Technocracy is Utopian Bureaucracy. - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

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

Moderator: Kolzene

Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14447160
I have been wondering where Technocracy fits into the Reactionary Political Model or if indeed it fits in this model at all.

I have come to the conclusion that it is a form of utopian bureaucracy. It is bureaucracy because, although hierarchy is apparently valued, the top most level is not apparently held by either a singular executive (monarchy), a smallish group of "best" men (aristocracy), or even a relative minority of visible mob leaders (democracy), but by a fairly substantial number of senior technical experts.

Another indicator is the degree to which loyalty plays in maintaining the social order. In a monarchy loyalty is pre-eminent, aristocracy less so, democracy still less and in bureaucracy barely. Anarchy of course is where loyalty is entirely vanished and social order with it.

Yet another indicator is the awareness of the correlation between real political authority and military power. Monarchy (maximum awareness), Aristocracy (a bit less), Democracy (still less - political authority is identified with the temporary affections of noisy mobs according to how large and noisy the mob "army" is), Bureaucracy (nearly absent - political authority is held to exist but is not identified with anything real and tangible).

It is utopian bureaucracy because it takes something mundane, degenerate and already existing and drapes it in a messianic idealisation that promises to make everything perfect (somehow).
#14447490
Probably you know nothing about the subject. Here is a starting point for you http://www.archive.org/details/TechnocracyStudyCourseUnabridged That is the basic information. Not the stuff that Kolzene posts here the TTCD material. I can see you are misinformed.

The information is simple and direct. Here is more background of the group that first came up with the idea http://www.eoearth.org/article/Biophysical_economics

It has zero to do with your thoughts on it though. Sorry.
#14447553
Dickydarn wrote:Probably you know nothing about the subject. Here is a starting point for you http://www.archive.org/details/TechnocracyStudyCourseUnabridged That is the basic information. Not the stuff that Kolzene posts here the TTCD material. I can see you are misinformed.

The information is simple and direct. Here is more background of the group that first came up with the idea http://www.eoearth.org/article/Biophysical_economics

It has zero to do with your thoughts on it though. Sorry.

Well no doubt technocrats are unaware of my thoughts or the observations from which they are derived so there is no reason for a counter-argument to be present in their material. I have looked over the Study Course, I skipped the early part which judging from chapter headings in just an uninteresting overview of various science subjects on which I need no instruction. I have also skipped over the sections critiquing money and markets for now, I'll look at that later, because while this is where the voodoo starts to kick in it isn't really material to where technocracy fits in terms of political decay. So I have read the last three chapters which carries the meat of the technocracy design. In those last three chapters I see plenty to confirm my designation of it as utopian bureaucracy and only one or two things that suggest it might aspire to being a something higher up the model of political decay.

First the indicators that it might aspire to be something other than bureaucracy:
The technocratic social design has a fairly conventional pyramidal power structure which indeed has a single executive at the top, the continental director (a monarch of sorts) and immediately below a board of directors of "best" men, the continental control board, which appears to be akin to an aristocracy. The "monarch" however is chosen by the continental control board and so is effectively hobbled to the interests of the board which makes the board effectively higher than the monarch, so the design is not a monarchy. Could it be an aristocracy then? If it were aristocracy the aristos would have effective control over those notionally below them. The basis of this could be loyalty, ownership, coercion or some combination of the preceding. The technocratic design makes no mention of from where the authority of the board comes so that seems to make the control board as superfluous an authority as the continental director. So the monarchic and aristocratic potentials are in fact notional and not effective.

We need not discuss the possibility that it is democratic since the design very explicitly forbids mob leaders from having authority.

That leaves only bureaucracy or anarchy. It isn't anarchy by intention for there is plainly an intent for there to be order and stratified control. By a process of elimination it is once again bureaucracy.

Another way to discover where it lies on the political decay model is consider which people or factions of people would be most able and interested in imposing it over the current political order. In the context of America that would be either the political class of mob leaders and their supporters or the civil service factions. The mob leaders derive their authority from the financial and vocal / voting support of business factions, religious factions and all manner of ordinary people. None of these would have any interest in supporting the imposition of technocracy so the mob leaders can be safely discounted as a possible vector for this political order. However the civil services could conceivably have an interest in technocracy as it allows as an operating ideology for the massive expansion of their own operations to include every facet of human activity. Moreover as many civil service factions are supremely well armed they have the ability to impose it, all that is required is for them to finally slip the already frayed democratic leash held by the mob leaders.

Technocracy is therefore an enabling ideology for the decay of democracy into bureaucracy.
#14447730
Kolzene wrote: I'm afraid that I can't really comment on the place of Technocracy in your model, as that model does not reflect at all my understanding of how the world works. I could get into why, but that would be a different discussion for a different forum. What I can say is that Technocracy does not consider itself utopian, because that implies that it is not possible. Technocracy is based on the very hardest of science, the physical sciences, and not philosophy or so-called 'political science'. That makes its conclusions verifiable in the realm. Trying to discuss the politics or philosophy of Technocracy is like trying to discuss those topics in relation to a computer, or power plant. In other words, you can only discuss the "why" they were made a particular way, and Technocracy's "why" comes from having scientifically studied what it is people want, and then figuring out how to best give it to them.

Sure. Don't get me wrong, I am in favour of North America becoming a bureaucracy and the more totalitarian the bureaucracy the better, my own project very much requires North America to slide into a pervasive anarchy you see.

It seems to me then, in order to help technocracy become a real thing, you need to persuade the civil service of technocracy's merits. The civil service are the first level of your pyramid of receptivity and the key to extending into more skeptical sections of the populace. In particular the Department of Education will be most useful to you; if they realise the potential for using it as an official ideology, then you could well see your study course being taught to nearly every single young person in the whole USA as a good and necessary thing. The idea that technocracy can't work without total ownership of the entire North American continent will be very attractive to the military factions of the civil service, as it gives them a pretext for the conquest of both Canada and Mexico. Likely the continental requirement will then be revised to include South America too.

Have any technocrats thought to sell technocracy to the civil service yet?
#14448313
Kolzene wrote:Except for the fact that a Technocracy is an entirely voluntary organization, it can only work with the willing consent (and participation) of the population, so conquest is out.

You have to be kidding. It's never going to happen like that. It is feasible for a sizeable well armed faction to impose it on everyone else (for their own good of course (snigger)). Science be praised! but it won't happen any other way because it is by design totalitarian to a degree never attempted before. Even the Soviets under Stalin never tried to impose scientific communism to the extent that technocracy claims is required and they were quite happy to slay dissenters by the thousand. From my reading of the material technocracy claims to require everything and everyone on the continent to surrender to the all encompassing system. You'd be lucky to get the consent of 10% even after sustained saturation propaganda and thorough universal indoctrination through the school system. What about the rest? Are they to become unpersons?

Anyway it will probably happen but not the way you want. The civil service will eventually find it, take it and make it their own. They will do technocracy the way they do everything else which is not by asking everyone if they don't mind. When was the last time a cop asked for your consent to being arrested or getting a parking ticket?
#14448432
First you must have faith in human nature. Religion seems to be loosing it's power over the individual especially noticeable in the West and I believe that there concept of government will loose it's popularity as well. Possibly we are talking many many hundreds of years and possibly thousands. This evolution of humanity will occur when there is a super abundance of food and material goods.
#14448719
anarchist23 wrote:First you must have faith in human nature. Religion seems to be loosing it's power over the individual especially noticeable in the West and I believe that there concept of government will loose it's popularity as well. Possibly we are talking many many hundreds of years and possibly thousands. This evolution of humanity will occur when there is a super abundance of food and material goods.

^
I floated this idea a few weeks ago. And was dismissed with "it will never happen". Why not?? Faith in human nature is the key. We have inherent anarchist tendencies and these need to be developed.
#14448739
Post Tue 15 Jul 2014, 06:46
anarchist23 wrote:
One day humanity will transcend governments and their protection rackets, it is just a matter of time.
slybaldguy wrote:
Do enlighten us, how is that going to happen?
slybaldguy wrote:
Do enlighten us, how is that going to happen?
anarchist23 wrote
^
It is called evolution.
First you must have faith in human nature. Religion seems to be loosing it's power over the individual especially noticeable in the West and I believe that there concept of government will loose it's popularity as well. Possibly we are talking many many hundreds of years and possibly thousands. This evolution of humanity will occur when there is a super abundance of food and material goods.
anarchist 23 wrote
This evolution of humanity will occur when there is a super abundance of food and material goods.
slybaldguy wrote:
So never then


To see the proper post go to the National Union thread in the Private Members Club forum.
Russia-Ukraine War 2022

Are people on this thread actually trying to argu[…]

Isn't oil and electricity bought and sold like ev[…]

@Potemkin I heard this song in the Plaza Grande […]

I (still) have a dream

Even with those millions though. I will not be ab[…]