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Portentous changes to the work economies of India and the USA due to job automation by machines and robots continue to make headlines. Varieties of hardware and software automation are seeing implementation burgeon in both countries, as companies seek efficiency by replacing humans with machines. Wage erosion in areas previously unaffected by automation - including varieties of programming - is getting commoner while new, albeit highly specialized, engineering jobs are created. Both articles encourage educational changes mindful of these realities, though how colleges either side of the world can adapt to the blistering pace of automation is unclear.
The latest tranche of job automation news comes hot on the heels of Davos' prediction that machine automation will result in a net loss globally of over 5 million jobs prior to 2020.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday February 10 2016, @10:24AM
I looked at these links. On first sight it appears as an honest attempt. On the other hand, they are proposing a society where the individual is deprived of many freedoms that we take for granted - such as to accumulate money for some purpose, or to lend it to others, or to simply waste it. This society is better suited to those sci-fi movies like Logan's run.
My quick read of their program also revealed that they have no mechanisms to deal with natural desire of humans to produce as little as possible but consume as much as they can get away with. They are talking of money losing value - and in the same breath replacing it with coupons like those food cards that were used in war time. At the same time there is no accounting of merit, no material reward for initiative. I would recommend others who are curious to have a look. It looks like a very rough draft of an utopia, with many difficult problems just avoided.
(Score: 2) by Murdoc on Wednesday February 10 2016, @12:01PM
Well I'm glad that you actually looked, but unfortunately you did exactly what I advised against. I gave you an elephant and you felt its tail and told me that the elephant is a rope. You can't learn the whole thing in just a few minutes. They used to teach a 22 lesson course in this. Without help it could take years. But I'm willing to help anyone willing to spend the time.
It looks like a very rough draft of an utopia, with many difficult problems just avoided.
The corner of a blueprint probably would look like an incomplete design. Where you see "problems avoided" I see gaps in your knowledge. Some examples:
My quick read of their program also revealed that they have no mechanisms to deal with natural desire of humans to produce as little as possible but consume as much as they can get away with.
Then you of course didn't read this article about human motivation. [technocracy.ca] As for consumption, there are physical limits to human consumption. One can "own" as many cars as can be produced, sure, but you can only spend so much time in a day driving one. Technocracy doesn't use the concept of private ownership as it is unnecessary and counter-productive in a post-scarcity society. It instead provides people with what those possessions are supposed to actually give them. In the case of cars, that would be transportation. If you have equal or superior access to transportation as owning a car would provide, then actually owning a car becomes a burden. The parking, the maintenance... who needs it?
They are talking of money losing value - and in the same breath replacing it with coupons like those food cards that were used in war time.
Energy Accounting [technocracy.ca] is nothing like money or "food cards". Such are aspects of a medium of exchange. One exchanges money for goods and services, or one redeems coupons for same. E.A. on the other hand is a medium of distribution, meaning people just get what they want, and the E.A. system keeps track of it so that it knows how much of each thing to produce in the next cycle. There is nothing "exchanged" or "redeemed". You are perhaps confused by the already outdated concept of Energy Certificates. They were a system of simply keeping track of what you consumed, not something that you "owned" and then exchanged or redeemed for something else. Today of course this would all be done electronically. I hope you can begin to see where your "quick read" has lead you to great misunderstanding, much like the Blind Men fable I mentioned earlier.
As for the rest, I'll leave that for you to decide if it is worth you time looking further into it, but I can tell you that like the examples above, pretty much everything you've decided about Technocracy is incorrect. I'm still happy to answer questions, but you can't learn everything in comment posts. I'd have to write dozens of articles worth of material that already exists elsewhere for you, but I can round things out and help point in the right direction.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday February 10 2016, @09:10PM
I can only confirm that I spent not more than 10 minutes reading through the jumble of not very informative text. It was late, after midnight already :-) But I understand your point about the shape of the elephant.
Still, it would be much better if those guys step away from the technocratic (!) format of a user's manual and instead write a short literary essay that depicts life in their society. It's not too hard, anyone can do it. I would have read that story, and I would have grokked all that I need to at least comprehend your position. Right now they start with a large article that explains nothing, and offer 22 links to articles that explain a bit more... some even go overboard, like the design of an energy certificate, with exact spec on the format of the serial number...
In that essay they need to show on a simple example how a typical family lives their day, or week, or year. Where they live, how, what they do, what they don't do, where things are coming from, and so on. Here is a pretty large example [gutenberg.org] :-) Note, though, how much technocrats are borrowing from Thomas More. For example:
They are furnished with a waggon and a slave, who drives the oxen and looks after them; but, unless there are women in the company, the waggon is sent back at the end of the journey as a needless encumbrance.
Note the "needless" here. It's the same attitude that struck me on technocrat.ca - making decisions for others. A rebel in me screams: "It's not your #$% business to decide what I need and what I don't!"
(Score: 2) by Murdoc on Thursday February 11 2016, @08:31AM
I can only confirm that I spent not more than 10 minutes reading through the jumble of not very informative text. It was late, after midnight already :-) But I understand your point about the shape of the elephant.
It just appeared to me from what you said that you were, based on those 10 minutes, ready to pass judgement on the whole idea.
Still, it would be much better if those guys step away from the technocratic (!) format of a user's manual and instead write a short literary essay that depicts life in their society. It's not too hard, anyone can do it. I would have read that story, and I would have grokked all that I need to at least comprehend your position. Right now they start with a large article that explains nothing, and offer 22 links to articles that explain a bit more... some even go overboard, like the design of an energy certificate, with exact spec on the format of the serial number...
Oh I agree that there remains a great deal of improvement to be made in Technocratic materials. That site is an improvement over what I had to learn with, which is why I said that it could take one years without help, because that's how long it took me to really understand it. Given the amount of information on the design, I don't think that it could be condensed down to 10 minutes though.
What article did you find long and explained nothing? I hope not the "Technocracy for Beginners", because that's not even an article. It's just a brief overview (of what is a large topic), with links to more information on whatever you are interested in. Kind of an introduction+table of contents. As for the Energy Certificate article, the link for it does say that it is long and outdated, but I know that when I first read it, it clarified a lot of things for me as to how Energy Accounting worked.
In that essay they need to show on a simple example how a typical family lives their day, or week, or year. Where they live, how, what they do, what they don't do, where things are coming from, and so on. Here is a pretty large example :-)
It's not a bad idea, but I know from experience that if such a thing were written, it would be criticised for not explaining how such a life was possible. If it were to be expanded in order to include such explanations, it would certainly be no longer short nor simple. That is why the majority of that site is about the mechanics of how Technocracy operates, in short, digestible chunks (along with a few longer, more detailed explanations of some things). But please feel free to continue providing suggestions for improvement. :)
Note the "needless" here. It's the same attitude that struck me on technocrat.ca - making decisions for others. A rebel in me screams: "It's not your #$% business to decide what I need and what I don't!"
Again, you have the wrong impression. I know from long experience that looking at one part of Technocracy can give the impression of a dictatorship, while looking at others can give the impression of communism, or anarchy, or even other things. Hence the elephant metaphor. In this case, the Technate does not decide what you need or want, it simply figures out the most efficient way of getting it to you. It is in fact the most free form of society I've ever seen. I know you might disagree with that given your previous message about freedom to accumulate money, so I'll address that one here too.
The accumulation of money is a means to an end. What is that end? Why do you really want that money? What does it do for you? To get you things, like a home, transportation, food, entertainment, comforts, etc. Thus, money is not that important itself unless it is the best tool at hand. If there was a better tool available, like perhaps Technocracy, then money becomes of little use, perhaps even a hinderance. In such a case, is the lack of "freedom to accumulate money" really a big loss? Likewise, lending money to others would accomplish nothing in a Technate, so why have it? In this way, Technocracy is looking at what it is that people really want out of life, and providing the best way of giving it to them. It is just engineering, the application of science to solve social problems, like building a bridge. It is not there to tell people what they should want or have, like political ideologies. Using the wagon and oxen example, it would be sent back as a needless encumbrance by the person using it. If they still need it, then they still have it. Simple as that.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday February 11 2016, @09:52AM
What article did you find long and explained nothing?
The first few that I happened to stumble upon when following your original links. I cannot say now, it's too late already (01:24am.) But *many* articles there are light on content. They are mostly descriptive. I will try to find time tomorrow to review a few in greater detail. But, as you say, if one article cannot be criticized as an item, then what am I looking at? This is not right. You cannot offer information in such a holographic way. I just don't understand - and I'm sure many people are like myself. Many are even less inclined to piece the information together, bit by bit, out of many articles.
It just appeared to me from what you said that you were, based on those 10 minutes, ready to pass judgement on the whole idea.
Hey, those 10 minutes are 20x more than the typical attention span of a modern Web surfer :-) You know what an elevator pitch is? Well, you have between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to deliver the essential facts. Not more than that. If you cannot, too bad - you lose the listener. Well, not me, not yet - but you get the idea.
I know from long experience that looking at one part of Technocracy can give the impression of a dictatorship, while looking at others can give the impression of communism, or anarchy, or even other things.
Funny that the Bible has the same problem :-)
Likewise, lending money to others would accomplish nothing in a Technate, so why have it?
Let's say "energy certificate", not money. Energy certificates are not earned but distributed. For what purpose? I guess, to authorize consumption of some part of the public wealth. Right? (I do not know, as you know :-) For example, my monthly allotment of energy allows me to instruct a robot to deliver to me one thousand red bricks per month.
If so, I can use those bricks to build a house. Either by myself, or by robot labor (which would also be on that allowance. But let's skip that.) The house that I intend to build will be a Magician's Tower. A large one. Takes 12,000 bricks. How long will it take me to accumulate those bricks? 12 months.
But what if I want my tower faster? Say, I have new spells to test, but as you know spells must be tested in a special room, with spell-repelling walls. But I digress. I want my tower ASAP. Obviously, if every member of the society wants his own tower, that cannot work - the society can only produce so many bricks per month because that's limited by the performance of mining robots, by the number of mines, etc. etc. It can be widened up if there is a constant demand, but you can't turn on a dime.
Then the obvious answer is that I borrow bricks from people who do not need their bricks now. Or, more precisely, who do not plan to use their energy certificates. As they cannot be accumulated, they'd be a waste if you plan to sit at home whole month and write a poem. You don't plan to build things, to burn energy, or to demand anything like that from the society. Again, you cannot accumulate your allotment of energy.
This means that borrowing and lending is beneficial to both the borrower and the lender. It allows them to smooth the uneven flow of their needs. As today we accumulate money for a large purchase (if you don't want to sell your firstborn to the bank,) in technocratic society people will gladly loan their energy when they don't need it, in exchange for the same amount of energy (not even more!) returned to them when they are ready to consume.
Now, what do we see? We see... a MARKET! We have sellers of energy and we have buyers. Sellers either provide their printed energy certificates (if they are transferrable) or just request goods that the buyer wants and physically hand those. In return they get an IOU.
Now, what do we see? What does that IOU look like? Like MONEY! Now you can give those IOU to other people and receive them without bothering with silly energy certificates :-) IOUs can be accumulated, loaned, borrowed, they don't expire, and you can get all kinds of /personal service/ for them. Energy certificates cover what you get from robots... but what if you want something /from a person/? How would you entice her ^W that person to do what you want her ^W them to do? What do you offer them? The money, of course...
Please tell me where I am wrong. I will read tomorrow :-)
(Score: 2) by Murdoc on Friday February 12 2016, @07:02AM
The first few that I happened to stumble upon when following your original links. I cannot say now, it's too late already (01:24am.) But *many* articles there are light on content. They are mostly descriptive. I will try to find time tomorrow to review a few in greater detail. But, as you say, if one article cannot be criticized as an item, then what am I looking at? This is not right. You cannot offer information in such a holographic way. I just don't understand - and I'm sure many people are like myself. Many are even less inclined to piece the information together, bit by bit, out of many articles.
To an extent I agree with you, the web site is not the best way to learn Technocracy. The best way that I know about was the old Technocracy Study Course, but that a) required the greatest commitment of time, and b) is no longer available. The book that went with the course [technocracy.ca] (PDF download) is still available, but from the feedback I've heard from people, it doesn't seem that well suited to single-person study. Not too surprising since that was never its intended function. So really the website is just doing the best it can. What do you see as a better way of doing it?
Hey, those 10 minutes are 20x more than the typical attention span of a modern Web surfer :-) You know what an elevator pitch is? Well, you have between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to deliver the essential facts. Not more than that. If you cannot, too bad - you lose the listener. Well, not me, not yet - but you get the idea.
Yes, I do know what that is. That is the first part of the Beginner's Guide:
Technocracy is a proposal for a steady-state, post-scarcity economic system. It is intended for industrialized nations with sufficient natural, technological, and human resources to produce an economic abundance. Primarily this refers to the continent of North America, but may also apply to other areas today as well if they have achieved certain minimum criteria. Put in the simplest terms, a Technocracy is a society where machines do the work that people do not want to do.
You can't condense it any more than that (O.k., maybe you could leave out the middle sentences. I might save those for later in a verbal conversation). And of course it's light on details, that's what makes it short. You can't have it both ways. As for "the essential facts in 30 seconds to 2 minutes", that is what the information after that is for, such as the Attributes of a Technocratic Society, and the Goals and Benefits pages. Since you can't describe all of Technocracy in so short of a time, the only thing you can do is tell what information is most likely to interest the person into looking into it further, so that is the strategy, the whole point of the Beginners page. It also tries to address the most likely questions to come up at each stage, such as "Is Technocracy a form of government?" Does this not fit in with what you were saying?
Funny that the Bible has the same problem :-)
That is why there is this page. [technocracy.ca]
Let's say "energy certificate", not money. Energy certificates are not earned but distributed. For what purpose? I guess, to authorize consumption of some part of the public wealth. Right? (I do not know, as you know :-) For example, my monthly allotment of energy allows me to instruct a robot to deliver to me one thousand red bricks per month. (snip) Please tell me where I am wrong. I will read tomorrow :-)
Sure. The entire thing is based on a false premise, that citizens have something that they need to exchange in order to get what they want. This is why I say that thinking of the Energy Certificates can be confusing, because they can be mistaken for something like money, but they do not represent anything about the individual other than their identity. It's a book-keeping system, that's all.
Let me put it this way: You wanted to know what it would be like for someone living there. Say a person wants a shirt. They go to the Distribution Centre, pick out a shirt (or perhaps more than one), register it at the station intended for that (superficially like a "till" or whatever in a store), and then go home. Or maybe they order it online and it gets delivered to them. That's it for them. On the Energy Accounting side, they register that one (or more) shirt(s) of type xyz was taken. This is added to a central tally so that the Sequence of Distribution knows just how many of those kinds of shirts people have. From this they can pass the information along to the Sequence of Textile Production so that they can figure out how many of those kinds of shirts to make in the next cycle. Note that the individual does not have an "allotment" from which the cost of the shirt is deducted. It is simply recorded that they have taken so many shirts, or whatever.
To be clear, let me use an analogy. If it were like money, then we could compare it to a pay-website were you have an account where you are allowed so many days, downloads, views, whatever, from which any such use is deducted from your account until you run out. In this case, the giving or lending of such units would make sense, because then you would be able to make more use of that website than you could without such gifts or loans. But Energy Accounting works more like a free forum account that keeps track of the number of posts you make. Here, you cannot really give or lend the number of posts you've made, because there is no real limit. Even if you did, what would it accomplish other than screwing with the site stats?
Or perhaps a car analogy would be better. Money is like fuel in the car. You can run out of it. You can give it to someone so that they can go farther. But E.A. is more like your odometer. It simply keeps track of how far you've travelled. If someone were to try to "transfer" miles out of their odometer into yours, what would you accomplish? It wouldn't change anything about your ability to drive, it just screws with the information about your driving that may be useful in other areas.
So in summary, E.A. is a system of distribution, not one of exchange. The Technate produces things, the people consume them. Their choices in consumption tell the Technate what they are to produce, and how much. What is the point of me giving you a TV as a gift when you can pick one up yourself (or even have it delivered) any time you want? I hope that clears things up. If not let me know.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday February 12 2016, @07:19AM
OK, I hear what you are saying. Fine. Let's assume that energy certificates are not money or money surrogates. Good for them :-)
Then a few more questions:
What happens if I want something that is not available? For example, I want a huge estate in the best region of France or Italy. What do I do? Right now I can purchase the land, given that I am rich enough - and the deal will please both the buyer and the seller.
Alternatively, what happens if I come to the store and ask for something that they don't have and will not have? Say, 100,000 tons of gold. Today if you want gold you can buy it (provided that you have money.) If there is not enough on Earth, you are free to mine asteroids (if you have money.) What would a citizen of technocratic society do?
On subject of "registering" purchases. When I buy something today I do not have to register anything. I can remain anonymous if I want to. Does that mean that the technocratic society is a panopticon?
Furthermore, why would the society want to know who exactly took the goods? Isn't it enough to know that so many were taken? What is the purpose of knowing that John Smith took three TV sets. Or thirty. Or three thousand... unless there is a limit. (Of course there is a limit. Earth's resources are finite. The whole premise that products are too cheap to meter works only so far. It doesn't work even with Comcast...)
(Score: 2) by Murdoc on Monday February 15 2016, @06:52AM
What happens if I want something that is not available?
There are many different situations that this covers, with different answers to them.
For example, I want a huge estate in the best region of France or Italy. What do I do?
Even this is highly situational. If we were to assume that the Technate in question was North America, and that Europe was not a Technate, then there would be nothing much the Technate could do for such a request. Your ability to buy anything in other countries would be largely dependant on the local laws, whether or not you were a citizen of that country also, or some kind of other registered visitor, and in that case, what terms were negotiated between the two countries. If Europe were a Technate, whether it was where you lived or not, you could not own land there. Technocracy deals with use, not ownership.
Now, if what you are asking is if you can choose where you live, of course you can, from the types of mass-produced housing that it available.
Alternatively, what happens if I come to the store and ask for something that they don't have and will not have?
Again, it depends a lot on what it is you want.
Say, 100,000 tons of gold.
Remember that Technocracy does not use the concept of "ownership" that market systems do. It concentrates more on "use", so the question for such a bizarre request would be: What do you need that much gold for exactly? If suppose, you were the manager of a microchip manufacturing plant, and the request was part of what was needed in order to make your quota of microchips, then it would be considered by higher levels of the administration in context with the other needed uses of gold, and the available supplies before being approved. Otherwise, this is not a common thing to request for the average citizen, simply because they don't have any good use for it. They wouldn't even have any place to put it! If it were allowed to let you have that much gold, it would be a waste, a deprivation of the rest of society that could otherwise use that gold for the primary purpose of society, which is again to provide each citizen with the highest standard of living for the longest possible period. But really, what would you use that much gold for? Sure, limiting you from simply "owning" that gold may be seen as a limitation on your "freedom", but I think that it is pretty much universally agreed upon that there is no absolute freedom. If you had a society completely without any sort of rules, then rules would be imposed by the strongest, thus limiting the freedoms of weaker parties. This is why we have such rules, in order to maximize the freedom of everyone equally. Unlimited ownership only allows some to hoard things at the expense of others.
There are many other example with different answers, like I said, and I think that a more realistic example may be more informative. Let's start small. Suppose you want a flavor of ice cream that is not available. It's easy to imagine a system in place where you could put in a request. The relevant agency would then do the equivalent of a "market survey" to find out if there is any significant demand to justify mass-production of the requested item. That could take the form of a survey, or in the case of food, taste-tests all over the country. What the threshold for acceptance would be I imagine would be based on formulae including things like what the cost in resources would be to dedicate machines to producing this new item. In the case of ice-cream flavoring, I'd imagine that would be pretty small, since it would only be a chemical formula.
Another instance would be in the case of things that cannot be mass-produced. Suppose you want a genuine natural diamond, or antique furniture. Technocracy can only give solutions to problems of abundance, not ones of scarcity. If an item is scarce, then it requires a solution of scarcity, and there are already many of these around. Which would end up being used of course would be up to the people at the time. Perhaps a secondary economy based on barter would exist for such items. There might be lotteries, or some things may be used as awards for exceptional service (like the Nobel Prize for example). Who knows? Technocracy does not claim to solve all problems, only ones dealing with situations where an area is capable of producing an abundance of goods and services.
On subject of "registering" purchases. When I buy something today I do not have to register anything. I can remain anonymous if I want to. Does that mean that the technocratic society is a panopticon?
As I've said, the purpose of that information is to be able to control production. There is no way invading the privacy of individuals is going to contribute to them having the highest standard of living possible. If you are worried about potential abuses, naturally there would be rules (and hence safeguards) in place against such abuses, because people would want them. Plus there is simply very little to gain from such invasions, so attempts would most likely be pretty rare. On the flip side, abuse of such information can lead to people being harmed, such as in the cases of prejudice, so naturally protecting people from such prejudice would be in the best interests of the standard of living. So really, it would not be that much different from today in that respect, just done a lot better.
Furthermore, why would the society want to know who exactly took the goods? Isn't it enough to know that so many were taken?
To make sure that it was a citizen that was taking them, not non-citizens. Can you imagine the havoc that would be played on the economy if anyone could just travel to the Technate and take free stuff without anyone knowing? Everyone would want in on that! And that of course would drain the Technate of all its resources as it had to supply the rest of the world, thus destroying its ability to produce an abundance and defeating the entire purpose of Technocracy.
As for limits, there would be no hard limits, simply because there are always fringe cases of someone needing more of something than the average citizen. That being said, normal consumption habits would be pretty easy to ascertain, and anyone requesting a very strange amount of something could easily be flagged for investigation. Not a criminal investigation, just a simple conversation to find out why they think they need that much. Of course, I imagine that virtually all such cases would be pre-emptively dealt with simply by including that reason into your request, unless the reason itself was really weird. Suppose someone ordered 100 kg of crackers. No one needs that amount for themselves, but it is conceivable that they may be trying to throw a party and the crackers are for their guests. However, in such a case, they would likely need many other things, from food, drinks, entertainment, perhaps decorations, etc. It would thus be a lot easier for them to go through an established procedure at the Department of Party Planning in the Sequence of Entertainment, who, just like party planning agencies today, would do most of the work for you, including procuring all the necessary supplies. Hence, no investigation needed.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday February 15 2016, @09:32AM
If Europe were a Technate, whether it was where you lived or not, you could not own land there. Technocracy deals with use, not ownership.
Well, I certainly meant that you want to own land on the territory of a Technate. However you are saying that "Technocracy deals with use, not ownership." But ownership is the right of use! I don't need to own 1,000 hectares of best land in Europe. I just want to use it as I see fit. Will that work?
But you are then saying: "Now, if what you are asking is if you can choose where you live, of course you can, from the types of mass-produced housing that it available." This means that a Technate is nothing but a commune where everyone is forced by the managers to live in barracks. The managers themselves, of course, would need better housing... like in villas that are denied to me... I have seen all that from inside the USSR. That's how communes work. Short of genetically changing the man, there is no workaround. Forget the material goods that robots can make. Focus on goods that robots cannot make. Those would be land, natural resources, and power over other humans. That's where the next phase of competition will play out. What is the ultimate end of that progression? That would be the World of Tiers of one Philip J. Farmer.
Technocracy can only give solutions to problems of abundance, not ones of scarcity. If an item is scarce, then it requires a solution of scarcity, and there are already many of these around. Which would end up being used of course would be up to the people at the time. Perhaps a secondary economy based on barter would exist for such items.
If technocracy is not a sufficiently complete system, then it is not capable of governing the society. For example, use of air is largely free today. Imagine that we have a government that issues breathing certificates to every citizen, but does not care what we eat and where we live. Immediately a black market will spring up, where people would be trading every resource that is not available for free. This may be not a defect of the system, but it would be a deadly omission. You simply cannot propose an economic system that ignores scarcity - and scarcity will stay with us until we become gods.
Technocracy does not use the concept of "ownership" that market systems do. It concentrates more on "use", so the question for such a bizarre request would be: What do you need that much gold for exactly?
Again, use and ownership are largely synonyms. I would want to use 100,000 tons of gold to make a statue of myself. Or 100,000 statues and place them all around my estate of 100,000 acres. Or... do I need to apply for a permit to requisition that much metal?
Otherwise, this is not a common thing to request for the average citizen, simply because they don't have any good use for it.
Again I hear words that worry me. Who decides who is an average citizen? What is a common or uncommon request? Who judges how good is the intended use? Those are attributes of a totalitarian state.
Can you imagine the havoc that would be played on the economy if anyone could just travel to the Technate and take free stuff without anyone knowing? Everyone would want in on that! And that of course would drain the Technate of all its resources as it had to supply the rest of the world
I don't intend to channel Leo Trotsky, but why would the rest of the world NOT adopt the wonderful system of Technocracy? After all, they only need robots, and a Technate can produce plenty of robots - enough to kickstart the conversion everywhere. So why wouldn't they? Why would a Technate need a wall with machine guns and flamethrowers, so to say, around it?
Additionally, a Technate does not need to periodically distribute any energy certificates to certify that you are a citizen. It's enough that you have a passport! You get it once, and you can procure items wherever you want, isn't it logical?
That being said, normal consumption habits would be pretty easy to ascertain, and anyone requesting a very strange amount of something could easily be flagged for investigation. Not a criminal investigation, just a simple conversation to find out why they think they need that much [...] It would thus be a lot easier for them to go through an established procedure at the Department of Party Planning in the Sequence of Entertainment
Man, you are truly scaring me. This is the society that you are proposing? Where every request is inspected by hordes of bureaucrats, and the citizen is "invited" to a local equivalent of KGB "for a chat" ??? Even letting alone the implications for human rights, let me focus on a technicality. Where would these bureaucrats come from? Why would they be going to work if nobody else needs to? How their noble efforts will be compensated? Doesn't it separate them into the new номенклатура (nomenklatura) - a class of privileged party officials who oversee activities of everyone else? As I said, this is a frightening prospect - and a dead end, because the rulers are always striving to own it all; such is the human nature. It does not even mean much that you personally don't intend to - it's enough that 0.01% of the population are budding dictators and control freaks. It's them who gets into politics, and it's them who ends up as a ruler - because they want to, and because they are ruthless enough.
(Score: 2) by Murdoc on Sunday February 21 2016, @02:47PM
Well, I certainly meant that you want to own land on the territory of a Technate. However you are saying that "Technocracy deals with use, not ownership." But ownership is the right of use! I don't need to own 1,000 hectares of best land in Europe. I just want to use it as I see fit. Will that work?
Ownership is *a* right of use, not the only one. Even today we have all sorts of licensing type rights of use. In the Technate it is all in accordance with the Technate's primary goal, which is to "provide the highest standard of living possible to citizens for the longest period possible." If we let you have that much land to do with as you see fit, then we have to let everyone do that. However, that is just not going to be possible, and even if it was, it would not be providing them with the highest standard of living possible because there would be no centralized planning. It would be no better than the USA during colonial times, where a person had a parcel of land, and they'd farm it, maybe trade a bit, etc. Who'd build the railroads? Or the interstate highways? Or the power plants capable of powering several cities? Or you might say that the rich people would do that and then charge for the use of these things, but then it'd be no different from today, whereas the things you can accomplish with Technocracy would give everyone a much higher standard of living due to greatly increased efficiency.
This means that a Technate is nothing but a commune where everyone is forced by the managers to live in barracks.
Goodness, this is wrong on so many levels. I think that you are doing the elephant thing again, filling in the blanks with your knowledge of other things that aren't relevant here.
First of all, no one is being "forced". Technocracy is a completely voluntary society. Not only does it have to be democratically voted in, but the people have to "volunteer" to abide by certain criteria in order to make it work, and thereby enjoy the benefits. It cannot be imposed, or it wouldn't work. If the people decided that they didn't like it for whatever reason, they could just stop, and it would stop working, and they could then do whatever else they wanted.
Secondly, they are hardly "barracks". Part of "the highest standard of living possible" means that people would get the best living conditions. Comfortable, sound-proof, fire-proof, pest-proof, climate controlled, almost anything you want delivered right into your home [technocracy.ca] including cooked meals if you want, easy access to all the amenities, virtually everything within walking distance and free transportation for those things that aren't, or if you are handicapped, or just feel like not walking. Basically, it would be like living in a resort hotel. I'm sure not many people are going to see that as living in hardship.
The managers themselves, of course, would need better housing... like in villas that are denied to me... I have seen all that from inside the USSR.
Ok, you are definitely doing the elephant thing again if you are filling in the blanks with things you know from the USSR, which is a completely different animal. First of all, it was a scarcity economy, so it couldn't provide a high standard of living to everyone if it tried. The best it could hope for an equal share of that scarcity. Second, it was a dictatorship, so of course it was going to be abused. Technocracy is not like that at all. How can you provide the highest standard of living to every citizen if some have a higher standard of living than others? Plus, there is no political power to abuse. So that's not going to happen.
Short of genetically changing the man, there is no workaround.
Ah yes, the old "man is greedy by nature" argument. It is easy to see why people think this is true, because they have observed it in every society to date. But that doesn't mean that it will happen every time. First an analogy: People for centuries in history would all agree from millions of observations that lead is a hard, dull metal. But then one day a guy heats it up enough and finds that its "nature" changes to that of a glowing, orange liquid, completely different! But we know that its nature did not change, it was simply its behaviour; its "nature" (or physical composition) accommodates both forms of behaviour, depending on its environment. Human beings are like this, their behaviour changes when their environment changes, and the environment of Technocracy is one of abundance, not scarcity. Ah, but you address this in what you say next:
Forget the material goods that robots can make. Focus on goods that robots cannot make. Those would be land, natural resources, and power over other humans. That's where the next phase of competition will play out. What is the ultimate end of that progression?
Nice theory, but it doesn't follow when you work it through. Again I'll mention that you have have to ask yourself: What does having (blank) do for me? What is its purpose? Let's try land. Why do people really want land? It's not an end in itself. It is so that they can have perhaps security, a place to grow crops, do what they enjoy, other things? And for some of that you have to keep going. What does growing crops do for me? Provide me with food, or an income. It's those end results that people really want; the means to get them only matter in how effective they are, and if there is a more effective method, then people will easily change to wanting that instead. So if in a Technate people can already have security, all the food they want, can do what they enjoy, etc., then why bother with land? The same goes for natural resources, since land is one after all. As for power over other humans, well, what do you get out of that? Taken to an extreme, slaves. What are slaves for? To do work for you. Why? To improve your standard of living. Well what do you think machines are for? That's the whole point of Technocracy, to maximize the effectiveness of machines to improve your standard of living. The machines are your slaves! And a lot better ones too. They work harder, don't complain, don't need rest or sleep, and are capable of a much wider variety of tasks than any group of humans will ever be able to. You can have a much better life with machines working for you than you can with 1000 hectares of land and a million slaves. So why choose that?
If technocracy is not a sufficiently complete system, then it is not capable of governing the society.
Blaming Technocracy for not handling scarcity is like blaming a hammer for not handling screws. It's called "using the right tool for the job." Even today we use more than one "tool" in our society. Our economy uses a mix of both capitalism and socialism because neither are seen to be a "complete" solution. And then for our politics we use democracy, something different for a different job. Technocracy is a far more "complete" system than anything used today. But ok, let's get into the details:
For example, use of air is largely free today. Imagine that we have a government that issues breathing certificates to every citizen, but does not care what we eat and where we live. Immediately a black market will spring up, where people would be trading every resource that is not available for free. This may be not a defect of the system, but it would be a deadly omission.
Ok, I don't even understand what you're suggesting here. The government issues breathing certificates to people, why? I am assuming that they have some way of restricting your access to air in order to make this enforceable? That's called artificial scarcity, and it is exactly what we have today with pretty much everything except air. We could be producing an abundance of goods and services, but we aren't, just so we can keep using this outdated scarcity economic system that keeps the rich and powerful in power.
But moving on; a black market will spring up trading everything that is not available for free. In the example you are proposing, why would this happen? Would it not be just like today anyway? Is it illegal to trade goods in this system? Or is this whole example supposed to be taking place in a Technate? Ok, let's try that. For some reason air is scarce now. That'd pretty much kill the Technate right there. Why? Because it can only work when there is an abundance of goods and services. But as you've pointed out, and I agreed, some things will always be scarce. But the difference is that you make no distinction between these things, whereas I do. People are not going to go crazy because they don't all have an original Mona Lisa. They will if they can't all get enough air to breathe. See the difference? Sure there are infinite human wants, but there are only certain things people actually need to live, and it is when you can provide those in abundance that Technocracy can work.
But it is not an "omission" that Technocracy does not deal with scarcity. Like I said, there are already many perfectly good (and many other bad) methods of dealing with this. I've already given some examples. using these methods does not necessitate the emergence of a "black market". Suppose people want to trade their antiques with each other, what's wrong with that? Suppose someone really wants your antique watch, but has no other antique to trade for it. Maybe they have something else, like they can make you an original painting, or a scarf that belonged to Brad Pitt, whatever. But really, since the emphasis in a Technocracy will be taken off of "owning" things, I really think that the majority of people will stop placing so much importance on it, and most such things would just go to museums where they can be enjoyed by everyone.
Again, use and ownership are largely synonyms.
As I pointed out before, no they are not. You are conflating the two. There are many types of use that do not involve ownership. Ownership is only one type of use. In Technocracy, there may be many different ways to allow the use of something, but they all have to answer to the highest purpose of the land: to provide the highest standard of living to all citizens for the longest possible period. I know I keep mentioning it, but I can't help that it remains relevant. Some examples: You can use your apartment to live in, sleep, eat, entertain, visit, etc. because that does contribute to your standard of living and does not take away from anyone else's. You cannot blow up your apartment because that would take away from the standard of living of others (mostly in damaging other's apartments, but also because then additional resources would have to be used in rebuilding it). You cannot use that factory however you want because failing to use it in the most optimum way to produce what the population is asking for is taking away from their standard of living. You can take whatever food is available to you in order to eat it, or even save it for later. You cannot take 1000 kg of food because no one can consume that and it would be taking it away from others. Do you see the difference? Let's look at your examples.
I would want to use 100,000 tons of gold to make a statue of myself. Or 100,000 statues and place them all around my estate of 100,000 acres.
Given how much gold there is in the world (it's not the most abundant metal or else it wouldn't be so valuable), I think it is safe to say that you hoarding this much of it would easily take away from the standard of living of others. It is a useful industrial metal after all. And how on Earth does having a giant statue of yourself contribute to your standard of living? Even today that would be considered ostentatious and wasteful. Now, one might claim it as "art", and that would be a potentially valid reason. But you couldn't just ask for (and get) anything you want in the name of art. The Technate would be fully aware of how much it had of every resource in excess that it could commit to such kinds of art. If there was enough to satisfy everyone's requests, then it is in abundance and no limitations are needed. It would be just like most other things. If there was not, then it would be scarce, by definition, and like I said, a scarcity-based solution would need to be devised. Perhaps a vote could be had so that people could decide which art projects that use large amounts of gold (or whatever) they would like to see most. Maybe it would be something else. The actual "Technocracy" portion of the administration would not be able to decide that because like I said it is not designed to do that. It could help provide people with the means to do so though, such as providing the systems necessary to have such a vote.
Again I hear words that worry me. Who decides who is an average citizen? What is a common or uncommon request? Who judges how good is the intended use? Those are attributes of a totalitarian state.
Wow, I'd really like to hear how you came to that conclusion. How do you determine what is an "average" request? It's really quite simple, it's called statistics. If 99.9% of people consume no more than 20 grams of gold per year (whether it be in jewellery, electronics, etc.), then I think that makes the 0.1% of people as outliers. Does this make it automatically bad? Of course not. But somewhere a line has to be drawn. Not many people are going to be trying to have 1000 pairs of shoes per year, but those that do will need to be looked at. So where do the number come from? Well it is a complicated issue. Part of it would be like I said before: if all the people's consumption can be met with existing resources then it's probably fine. There would also be issues of throwing off efficiency too much, and perhaps overconsumption could be indicative of some deeper problem that needs to be addressed (either something psychological, someone providing Technate goods to other countries outside of existing trade treaties, etc.). But really we are talking about some pretty fringe cases here. It hardly makes it a dictatorship. Again I'll point out that the guiding principle is whether or not people are getting the highest standard of living or not, And that bit about "for the longest possible period" is important too because of course you want it to be sustainable. You could probably achieve an even higher standard of living without it, but only for a much shorter time.
And if you are that worried about any restriction on your consumption, how about our society today? You are not absolutely free to own or buy anything you want. Drugs? Uranium? WMDS? Company secrets? Heck, even copyright laws severely restrict what you can have and what you can do with it. Does that make our society a totalitarian state? Technocracy would be a much more free society than today. Not 100%, for the reasons I've already stated, but far more than today.
I don't intend to channel Leo Trotsky, but why would the rest of the world NOT adopt the wonderful system of Technocracy? After all, they only need robots, and a Technate can produce plenty of robots - enough to kickstart the conversion everywhere. So why wouldn't they? Why would a Technate need a wall with machine guns and flamethrowers, so to say, around it?
Ok, are you not understanding me, or are you just reaching for any argument against it now? You are talking about something completely different here. I was talking about countries trying to smuggle goods out of the Technate so they can be used/sold/whatever in their own countries. Obviously if they can get them for "free" because nobody is checking who is taking them, that means a huge profit potential for them. You on the other hand are now talking other countries adopting the Technocracy system in order to produce their own goods. Very different topics.
But if you want to talk about that sure. The answer is: no reason that I can think of. There is a reason why they would not be able to though, and that is because they would need the three requirements of Technocracy: sufficient natural resources, sufficient installed technology to turn those resources into use forms, and sufficient trained personnel to operate that technology. And yes, of course a Technate would do everything it could to help other countries make this happen, if that is indeed what they want, from providing technical assistance, new technology, etc.
And who said anything about a wall with weapons? You're sinking into hyperbole here.
Additionally, a Technate does not need to periodically distribute any energy certificates to certify that you are a citizen. It's enough that you have a passport! You get it once, and you can procure items wherever you want, isn't it logical?
Energy Certificates, like most of Technocracy's proposals, are just that: proposals. If/when a better idea in order to accomplish Technocracy's goal (you remember what that is by now I hope) comes up, of course it would be used. And in fact it has. Even the Energy Certificate document says, right at the very beginning, that it is now an outdated concept and that we have better ideas we can use today, thanks to the advances in technology. As for your idea of a passport, an ID card [technocracy.ca] is not a new idea.
Man, you are truly scaring me. This is the society that you are proposing?
No, I'm afraid that you are scaring yourself. Either you are being so gripped by fear and paranoia that it is clouding your ability to reason (which up until now I thought was better than average), or you are already dead set against the idea and just making things up to justify it. I hate to be this harsh, but the things you say in this paragraph are so outlandishly incorrect I don't know where you are getting them from. Bear with me while I show you:
Where every request is inspected by hordes of bureaucrats
See there? You said "every request", while I was clearly talking about statistical outliers, a very small minority of cases. Even today, people buying odd amounts of some things, like cough medicine that could be used to make illegal drugs, is investigated, but not everyone who buys cough medicine. So I have to ask, why did you jump to "every request"?
And "hoards of bureaucrats"? Nothing I've said gives you any basis for this. It may very well be the first thing to pop into your mind while reading what I wrote, but that's on you, not me. I can easily picture only two or three people involved. Would you like me to describe how?
and the citizen is "invited" to a local equivalent of KGB "for a chat" ???
Again with the hyperbole. Why does it have to be the KGB? Of course, because from your earlier comments you are convinced that the Technate is nothing more than the USSR reincarnate, so naturally this would be the same too. (sigh) No. The investigation would be by the Sequence of Social Relations, and they are not even the police, let alone any kind of secret service. They're there to help smooth out any problems people might be having. They are more like marriage counselling than anything. Not nearly as scary as you seem to think.
Why would they be going to work if nobody else needs to? How their noble efforts will be compensated?
Now you've jumped topics completely, but ok. Remember the shortest definition of Technocracy? "A society where machines do all the work people don't want to do." (It's right there in the beginning of the Technocracy for Beginners page.) So whenever you need to ask "Why would someone work/do that?" The answer is simple: Because they want to! Their "efforts" don't need to be compensated because they want to be there. Volunteer society, remember? And since the SSR are more like counsellors than secret police like you think, their work is about helping people, which many people like to do, more than interrogating them.
Doesn't it separate them into the new номенклатура (nomenklatura) - a class of privileged party officials who oversee activities of everyone else?
No, it doesn't. I hope you can see why now.
As I said, this is a frightening prospect - and a dead end, because the rulers are always striving to own it all; such is the human nature. It does not even mean much that you personally don't intend to - it's enough that 0.01% of the population are budding dictators and control freaks. It's them who gets into politics, and it's them who ends up as a ruler - because they want to, and because they are ruthless enough.
This is a understandable concern, but an incorrect assessment of Technocracy. There are two reasons for this. 1) There is no political government in the Technate. Thus, there are no positions of "power" to abuse. I know this sounds incredible, because you've never seen it before, but it still entirely doable. 2) There would be no gain in it. Again, ask yourself what does all this power do for me? What is the end result? For most people, it's a better standard of living. They want to "live like a king." For most people, this is already sated in how high the standard of living would be. Only people with true mental problems would want more at the expense of others, and there'd be no mechanism by which they could achieve it. Ok, if we want to indulge in gross speculation, sure, it might be remotely possible with an ingenious enough plan, and enough patience and effort to totally wreck the Technate just so you can have make everyone else suffer beneath you. But really, it would be far harder to accomplish in Technocracy than any other system. Such would-be dictators would be much better off moving to some other country were such a plan would be far easier.
And I've already addressed your concerns about "human nature" already. It's just a common myth that humans are unchangeably greedy and power-hungry. The fact of the matter is that one of the most defining attributes of human beings is their adaptability, which is why we see such wide varieties of behaviour in different environments. And really, the fact that there are so many people today that are quite the opposite, and are instead helpful and giving [technocracy.ca], despite the fact that our environment encourages anti-social behaviour (because it rewards successful crime and corruption with money and power), is a testament I think to the fact that human beings are more good than not, because so many act that way despite all the pressure not to. Now change that environment to one where most such anti-social behaviour is either impossible and/or unprofitable, and instead encourages pro-social behaviour, and I think we will see the "nicest" society that ever existed.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 10 2016, @01:58PM
It looks like a very rough draft of an utopia, with many difficult problems just avoided.
Welcome to every religion, nationalism, or economic system our species has ever spawned.
Do the engineers think it fixes everything? Who cares, what matters is can it sell. Probably.
When you look at ultra-rich ivy league students, their currency is PUA counts for the alpha boys and holiness spiral SJW signalling for the ugly girls and beta males. Nothing really disruptive has happened by making $ no longer the currency.
Another way to look at it, is there is, or was, a multi-billion dollar industry in bottled tapwater. Yet, its not a "real" problem that there exists a glass of basically free tap water on my desk, its too cheap for my employer to meter tap water per individual employee, my home town has free water drinking fountains in parks and because I don't live in a slum they're not disgusting like in cities, etc. They'll always be a weird subculture of people still into bottled water or capitalism or scarcity economics, but they're going to be looked at kinda like the Amish.
Another interesting thing to think about is a century ago people consumed to fill time by actually consuming. Now its digital entertainment and media where they consume a couple watts (walk on a treadmill to power if you have to?). As technology improves, e-ink blah blah eventually a small solar panel can run your digital soma device in perpetuity with no effort. So what exactly is the problem?