[lookingin]

Hello anyone,

It's been along time since I've joined this forum and then posted only a few times. Why have I posted only a few times? Well frankly "politics" as it is known bores the hell out of me because it is largely fake and is thusly comparible to The School of Driving Around in Circles for Morons -- and I include both rich and poor alike in this comparision, nobody is exempt except for those who have risen above the conditional lines of thought.

With that said, I've been thinking. Since it is a given that something in US government is not functioning as planned, it is now obvious that we need some new way, a more humane way, of governing needs to be agreed upon. I don't know whether that would mean "technocracy" or not, but as things are now neither "technocracy" nor anything else will be put on the public's table for discussion. Those in power will not allow it.

In the extreme sense of things, what you have in the world are two kinds of people: the sellers and the buyers. The sellers are of course the people who have the power who acquired that power by making others believe them, and too often left to chance is whether what they are offering is anything beneficial to the fate of this living world or not. They are our politicians, and our media, and the general body of self-interested business people at the top. Don't get me wrong, I haven't condemned anyone here, because if you live and breath you too can count yourself among the self-interested. It is human nature. The question is, should this behavior be allowed to run rampant in a finite space called earth which all the living beings here are forced (by fate, by chance, or by default) to live on.

"Poor" people are not simply poor because they have no money, or because they haven't the right job, or because they are lacking the opportunities of advancement, they are truly poor because they will actually defend the current stagnant system with all their might even though it offers them nothing but a few crumbs and a continual struggle of uncertainty for themselves and their future generations, a system which is dead. Yes that is right, because it is clearly in DEADLOCK and so IT IS DEAD. It is shocking to see that average people will argue all year round until they are blue in the face about whether Republicans or Democrats are better. Ironically it is here where the common folk "choose" to make their stand, in a total waste of effort, in defense of the artificial beliefs they've been sold on -- and thus we have the buyers. Note: Here I refer to the poor as especially those that proudly boast themselves as the Middle or Upper-Middle Class. The Middle Class have to be the most asleep people on earth, while the greedy rich have their heads on straight because they know just how to control people. Even the truly poor are sometimes persistant enough to find out and learn what's really important in life because ultimately there is no "Middle Class" and there never has been, just because the greedy have thrown you a crumb for kissing major ass, or "climbing the ladder of success" as it is known, does not mean there has ever been anything but those who have and those who do not. Are we supposed to believe that all men are created equal or not? And what values shall we attribute to the differences, those who are deserving and those who are not? This is based on what evidence? By the looks of all of us and the bigger picture, I'm just not getting it.

As I see it, right now there is no way the people in power will ever let a technocracy become a reality because they control the media and therefore what is popularly believed. On the contrary it is more likely that they will use technology to control us -- this seems inevitable if you look at where the funding is going, towards greater and greater military defense technology. What will the ultimate target become?

People in power do not want to lose their status, and they certainly do not want to become equals with everyone else. As for an entirely different way of doing things, they will dismiss it, they will ridicule it, and do just about anything else they have to do to virtually erase it. So can the old system ever be thrown out to install the new?

[JustinGilmore]

history shows many governments have been thrown out, but i do understand your point

[A_Technocrat]

Very insightful post that is all I can say about it.

About the question at hand, right now Technocracy can't do anything except for do research, keep the organization going, and educate all of those who are willing to listen. This due to the reasons listed above, the price system is simply too strong for us.

Although, the price system will eventually destroy itself. It almost did it back in the 30's, which Technocracy predicted would happen.

When this happens Technocracy will have to step in and offer its plan to the people of North America. Then the people will have to choose between Technocracy or their doom.

Edit: Of course if anyone has any good ideas on how to get a technate implemented sooner, me or Kolzene are all ears. Note: If it involves something along the lines "shooting GWB and captialists in the face" please post it in the communism forum.

[Justin534]

Well I have an idea on how to bring about Technocracy without the need for any kind of revolution or economic collapse. I originally posted this in the communist forum, although technocracy is not communism I am wondering if this type of idea may be able to be used for technocracy. Ok, here it is:

Ok, I think this is the problem with all communists that I can see. We are not thinking of new means to get there. Basically all communists believe there has to be a revolution. If Im wrong please correct me. Then there would have to be some form of government to transition from a capitalist economy to a marxist one - again, if Im wrong please correct me. But no one seems to be thinking of new ideas, as if these are set in stone. Times have change though, and possibly one tool to help us out is the Internet. None of these previous lines of thought take into account the Internet.

I propose that marxists (generally communists, call yourselves whatever you want) simply stop participating in the capitalist system. Im sure there are marxists (I use marxism and communism interchangably) all over the world from every walks of life - ie doctors, people that know about manufacturing, those with knowledge on mining, agriculture, etc. What are we waiting for, why dont marxists just start being marxists. With the Internet all marxists from around the world can connect with each other. We should form a global marxist society within our capitalist countries. We have no legal obligation to participate in capitalism.

So you may ask where would we get resources. Well we would still need to follow the necessary systems set out in our countries. We would need to form a business and follow all the regulations. But I dont see a problem with this. Our companies would only be companies in the legal sense. But they would have no wages and no in or out flow of cash.

Some of you may ask what if we werent completely self sufficient or didnt have access to certain resources. Then I say we could participate in some kind of communal capitalism. We would make and produce products as a community and sell them in the capitalist system. Instead of participating in a capitalist system individually, we would do it as a community.

With the Internet we could figure out what is needed where and when. We could run our economy through the Internet. This would be a global community, not just existing in seperate pockets, but all over the world. Slowly over time people would see the benefits of cooperation, that marxism actually works, and they would join us. Maybe all other attempts to reach a marxist system has failed because the world has tried to be changed from the inside out. The revolution occurred in Russia and the Soviet union tried to change the world from the outside-in. We have seen that this failed. This way we could avoid revolution and as people slowly join the global community the states would slowly dissolve.

The Internet is our most powerful tool, we need to use it to its full potential. This is how we can change the world in the 21st century. We can talk about communism all we want, but we need to DO something. We cant just wait for it to happen.

Lets discuss, debate, fine tune, and work this out. Please dont simply disregard this because it is not a mainstream idea. I want to hear everyone's opinon good or bad.

[Justin534]

Ya, I wasnt exactly sure if this kind of idea would be applicable to technocracy - since it seems that in needs the participation of the whole of society to work. Oh well, sharing ideas never hurt anyone....I dont think.

[A_Technocrat]

*edit*

Here's a good idea, visit:

http://www.technocracy.ca

[A_Technocrat]

A cool photo

http://www.thinkless.org/photos/tiffanys/dollarburning.jpg

[Justin534]

Just curious how come you think the price system will destroy its self? Whats innately unstable about the price system? And how come it almost happened in the 1930s?

[A_Technocrat]

Now now, A.T., we don't what people to think that we are serving any kind of active role in the collapse of the Price System. Remember: "Technocracy does not destroy the Price System, the Price System destroys itself."

Killjoy...

but in all this idea won't do anything useful and we'll have to wait for the price system collapse itself.

[Justin534]

That's a great question, Justin, and you've certainly hit upon Technocracy's raison d'etre; it's no small order. I will however try to be as brief as possible and follow with some good resources on getting more info.

It's good to remember that Technocracy was not conceived simply as a 'good idea'. It was developed in direct response to a comprehensive scientific study of the North American continent (called the Energy Survey of North America), that predicted the eventual failure of the economy to be able to distribute its production to its citizens. In fact, the group that did this research, called the Technical Alliance, predicted the onset of the Great Depression within 6 months of the stack market crash. From their understanding of the problem came what was needed for a solution, and that solution was named Technocracy.

So what was this problem then? Put most simply, it is this: During the beginning of the 20th century, more and more companies were installing machines to do work at an increasing rate. Also increasing was the amount of work that these machines could do as compared to the amount of human operation they required. Initially this got a lot of people a lot of jobs, and produced a lot of goods for these prosperous people to buy, hence we had the "Roaring Twenties." However, an inflection point occured in the total employment of North America (and indeed many other countries). The rate at which machines were able to do work began to outstrip the need for people to operate them, hence they began putting people out of work, all the while producing even yet more goods for us to buy.

Now, I will assume that you know a little basic economics here. Since production was skyrocketting, this meant that supply was going up at a rate faster than any time in history. What happens to price when supply goes up? That's right, it goes down. Now, people were also being put out of work, which meant that they were starting to spend less, which means that demand went down. What happens to price here? That's right, down again. With both these factors came the destruction of price, a loss of confidence in companies and banks, and hence, the Great Depression. (All this is demonstrated in this chart here.) This left us with a paradoxical situation: the more we produce, the less we could consume. Do you start to see the craziness of this yet?

But of course, the next question is, why did we recover from the Depression if it was such a problem? The answer is not an obvious one. Put simply, we didn't. What our leaders did to "cure" our problem was in fact the equivelant of a doctor giving a patient pain-killers when they have brain cancer. Sure, most of the symptoms go away, but the problem continues to get worse. And eventually, the patient will die.

The same is happening right here in North America. The economic "tension" between the need to automate and the need to keep people employed in order to have an income continues to grow wider. The government "cures" this by regular injections of money in the form of social programs, business incentives, and wars. Really, it was WWII that gave us the temporary reprive from further depression, and the wars and cold war that followed continued our treatment of "painkillers".

But the time will come when these factors can no longer be simply "glossed over" by increasing the debt. Either the debt will become too large, or we will no longer be able to borrow at a rate that will keep proper economic "momentum" up, or worse still, shortages of natural resources (such as oil) will cause fluctuations that cannot be corrected.

The only way to actually solve this problem is to no longer employ scarcity mechanisms (such as money) that cause it in the first place, and no longer tie in people's incomes with the amount of hours or work they do. Once that is done, the entirety of industrial potential becomes available to us for the first time, allowing us to all experience a standard of living far higher than is the average at this time. No more poverty, no more starvation, virtually no crime, etc. etc. It all becomes possible. Once you've read enough and understand it, you'll see it too.

Now keep in mind that what I have just said here, while appearantly lengthy, is a mere summary of a large amount of information. It is only the conclusions and not meant to "prove" anything, but rather can themselves be "proved" if need be. If you'd like clarification on any or all parts of this, please ask, and I can either answer directly or point you towards the best places to read more about them.

For a good article on this very subject (including the aforementioned chart), try Why Technocracy? For a look at some of the methods that Technocracy employs to unleash and unrestrict our industrial capacity, read Eleven Reasons Technocracy Works. For more info on the history of Technocracy, try this portion of the FAQ file (a bit long to load in case you have dial-up!). I especially recommend question 3.8, "Why did society recover from the Great Depression?" Good stuff.

I hope this helps!

Very interesting, thanks for the information. I have another question though. Cant the loss of jobs that comes about through more efficient production be countered by technology and service related jobs? Thus preserving the price system?

[Proctor]

I know I've posted this before, so my apologies to anyone who has already read this, but I think you might find it interesting. It is an extract from a 1970s book on Communism I borrowed my school library, and details why Capitalism is doomed to fail from a Marxist perspective. I know it is not the same as what Kolzene is talking about, but I think it is similiar, so I hope he won't mind me diverting the topic a little.


The Decay of Capitalism

Marx saw capitalism as an inevitable and even desirable stage in the evolution of society, even if it was bound to collapse in the end. For it was under capitalism that industrial wealth - factories, workshops, transport and so on - was created. Since true communism means ‘ to each according to his need’, without that wealth true communism could not exist. Also, said Marx, capitalism created the necessary political awareness and revolutionary organisation among the proletariat for it to bring about the next and final stage in the development of society.
The ‘internal contradictions’ of capitalism that would cause its decay and downfall were, in Marx’s view, numerous. Fault One and Two it shared with other previous stages of society, although they might be worse under capitalism. These were Exploitation of one class by another, and its corollary, the Class Struggle, the inevitable conflict between exploiters and exploited. The other faults were more specific to capitalism.
Fault Three was the boom-slump cycle: Marx thought, and many non-Marxists agree, that capitalism is prone to alternating periods of economic boom and economic slump, although Marx, for reasons we shall see, thought that the slumps would get worse and worse.
Fault Four was that because of the ruthless competition between n capitalist companies there would be fewer and fewer of them, as the weaker were driven out of business. This meant that wealth would be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, and that ever-increasing numbers of former capitalists would be driven down into the ranks of the proletariat.
Fault Five was the increasing number of the unemployed, as production was concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.
Fault Six was that technological progress would merely aggravated exploitation. According to Marx’s ‘labour theory of value’, the value of an object is determined by the work that is put into making it by the workers. Capitalists only make profits by withholding from the workers part of the ‘value’ that the workers alone create. Therefore, to pay for better equipment, capitalists must keep back from the workers more and more of the ‘value’ of their work. This brought yet again another fault.
Fault Seven was the increasing misery and impoverishment of the proletariat, confronted with fewer and larger employers determined to drive down wages in order to maximise both new investment and profits. However, this process of fewer rich and more poor itself redounded upon the rich in the following way.
Fault Eight was that as wages fell, people would be able to afford to buy less and less. Therefore capitalism was bound to experience an increasing crisis of overproduction, as too many goods chased too little money. This in turn led to two further faults.
Fault Nine was a long-run decline in the rate of profit for the capitalists, because they could not sell all their goods. Thus, in a sense, they were caught up helplessly in the same vicious circle as everyone else.
Fault Ten was that in the desperate search for new markets for their goods, the capitalist class (which also controlled the government, on Marx’s theory) would look abroad and inevitably come into conflict with other capitalist countries also seeking new markets: this was the explanation of, for example, wars between European countries over colonies. Thus capitalism becomes a source of military as well as class warfare.
Fault Eleven was perhaps the most famous single idea that Marx injected into political discussion - and the most difficult. It was the idea of ‘alienation’. He borrowed it, once again, form Hegel, but made it all his own. By ‘alienation’, he meant that men who were exploited by the capitalist system, who were simply paid a wage to work on machinery owned by someone else, who saw the political, moral and artistic life of their country run by the bourgeoisie for their own benefit, could not truly express themselves and their talents. They were bound to lead cramped and miserable lives with no sense of ‘belonging’ to or identifying with the world around them. In short, they were ‘alienated’.
Despite his emphasis on class, Marx therefore saw capitalism, in the deepest and most personal sense, as a grave handicap to the development of individual human personality. Only when the evils of capitalism were abolished and true communism created, he argues, could men as a whole be able to realise their true selves and lead a full life at one with their environment.

[Proctor]

Of course this still says nothing about what to do about it, but I will leave that for another thread. Perhaps Proctor you an I can discuss Marx' ideas on that and compare them to Technocracy.

But of course. I'd be more than happy too. But, I should warn now, that I am no expert on Marxist theory, and am no longer even a believer. Perhaps you could ask Jaakko to join us; he is very clear and concise when he is informing rather than persuading, and is probably the most knowledgable on the subject.