How similar is the modern military to a Technocracy? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The solving of mankind’s problems and abolition of government via technological solutions alone.

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#14446054
I am surprised at how much the military resembles communism (equal wage scales, centralized command and supply, etc.).

But I am also thinking the modern military too is beginning to resemble a Technocracy: there are people whose careers are dedicated to mass movements of goods with minimum time and effort, engineers who develop technical equipment and choose the maximum effective deployment method, decisions not left to the sergeants in the field but to centralized specialists. Many ranking military members are and have always been engineers (Robert E. Lee for example, but nowadays much more so than in the past). How and where to deploy modern weapons requires more than a knowledge of chess, it demands an in depth technical understanding of the capabilities and functioning of the weapons themselves...

The military man's field food is pre packaged for easy use and specifically dictated by nutritionists for his active lifestyle...his clothing is chosen and even engineered for his specific duties...

Then of course there is the non-political aspect to a military (at least the US military in which political involvement is minimized as much as possible)...

How much like a technocracy is the modern military?
#14446688
The U.s. military is very much like a technocratic government. Lots of industry in modern industrial society mirrors Technocracy ideas because they have to be efficient. In the price system you have to save money and that means saving energy efficiently http://www.eoearth.org/article/Net_energy_analysis

Something like a car has very very little on it that is not needed for some reason. Something like an Iphone also is just pure engineering and design.

The whole of societies government could be replaced easily with technocratic government. Getting rid of money is the first step. Then using energy as the way to measure resources and population and sustainable living.

Technocracy is similar to a military operation in the sense that a military operation is not a democratic operation. Experts decide how to do things with maximum efficiency involved.
#14446689
Dickydarn wrote:Getting rid of money is the first step. Then using energy as the way to measure resources and population and sustainable living.

Money is media of exchange, so using energy as a media of exchange is not getting rid of money but just using energy as money. I don't know how feasible that is to do directly but I suppose a one could have credit slips backed by energy as credit slips were once backed by gold. Doing that though effectively makes energy companies into banks also.
#14446719
In the military (at least in the US Coast Guard and the US Navy) promotion is based on several factors: a written test, time in present grade, overall time in service, and a numerical evaluation score given by your superiors. All of these factors are given a numerical weight determined by a formula. When positions open, those with the highest scores are promoted. It is a very efficient method with minimal bias.

I can imagine a technocracy using a similar system for promotion.
#14446768
Kolzene wrote:That is true, but it is not what Technocracy is proposing. It proposes replacing the medium of exchange with one of distribution, and one not based on subjective value, but on an objective measure (called Resource-Based Accounting), in this case, Energy, because it is universal to all products and services.

So what would be used as money then?
#14446821
O.k. I see its pointless debating here as you are a contrary to nearly every idea anyone presents.
This is a problem with people that consider their ideas sacrosanct and self styled 'experts' that quote primary sources over and over are not going to win fans to ideas that are so narrowly presented.
Mostly the point of saying a 'car' is built in pure engineering ideas should get across that society is close to using good design now, or that an Iphone or other phone is based purely on fairly well designed technology should get that across.
#14447117
Kolzene wrote:Nothing, money is not needed. The Technate produces what the people want, then they get it. Energy Accounting is only there to keep track of what people consume, so that the production sequences know how much of every item and service to produce next time. There is no buying or trading done, at least for mass-produced items. There might very well be a secondary economy for things that are still scarce (like antiques and original artwork), but Technocracy does not deal with that end of things. People will come up with whatever they want to deal with those sorts of things. Check out the article I linked to in my last post for some more information on Energy Accounting.

Well I can see a couple of flaws in this line of thinking. Firstly lets identify some agents to see why they will need money. Firstly we have the Technate: this is a commune, commonwealth or state of some sort. So the technate is, in aggregate, an agent itself. Depending on whether it is a stratified hierarchy or a flatter headless association it will act more or less as a single agent in some interactions with other agents. Then there are the various persons that make up the technate, from presidents / CEOs down through offiicals, bureaucrats and other managers to the hoi polloi: workers etc we will call these technodes. Then there is everybody else: rival technates, rival states and all the persons within them.
So Energy Accounting might well facilitate production and distribution internally to the technate commune and may work very well for that purpose however it is of no use for facilitating external trades:

- The technate cannot use it to trade with other states or persons not owned by the technate.
If the technate wants for its production inputs not already possessed in sufficient quantities it will have to take them by conquest (borg style) or barter for them (inefficient). Example problem: 3 tons of Strontium are required for various production needs but the Locus Lunus Technate does not possess the required element. Nation Zeta Prime does possess surplus strontium and regularly sells it on international markets. How does the Locus Lunus Technate aquire the needed Strontium? Buy it with some money or invade Nation Zeta Prime and seize its assets?

- Persons in the technate will have nothing except barter goods with which to trade if they interact with persons not associated with the technate. This means simple things like going on holiday are not simple. Example problem: How does technode Jim Jetson tertiary adjunct of the Californian Technate take his family on holiday to Abu Dhabi and pay a cab fare?
#14854922
First of all, let me just remind everyone that just because you see a "flaw" in some part of the design that I've described does not mean that a flaw necessarily exists. Learning about Technocracy from just forum posts is a haphazard way of doing it, so you're guaranteed to be missing something. Your concerns have already been thought of and dealt with.

SolarCross wrote:- The technate cannot use it to trade with other states or persons not owned by the technate.
If the technate wants for its production inputs not already possessed in sufficient quantities it will have to take them by conquest (borg style) or barter for them (inefficient). Example problem: 3 tons of Strontium are required for various production needs but the Locus Lunus Technate does not possess the required element. Nation Zeta Prime does possess surplus strontium and regularly sells it on international markets. How does the Locus Lunus Technate aquire the needed Strontium? Buy it with some money or invade Nation Zeta Prime and seize its assets?

You are right in that the method of distribution that Technocracy uses (Energy Accounting) is not really equipped for dealing with external agencies. This is one of the reasons why one of the requirements for a Technate is that it be self-sufficient, so that reliance on external resources controlled by price systems is avoided (it is also why it would not need to 'conquer' anyone'). In North America we have (for the moment anyway) everything we need to make the Technate work. External trade is not needed. That being the case, anything we do trade would be through other methods, such as gifts, or barter. Individual agreements with other countries will be negotiated on a case by case basis.

SolarCross wrote:- Persons in the technate will have nothing except barter goods with which to trade if they interact with persons not associated with the technate. This means simple things like going on holiday are not simple. Example problem: How does technode Jim Jetson tertiary adjunct of the Californian Technate take his family on holiday to Abu Dhabi and pay a cab fare?

Vacations would be handled in a similar manner to other trade agreements. The Technate would negotiate with some country that people would want to go to to exchange something it has for either some amount of currency from that nation or some other kind of credit that vacationers can use while abroad. So again, Energy Accounting is not suitable for this. The axiom to remember for these kinds of things goes like this: Problems of abundance require solutions of abundance, while problems of scarcity require scarcity solutions. Dealing with other countries still using a Price System (scarcity economies) is a scarcity problem, so it requires a scarcity solution. Energy Accounting is a solution for problems of abundance, and is thus not appropriate. Should the other country in question also be a Technate, then we would be dealing with another abundance issue, and Energy Accounting would be perfectly fine.
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