[telluro]

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

From here, I gleaned this basic definition:

What is the purpose of a Technocratic society?

The stated goal of a Technocratic society is to provide the highest standard of living possible to all citizens for the longest period possible.


And the general idea seems to be a transcendance of political ideology* and a focus solely on practical, technical terms, on what work to make life better and longer.

*or so technocrats think - since they want the state to preserve rights, and that's very ideological - it's just taken for granted

So in any case why is this utilitarianism different from the dominant species of capitalism which we have now, but stripped of some of its more political features? Why is it called technocracy and not utilitarianism?

If I were to think up a definition of technocracy, I'd think a political system run by practical scientists for several ends, the most important of which is not the betterment of each and every individual. In fact, I could think of a number of ends that override that specific end, but to submit a whole system to that one sole end is something, 1. which I don't understand, and 2. which is typical at the very least of the rhetoric of the system in which we currently live? What is it that technocrats want to change?

[Einherjar]

Technocrats are simply utilitarians who think that technology can solve mankind's material problems in the same way the free market or the socialist state does for others. It is, as you say, another brand of utilitarian ideology that seeks to achieve its end through technological progress and technical rule alone - hence its name. I suspect that you, like me, approached this ideology enthusiastically only to be quickly put off and disappointed by the usual Millian patheticalness. The only possible difference from the current system is technology acquiring a central role rather than being subject to the forces of the market or populist tendencies.

[telluro]

Indeed.

But I'm assuming that the individual acquirement of life-bettering technology will be economically democratic, in the sense that one has to buy it, rather than it being forced on him, since they believe in rights. So again, I don't see the difference between a technocracy and an open market capitalist society with fairly advanced technology.

I've gathered that they might not think that capitalism will lead humanity to a post-scarcity era. I (an anti-capitalist in many ways) propose that capitalism has already taken most of Western society into a post-scarcity era, and perhaps into a post-necessity era, since we no longer consume simply what we need for survival and good life, but more, much more, simply to keep up economic growth.

[Fitzy]

Technocracy is top down (katascopic) control of technology and production, but freedom and democracy for people (anascopic). There is no market in technocracy, or atleast it is no more of a market then it was in Stalin's Soviet Union. The consumers determine what is produced and to what extent by buying products with energy credits. Technocracy is classless, in that everyone is supplied with an equal sum of energy credits. Our current society is not a society of abundance, but of scarcity. No matter the technological level or productive capacity, abundance must be engineered. That is to say, the technate must only produce that which can be produced in abundance. There is some exceptions, but these things cannot be owned, they must be rented. The technocrat views our current society as one of the worst types of society. Technology and production are controlled anascopically, and people are controlled katascopically; and this is the opposite of what it should be.

[telluro]

That is very interesting, Fitzy. Given this explanation, I must admit I've shared some fundamental ideas with technocrats then, namely that technology should be controlled top down, combined with an ancient definition of liberty for the people.

I must admit further that much of the rest is somewhat alien.

If the consumers determine what is produced, what do you exactly mean by top down control of technology?

If technocracy is classless, who is in control of technology? Wouldn't that group be a ruling class in effect?

A universal problem: If there is a group who has a top-down control of technology, what stops this control from spilling into politics? This is a historical problem, since many city-states conserved their liberty until an Emperor gained control over a certain technology, for example, gunpowder. My own theoretical solution is that this differentiation must be established culturally - as Plato says, the people in power must be the ones cultivated to NOT want power.

Why is Western capitalist society not a society of abundance? I sincerely cannot fathom this. Western countries have an ever-rising level of obesity, an ever-decreasing level of homelessness and joblessness, the whole system is geared to get consumers consumer more than they actually need to exist or live well. That's a society of abundance as I understand it. Perhaps you mean something different to this.

Further, do you believe that overpopulation is a problem? If we do manage to find a solution for overpopulation (not likely), or if a solution is found for us, then what do you mean when you say that "abundance has to be engineered". If our population levels dropped to a few millions, there's be enough abundance on the planet for all of us. How is, in any case, an engineered abundance sustainable for a growing population?



Now, allow me to share about a thousand words which I wrote a few years ago as a basic plan for some fiction I then intended to write, and in any case, of which I was reminded by your description. I think although the utopic system I describe here is not technocratic, it does employ foundational technocratic principles, at least as you described them:

Their education, law, society and politics are ordered according to the level of will involved. The lowest tier of their concerns is That-Which-Emerges-Of-Its-Own-Will, being their natural disciplines, the broadest study of the natural world and its relation to the human. The second tier is That-Which-Emerges-Of-Our-Will, and these are disciplines that are more practical, such as applied anthropology, political engineering, political geography and organic farming. The highest tier is That-Which-Concerns-Our-Will, being those disciplines that shape and discipline a character and its will, and secondarily, the martial disciplines. One’s caste is defined almost entirely by how high one aims and achieves within this order.

Rather than understanding the three castes as three tiers that rest on each other, it is perhaps better to understand them as three doors within each other – one who belongs to the highest caste belongs also to the second and common castes, and so on and so forth. The lowest caste submits itself to natural forces, gratuitous and purposeless to the distant eye but made of genuine and spontaneous wills. Their meaning is found in durability and intensity. The middle caste is concerned with compelling natural forces according to its creative will. The highest caste are concerned with self-creation and a sharpening of wills. The castes are not unambiguous, and though we speak of three castes, one could easily observe that there are five, more, or even none at all.

The highest caste they call the Shapers. Shaper is also the collective name for them as a people, since for them a farmer, just as a warrior or a legislator or a god, is a Shaper. The difference is merely the height from, duration and subject on which they act. The caste they call Shapers can be divided into the divine and the political caste. Both are ultimately creators; it is in direction that they differ. The divine caste has an inward direction; they are solitary creatures who tend to live Motherside, are delicate to the extreme and absorbed in self-creation. They are immensely powerful and wise, and are venerated as gods and oracles. The political caste has an outward direction; they are artisans and architects, and their prime matter is the fate of the world and its resources, its peoples and their flesh, their spirit. Direct intervention into the affairs of peoples is considered by them to be uncouth and callous. They fashion humankind according to their creative and profound will through law-giving moralities and religions that prevail through long periods of time.

The middle caste they call the Kithguilds. They are aristocratic family-corporations that contend with each other, concerned at their highest level with military discipline, subsequently with good breeding, and lastly with the economic and industrial disciplines. Every Kithguild has its own military techniques and technologies, concerning firstly armed and unarmed combat, secondly soldiering, and thirdly tactical strategy. They are as a whole Kithguild considered as one family unit, all married to each other, and have intricate breeding maps, planned centuries ahead. Sexual liberty is complete, with few instances of jealousy that are rebuked and ruthlessly bred out. Nevertheless, reproductive privileges, acquired either before birth or researched, appealed and granted during life, are closely and brusquely guarded. The Kithguilds own and operate much of the means of production, distribution and exchange that sustain the Shapers and their Cities. Their economy rests on the two pillars of property and skill. From the Kithguilds emerge two others castes.

From its military concerns emerge the Guardians, ascetic warriors who form in Orders that devoutly defend and serve the Shaper caste at all costs. They are normally chosen at childhood, being excellent specimens of the Kithguilds, and are reared and educated under the auspices of the Order. They are taught to discard all possessions and attachments except for a gladius and a rifle that they craft and service themselves, and apply in battle, and a loose cloak usually adorned with the colours of their Order and other designs that express the wearer’s qualities. They are further imbued with a universal involvement and philosophy, and when not warring, they act as itinerary teachers and judges as Motherside communities request, and further they act as custodians of Green Law. When judging they generally depend on customs of the community rather than on their own personal ideas. Nevertheless, these are not ruled out either.

From its economic concerns emerge the Techno-scholars. Throughout the Kithguild, every person is skilful enough to craft and mend the tools and weapons that they use, but a special class arose that deal with technological and industrial application. They are well-educated persons who seek their fortunes outside the Kithguild and are usually employed within a number of posts involving the running of small technical academies, the supervision of high-tech farmsteads, the maintenance of merchant routes across the world, diplomacy and trade with the Motherside communities, and, exceptionally, command and coordination during a total war. The arcane skills of the Technolars, masters and teachers, who work and excel within a unique and ancient tradition, supplement this proprietary aspect of their economy. The Technolars get the widest and most practical education available, being firstly initiates of organic and technical farming, proceeding from that to biogeophysics: the study of the earth, its materials, how chemicals cycle through its systems, how living and nonliving systems interact, and how the planet’s oceans, atmosphere, and crust behave; and then further in physical and political geography: distinguishing natural regions, resource management, transportation, trade routes, practical cartography, viability of political regions and cities, demographical studies and military evaluation.

The common caste is usually employed to cultivate City farmsteads, although Kithguilders who assist are not infrequent. The common caste works on farmsteads cooperatively, their immediate reward being the stability and protection of farmstead life. Work is not hard since it is essentially done by high-technology. The food produced in farmsteads returns to one storehouse from where it is distributed to workers, and all the inhabitants of the Cities. The main principle that guides both the Motherside communities themselves and the Shaper’s treatment of them is liberty. The only law that Guardians apply most severely is Green Law, that is, a basic population control propagated through instruction, although local wars and disease are usually sufficient restraint; relatedly, a restraint of urban expansion and a containment of high-technology, particularly military; the defence of wildlife from disruptive human activities, even though the Motherside communities sometimes undertake this defence; and a basic law by custom. Otherwise, liberty is absolute, and its immediate price is instability. Political liberty brings with it the heavy responsibility of self-rule. The need to create some form of stability gives rise to communes of every variety, mostly of a communal democratic form, sometimes around a respected leader or group of leaders. Some others take up a nomadic life, while some form families, farming land and hunting away from other settlements. It is unusual for a Guardian to interfere in Motherside politics, but occasionally they do help a community to depose a cruel tyrant or crush a bandit army.

Economic liberty comes at a great price, and many understand why peoples before them were eager to abandon it. Nevertheless, economic liberty is the basis of all liberty, unless liberty comes to be understood as laxity and imprudence, as it was in former ages.

The above would crudely describe my utopic ideology, btw, a sort of Platonic archeo-futurism. I hope you can see what I saw in common with your description.

[Fitzy]

If the consumers determine what is produced, what do you exactly mean by top down control of technology?

Im not sure if i should have said that, saying that the consumer determines to what extent a particular product is created may have been enough. But I can think of one example where the former may be the case: Consumer input and consumer surveys, meant to determine what products and what variation of a product is desired.

If technocracy is classless, who is in control of technology? Wouldn't that group be a ruling class in effect?

No. All people control technology in equal. The populace elects scientists and technicians to manage technology and production; these elections are non-political and the only job of the "representives," in this case, is to manage the economy, which is necessarily public and katascopic. There may be other elections, probably local, which deal with political and social concerns; or this aspect may be directly democratic.

We cannot say that there are classes, nor can we say there are castes. Ownership is public; and while control is not, the group that controls production is not entrenched, it is democratically elected and can be recalled at any time.

A universal problem: If there is a group who has a top-down control of technology, what stops this control from spilling into politics? This is a historical problem, since many city-states conserved their liberty until an Emperor gained control over a certain technology, for example, gunpowder. My own theoretical solution is that this differentiation must be established culturally - as Plato says, the people in power must be the ones cultivated to NOT want power.

Perhaps. But i think the technocrats take a different approach. Each and every person is given an equal sum of energy credits. So there is no way to benefit materially from the control of production and technology. In addition to that, the people who control production and technology only manage the economy, and as far as I know, cannot make laws or change laws.

In our current society, the ones that control the means of production, own the means of production; and they can use their wealth to influence the politics of society and to benefit themselves.

Why is Western capitalist society not a society of abundance? I sincerely cannot fathom this. Western countries have an ever-rising level of obesity, an ever-decreasing level of homelessness and joblessness, the whole system is geared to get consumers consumer more than they actually need to exist or live well. That's a society of abundance as I understand it. Perhaps you mean something different to this.

Why is Western capitalist society not a society of abundance? I sincerely cannot fathom this. Western countries have an ever-rising level of obesity, an ever-decreasing level of homelessness and joblessness, the whole system is geared to get consumers consumer more than they actually need to exist or live well. That's a society of abundance as I understand it. Perhaps you mean something different to this.

I do mean something different. With your meaning of the word, every era has more abundance then the era that came before. And in this way, there is no difference between today and yesterday. I will explain what the technocrat means by abundance:

There is much more consumption then we used to have, but we still can easily consume all that is produced, we just don’t get paid enough to do so (under the capitalist system). And it will always be this way, until abundance Is engineered. That is to say, we will only produce that which can be produced in greater quantities then that which can be consumed, not by itself (as though society only needed one product), but when we also take into account the energy cost of producing all other products which the technate produces. Some things are very useful to the consumer, but do not meet those requirements; these things will probably be rented out.

Further, do you believe that overpopulation is a problem? If we do manage to find a solution for overpopulation (not likely), or if a solution is found for us, then what do you mean when you say that "abundance has to be engineered". If our population levels dropped to a few millions, there's be enough abundance on the planet for all of us. How is, in any case, an engineered abundance sustainable for a growing population?

The technate would have to take into account population growth. But I think they would want to have zero population growth, as the technocrat is concerned with sustainability, the balance of production with consumption, and zero growth.

Personally, I think population levels should decrease until it reaches a certain point. I would also like to see this population control combined with a eugenics program.

[Figlio di Moros]

The technate would have to take into account population growth. But I think they would want to have zero population growth, as the technocrat is concerned with sustainability, the balance of production with consumption, and zero growth.

Personally, I think population levels should decrease until it reaches a certain point. I would also like to see this population control combined with a eugenics program.

It would have to be; you couldn't sustain a technate with an ever-smaller population without maintaining the number of people with a minimum IQ, such as 120 on current standards. It would actually be incredibly improtant to increase such a population base.

[Fitzy]

Why? The amount of human labour necessary to maintain the a given amount of production can always be decreased.

[Figlio di Moros]

Why? The amount of human labour necessary to maintain the a given amount of production can always be decreased.

While reduction in labor is possible and is part of natural economic progression, it typically shifts the demand from human physical capital to more intellectually demanding labor. In the case of mass automation and high-tech systems, thi would mean more high-IQ type people, technicians, electricians, computer or robotic specialists, engineers, etc.

[Fitzy]

Well I dont really care much either way or the other, so lets drop it.

[telluro]

Apologies for the quickfire questions. I'm just trying to break in, here.

Perhaps I can clarify here. What things are produced is determined bottom-up (anascopically), by the population through their behaviour in consuming, because that is based on subjective desires and needs. This is done through the Energy Accounting system. How those things are produced is decided upon by the technical administration, top-down (katascopically), because that requires objective, technical expertise to find the best way of doing that.

I find this a simplistic theory. What determines the behaviour of the population's consumption? In short there will be a cultural power gap, which will be filled (politically, religiously, corporatively, etc...) which will be beyond any scientific or Technocratic decision.

Now, why do you think that production should be determined "democratically"? Is it the idea that democracy discovers the "true" needs of a people? Can you consider that if you now established a technocracy in the US and another one in the Middle East, with no other immediate political elite, you would have very different demands?

No, they would not be, because they would have no political power. Instead, those "in charge" of the technology are given responsibility in operating it correctly. Since this can be measured, if at any time a person is found not to be doing their job, then an investigation is started and may result in the person's dismissal from that position if they are found to be incapable of continuing to do their job. Think of it like being a bus driver; if you were to deviate from your assigned route, or not be on time without good reason, then you would be replaced with someone who would get it done properly.

Who does the replacing? If there is a law, who enforces it? A system doesn't work on its own, even if it's clear-cut and obvious how it should work, which it rarely is.

Is Technocracy a version of Anarchism?

I don't see how something like that could happen in a Technate. If I understand your example correctly, you are talking about overwhelming force from the outside. Like I said, the system is designed so that anyone deviating from their job would be investigated and dealt with. I'm sorry that I can't think of how to be more specific than this. Every scenario I can think of doesn't come close to working like this. Like maybe, someone gets control over a new kind of nuclear bomb to hold the Technate hostage? Something like that? Because first of all, what could he possibly gain by that? And second, such a device wouldn't even exist until at the very last stage of a very well-thought out katascopic process that would have built-in redundant security features to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. The project would not even proceed unless there was good reason to think that the security measures would be more than enough. And that's assuming that the Technate did something stupid like make a nuke anyway. Ok, let's assume it's for blowing up asteroids threatening the Earth. No "person" would be allowed to control such a thing. The system does. This is the difference between engineering and politics, and why there is no "ownership" in a Technate, or political power.

Yeah, but just because there "isn't" ownership or political power, meaning mainly that it is not permitted, does not mean that no one will try to take it. Again you say that anyone deviating from their job would be investigated and dealt with. The problem I highlighted was: who investigates the investigators and deals with the dealers? Where does accountability stop, and how does it work? Yes, if there is someone, or a group of someones, who is heading say a nuclear weapons factory or an army, what stops them, perhaps as a group, from using those things to take political control? There could be a multitude of whys -you don't even need to come up with one- perhaps they're not happy with what the people are demanding, perhaps they come to realize that people in fact do need to be lead from the top-down because otherwise what they demand is the destruction of the world, perhaps they don't agree with a process or other, or with the whole system, perhaps they have religious motivation, or think that a society where everyone is allowed what he demands is immoral, or simple pure egotistical will to power. There could a million variations of why someone thinks to threaten or take over a Technocratic society.

Is there an army in a Technocratic society? Who commandeers it? Democratic or authoritarian?

What if in this society I, as a civilian, want to buy hand-grenades or a bazooka, do I get those? (And in abundance?)

Then we are talking about different definitions of the word then. Abundance literally means more than enough. Meaning that you can get all you want, whenever you want. The minute there is any constraint on its availability, then you lose abundance and have scarcity. It may be a lot of scarcity, but it still is scarcity. Some examples to help illustrate this: The only real abundant thing we have today is air. This is because you can get all you want, whenever you want. On some days in major cities when the smog is too thick for many people to be able to go outside safely, then they have lost their abundance of air, because they can't get fresh air whenever they need it.

Here is the dividing like between abundance and scarcity, and that is: can you sell it? Right now I could offer you a can of fresh air (non-compressed), and you would not buy it. However, if you were suddenly locked in a bank vault with limited air left to breathe, suddenly that can of air has a great deal of monetary value, doesn't it? You can apply this to anything. For instance, today, I can still sell you various kinds of foods. In a Technate, you could not do this (aside from there being no money for the moment), because any person you asked to sell your food to would already be able to get all they want delivered to their home anytime, or at any public eating place, for free. Why would they spend anything (assuming they had something to spend that was limited) in that case? You could not sell that person a bus pass or train ticket because they already can take those whenever they want. That is abundance. It does not mean lots, it does not mean more than before, and it does not mean (like many people think) limitless. It means "more than enough", and you get that when no one can sell it to you any longer.

Ok, on the one hand, it's almost a capitalist ideal, but in its execution it's anti-capitalist. Understood.

Apologies for the incessant "how" questions, but please tell me how you could produce an abundance of food for 6 billion people? Even air is threatened under the wrong conditions.

What about things of which an abundance is not necessary, like say, I don't know, weapons? Wouldn't they still have a price?

No. Not in North America anyway. From the dreaded Wikipedia (citations and links added to counter anyone's problems with that):

[*]The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2008 is 2.1 children per woman, (CIA - The World Factbook -- Rank Order - Total fertility rate)
[*]which is roughly the replacement level. (CIA - The World Factbook - Notes and Definitions
[*]However, U.S. population growth is among the highest in industrialized countries, (CIA - The World Factbook -- Field Listing - Population growth rate
[*]since the vast majority of these have below-replacement fertility rates and the U.S. has higher levels of immigration. (CIA - The World Factbook -- Rank Order - Total fertility rate and CIA - The World Factbook -- Rank Order - Net migration rate)

So industrialized nations tend to have low population growth, often too low which needs to be mitigated by immigration. Now, what effects a full abundance will have on this I think is hard to say, because I can see factors affecting it both ways (both more opportunities for doing things other than raising families make people do so less, as well as simply having more free time to raise a family making others do so more). Now if you are talking about world overpopulation, yes, that is a problem overall, and if there is a solution to it, we'd be in a far better position not only to find it if we had Technocracy, but also in a far better position to help.

Ok, so industrialized nations are at replacement reproduction levels, but aren't there still too many humans to produce an abundance for?

[quote"]This is the important difference: if someone had complete ownership to arbitrarily decide on the use of an item, it would not fit into this plan and could not be guaranteed to contribute to society's goals. In fact, someone could easily decide on a use for something that is contrary to either an individual's, group's, or all of society's detriment. That is a problem with today's concept of ownership, particularly when it comes to corporate ownership, because then we get things used for goals not in an individual's best interest, nor society's, most often instead for profit and the benefit of the shareholders or other corporate owners.[/quote]
I see. So you've answered a question I put to you above (about hand-grenades) but still are open to the question about who guards the guardians, and if there are no guardians how do laws work?

But a more fundamental difference between capitalism (or indeed any Price System) and Technocracy is really the abundance vs. scarcity thing. Now I know we have a difference in definitions here (at least before my last post, not sure about now), but building on my last post, all any Price System can do is try to find ways to distribute scarce materials and services, so that either you end up with a guaranteed lower class (capitalism), or a whole society that, while they all have the necessities of life, do not have a standard of living anywhere close to what their resources and production are capable of (socialism). A classic example of this is in agriculture: If farmers were allowed to produce all they wanted, they would of course produce as much as they could in order to maximize their profit. This benefits them personally, but not society, because once technology allows them to produce an abundance of food, then the price of that food falls below what they can sell it for, putting them out of business, and we end up with a situation where we can produce more than ever, but no one can actually get it. This is the failure of a scarcity-based economic system to distribute an abundance. It is just like the example I gave in my last post concerning air (you can't sell it if it is abundant), and is exactly what happened to cause the Great Depression. So abundance and scarcity economics are completely incompatible, and one of them has got to go, so unfortunately we chose to get rid of the abundance rather than change how we do things. This resulted, to continue the agriculture example, in the government needing to subsidize farmers so that they would actually cut back their production in order to raise prices. This has the effect of a) wasting government money (and thereby making it more scarce for doing other important things) and b) decreasing the food supply. So this benefits the farmers, and gets the food available to people again (so it is seen as good), but how does this compare to simply producing all the food people want, and giving it to them? Then nobody has to worry about not having enough to eat, and also has a much greater selection, which increases the quality of life. There are numerous examples of this if you'd like more.

Understood.



All in all very interesting, but up till now, it still seems to me that "my system", the Platonic touch to Technocracy (it seems) is a more realist, dare I say practical?, version of Technocracy.

[El Gilroy]

One of the main problems I see is in motivating people to work. How to do it?

[telluro]

I'll read more about technocracy but I think my problem is rather specific. Apart from the several gaps of my lack of knowledge, true, I think there is a gap about cultural power in tehnocracy.

I think that you might be mistaken about how distribution works in a Technate. By "democratically", it is not meant that the group as a whole decides by some sort of vote or something, but rather that people decide what is produced by the act of consuming. E.g. if a particular area consumes X number of apples in a given production cycle, then that many more are produced for that area for the next cycle, plus/minus room for standard variation, with consideration given to trends in growth and decline of consumption of course. This is the process called Energy Accounting.

No, I understood that.

Although questions still arise. What if I want to consume something that isn't being produced yet? How do I show this to the producers? In capitalism (apart from direct manipulation), research occurs to find out these future demands. What about services like cooking? Would there still be differences between fast food, normal home-cooking and gourmet food? Would the production of food be solely utilitarian?

So yes, a population in the Middle East would very likely choose to consume different things, but not very different. Sure, different clothes, books, entertainment, food, etc. but by and large, they'd still be consuming clothes, books, entertainment, and food.

As for why it should be done this way, I would think that'd be obvious; wouldn't you prefer to decide what you eat, what clothes you where, how and when you travel, etc., rather than someone else?

The problem is if one is thinking that a democratic way of deciding what a people should consume is actually discovering what the people REALLY want or need. My point about, say the difference between American and Middle-Eastern people was that, I think, people desire what their culture instructs them to desire. People in America might choose junk food more than people in the Middle East because their culture instructs them too. This sounds coarse, I'm sure, but it reaches on many levels. Religion has this kind of cultural power in instructing people what to wear, eat, how to behave, but it's not just religion. Cultural assumptions are everywhere, and we don't see them clearly for the simple reason that without them we won't "see" at all, and in fact we further have to assume that they're not cultural assumptions at all but facts. In any case, the way I see it, technocracy is abandoning cultural power, and capitalism is at least superior in this one sense, in that it manipulates the consumer's desire - without that manipulation, other forces will come into power to manipulate it themselves, like say a religion. In fact, given the lack of a capitalist economy that manipulates what one wants to consume and how, and the lack of a political elite which uses propoganda, say, like "political correctness" or forms of it, then it is very much possible that religions like Christianity or Islam would become very strong without both those competitions. When you think about it, both religions declined mainly because of a losing competition with political liberalism and a capitalist economy. Without them, they would probably thrive.

In any case, if there is something which is external to technocracy in defining what "the highest standard of living possible to all citizens for the longest period possible" is, then technocracy is already overturned. That's what initiated my questioning here in fact, in that you (Technocrats) seemed to be taking this definition for granted, and not understanding that it is something which is culturally-defined. What about a culture which doesn't define "the highest standard of living possible" in any direct materialist way, for example?

I'm just curious, how is it a capitalist ideal?

In that it is concerned mainly about production and consumption.

No, because the quality of being abundant is not determined by how much is produced, or by how much is needed, but instead by whether or not more can be produced than are needed. Thus an "abundance" of weapons, or anything else that might have a very small demand, can still result in a small amount of actual production.

Ok, what about art and cultural artefacts that are produced once and uniquely?

[telluro]

So let me try to get this straight, and please correct me if I am wrong: What you are saying is that because capitalism manipulates people into a consumerist culture that interferes with other "influences", that this is "good" somehow? And the same with politics? If so I find this a little troubling.

No, I meant that it's necessary basically. Considering people's choices, preferences, etc... without their culture is like considering a software without its programming. People everywhere are programmed via culture, and culture is over-individual, in the sense that it's partly the creation of how a community decides to live together but rarely conscious, and partly the creation of a power elite not necessarily political but generally conscious. To work on that allegory, a technate would be like someone who has to deal directly with a program's demands, whereas a programmer is that someone, or something, which creates those demands. And which is the power? The technate in truth is serving the demands of the hidden programmer.

I'm not saying they're good, far from it, but without capitalistic or political manipulation, other forms of manipulation will enter the picture, and there again there will simply be a different hidden programmer, someone, or something (in the case of a culture or a memetic structure) which defines what the people demand, for which the technate will cater.

This is my basic problem, and again, to go back to the Platonic Technate, that's what the Platonic aspect fills, the cultural power element. If you remove a particular culture, you'd need to replace with another (hopefully better) culture, or else you'll be leaving a power gap for someone, or something, else to fill.