Technocracy: A new order of the world

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And yet is *still* too small to be noticed by the history books.


So, is it against democracy? Somehow I thought the movement was primarily focused upon economic factors, and I don't see how popular economic action is negative.


Or at least so you hope, a major issue exists in interpersonal dynamics, and this makes smooth-talkers seem smarter. In fact, studies have been done where actors have been hired to give a lecture upon a topic they know little about, their charm is a major factor in assessments of their knowledge.


Hmmm... and where are the financiers? Even if we abolish money, there would have to be someone who does work similar to theirs, and it seems to me that they would ideally work with the engineers, the programmers and the electricians(do you mean electrical engineers? electricians usually just do wiring in houses I think). I mean, I know that technocrats usually claim that resources will become magically abundant, but from what I've seen, this really is an assumption of magic.


I don't know what you mean by "control of their fields", in any case, decisions *must* be made on emotional grounds. The entire notion of a realm of facts is ridiculous, where are the moral facts you refer to? How do we deal with the genuine ambiguity that exists in reality? The facts may tell you that an outcome is 2 standard deviations away, but the acceptable range is to some extent going to be a matter of emotion.


The money system is relatively rational, it is just that the people aren't. In any case, I don't see how a joule of energy is any different than a gold standard, if perhaps more ridiculous. Not all joules are equal, and not all costs are reflected in joules.


Civilized is one of those terms subject to subjectivity. Some could argue that this direction would actually stunt intellectual and moral advancement.


This is questioned, and your link is not enough to say "collapsing" as collapsing refers to something that has already begun happening to a great extent.


Right, a bad alternative.

Very little I have read from the technocrats really seems to indicate to me that they have a lot of knowledge about the systems they criticize as completely faulty, or that their own notions are realistic. In any case, the centralization argument made earlier is valid, because of the coordination problems that would have to be addressed by technocracy. It is not as if separate branches can decide things in isolation, but once they all band together they are centralized, and there is no soft measure of change, so therefore we either have failure, or we have centralization and *then* failure.


What is first class? Is this a good use of resources? Can everything be questioned? Certainly I find the notion that everything can be questioned to be questionable, as those who uphold it only question to the extent that is socially acceptable, but they do not show any signs of questioning their dictums and methods, making them just as foolish as those they question I'd think.


In any case, I think I've made it clear that I am opposed. The direction is questionable, and seems flawed.

It sounds like a robot world.

I'd rather hang out in Fiji and have a little farm.

Technocracy has been around since 1919 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_(bureaucratic)) and although it makes sense that people who know what they're doing are authorized to do it there are enough general idiots with technological expertise around to foul up any social system. People with that mind set tend to be totalitarian and can be particularly nasty. Many of Hitler's supporters were technologists and the results of moving full speed ahead in revising social systems by using faulty technological concepts can be hugely disastrous.

If technology is so useful the first steps involve giving the general public a sound educational foundation in technology so that a very large base is formed in sophisticated understanding of technology with a wide appreciation of the different social effects of applying technological solutions. No doubt the current federal and state legislatures lack a good technological background but it is a slow process to remedy that and the religious right is highly prejudiced against good science.

In Finland all education through the university is free and that is the first step any sensible nation should take in getting qualified people properly educated. The first and only sensible attitude of any country is that the population should be maintained healthy and educated to the maximum to properly attack problems. The USA is way behind in this first elemental step by making both good health and excellent education unaffordable for a huge segment of its population and this is a huge stupidity.

I really need to question this. I mean, my school (undergrad only - I'm outta here) is in the "affordable" public university system, and, honestly, it's already full of people too stupid for higher ed. What on earth could it accomplish to get people who are even dumber into colleges?

Qualified people are now denied higher education out of financial problems. This is destruction of valuable and badly needed resources. Your judgment that the school system is overloaded with stupid people is highly suspect. The quality of education is a large factor in misjudging basic capabilities.

Well, twoshots's assessment is not even unique to him, I've heard scholars argue that too many people are being pushed into higher education, both on the grounds of intelligence, and the economic utility of such investments.

What is properly educated? Is it worth it for the large segments of the population that will always refuse to learn? The issue is never knowledge, it is a culture. People forget the knowledge they already *should* know, why would the additional knowledge be held on to? Why is it the deciding factor, people may be educated on one bit of technology, but we cannot re-educate them on every new advancement, and some won't even need to have any more official education to catch on to the new advancements.

It is not even a matter of advanced technology. When I attended Stuyvesant High school in New York in the late 1930's I received a good solid grounding in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology that I found extremely useful for the rest of my life. And it washed away the nonsense of popular misconceptions. It does not require extraordinary capability to grasp these very basic subjects. As science advanced I grasped the progress through magazines and supplementary literature. I am not a scientist but this is basic knowledge and all normal people are well capable of acquiring it. If the will to learn is not there then the nation as a whole suffers greatly and the lack is as dangerous as a basic defect in the military system. If the USA could do it then, it can easily do it today with advanced computer and informational techniques.

Well, it is pretty easy to receive a good foundation of knowledge if one tries to get it, it is just that most people don't care. They will basically try to go through the minimal requirements to graduate, and stop right there. The issue isn't one of extraordinary but rather how good must one be, and how willing will one be to learn. Very few people *care* and you cannot easily make a person who does not care to do so.

Perhaps the point is that affordable education of high quality should be available for those who are capable of benefiting from it. That's completely different to pushing kids into education in a way some people above have described, and as happens here in the UK. When I was a kid, it was only the most able academically who got to go to university, and you weren't forced into taking on debt that would require years to pay back. When you got there the students were generally people who wanted to be there, rather than those that had been coerced or fed a load of politically-contrived spin, as happens now. In fact, here in the UK we're tending to follow the US educational model. Whereas most youngsters would leave school at 16 a few years back, now that's being increased through government legislation to 18+. With universities, I think nearly 50% of kids now go to one after leaving school. Whilst this has been happening, the government's been lamenting the shortage of people available to fill vacancies that clearly do not require a university education, using it as an excuse to fill the country full of foreigners who work for the minimum wage, and avail themselves of all the benefits a liberal democracy provides courtesy of the indigenous taxpayer.

That, certainly, makes more sense, but I'm wondering where the evidence is that there are vast throngs of people who are smart, motivated, yet inexplicably incapable of getting into university's whose primary criterion for admission is "has a pulse".

It isn't hard to get scholarships, and it isn't hard to get loans. Most people who have what it takes to succeed in college and benefit from it probably are quite capable of handling this. Those who can't, I'd guess, aren't as important as people like to make them out to be.

The more important thing here is that college shouldn't be necessary for basic life skills. Highschool as it stands in the US of A is a complete waste of time for most people; it's like glorified daycare where you come out with the amazing achievement of having read Catcher in the Rye.

There are invisible barriers that hold people back. It's not just a case of getting into a university- what about a person's background and upbringing? It clearly plays a role on their life-chances- and not just in a physical sense. I think there are plenty of people in higher places that are far less important/special than made out to be- a lot of people get things handed to them on a plate from birth. Clearly some people have more life-chances than others and so while I doubt it that any Western country is hiding a genius among those who have a lesser chance of succeeding, there are plenty of people who if had equal oppurtunities would have achieved far more. Of course, saying that, globally there are people who are given no chance whatsoever to succeed- no matter how intelligent. Meritocracy may be possible (my uncle went from the bottom to near the top) but it is currently much harder than many make it out to be.

On funding... well, that EMA fiasco took me out of college for weeks because I couldn't afford to go there on my current budget. Loans aren't easy to get for everyone and it's not always down to how much a person needs- if you are in a grey area, for example, in the cross between lodging and foster care that is an alternative to leaving care at 16 in the UK (supported lodgings), it can be very hard to prove that you need money.

I go to a college in a prestigious area- although it's a train ride away from where I live. A lot of the kids from private schools there are idiots compared to those from state schools on the same course. Yet the kids from state schools of a similar intellectual ability or in some cases higher are on lower level courses. Clearly there is something wrong with that scenario.

All governments are really "pseudocracies" - they look and appear to be governments but in reality are front groups of the real controllers.

You cannot have a competent voting democracy without a well educated aware citizenry. It is a necessity for everyone to learn to read so that they can learn how not to be scammed by crooks and crooked politicians. It's not even possible to use a simple computer without reading. Yet reading was a specialized skill for hundreds of years until general education gave most people that ability. The sciences and math are not that difficult to learn if they are presented properly with the latest methods. If most everybody can read, then everybody can be taught the basic of science and it's not a luxury. Government doesn't work properly without it.

I was thinking that a proper commodity based currency would be based on oil and gold. The only question is what to call the units of such currency. The unit of gold currency should be called the Trojan because gold is weighed out in troy ounces. The petroleum currency should be denominated in Sheiks, since most of the oil comes from Arabia and the Emirates.

And as we look at our wallets stuffed with Sheiks and Trojans we will know exactly what OPEC and the bankers are doing to us.

ruveyn

Since both gold and oil vary wildly in value the current system of merely trusting each other that currency has value with no backing works as well.