Technocracy implies a belief that a sophisticated and well-enforced set of top-down policies - which aren't tied to any other vague elements of leadership or political maneuvering - are the best way to rule societies. Not that the people at the top themselves have the know-how to craft and execute them. Just as one can be a AGW proponent by trusting scientists without knowing how to read climatological data or sequester even a single cc of carbon dioxide.

You're describing something else "well-enforced set of top-down policies" is how things are structured. You can get that from a king's brutal enforcement of divine law.

Technocracy is how to chose who runs things: "is a system of governance where decision-makers are selected on the basis of technological knowledge. Scientists, engineers, technologists, or experts in any field, would compose the governing body, instead of elected representatives. Leadership skills would be selected on the basis of specialized knowledge and performance, rather than parliamentary skills.[2] Technocracy in that sense of the word (an entire government run as a technical or engineering problem) is mostly hypothetical." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

Critically, having someone technical in charge based on an election is not a Technocracy. It's related to Monarchy/Democracy just replace by birth or by election with by demonstrating relevant technical skill. Knowing how to build a CPU for example is not relevant to setting health policy.

PS: The closest we have come is probably a small hunter gather group lead by a group of the eldest. As they are selected based on their skill in survival. Though presumably they had far fewer regulations etc.

Well known technocrats frequently raise because of being good on politics/charisma/etc, rather than their technical skill which sometime can be average at best.

On top of that, pure and legitimate technocrats frequently are so deep in their fields they don't notice side effects to other fields. Politics are about making the whole system work, not about advancing one single field.

It's easy to optimise a society for a specific task (e.g. war economy). But the disbalance it brings may not be worth it in the long run. E.g. today's western societies are not self-sustainable due to huge welfare and too low birth rate. I wonder wether we'll revert to family-based societies next or invent smth new.

The economic drain of welfare spending is often overestimated. The IRS for example shifts a lot of money from A > B, but it does not cost a lot of money to do that shift. Mostly what changes is who is allocating resources, not the total number of resources to allocate.

Which is technocratically correct. But on the other hand, welfare may enable freeriders. Who are fully capable to make a living themselves, but choose handouts.

Of course, next step is that welfare to freeriders is cheaper for the society than freeriders turning into criminals. But even with welfare there're criminals and not all freeriders are criminally minded either.

Freeriders can still create value. See J. K. Rowling for a billionaire example who leveraged social welfare into wealth. I am not saying Welfare is justified, just that is not a major issue.

US has a 18.57 trillion GDP, if you dedicate 10% of that into ~1,500$/month free riders that's ~1/3 of society. As long as most people want more than a subsistence level income it's simply not going to become a big deal. Sure, you in theory lose the economic output of the lazy not just the old or the infirm, but that output is simply not that significant in the first place.

Granted, we spend vastly more than that on many people. But, higher costs are a question of poor implementation not inherent costs.