[Uhuh]

It is frequently claimed that Technocracy Inc's plan has a sound scientific basis and is not founded on political ideology or philosophical musings. Please provide references to the quantitative data and analysis on which the assertions made by 'Technocracy Inc' are based. Without them, technocracy cannot claim to be a scientific plan.

Where are Technocracy Inc's academic writings? I have not seen a single reference to a scientific paper / text and yet it is continually claimed that Technocracy Inc's plan is a product of science.

A theory can not be assumed to be well-founded because someone says it is; they have to demonstrate that it is. A lack of analysis that is precise, rigorous and referenced is the luxury of religion and not science.

Assuming there is scientific analysis behind the ideas of Technocracy Inc please provide some references to the relevant academic and scientific writings.

[Josh]

http://technocracy.ca/simp/begin.htm

There ya go. Read on.

[Uhuh]

Nope.

Nothing remotely like a scientific paper there.

We're looking for scientific anlayses here, not propaganda. We're looking for real data, not the political ideology that your propaganda claims to depart from.

Saying something is science doesn't make it so.

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Nope.

Nothing remotely like a scientific paper there.

We're looking for scientific anlayses here, not propaganda. We're looking for real data, not the political ideology that your propaganda claims to depart from.

Saying something is science doesn't make it so.

Are you suprised? The claims of technocracy require human action to be quantifiable, which it clearly is not. Economics is a social science, not a natural science. The ideas of technocracy can work, but the methodology used in arguing for it is fatally flawed.

[Tangerine]

Fatally flawed? How so?

[Comrade Ogilvy]

The methodology of technocratic arguments hinges on, ultimately, that technocracy is science. Science, of course, require data and reproduceable experiments. As economics, at its core, is ultimately the study of human action, it is a social science, and as such cannot be modeled in a data-driven fashion in which reproduceable experiments exist. For this reason, technocracy often ends up looking like something of a non-sequitur.

[Tup]

The methodology of technocratic arguments hinges on, ultimately, that technocracy is science. Science, of course, require data and reproduceable experiments. As economics, at its core, is ultimately the study of human action, it is a social science, and as such cannot be modeled in a data-driven fashion in which reproduceable experiments exist. For this reason, technocracy often ends up looking like something of a non-sequitur.

Well put!

Ah, but you're wrong here. There are many things that science, and hence Technocracy, can measure about human activity.

Technocracy may be able to determine the correct proportions at which already existing products should be produced, but it cannot quantify human desire or want. How is technocracy to determine the relative worth of various products? Which new products should be produced in the future?

Take for instance the consumption of any particular product. It is easy, once a system is integrated, to tally the amount of something consumed. Once that is done, it is easy to match production to consumption. It's really as simple as that.

A similar system has been applied in socialist economies, btw.
This system could work well producing products that exist already; what about determining which products to produce in the future?

While Technocracy can get quite complicated in its intricacies, the underlying scientific principles are not that hard to understand, and anyone can. Just read something such as this article, and you'll see how easy it is to understand how Technocracy can measure human economic activity, and create a system to adapt to that activity.

The articles you have provided fail to legitimise technocracy.

The first article starts off with a wholly inadequate graph. The graph seems to be without discernable units. What is a "unit of production"? What do the numbers on the x-axis and y-axis have to do with "total industrial employment in man hours" or "physical production"?
Why does the graph have neither a source nor an adequate explanation?

The three-curve chart is a statistical record of physical events that have a direct bearing on human need and human suffering. It says an emphatic no to all who claim that machines make jobs.

If the graph provided had any bearing on reality, it still woudn't validate the conclusion given above. The graph only discusses "total industrial employment in man hours", rather than discussing employment (ie "jobs") in general (ie for the whole economy).

The chart shows that with a continuous increase in total production and a continuing decline in man-hours per unit of production, there will be a decrease in man-hours of purchasing power with which to buy that production.

The graph in no way demonstrates that "there will be a decrease in man-hours of purchasing power with which to buy that production".

Since purchasing power in our present social system depends upon the sale of man-hours, consequently purchasing power drops off as more and more kilowatt-hours replace man-hours.

non sequitur

These trends will continue. They cannot go back; they are unidirectional and irreversible.

If the trends shown in the graph are "unidirectional and irreversible", then the future of mankind is bright; we would have industrial armies of mechanical slaves producing everything we need.

That system broke down in North America about fifty years ago with the threat of abundance.

Abundance a threat?

Technocracy is a social design for living engineered for the distribution of an abundance to all our citizens from birth to death.

It is utopian to believe that an economic abundance can be "engineered".

Any other road will lead to national suicide.

National suicide?

6.Allow the citizen the widest latitude of choice in consuming his individual share of Continental physical wealth.
7. Distribute goods and services abundantly to every member of the population.

If goods and services are distributed "abundantly to every member of the population", then why must each citizen only consume his/her "individual share of Continental physical wealth"?

In the first place, money relationships are all based upon 'value,' which in turn is a function of scarcity. Hence money is not a 'measure' of anything.

non sequitur

Thus, money in any form whatsoever is completely inadequate as a medium of distribution in an economy of abundance with a Price System control.

It seems that they are confused as to what money is. Money is simply a medium of exchange; it doesn't have to be physical.

In other words, it is negotiable; it can be traded, stolen, given or gambled away. Thirdly, money can be saved.

If there were a state of abundance, why would anyone want to steal, gamble, or save?

As for Technocracy being a science, there is nothing in Technocracy that is not already a well-established scientific discipline. For an in-depth study of all the scientific precepts of Technocracy, you can read the Technocracy Study Guide, located here.

What about the goals of technocracy? Are they "scientific"? Science isn't supposed to deal with value judgements (ie determining 'good' goals).

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Ah, but you're wrong here. There are many things that science, and hence Technocracy, can measure about human activity. Take for instance the consumption of any particular product. It is easy, once a system is integrated, to tally the amount of something consumed. Once that is done, it is easy to match production to consumption. It's really as simple as that.

In any sufficiently developed economy, certain statistical measures can be gathered. However, one can never gather all data in an economy, even a true command economy (due the existence of a black market). Furthermore, any given good's current consumption is influenced by a wide variety of variables. Even the ones that can be documented, such as disposable income per person or the household savings rate, are influenced by cultural, sociological, and psychological factors that are unquantifiable. Human behavior can be modeled with some accuracy, but it cannot be quantified by any stretch of the imagination.

While Technocacy can get quite complicated in its intricacies, the underlying scientific principles are not that hard to understand, and anyone can. Just read something such as this article, and you'll see how easy it is to understand how Technocracy can measure human economic activity, and create a system to adapt to that activity.

The underlying scientific principles are fundamentally flawed, as technocracy ultimately hinges upon an empiricist understanding of the business cycle which tries to model future trends based upon past performance, similar to the failed Kolhan filter that was employed by neo-Keynesians during the 1960s in an attempt to graph future economic activity. Furthermore, technocracy fundamentally fails to understand how the business cycle operates, as its laughably bad analysis of the Great Depression illustrates.

As for Technocracy being a science, there is nothing in Technocracy that is not already a well-established scientific discipline. For an in-depth study of all the scientific precepts of Technocracy, you can read the Technocracy Study Guide, located here.

Technocracy is simply another system of economic organization. That is, it's a system which is to allocate scarce resources in a world of unlimited wants. While its approach is radically different from traditional economic systems of organization, it does not represent a new paradigm. Economics is not a natural science, and one cannot employ science and mathematics in this fashion.

[Josh]

Technocracy is simply another system of economic organization. That is, it's a system which is to allocate scarce resources in a world of unlimited wants.

While some resources are scarce, most are not. Food, for example. Far too many starve in the United States every year, simply because they are unable to pay for what food is placed on the shelves. These people starve needlessly. Farmers produce enough food to feed everyone in the United States- yet to keep the market profitable, enough food is destroyed so that not everyone gets it, which makes it 'valuable' in the economic sense. It is essentially the sanctioned starvation of a percentage of the population. Technocracy proposes that such waste is unnecessary and preventable. I suggest reading the articles and Information Briefs at www.technocracy.org for more information.

[Comrade Ogilvy]

No one in the United States starves, although too many are malnourished. A large subset of those who are malnourished are malnourished due to their own stupidity (eg, college students who get scurvy because they never eat fruit). The agricultural policies which pay farmers to destroy crops are by no means necessary to keep the market profitable, and if you think they are, you are economically illiterate. These policies, along with agricultural subsidies, exist to benefit politically-connected agribusiness. Technocracy is correct that such waste is unnecessary and preventable, but technocratic solutions are unnecessary.

[Tangerine]

And what solutions do you propose?

[Tup]

I would refer you to read both the articles Why Technocracy? and Energy Accounting, as they will no doubt answer many of your questions.

I have already read those articles. I responded to them in my last post.

To summarize however, as I already described in my previous post, no one needs to measure anything that is abstract. If something is consumed, it was desired. If is not, then it wasn't. It's pretty easy.

It is only easy if there is an abundance of goods.

As for the "relative worth" of products, Technocracy again does not try to quantify abstract things such as "value".

That is, among other things, what is wrong with technocracy.

Instead, as described in Energy Accounting, the only factor that is universal to all goods and services that can be objectively and invariably measured is energy.

That is false; the cost of services provided by humans cannot be measured in terms of energy. What makes energy any different then other physical properties and transformations (e.g. mass, raw materials)?

Only with this as our tool can we accurately measure our resources, productive capacity, and amount of production consumed.

There are other methods of accounting.

Armed with that knowledge, the Technate can produce exactly what the population wants, without shortages or waste (overproduction).

I don't follow you. How does the use of energy accounting allow the technate to "produce exactly what the population wants"?

And it certainly isn't hard to imagine how new products would be decided upon. There could be a function though which anyone could submit a new service/product idea or even full-fledged design. That function would then submit the idea to the population, who would then "vote" on whether they would like to see the item produced or not. If the response was positive, then production of the item would be ramped up to meet the new demand.

That would be incredibly impractical. Democracy of any kind generates inefficiency. Such a system would quickly lead to anarchy and gridlock. The "function" and its clientele would have an enormous responsibility without sufficient accountability. The main problem with this system is the lack of useful assessment opportunities. Without an accurate means of assessing the achievements of the "technate/function", an incentive structure tailoured to improve efficiency cannot exist. It is a utopian idea completely divorced from reality.

In such a system, would all entries be submitted to the population and be voted upon, every idea/product any Joe Blow thinks would be "cool"? How would the voting be carried out? Would there be incentives to vote? Would some amount of voting be mandatory? How would a submitted idea/product be rejected? Is it possible that every submitted idea/product receive a positive response from the population and consequently have production of such items "ramped up"?

Naturally, since that is not their intended purpose. They are instead introductions to new ideas that people are unfamiliar with. They are the starting point to being educated about Technocracy, not the end.

The articles provide propaganda, not "objective" information.

to demonstrate "trends" (notice this word in the title, not "data") that are universal to all sectors of the economy.

The graph does not explicitly refer to “all sectors of the economy”.

So you see, for its intended purpose, the graph is quite adequate.

As far as I can tell, the graph serves little or no purpose.

If what you are saying is that it is inadequate because it discusses only Industry,

Yes, among other reasons.

then I would say firstly that this was more than adequate to make the Price System obsolete (hence, the Great Depression),

The Great Depression is not evidence for the viability of Technocracy. The Depression was caused by a boom-bust cycle, not "abundance".

and secondly that the same trends exist in the service industry as well.

Employment in man-hours in the service industry has been increasing over the last few decades. This is not true of the industrial sector. All this means is that employment is being shifted from one sector to another. How is this an ominous trend for the price system?

If you are saying that it is inadequate because it discusses "man-hours" instead of "jobs",

I am not!

This would be referring to the "bell" shaped curve on the chart. Aside from the fact that this is historical data, you could also multiply the other two curves against each other and get this third one as a result. Go ahead and try it. I have.

I know what it refers to. I am disputing the claimed link between the trend in the graph and the conclusions of the article.

Not at all. Shall I explain it for you? In order to have purchasing power, one needs work, which is to say selling your "man-hours" in exchange for this purchasing power. If you lose your job because it was just automated, then you lose that purchasing power, don't you? Hence, as "man-hours" are replaced by "kilowatt-hours", purchasing power diminishes. It's a rather simple arithmetic correlation.

The argument is invalid because the replacement of "man-hours" by "kilowatt-hours" as described in the article, together with the claim that purchasing power depends upon employment, does not lead to the argument's conclusion. Purchasing power may depend upon employment without there being a direct correlation between total consumption and total employment in man-hours. In other words, even if all purchasing power is derived from employment in man-hours, that has no relevance to the actual amount of consumption. Each man-hour worked can generate a changing amount of purchasing power over time. The argument is also unsound since it contains at least one false premise. Purchasing power does not depend solely on man-hours worked, as that would fail to encompass the purchasing power of those earning a profit from investments and the purchasing power of the government (tax revenue from corporations etc).

Shall I explain it for you? In order to have purchasing power, one needs work, which is to say selling your "man-hours" in exchange for this purchasing power. If you lose your job because it was just automated, then you lose that purchasing power, don't you? Hence, as "man-hours" are replaced by "kilowatt-hours", purchasing power diminishes. It's a rather simple arithmetic correlation.

The replacement of man-hours by kilowatt-hours as described in the article does not necessarily lead to massive unemployment. Massive unemployment has not yet occurred, yet the article claims that man-hours have been being replaced by kilowatt-hours for decades now. Even if employment was the only source of purchasing power and employment levels were decreasing, increases in average hourly wages could more than compensate for the losses in purchasing power.

Then you have missed the point of the article then. This would be true if purchasing power was not tied to employment, as is the case in Technocracy (so you are saying that Technocracy's proposal is bright?).

I am saying that if the trends represented in the graph continue together with the corresponding trend of increasing total employment incorporated within that time period, then the future of humanity is bright. The graph, when placed in the context of actual changes in total employment, provides advocacy of the status quo rather than technocracy.

Hence the paradox of our time: the more we are able to produce, the less we are able to consume. Technocracy is the solution to this problem.

Total consumption and production have both been increasing for some time now.

Abundance caused the Great Depression and I don't think that too many people back then found it very funny.

IMO, The Great Depression was caused by a lack of responsible governmental control over the economy.

And this statement is a categorical denial in contradiction to the observable data that states that an abundance has already been produced, and it was produced by machines, or "engineering".

There is not abundance. Please provide reasons for me to believe in such ”abundance".

This, I'm afraid, is a non-sequiteur, as you say, for neither the above quote nor the referring article say this (must consume only?).

I admit that I may have misinterpreted the semantics of the article with respect to that extract. "Their share" may not represent a limitation if it is referring to how much was consumed rather than how much can be consumed. I apologize if I made such an error.

What this is saying is that each citizen will have an equal amount of goods and services (as measured in terms of energy),

What you have written here suggests that I didn't misinterpret the extract after all. Are you saying that each individual is limited in terms of what they can consume or not? If there were no limits on consumption, then there would be no way of ensuring that each member of society consume an equal amount of energy.

Now, suppose this same desk is worth $100 today. There is no guarantee that it will be worth the same tomorrow.

Money is a means of expressing relative value; the monetary worth of something is variable over time. The length of an object is also variable over time. The difference is that the units of length never change (excluding relativistic situations). Money is a measure of something, and that something is the ever-changing relative value of goods and services.

That's a very good point, which only proves another part of Technocracy, but that is a different topic.

I was questioning the claimed need for "energy credits" to replace money.

Technocracy, just like science, does not deal with value judgments. As I have said before, Technocracy is a technology, and like any technology, it can be either used, or not.

Libertarianism, just like science, does not deal with value judgments. As a Libertarian may have said before, Libertarianism is a technology, and like any technology, it can be either used, or not.

Technocracy can only be a technology if every ideology is considered a technology. Technocracy has a clearly outlined vision for society. Technocracy inc. clearly advocates the technocratic ideal. Technocracy inc. is a disseminator of propaganda, not an organization dedicated to informing people of the "facts".

In this case, all Technocracy is saying is that in order for technological civilization to continue, this is what must be done. Technocracy is not saying that people "must" chose to continue technological civilization, however. That is completely up to us. However, given scientific observations of society, it is considered highly unlikely that society will not want to continue its technological civilization, thus Technocracy presents its plan. But choose it or not based on your own "values". All we ask is that you do so informed of the "facts".

Claiming that technocracy is required for "technological society to continue" is like a libertarian claiming that libertarianism is required for " a free and open society to continue". According to the libertarian, you can either choose libertarianism or not, but you should do so based upon the "facts". To a libertarian, rejecting libertarianism is the same as rejecting freedom. To a technocrat, rejecting technocracy is the same as rejecting technology. Technocracy and libertarianism, like all other ideologies, have goals and "values" - some more explicitly stated than others. Do you think libertarianism is a technology? If not, why isn't it?

[Josh]

Burning crops, killing livestock, pouring oil on oranges, putting other products on ships and sinking them...

Also, ships are in and of themselves sank. Currently, the military is going to be sinking one of the relatively old (it's not that old, actually) aircraft carriers. It's a completely unjustified waste of perfectly good, reusable scrap metal. Think of all the cars that could be constructed with that amount of metal!

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

More to the point, however, is the idea that abundance destroys value. If you take air for instance, no one can sell this, because it is abundant, i.e. there is more than enough for everyone. If ever an industry can produce so much of a given product or service that its value drops below that which would be sufficient to make an operable enterprise out of it, then this situation can be called an abundance as well. It is the inability of any Price System economy to address this problem for which Technocracy was devised. This is all more than adequately described in the Why Technocracy? article.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

The reason that air has no value, is that none can control it.

If one could take all the air in the atmosphere away, or render it unbreathable, then it would have a value that is essentially infinate.

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

Um, exactly. If someone were to do that, then the air would no longer be abundant, but instead scarce. It would be artificially scarce, but scarce nonetheless. This is of course how the Price System has managed to survive so long after its "natural" time for death/collapse in 1929. Money and abundance cannot coexist, thus you must get rid of one of them. North America apparently chose to keep money rather than everyone living better. Roll eyes

I don't believe in era based progress, so I don't believe the price system was just the best way of running things for a certain 'era' and then it went obsolete at a certain date. Things don't work that way.

Money exists beacause of BOTH abundance and scarcity, beacause money is the result of trade, and trade is the result of interaction between scarcity and abundance, designed to create a balanced equilibrium, in which all get what they demand and get rid of surplus.

The eternal problems, never change. As soon as it was possible to 'breed money with money', the healthy economic order degenerates, beacause someone must pay for it all.

We must eradicate usury. That would solve most of the problems we presently suffer from with the 'price system'.