Technocracy

Post Reply New Topic

Thereion, I don't believe most people are ready to forgo private property rights. Iknow, YOU don't buy into the concept, but most of the rest of us do. I like my stuff, I like accumulating more stuff than my neighbor and I like competition.

haha, i agree with the second comment. if there wasn't competition nothing would likely be improved

Angry is a poor choice of woords. Exacerbated would be more accurate. You see, I'm a bit like Old Benjamin, the Donkey from "Animal Farm" and you're either one of the sheep or one of the pigs, I can't decide which, but I'm leaning towards the sheep.

Free Market Capitalism is pretty pragmatic last time I checked.

You mean things like "Victory cigarrets" or "Victory Gin"??

Visit us at http://www.technocracyeurope.eu


I'm looking for a shred of logic here.....somebody help me!! !

Scrapheap - You seem to have misinterpreted me. I advise you to read about the technocratic movement on wikipedia.

It's like talking to a brick wall.

I've read your website AND wikipedia. and all your niave half-witted comments.

I Thank my lucky stars that you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever implementing this government. The opportunities for corruption are overwhelming. Technocracy would mutate into dictartorship in less time than Communism did.

The problem is human nature. We will manage to abuse any system we get our hands on because we are human. Socialism always sounded good to me in theory, but add humans and it turns into something else.
And look what a mess has been made of the USA by big business and greed running amok. Humans screw up everything they touch after awhile.

The US may be a mess, but tax laws and goverment regulation are much more responsible than that evil gredd you cite.

What is an evil gredd and what am I citing? If I was misunderstood I am just observing that humans being what they are will always mess things up. The scum will always eventually rise to the top. I do not know the answers, I just know that by nature humans are not always nice animals.

i think we should create a computer that has superhuman AI, and then create an army of robots to protect it, and then give over complete control of everything to the computer. and this computer would terminate with extreme prejudice anyone who tries to take over control, plus their immediate family... this will ensure that evil politicians are cut off at the knees..

Sorry, it was a typo, should have read, greed...

It is not hunan nature that is the problem, it is the nature of government that is the problem.

You could be right, but consider: Governments come and go. Human nature stays about the same. To achieve a more or foolproof government, wouldn't we need people to evolve and become more altruistic, since any system that has been thought up so far has been abused? I'm having trouble putting the thought into words, though.
We should keep looking for answers anyway.

Well, the entire reason we formed the governments we did was in reaction to human nature. When I look at the founding fathers I don't see hardcore pro-democracy zealots, I see people who looked long and hard on ways to keep people free and yet still have a functioning society and I think most other governments that function today were made with the same understanding. There are always going to be questions on how the world should work, however, that is not the real question. The real question is how can we pragmatically make the best decisions on this matter.

Did you actually read the wiki? Look on the criticisms of technocracy. What does it say? Does it say "Many of the criticisms of central planning also apply to technocracy." or does it say "technocracy has no criticisms as it is the perfect society"? It most certainly says the former. Capitalism adapts production to the consumer. My examples are not flawed because individuals will most certainly want land for their own usage, as well, individuals will always want things for their own benefit, this can even include the people that buy their own ovens or grow their own veggies. Those are parts of the means of production, heck, the means of production can be such a broad term that it hardly matters, my computer is a part of the means of production and yet I want exclusive ownership over it, so are microwaves, ovens, even televisions depending on how you wish to define the things.

Scarcity is something inherent with the nature of human desire and the framework in which we live. We will always have less than we would ideally want. Technocracy would make barter more difficult, as you stated the credits are non-transferable and therefore cannot be used for efficient barter which creates problems of using things to mediate the barter. Capitalism is the system that efficiently deals with trade and it tries to allocate resources efficiently as capitalists don't like scarcity either, the people in a particular industry might like it, but capitalists don't like it.

It is subjective as inidivduals have different desires. I personally dislike sports and would not like to see any resources that could otherwise go to me go to promoting sports, however, others do like sports. Others also might like farming, I dislike it, however, the comparative like or dislike of farming is important for divisions of labor as if something is underproduced people must be incentized to go into the field and vice versa.

No, we need a growth system to change and adapt to the planet. A system of zero-growth is a system where human welfare never improves.

BS! It is not based upon physics, and to claim that a human system is "based upon physics" is complete sophistry. Physics cannot assess the nature of human realities in this regard, if it could then there would be no demand for the liberal arts and engineers would never have to deal with a core curriculum. Technocracy isn't science.

Free market capitalism is pragmatic, most free-market capitalists are not objectivist randroids but rather believe in the pragmatism of the free market, to say that pragmatists and free-marketeers are not the same merely reflects a deficit of your own understanding, as there is overlap with pragmatism and thousands of other ideologies.

1. The wikipedia article stated "Many problems associated with central planning could be for technocracy as well", which does not imply that it is central planning that technocracy is. Moreover, with holonic frameworks, we could solve those bottleneck problems.

2. We are not using that definition of scarcity. Our definition is that there are less resources than people could physically consume, and abundance is the opposite.

3. We are living on a planet which is a closed resource flow. We are exhausting it, and driving towards an abyss. A zero-growth system won't necessarily have lower prosperity, or even stagnant prosperity, but could improve with more efficency measures.

4. A market economy is not efficient as it collapses when specific markets are fulfilled. Why do you think car companies are producing cars which are almost impossible to repair by the owner, and which instantly begins to collapse as fast as the insurance does'nt apply anymore?

Yes, and technocracy is a planned system. It is not controlled by multiple competing individuals, it is controlled by a board of planners who are only checked by political power. That is a planning system no matter what you might say. Not only that but this ultimately centralizes power in the few as consumer sovereignty is reduced significantly as they themselves are not the planners. Now you can argue that the planners under your society are supposed to serve the people but this has never really happened in the past.

Scarcity is simply an insufficiency of resources. Our resources are insufficient to meet all desires yet we still want to fulfill them and have a system that will continue to grow so that more desires can be fulfilled. One could argue that a fancy suit gives no further practical function or that a super massive collection of toy cars is a waste as you will never get to play with them all but that does not prevent people from desiring them and being pleased by having them.

Growth is anything that allows for more wealth to exist, right? Therefore efficiency measures are in fact growth and they are an aspect of the growth that capitalism attains and really a lot of the growth that happens now isn't based upon natural resources but rather use of human resources and these are even more difficult to understand by any planning system. After all Mp3s, better laptops and such are an area of much growth to be attained and a good amount of this isn't utilizing more inputs but rather making better use of current ones. In fact, given that capitalist societies try to use all inputs as they can be best used, the source of growth is meant to be efficiency.

Cars have been getting increasingly complicated over time due to the technology involved and as well, how long a car lasts depends a lot on the person taking care of it as with some cars you can get a lot of time out of them as many people have cars for much longer than their warranty simply by treating them well. Frankly, the amount of flaws in a car depends a lot on the effectiveness of the company you buy it from, as I know that Toyota tends to have high car quality while other companies tend to make more mistakes due to the manufacturing methodology they use. Frankly though, I would like to see a reference to the car company conspiracy, like I have heard that car quality declined during the 70s in America because American companies thought they had a dominant position but more groups are making their way in the field now.

Wrong. The sequences are not deciding exactly what people should consume, but rather the production of the things the public desire. The energy accounting system is designed to imitate the price system, but without profits or bottlenecks. The facilities are basing their production after the input of energy credits.



According to economics, yes. But according to technocracy, no.

According to you, scarcity is something subjective, according to us, it is objective. People do not have the physical capability to consume endlessly. The Pareto diagramme shows a world where 80% of the resources are concentrated to 20% of the population, both globally and nationally.

With increased load factors of equipment which is utilised through the replacement of ownership with usership, we would suddenly face a situation when everything is available to everyone without the need of excessive duplication.



Money and financial manipulations do not create anything valuable. The only thing which could create the energy surplus to increase prosperity is the technological capacity. The price system is only good at one thing, and that is to distribute scarce goods. We do not have scarcity anymore, so government intervention is utilised to create artificial scarcity just to save the market economy.

The economy is still planned, I never said that it was supposed to work by deciding what individuals consume, I said it was planned. Planning means that it is not a system of the liberty of individuals but rather controlled by outside forces, now of course you can claim that these technocrats are supposed to serve the people, but the communists stated that the fruits of labor were supposed to help the proletariat. The point to be made is that although this system is designed to help people it can still be subverted from its originally intended path as these planners still have monopoly control over the situation and altough they may not intend to draw profit they can avoid efficiency and lie about their progress. As well, profits play an important role in economic affairs to begin with as profits essentially guide where production should go, if something is profitable then it makes sense to make more and more of it to meet the demand, without the profit motive then individuals have little reason to try to make things work, especially given that the different methods of manufacture. Essentially, the problem with technocracy will end with it being untenable due to the fact that there are thousands of methods to do things, people who place different values on things, poor incentives and faulty information, which is the same problem with communism.


Yes, but people still want to own as they still hold attachments to things. Human life is subjective, a system that ignores that is a system that will repress human desire and thwart freedom. Frankly, I might want a car for myself really badly that is personally customized, fitted with a spoiler and racing stripes, in a non-ownership society the ability to get my perfect car personally customized is blocked off to me no matter how badly I want it and how much I am willing to sacrifice for this car, now frankly, I cannot see this as anything but a bad system that doesn't allow people to act in such a manner. As well, the lack of ownership can easily lead to hoarding or the fallacy of the commons in many cases as individuals have little reason to share what they want and think is important and little reason to take care of what they do not directly own.


Of course they do, they are a system of distribution in and of themselves and they are a part of the price mechanism's actions to increase wealth. Money isn't a value in and of itself and that has been known since the economists attacked the mercantilists. We still have scarcity though, people want various items for themselves and for their own purposes, and prices are a tool to calculate which purpose is truly more important based upon how much people value it.