Talk:Technocracy movement

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Engineers

Man, at first I thought "Engineers in charge? Aw hell no!" And then I asked myself: could they possibly be any worse than the current Congress? I simply cannot imagine how. At least engineers get things done. Wehpudicabok (talk) 07:24, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, Technocracy (as in the one proposed by the Technocracy Movement) is a lot more than one would expect at first glance. Regardless of whatever you end up agreeing or not, I always recommend the design as a reading: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yFX8diKQwXakUEh4h1hgOvM-n0HOz00ozBEVU3fzMwI/ --The1992Phoenix (talk) 06:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be somewhat in the RW mission to actually promote some techno-/scientocracy? Not too much, but I think it would be beneficial if it would be a requirement to be a physician or biologist to be electable for the health minister position, or scientist to be electable for a science minister position... at least better than just electing people because they have better speech writers than the other candidates. Also, it would be nice to have something to mitigate the general dumbness of the average voter. Some mix of technocracy, scientocracy and democracy wouldn't be bad, I guess. Or the sovereign republic of Academia, consisting of academists worldwide. --87.145.128.151 (talk) 02:48, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Jesus Christ, have you ever been to your average academic department meeting? Academics are the absolute worst, and I fully support increased funding for universities if only to encourage academics to stay in academia, where they can't do any real damage. Peace. AgingHippie (talk) 02:53, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

No, having a "physician or biologist to be electable for the health minister position, or scientist to be electable for a science minister position" would just be requiring politicians to have degrees. Technocracy (at least the one proposed by Technocracy Incorporated) is not about control by a minority, it is about setting up a method of social organization using science. Also there would not be any laws, so political positions and controls would be unnecesary. The1992Phoenix (talk) 09:54, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Okay, how is this supposed to work, exactly? How are we to "[set] up a method of social organization using science"? Colour me confused.

Given its origins, I'd say that it sounds an awful lot like "control by a minority", namely scientists (or, more likely, engineers). The Wikia page and the pages of Technocracy Inc. and the Europe Organisation for Sustainability are very short on suggestions for social organisation beyond Technocracy Inc.'s hobby horse of replacing money with energy and creating a sort of North American variant of the ECSC (judging from the Wikia as their own site is broken/offline). As for the EOS it:

1. Is also big on the energy thing which is pretty wishywashy and doesn't actually provide any model for organising society (it just exchanges one counter, money, with another, energy).
2. Contains a rather pointless section on sustainability (essentially rehashing concerns raised at least as far back as the 1987 Brundtland report and even earlier with the 1968 founding of the Club of Rome and something on which few but the most extreme wingnuts/moonbats would disagree).
3. And a very unspecific, generalised "brave new world" manifesto.

It seems that the technocrats ignore that democracy has at least some aspects of the experimental scientific method: Politician A promises to make things better (hypothesis), when enough become convinced about the validity of said hypothesis, A is elected and allowed to run an experiment (ruling), if the experiment is successful A is retained (hypothesis confirmed); otherwise A is rejected and a new hypothesis (different politician with different plans for improvement) is tested instead.

It's actually striking that the Technocrats^{deliberate capital to signal political ideology} are extremely vague on the actual organisation of society and the role of the technocrats. But that is probably because the original movement's ideology of the 1910s and '20s doesn't sound too attractive any more, considering the experience of having what amounted to all-powerful engineers in charge of political systems based on "scientific" racism or "scientific" socialism, or, for that matter, the technophiles in charge of the social engineering during the U.S. Progressive Era or Scandinavia from the 1930s, incl. some rather unsavoury initiatives in the Swedish welfare state (but I know other Scandinavian and states all over the world dabbled with similar strategies). ScepticWombat (talk) 11:39, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

You raised too many questions too quickly so you will forgive me if my reply seems long. In order of statements:

1. An electrician who votes that a circuit should operate according to his likes and preferences would likely get undesired results. In similar fashion a science-designed social system will operate with the seamlessness of a physical apparatus because it's functions are clearly defined and based upon scientific research. Just as the electrician cannot vote/will/desire/etc. a circuit to operate in any other way than the intended one, a science-designed social system will operate according to it's function. Any attempt at operating it like the systems of today (i.e.: Inserting political-economical methods) would result in an easily noticeable disruption - just as the electrician putting a superflous element in the circuit can cause a severe malfunction of it.
2. Actually, that is a common argument against Technocracy. The problem is that is not, in fact, valid against the Technocracy I am talking about: "Technocracy has never advocated turning over social control to engineers, scientists or technologists. Minority rule is not the answer to America's problems. Technocracy stands for the adoption of technological PRINCIPLES of social control within the framework of a scientific design dictated by physical laws. Read and ponder that sentence well. It means that WE, THE PEOPLE, must adopt a BLUEPRINT OF SOCIAL OPERATIONS when the time arrives that the Price System can no longer function."[...]"Under the Price System most scientists and engineers are as muddle-headed and ignorant about how to solve social problems as politicians and business men in general. This does not detract from their great achievements in their own fields. Rather, it points to the fact that the methods of science must be extended from the purely technical field to cover the entire social field." -- Source book.
3. For Technocracy, as designed by the Technocracy Incorporated/Technical Alliance I would not quote E.O.S. or the Wikia as reliable sources. The first is related to Europe and therefore uses modified texts (at the very least they must be - since the original texts explicitly state that Technocracy must first be established in the American Continent) while the Wikia has contributors from things like The Venus Project (which are unrelated to Technocracy and, historically, have had goals opposed to each other). Technocracy is not globalist, and the physical composition of Europe is very different to that of America. Rather I recommend the original source materials as available in the Technocracy Incorporated page: http://www.technocracyincorporated.org/ (Note: In the past "Technocracy.org" was the official homepage and "http://www.technocracyvan.ca/" was the official page for Canada, but the first tends to get hijacked by spam companies every now and then and the second has not been updated in a very long time so I cannot guarante the links within them to be reliable/working). You will also find most of the texts at Archive.org, should you wish to use that instead.
4. What you are talking about is the "Energy Certificate". Since a brief description of how it works ties in with your next point, I will quote source material below.
5. "Many of the concepts that are regarded as somehow beneficial in todays society such as the current ideas of Democracy are actually a form of special interest control that employ debt tokens (money interests) and this is in effect a vehicle for a civil contract of idea slavery used to insure conformity and sociological concepts, such as morality, ethics, aesthetics, etc. Technate design precludes special interest control, therefore the idea of voting in a Technate is a non-starter. It can not be, because voting gives special interest groups a vehicle of control, and that is another type of Price System control mechanism that would negate the scientific management of the Technate. Technocracy is based on functional governance and is not a political system. In other words, energy units or certificates can not be used to control or manipulate people in a context of so called voting, as in a Price System, as any kind of a voting system is controlled by special interest groups. Special interest control is only another Price System mechanism which defeats scientific management. Energy Accounting is only an accounting system, not a substitute for the concepts of a monetary system, it is an inventory management control only, and not a people manipulation vehicle." Source link. From another text: "Why Not Money? On the basis of these requirements, it is interesting to consider money as a possible medium of distribution. But before doing this, let us bear in mind what the properties of money are. In the first place, money relation-ships are all based upon ‘value,’ which in turn is a function of scarcity. Hence money is not a ‘measure’ of anything. Secondly, money is a debt claim against society and is valid in the hands of any bearer. In other words, it is negotiable; it can be traded, stolen, given or gambled away. Thirdly, money can be saved. Fourthly, money circulates, and is not destroyed or canceled out upon being spent. On each of these counts money fails to meet our requirements as our medium of distribution." Yet another link. This one actually elaborates on the requirements of the Energy Certificate and why it would work like it is designed.
6. Since you noticed the spelling, I would like you to be aware of the organization's official stance on the "issue": "Question: The American collegiate dictionary that was put out recently has a definition of technocracy spelled with a small “t: Does CHQ have a copy? || Howard Scott: “No, we haven’t got that. We don’t care whether it’s a small “t” or a big “T”.”" 4 Dec 1952. Membership meeting Kent, Ohio. (from “Words and Wisdom of Howard Scott”, Vol.2, p.443.)
7. Actually, Technocracy offers the best method of fighting overpopulation I have ever seen. I cannot find the link right now however and Google is not cooperating so forgive me from not linking to it now. --The1992Phoenix (talk) 19:06, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Short video lectures

• "Technocrat Explains an Alternative to Money - the Energy Certificate"
• "Technocrat Explains the Concept of a Functional Calendar"
• "Technocrat Critiques Capitalist Economy - Artificial Scarcity and Imperialism"

@Bongolian, for your potential interest as you've edited here recently. Possibly there's more, I'm not sure where these are from. I came across them because about seven years ago, the technocracy movement was the subject of some mildly-positive curiosity in one socialist circle I discussed such topics with, especially because of its advocacy for what basically seemed to be a weird form of central-planning.

I've since found some communists (I think the CPUSA but I don't remember) were more critical. I had no clue until recently that Elon Musk's granddad was part of the technocracy movement. I knew that Musk was privately sympathetic to technocracy (Grimes once spilled the beans not too long after dating, saying something like "technocrats and communists could get along"), but I thought it was more of a neoreactionary-esque ideology he secretly believed in that simply shared the name. Chillpilled (talk) 08:24, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

It makes sense that socialists might have some sympathy for them. Howard Scott had an alliance with the I.W.W. during his early years under the Technical Alliance banner (Technocracy and the American Dream, pages 27,36-44). Howard appears to have been influenced by Thorstein Veblen (The Winding Passage by Daniel Bell; Wobbly by Ralph Chapin). Bongolian (talk) 21:09, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Eggman edit

Okay, I get that I might be the only regular editor to be active right now to be familiar with the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and some of this might be my own interpretation of the character, but I'm pretty sure that something like the technocracy movement is exactly what Dr. Eggman is trying to achieve with his aspirations to conquer the world and build the Eggman Empire. (Well, that and stroking his massive ego and dictator complex; the latter might be a bigger motivation, really.) As such, I figured "why not throw in a quick reference for other Sonic fans to get a chuckle out of"? --Luigifan18 (talk) 01:09, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

You're not the only editor here familiar with the Sonic franchise. A better question to ask is why this would be of interest to us? Perhaps a popular culture section? You'd still need citations, BTW. Carthage (talk) 01:47, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps because Eggman is one of the most famous examples of a very unflattering caricature of science and scientists that actual scientists and science enthusiasts need to rebuke, lest laypeople get (or are actively given) the wrong idea about what science is about. --Luigifan18 (talk) 16:20, 25 February 2024 (UTC)