Scalable 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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By SolarCross
#14449740
Technocracy's implementation problem

From my casual acquaintance with the technocratic doctrine it is apparent that two of its requirements are in hard contradiction with each other. One of these requirements is that the defacto communism of technocracy be voluntary. The other requirement is that the technocracy has continental self-sufficiency.

1. Voluntary communism is by itself entirely feasible, every marriage, family, monastery and clan is to a great extent communistic in practice. Of course it is not very common for these communes to be entirely communistic some things remain private. Larger voluntary communes exist as well though they are usually of a very shallow sort, the shareholders of a join stock company only hold ownership of that company in common and nothing else of their own, citizens of a nation-state only share a common identity and perhaps also an allegiance and nothing else of their own. Voluntary deep communism as required by technocracy does not scale very well and certainly cannot be voluntarily instituted on a very large scale all in one go. Deep communism on a large scale cannot by done otherwise but by fairly extreme coercion but this would not be voluntary communism.

2. Continental self-sufficiency is not completely nonsensical because to maintain a commune with a level of specialisation and technological proficiency evinced by modern standards without using trade with others external to the commune at all would require a very large populace and resource base. Avoiding trade for a small commune would mean falling to a very low level of specialisation and technological proficiency.

Solutions

We see the contradiction - if technocracy is voluntary it cannot have the continent, if it has the continent it cannot be voluntary. The way out of the contradiction is to drop one or the other of these two requirements.

1. The Bolshevik solution is to drop the voluntary from the communism. The technocracy would obtain the people and resources it needs by forceful collectivisation. The Bolsheviks through their coup actually managed to meet the continental self-sufficiency requirement in one fell swoop because the Russian Empire that they acquired control over was quite extensive enough in terms of head count and geographical resources to match the equivalent continental requirements of Scott's technocracy. Applying the Bolshevik solution to the Americas could be achieved by gaining mastery over the US government and its military as this would give possession of the US people and geography and also the means through the well funded US military to conquer the remaining territorial requirements: Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.

2. The other solution is to drop self-sufficiency which requires a continent and substitute it for self-sustainability which does allow for such trade as is useful to make up for any shortfalls in the communes economic capabilities. With this flexibility scalable technocracy is achievable voluntarily. Then even a small group of enthusiasts can pool their property instituting their technocratic commune and grow organically and voluntarily through new acquisitions of people and property. This model I call agorist communism. Externally the technocratic commune is a fully market orientated trading entity while internally being a fully technocratic commune. Initially while it is small very much of its activity will be focused on trade by necessity but as it grows more and more of its needs can be met internally through technocratic solutions, until finally a sufficient size is attained that trade can be all but dispensed with entirely.

Discuss.
#14450064
Kolzene - the contradiction I highlight is in the implementation, once it has been actualised on a continental level then sure that contradiction may well resolve itself, but until then.. One cannot go from 0 to 60 instantaneously, in between 0 - 60 must be an acceleration that drives society through various transitional stages until technocracy is achieved on a continental scale. Huge numbers of diverse people constitute a vehicle of immense inertia so changing their collective direction is an immensely non-trivial task. To move all of them in the direction you want will require the Bolshevik method, fraught with difficulties though it is.

Scalable technocracy means instead of "accelerating" everyone from Alaska to Venezuela all at once, you just accelerate those that want to be moved first, and pick up others as you gain momentum. Analogous to your pyramid of receptivity consider a pyramid of volition. It is easy to assimilate people who want to be assimilated, it is hard to assimilate those that do not want to be assimilated, they will resist. So begin just with those that want it. Yes a small commune will need to trade but note even a continental commune will need to trade a bit if only to get local currencies for the use of technodes when they go on holiday to non-technates. There is no sense in being too purist, trade is beneficial (that's why people do it!) even while it may have downsides.

Like as not if technocracy is at all a viable and desirable way of doing business then some people totally unconnected with you will try it and they will probably modify it make it more implementable. Some of those people will try the bolshevik method (probably US civil servants) others will try the scalable method. Either one will be moving past 0 faster than anyone that stubbornly thinks they can keep both voluntary and continental as requirements in implementation. For being a purist you will lose to the mongrels.
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By Dickydarn
#14450299
The Bolsheviks came very close to the same idea of Technocracy concepts at the same time as people in the U.s. thought of it http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/apr07/page10.html and the connection of having a large resource base is relevant because North America and the old Russian Federation were geographically number one and number two in resources.

1. Voluntary communism is by itself entirely feasible, every marriage, family, monastery and clan is to a great extent communistic in practice.
Technocracy is a radical concept compared to the conservative things you mention there. Marriage is a contract and as such is not viable in a technate, which by the way is spelled with a small T.

Also keep in mind that the old old technocratic groups had no assumption to power theory. It is merely a suggestion of a type of society. TechInc was not planning on running anything, just providing some viable choice for an alternative economic system.
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