About Technocracy, Korimyr...

[Goshin]

In a previous thread on Fascism, Korimyr stated:

Ideally, I would like to abolish currency altogether and replace the market economy with a technocratic system. I see corporatism and increased government involvement in the economy as the only effective midgame strategy for accomplishing this. Communism destroys economies by replacing management with politicians, while Fascism allows corporate leaders to continue doing their jobs as long as they work for the benefit of the State.

....

I went to the linked site, Technocracy Inc, which appears to be a/the "official" organization site. It is a terrible site, very amateurishly set up. Many of the article
links lead to blank pages, short articles, or even one-line statements! Remarkably uninformative. If they want to impress anyone, they really need to step it up.

I read several articles, of those that were actually available. It seems like a very utopian concept, with all
the caveats that implies.


An Age of Peace and Plenty is Possible

For centuries people have dreamed of an age of peace and plenty, an age without
crime, debt, hunger -- or war! A great dream indeed, but how could such a dream
actually be achieved in a real world in which these things are traditional and
profitable? If such an age became possible, what would be its operating
characteristics, and where is the human intelligence required for its
installation? Who would be willing to make an effort to understand the physical
requirements, or to accept the drastic changes necessary to turn this dream
into reality?

The ideal, or desire, for peace and plenty is not enough, the physical
requirements must be considered; an operating mechanism for the distribution of
plenty must be designed. And until it is, such an age will remain just that, an
ideal, or desire, without substance in this real world of matter and energy.
The installation of such a mechanism would require the greatest social change
in recorded human history.
... It would require the intelligence
to design, construct, and operate an automatic, computer controlled technology,
and to achieve this conversion to a compatible social system. The location for
starting such an age must be determined by the area which has the resources to
make it possible, the iron, aluminum, wood, etc. Further the area must not be
overpopulated. WOULD YOU BELIEVE THAT THIS NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT ALREADY HAS
THE ABOVE REQUIREMENTS?

When the above conditions are made possible, it would then be necessary, for
the first time in history, to design an economic system which could affect the
distribution of this plenty to all the people in the area. Since human muscles
are not powerful enough to produce so much, technology must do the job. Methods
must be found to allow more people to work less and still have access to the
plenty produced by technology.

Fortunately I found other sites about Technocracy that were slightly more informative.

Technocracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technocracy is a hypothetical form of government in which engineers, scientists, and other technical experts are in control of decision making in their respective fields. The term technocracy derives from the Greek words tekhne meaning skill and kratos meaning power, as in government, or rule. Thus the term technocracy denotes a system of government where those who have knowledge, expertise or skills compose the governing body. In a technocracy decision makers would be selected based upon how highly knowledgeable they are, rather than how much political capital they hold.

Technocrats are individuals with technical training and occupations who perceive many important societal problems as being solvable, often while proposing technology-focused solutions. The administrative scientist Gunnar K. A. Njalsson theorizes that technocrats are primarily driven by their cognitive "problem-solution mindsets" and only in part by particular occupational group interests. Their activities and the increasing success of their ideas are thought to be a crucial factor behind the modern spread of technology and the largely ideological concept of the "Information Society." Technocrats may be distinguished from "econocrats" and "bureaucrats" whose problem-solution mindsets differ from those of the technocrats.[1]

In all cases technical and leadership skills are selected through bureaucratic processes on the basis of specialized knowledge and performance, rather than democratic elections. Some forms of technocracy are a form of meritocracy, a system where the "most qualified" and those who decide the validity of qualifications are the same people. Other forms have been described as not being an oligarchic human group of controllers, but rather an administration by science without the influence of special interest groups.[2]

China has been described as a Technocracy. [3]

Technocracy movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The technocracy movement is a social movement which arose in the early 20th century. Technocracy was highly popular in the USA for a brief period in the early 1930s, when it overshadowed many other proposals for dealing with the crisis of the Great Depression.[1][2] The technocrats proposed replacing politicians with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy.[1]

Overview
Technocrats believed that politicians and businessmen could not manage a complex, rapidly advancing industrial society. The technocrats proposed replacing politicians with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy. The technocratic philosophy assumed that energy was the critical factor determining economic and social development. The technocrats measured social change in physical terms: the average number of kilocalories used per capita per day. Money would be replaced by energy certificates, the total supply of which would be determined by the total amount of energy used in the production of goods and services.[citation needed]

The coming of the Great Depression created an opening for some of these radical ideas of social engineering.[3][4] By late 1932, various groups across the United States were calling themselves "technocrats" and proposing reforms.[5]

By the mid-1930s, interest in the technocracy movement was declining. Most historians have attributed the demise of the technocracy movement to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal,[4] a more democratic method of accomplishing the planning and economic reconstruction that the technocrats had called for. The authoritarian, elitist, and even fascist overtones of the technocracy movement undermined its popular appeal as a political movement.
....
1948 saw a decline in activity and considerable internal dissent. One central factor contributing to this dissent was that "the Price System had not collapsed, and predictions about the expected demise were becoming more and more vague".[32] Some quite specific predictions about the Price System collapse were made during the Depression, the first giving 1937 as the date, and the second forecasting the collapse as occurring "prior to 1940".[32]

Membership and activity declined steadily in the years after 1948, but some activity persisted, mostly around Vancouver in Canada and on the West Coast of the United States. Technocracy Incorporated currently maintains a website and distributes an occasional newsletter

The term Energy Accounting refers to a system of resource allocation for is proposed by Technocracy Incorporated in the U.S. The system has its basis within the Thermaldynamic interpretation of economics. All human economic activity requires energy. All this energy can be accounted for when we wish to produce goods. In an Energy Accounting System, the amount of energy needed to produce an item is counted. Thus, the production capacity can be defined in terms of energy.

With the sum total of all the energy needed to produce goods known, it is then possible to allocate an equal share of the production capacity to each citizen. In the original proposal put forward by technocracy Inc, each citizen will receive paper certificates which they could use to allocate production capacity to produce goods they desire. In a more modern system, the certificates could be replaced by a computer accounting system where each person’s allocation is refer to as energy credits.

Retrieved from "http://technocracy.wikia.com/wiki/Energy_Accounting"

Energy Accounting - Technocracy Wiki


Replacement of cities:

An Urbanate is an assembly of buildings, or perhaps one large building, in which people would live and work. These places would have all the facilities needed for a community, including schools, hospitals, distribution centres (shops), waste management and recycling, sports centres, and public areas (parks and gardens), and would also have easy access to the surrounding country-side. The exact design of an Urbanate has not been specified as this would be far better done by the engineers and architects of the technate, if and when they come to build one.[1]

Design and proposed benefitsTechnocrats propose that Urbanate buildings be as energy efficient as possible, and be designed with safety in mind, with every building material being completely Fireproofing|fireproof and resistant to almost all natural disasters. It is envisioned that Urbanates will be manufactured rather than constructed in the traditional sense. Standardised, prefabricated components will be produced in automated factories and transported to the desired location to be assembled into whatever design is required with a minimum of human labour used.

Urbanates are to be designed to give each citizen the highest standard of living possible within a sustainable resource base. Urbanates in design, could be something akin to resorts, with all sorts of leisure facilities included. In other words, these structures would be built with a view to practicality and non commercial (Price system) concerns, and protection of resources.[2]


Getting around in an Urbanate would be inherently easy and efficient, with every kind of major facility placed within walking distance or an easy commute of a housing complex.

Urbanates would be connected via a continent-wide transportation network envisioned by the Technate design (Technocracy Study Course), which would involve a High-speed rail network (possible Maglev train) linking every Urbanate, the Continental Hydrology (a massive Canal network), and air transport. These systems would also be connected to the technate’s industrial sites, consisting of automated factories, for easy transport of goods to consumers and to all recreational and vacation areas of the continent.

Technocrats suppose there will be great environmental benefits to recycling some current cities and adopting Urbanates. Urbanates will take up much less physical space than cities and will not have polluting cars or industries. Roads and highways, major ecological hazards with their thousands of kilometres of concrete and tarmac cutting through natural landscapes, will be absent in this plan, and nature will be able to reclaim vast tracts of land.


Eco-Units and Urbantes The term "Eco-unit" refers to a sustainable community in which the community handles all food, energy and waste management needed for the community. The Swedish systems ecologist Folke Gunther developed the concept was developed. This has then become a proposed foundation for an urbanate where a number of eco-units would link together to form on urbanate.

Sounds a lot like the Arcology concept, but without money.

I can't say that Technocracy sounds all that practical, or particularly appealing. One thing I wonder about it this: in teh absence of money and the distribution of "energy consumption shares" on an equal basis, where is the
Incentive motivation for people to produce efficiently? Or to advance themselves through education/etc?
Purely social-status mechanisms might exist but history suggests that is inadequate as a motivator.

Any thoughts on any of this?

 

[Real Korimyr #9]

I went to the linked site, Technocracy Inc, which appears to be a/the "official" organization site. It is a terrible site, very amateurishly set up. Many of the article
links lead to blank pages, short articles, or even one-line statements! Remarkably uninformative. If they want to impress anyone, they really need to step it up.

Yes. I was remarkably disappointed in the presentation of the site the last time I visited. It used to be much cleaner and more informative.

One thing I wonder about it this: in teh absence of money and the distribution of "energy consumption shares" on an equal basis, where is the
Incentive motivation for people to produce efficiently? Or to advance themselves through education/etc?
Purely social-status mechanisms might exist but history suggests that is inadequate as a motivator.

When people are engaged in pleasant work and are not stressed by overwork or resource shortages, they naturally try to do good work. I agree with your concerns that this may not be sufficient, but I agree with Technocracy's analysis that there's no other way to avoid the economic cycles of boom and bust punctuated by unnecessary wars and the occasional market crash. Other means of creating incentive motivation may be required.