A very good summary of technocracy.
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http://www.technocracyeurope.eu
Hello human being!
Let's now explore what technocracy is. You may have heard the term before if you have attended university courses, for example "the history of ideas", or have played some role-playing games, like "Mage: The Ascension". Of course, we are neither some sort of bureaucratic elitists or a world-wide conspiracy.
Rather, we are a social movement.
We are living in a deeply troubled world. For every year, our growth-oriented civilisation destroys more and more of our diverse ecosystems. The natural ecosystems, which we are systematically exhausting, are circulation-focused, and work according to a dynamic equilibrum which creates a balance - a harmony - between the different lifeforms in the ecosystem.
Today, we have created linear ecosystems, where the environment is tamed, and reorganised according to the whims of the price system.
The price system is a global resource flow which works according to the principle of exchange. Money is utilised as a medium of that exchange, which could be of both raw materials, material products, and services. The price system is working according to supply and demand, where the subjective needs and income of the consumer is weighted towards the availability of the product or service given.
The price system has expanded and institutionalised itself during the last couple of hundred years, and today, it has - together with industrialism - created unprecedented growth and increases in human prosperity. The price system is the basis for both capitalism and socialism, for both free markets and government welfare.
Nowadays, there are many problems with the price system.
The two most alarming of them is;
1] That the Earth is a closed system, which contradicts the demands of the price system for eternal growth. When we are systematically creating new and less life-supporting ecosystems, we are going to destroy our own future and create a hell on earth[1].
2] That we have in fact leaved the time when scarcity of necessary goods and services was a natural law, and increased productivity so much that we have entered an age of relative abundance. The price mechanism is dependent upon scarcity since abundant goods cannot be sold with profit.
These two conclusions may contradict each-other, but it is a matter of balance. If we, theoretically, utilised our technology in a more wise manner, we could distribute a high standard of life to all human beings in a specific region or globally, while we would recycle our waste and thus create a equilibrum between humanity and nature.
But the price system stands in the way of both of these goals.
Therefore, we technocrats have proposed an alternative to the price system. The alternative is called, you guessed it, technocracy and it uses something called "Energy accounting".
Energy accounting means that all citizens would be given a digital certifikate with an energy quota. The quota would be based upon the total production capacity of the technological infrastructure. The quota comes in the shape of energy credits, which are based upon kilo-watt hours. All citizens are guaranteed an equal income in energy credits.
When the citizens are using their energy credits, the computers could track the demand and constantly adapt the supply after the demand, thus eliminating waste and allocating production to the best available facility.
To make this process easier, all production of products and services is sorted under the technate. It should be noted here that this does not equal central planning. Today's companies would still exist, but would be severly altered. They would keep most of their functions as what they really are (or should be) - creative productive units, but would lose their hungry drive to make profit. Also, people would be appointed to the job or function they are suited for according to meritocratic principles.
The technate is comprised of the entire infrastructure of an area big as a continent.
The technate is both a service and an information system, which is administratednot by politicians or businessmen, but by experts in their fields, chosen on the quality of their work and their efficiency. The technate would be run by technicians, engineers, scientists... well, geeks.
These experts would not have any authority over people. The technate would not make any laws or regulations. The experts would not decide what the people need, but rather how the production would be concluded in the most efficient manner, according to the needs and wants of the citizens and the needs of the environment.
This is the reason why it is called technocracy. Because the infrastructure would be administrated by those who actually understands it, instead of those who wants to execute economic and political power over other people.
Technocracy is a government over technology, not over people.
And how would the people live? Well, as long as they are not eating each-other and have the same access to the production capacity of the technate given by their certifiates, they are basically free to run their own lives. Barter would not be prohibited, but the mere existence of the technate would prevent it from forming a new price system.
We technocrats are also big fans of down-scaling and automatisation. We want to reduce the amount of people working, and instead letting machines take over so much work as possible. Thus running contrary to the naive belief that work is some sort of natural law.
All people able would of course still work, but the thought is that they should work with what they like, and that they should do their work because they are loving it, not because any usage of force.
The amount of work would be significantly reduced though, not to any specific time though, but according to the current level of automatisation. The more we will automatise, the less work-hours would be needed on a continental scale.
We would also like to abolish urban wastelands, and replace them with ecological structures, remniscent of arcologies, but called urbanates. These would be equally distributed along the technate, and built as sustainable communities.
All structures and equipment produced in a technate would be modular as Lego, thus making it easier to add extensions to your house, move your apartment, our repair your TV and refrigerator. Thus, the products would have much more lifetime in usage, and would be easier to recycle.
The prime point of technocracy is that it would allow us a middle way between capitalism and primitivism, without jeopardizing either and both of the environment or humanity. We technocrats are constantly working to improve and study our own design, according to traditional scientific methods, such as empiricism.
Already on the edge of your seat? Then check out the rest of the website and don't forget to join in if you want a piece of the action!
A very good summary of technocracy.
Sciences & Environment rocks my bedroom.
[FONT=Arial]Say what you mean and say it mean...[/FONT]
"Frankly if we have a revolution and you stop me eating meat, I'm going to eat you."- The inimitable Skinz.
Be careful, lest the time comes where we have to weigh you against a duck.
Yep, it is written down in our website. It is happening much there right now since we got the domain fixed.
sounds like i have pretty technocratic tendencies ^^
never bevore reall ready into this, thanks for the summary
Is that the NET site?
Sciences & Environment rocks my bedroom.
[FONT=Arial]Say what you mean and say it mean...[/FONT]
"Frankly if we have a revolution and you stop me eating meat, I'm going to eat you."- The inimitable Skinz.
Be careful, lest the time comes where we have to weigh you against a duck.
Thanks, I'll be updating my bookmarks and so on. Thanks.
Sciences & Environment rocks my bedroom.
[FONT=Arial]Say what you mean and say it mean...[/FONT]
"Frankly if we have a revolution and you stop me eating meat, I'm going to eat you."- The inimitable Skinz.
Be careful, lest the time comes where we have to weigh you against a duck.
Hello Serpent
Nobody seems to be responding to my posts in technocracy.ca (because of some heated internecine battle I think) so I'll repost it here:
This scheme I think would be workable given our tech. level now:
Everything from the oil that powers your car to the electricity that power factory machinery to the food that power human labour are measureable in terms of scientifically quantifiable energy units. Given that everything including products that are manufactured and purchased needs a measurable amount of energy to shape into its final useful form, if the total amount of energy that a civilization uses to make their goods and services are distributed evenly among the consumers of such goods and products and we simply let consumer demand for a product measured in quantity acquired determine future adjustments to production quantity for a product there would be virtually no way and no reason for the economy to periodically stall (the business cycle) and for people to be forced by economic necessity to take on jobs they don't want to do or be forced by the necessity of a price-based economy to be left without an income to live when business becomes unprofitable and needs to mass-fire workers.
Energy credits are different from money in that energy credits are simply the measured amount of the sum total of energy used up in making all the products and services available to the people to acquire for consumer use in contrast to ownership which will be impossible given that everybody has an equal amount of energy credits to stake a claim of consumer use for any given product or service.
But even if such a situation were to occur in that someone stake a claim upon a product and leaves it idle introducing artificial consumer scarcity where there was none before, this could easily be remedied by introducing a scarcity fee for idle resources equivalent in cost to the proportion of time it was intentionally left idle over the useful lifetime of the resource (this should be familiar to anybody in the bookkeeping field as depreciation) plus the difference in cost in securing an alternative resource (which is usually more expensive in energy costs to make). But, again this is a hypothetical situation that would seldom arise given that everybody is allocated an even amount of energy credits since machine labour already far outproduces human labour in terms of quantity of goods and services churned out making any inequalities in energy credits for bonuses given out (let's say for the small amount of time taken to do manual work that's not yet automated) insignificant. In any case the bonus given out for manual work would be measured as the amount of average consumer expenditures in energy credits over the time that a worker uses to work and therefore not participating in consumption (as everybody else would who are not working).
Energy credits are also different from money in that they cannot be traded, negotiated or hoarded as individual debt trading tokens as money is. It's simply the total measured amount of energy used up in the production process of a society and changes according to the amount of energy available to the given society, so if you build more power plants or discover a new source of fuel you have more total energy credits. Also energy credits are bounded to the product or service once the act of purchase is made effectively taking it out of circulation until such time as when the consumer item is destroyed or consumed at which time the energy credit also is consumed or the item is bought by somebody else in which case the energy credit remaining as measured as the remaining useful lifetime of the item is returned to the public consumer energy pool. This by the way is all computerized with smart cards and network computer accounts so paper money is obsolete.
Well. If you feel alone now, then by all means, you are welcome to join our website
We need 50.000 members
Why 50.00?Originally posted by Serpent@Oct 4 2006, 09:57 AM
Well. If you feel alone now, then by all means, you are welcome to join our website
We need 50.000 members
Sciences & Environment rocks my bedroom.
[FONT=Arial]Say what you mean and say it mean...[/FONT]
"Frankly if we have a revolution and you stop me eating meat, I'm going to eat you."- The inimitable Skinz.
Be careful, lest the time comes where we have to weigh you against a duck.
Hahaha... I mean 50 000 members
Or fifty millions for that matter :P
Since it's NET is membership restricted to European members? Otherwise, I'll give it a try.
We have American members. And our new NET director [chief of technate] is an Australian citizen. NET is not restricted to anyone based on geographic location or ethnic belonging.
And you do not need to be a member of NET to be a member of our forum.
Priorities
Many people do view their own working rights and their personal prosperity, or the political struggle against capitalism, as more important than creating a sustainable society. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
We cannot continue with this current lifestyle for much longer.
We cannot move back to agriculture either.
We need a middle way between these two extremes. A sustainable society based on resource circulation, with high prosperity.
Therefore, we need technocracy.
i agree with sum of ure points, one being capitalism is so wasteful - and things need to happen, both now and soon.
intrested in learning more on the ecology part of it and things like - is it pro organic? (ie is it seen as wasteful too do energy intensive spraying and monocultures like that which is done in capitalism), what it the alternative to agriculture for food production under technocracy? not permilculture? what if there was expert who knew how to make food organically and effiecently?
will read ure site sum more -
cheers
'I'm not proposing we should all get naked and be neandertals,
But we can live a simpler life - one that might take us away from the materialism that destroys our air, our water, and each other." - Possuelo
'man is born free and everywhere he is in chains' - Rousseau
property is theft
www.savehappyvalley.org.nz
Love the description, complements leftist and post-leftist societies perfectly.
We are for permaculture and hydrophonic farms, as well as for a reduction of the ecological footprints to an optimal level [the level which actually corresponds to the consumption]. This could partially be achieved through energy accounting [by eliminating excess production] and partially by for example vertical agriculture.
When it comes to organic production, it is not a consequent stand for that but rather more flexible. We are not trying to design the society to the least possible detail, but rather keep our design open and modular in it's purely technical aspects so that we could adapt it to changes.
Jeeze, the next thing you know these damn nerds are going to try to take over the Greek Council and use it to adopt new guidelines to end the so-called persecution they receive from the Alpha Betas.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein
Vinny, according to your "philosophy" we can save ourselves the trouble of thinking and contemplating to come up with a solution to problems and we'll just choose leaders according to penis size. Of course we know you have the biggest one because you're so strong-willed, aggressive and "gutsy".
Why was the subject moved, after about 5 weeks?
