mikema63 wrote:Ive yet to really see any real plans to get technocracy implemented bar some conspiracy speeches about smart grids and the NWO being technocracy.
How is technocracy going about all this?
Well, I'd say that, with current technology, it is impossible to establish a technocracy. In order for technocracy to be installed, you need to get rid of scarcity. You need abundance of every consumable good. And that's obviously impossible right now. Of course, with efficient planning, it is possible to establish a virtual abundance of every renewable resource. There was a time when water was quite valuable, because you needed to find pure water in order to maintain agriculture. Nowadays, if there are no rivers nearby, you can simply install desalination plants and turn ocean water potable. It's not hard, and many countries in the Caribbean do exactly that.
It is also possible to install virtual abundance for manufactured goods, if you know how much you need to produce. But the problem is when you have non-renewable resources. Some, like petroleum, can be easily replaced by other stuff. But you have a problem when you think of things like gold, for example. Gold is quite rare to find in mines nowadays. It usually just circulates. And gold is not something that you can use once and throw away, just like that. You use it for important jewelry, like wedding rings and family artifacts. It's not like women will use a necklace in one party and then simply return the pece of jewelry to the store for someone else to take it. That's unrealistic. And it is not like gold is only used in jewelry, anyway. Gold is used extensively in technology, due to its electrical properties. You have gold being used in optical discs and high-speed cables. And these things are made to last. So it's not like you will be able to apply the same logic you used in the car example you used before. You simply won't be discarding gold often enough to have it circulate that way.
But that doesn't mean all is lost. If we have enough gold to maintain such a system, we can easily establish this virtual abundance. And luckily, there is no scarcity of gold in the asteroid belt. We just need to get there. And, in the future, converting one element into another will probably be easier and less expensive as well. But, right now, it is impossible to implement a full post-scarcity economy, because many resources are naturally scarce.
That's the economical aspect, of course. The political aspect of technocracy (i.e. a system of government led by experts and technicians, rather than politicians) can be implemented at any point.
quetzalcoatl wrote:I don't know anything about technocracy other than what has been discussed on this forum. I'm guessing it might be implemented via automated production and some kind of expert system/AI to manage it.
Pretty much, yeah. Technocracy is basically impossible without full industrial automation and nationwide registry of all goods consumed. You need to find a way to create virtual abundance of industrialized goods, after all. And, in order to do that, you need a good control system to know how much is being consumed and how much is being produced. And it is almost impossible doing that without good computers to do all the math.
However, even with full automation, it is hard to bypass the issue of some non-renewable resources being scarce.
Technocracy seems rather pointless under the current economic set-up. Why have productivity doubled, tripled, quadrupled, etc., when the endgame is redundancy of the labor force? If every doubling of productivity were accompanied by a halving of the work week it would be different, but as it is now 100% of productivity gains go to capital.
But the idea behind technocracy is not to increase production. On the contrary, it is to limit it to match the consumption levels at all times, achieving the minimum error possible. And that would be achieved by having all kinds of human labor becoming
unnecessary. With everything being automated, all boring, repetitive, dangerous and/or unpleasant types of labor would be done by machines. So nobody would have to work in an area they don't like. Everybody would be doing whatever they want to do. If they wanted to be university researchers, they would be able to do it. If they wanted to be doctors, they would be so. And if they wanted to be lazy and do nothing all day long, they could do it too.
Capital is also not an issue, since capital doesn't exist under the system. Money is completely gone.
Let's face it. There's going to be some level of corruption and bureaucracy in any government anyway, so why not have a government that looks out for the basic needs of the citizenry?
What would corruption accomplish in a system without money, exactly? Everyone can have whatever they want for free. What's the point of risk going to jail in that system?
As for bureaucracy, technocracy is not aimed at ending it. I'd say the proposal is to make things even more bureaucratic, cine the governance model is based on the corporate model used by most companies.
The corporatist model seems interesting, if it could be divorced from racialism and militarism somehow.
But technocracy is not corporatist. Corporatism is a social model that requires people to be divided into specific labor-based corporate groups. You have the group of industrial workers, another for agricultural workers, another group for scientists and so on. And each group plays its own role into forming a unique organic society. People are not free to move from one group to another. They are supposed to be where their skills are needed.
The technocratic social model is essentially free. Everyone is free to do whatever they want, because labor is no longer necessary. Automated machinery will do everything. You'll only need people organizing the whole process.
fuser wrote:Like every other ideology, they will need an army to take the power then a police to keep it.
Pretty much, yeah. Without a military and a police force, ideologues will simply take over, reinstall the price system and ruin everything.
But as Smertios said in another thread, Technocracy is more of a concept than a full blown ideology which can be implemented in various other ideologies.
Well, that's true, though, in this post, I have been referring to technocracy as suggested by Technocracy, Inc. But, like I mentioned in that other thread, technocracy is hardly a political ideology, in the sense we are used to. Going by the definition, it is certainly an 'ideology', in the sense that it is a set of ideas regarding the achievement of a goal. But the same can be said of feminism, for example. Or even the gay rights movement.
When we look at the political ideas defended by Technocracy, Inc., we see that their main target are not the traditional political ideologies, but democracy. So, in a way, technocracy is the equivalent system to democracy, not to liberalism or socialism.
Before having an official ideology, a country has to have a distinct nature. The government can be democratic, in nature, or it can be autocratic. It can also be aristocratic, meritocratic, theocratic, lottocratic etc. Similarly, it can also be technocratic.
One step below, the form of government is defined. The country can be a republic or a monarchy, parliamentary, presidential, semi-presidential, directorial etc. All of that without ceasing to be a democracy, a meritocracy etc.
And, one step below, the government will also have a political ideology. It can be liberal, socialist, social-democrat, conservative, christian-democrat, libertarian etc. All of that without jeopardizing the steps above. In that way, I'd say that it is 100% possible to have a liberal technocracy, or a socialist technocracy, or even a fascist technocracy.
mikema63 wrote:Not according to them, I think Jolene mentioned that private property wouldn't really exist. If for instance ou were using a car then as soon as you stopped using it someone else would and when you needed to use a car again you would use another. No one really owns a car but no one lacks for the use of one.
That's new to me. It would basically be impossible to implement such a system, anyway. People grow find of their possessions. There are many people who really like their cars, after all. I think the appropriate technological solution to the transportation problem is making efficient public transportantion systems (train, bus, taxi etc) that can support as many passengers as needed. That'how I always imagined technocracy solving that problem.
fuser wrote:Car is not private property. 
They want to abolish personal property? 
Fuck them. 
Ehh, by definition, 'personal property' is just private property that is movable. That is, all private itens that can be carried with you, even if you leave your home. They are still private, in the sense that they belong to you, though. So that dichotomy simply doesn't exist.
mikema63 wrote:Hmmm, seems like corporatism is the most likely system to produce a technocracy then, though I think there is something to be said about spontaneous order.
I'd say that corporatism is the least likely system to lead to technocracy. Technocracy is, essentially, anti-corporatist, in the sense that it does not divide people into corporate groups. Instead, labor is outsourced to automatic machines, so people can be free to do whatever they want. They can even be lazy and do nothing for the rest of their lives, if they want. That would be unimaginable in a corporatist society.
Though how they expect to manage creating a technate without using the political process is beyond me.
That's basically a misunderstanding the people in Technocracy, Inc. has made. They claim their system is non-political, because there aren't elected politicians in office, but that is not the definition of politics at all. There is a system of governance in place, dealing with all power relations in society. So the system
is political. In fact, it is impossible to have a non-political system in human society. There will always be power relations between human beings.
Like many people said, how exactly the technocratic system would work is not well-defined yet. There isn't a concrete plan for implementation. But since their main target is democracy, and they favor a technical government, rather than an elected one, this is how I always imagined it: instead of elections, there are examinations. And instead of terms of office, there are limited contracts. That way, the most skilled expert is always in charge. Instead of having an election every 5 years to decide who will be the Secretary of Transportation in a state, there would be a standardized written examination, for a 5-year contract, in which a proper transportation engineer could be selected to fill the position. Whoever passed it with the highest score would get the job. That way, there wouldn't be a politician in charge, but a technician, with the appropriate skills.
ralfy wrote:Space travel. 
Exactly! (Economical) Technocracy can only be implemented if there is an abundance of physical resources. And, in many cases, that is simply not true yet. But once we start expanding into outer space, we will reach new mines. There is an abundance of gold in the Asteroid Belt, for example, as I mentioned before. And there are also many other metals. There is plenty of helium in Jupiter and so on.
Assuming we can control human population in the future, in order to keep the number of human beings stable, we can easily achieve a virtual abundance of every resource needed in our society.
You need to justify this logic.
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