What happens when experts fail? Week 15 Reflection

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What happens when experts fail? The answer to this question is what should be at the forefronts of the minds of anyone in the process of the creation of any organization or society. In today’s world, we rely on experts for everything, whether we realize it or not. The people who run our schools, our governmental systems, the internet, the road infrastructure, essentially every aspect of our lives is, in one way or another, entrusted to experts in a field. Therefore, since so much of what happens is directly influenced by experts, it is vitally important to consider what will happen not if, but when, they eventually fail, as all humans are bound to do eventually.
Some have reacted to this situation by proposing that we give less power to the experts of various fields. At first glance, this sounds like a good idea, since taking power away from the people who are guaranteed to make a mistake eventually is a good idea. However, this is not the full equation. The power that is taken from these experts must go somewhere, or we have just weakened the organization or society as a whole. This is not an ideal situation, so where will the power be distributed to prevent a critical failure arising from human error? One solution is to distribute the power among a group of experts, all with an incentive to ensure that the group remains on track. Without this incentive, simply distributing the power over a group only provides an opportunity for the entire group to have an error, whether by corruption or by something as trivial as listening to the ideas of the oldest members with the most open ears. This makes an error less likely, as the entire group would need to be on board, but this distribution of power and decision making are equally effective at preventing the things that the group is supposed to accomplish, since more steps are now required for each action to be taken. In order for this distribution to be worthwhile, the members of the group must all have an incentive to keep the group accountable and on track.
However, despite being a decent system, I believe that we should continue giving power to experts, but only power over things that they are experts in. Make the best doctor in the world the head of doctors. Even when they mess up, they will mess up significantly less often and less catastrophically than anyone else would in their shoes. Therefore, I believe that while expert failure can be a big problem, people will always fail, so we should put the ones least likely to fail in positions of power.