Is this the century of Technocracy?

Technocracy is just the same form of liberal democracy.

They are just replacing a harvard educated elite who studied law with a harvard educated elite who studied economics.

Not necessarily Harvard (especially if it's not in America) and not necessarily Economics — after all, it could be a Scientist, an Engineer or a Technical Manager of some sort, not just Economics.

Still, your point stands and it doesn't mean Technocrats will be better, just different — as long as they don't forget people are people, not organic machines that always follow orders.

@Baff

Well, about that, are the law majors using their knowledge of the law in a field where that knowledge helps? Or are they just getting elected based on credentials?

Well it wasnt mean to be taken literally, there are many elite schools.

Pretty much, but that just goes to show how shallow the word "technocrat" really is.

In the end is just another way of saying common people are too stupid to participate and thus need to be managed as if they were employees by some very skilled managers.

After all, lets not forget that the most technocrat friendly state right now is probably China and its communist politurbo...which whatever your opinino of the chinese leadership is... doesnt happen to sound awefully democratic.

edited 4th Mar '12 3:15:48 PM by Baff

And I am sorry to double post but I want to highlight this.

The worst politicians ever tend to be technocrats. That is my opinion. They (who are describe as technocrats by the press, whatever that means) tend to be ruthless and managerial. They want results at all cost and like any good corporation lack and do away with moral and ethical concerns in order to get them.

edited 4th Mar '12 3:18:10 PM by Baff

Not if the Tradiationists can help it.

The main issue with a technocracy is that it ignores several key problems with the human condition. The first being we're all greedy bastards. Or to put in a more civil way, everybody wants something. Whether it be a better home or a nicer car at the end of the day you need someway for people to get things and capitalism is generally accepted to be the best way to do that.

The other issue is that it discourages trades people and labor. Why become a plumber when there's no financial incentive? Sure, the plan is eventually to get robots doing most of the work but that isn't really relevant now.

So how can we get a technocracy to work you may ask? I don't think you can really. Society is one big damn machine and just cutting out politicians is like removing a gear.

Or, to put it simply, Life is a Gambit Pileup — everyone has an agenda (or agendas) that they are trying to achieve — even the Technocrats themselves.

Presumably a technocracy would include a civil engineer. Who would know that our plumbing is pretty damn important to comfortable living. And generally how that and any other basic infrastructure is vitally important to our lives. Like our representatives now are supposed to. (Basically it's one of those big fat DUH things that every authority figure should know.)

(Feels like stepping quietly out of the way while Stars takes all the arrows)

Ahem, my post wasnt intended to replace democratic political institutions, it's intended to supplement them, specifically with all aspects of policy requiring a regulatory component. The idea is to get a panel or more or less neutral experts to pass judgement/make recommendations concerning all aspects of regulatory policy.

"Presumably a technocracy would include a civil engineer. Who would know that our plumbing is pretty damn important to comfortable living"

yes but the question is how do we get men to become plumbers without financial incentive? Or garbage men? Jobs that work now because 1: The pay is good 2: The work really isn't all that hard. If you remove money from the equation you need another motivator for people to get into jobs like that.

State could take care of the money.

I mean, I can see logic going here.

• Statement: Trash is unhygienic.
• Statement: Unhygienic conditions spreads diseases.
• Statement: Diseases are bad for society.
• Conclusion: Leaving trash is bad for society.
• Solution: Collect trash away and deal with it.
• Solution: Form government agency to collect and dispose trash.

edited 5th Mar '12 3:51:38 PM by Mandemo

That's still not answering the question.

I am John Smith. I live in a society where we do not have money. We have freedom of choice. Why should I become a plumber when there are a multitude of other options available?

First off, given the number of commercials I see there's not really that huge a problem in convincing men to become plumbers. Also, they charge ridiculous prices, so the ones that are good and getting their name out there are probably making comfortable livings. As evidenced by the fact that most of us are not up to our knees in our own refuse, clearly someone is doing the plumbing job, as well as the job of designing these systems at least somewhat efficiently. The only way this is important to a supposed technocracy is that you'd have to pay the city employees who handle the public system pretty well, and a civil engineer would supposedly weigh in on that issue, as well as making sure the city employees were working on city plumbing efficiently.

@Spades: But that still relies on there being money.

Okay, so you're replacing them with a graduate who hasn't adequately studied law or economics.

>_>

@DG; What part of this topic ever assumed there wasn't going to be money? I thought we were just talking about the possibility of replacing democracy with a technocracy of sorts and also of the possibility of getting the technically savvy to take on a more proactive role in politics. My statements have all assumed that taxes in some form would continue. And certainly in the case of commercial plumbers, someone's getting paid.

@Pykrete; If you want to run for President, you technically require neither of those. Any person above thirty five can run. Granted, the nature of people has resulted in such that you have to have a career in politics for a good long while to even have your name be well known by anyone, but there's a bunch of people who put their name out there as a candidate. Our system does not technically require to you to have either of those things for political positions not related to the judicial system. It's just that it tends to attract all those laws students because there's only so many lawyer jobs to go around.

@Spades: It's in the OP.

Well, that's pretty stupid. Money isn't going to disappear anytime soon. Even if it did, you'd have to have an allocation of resources to make sure everything is working as it should, and resources don't exactly run free all the time. Basically, it'd probably turn into a barter system.

But yeah no, money's not going to disappear in a technocracy. This is pretty much a case of Stars pulling things out of fantasy books.

You could always make the undesirable jobs a required internship program of some kind for aspiring technocrats. Part of training to be a civil engineer, say, could involve getting in a number of hours servicing plumbing and sewage systems, to give you a hands on experience out in the actual field with the systems you one day plan on designing and building. If people knew that unclogging toilets was the gateway to a better career in the future, they wouldn't be so opposed to it. And just because wages are gone doesn't mean that there still aren't perks and incentives. For example, people look down on garbage collectors because society labels that as a menial task fit only for those less fortunate, but a technocratic society that has no concept of "having material goods = wealthy" would see the garbage collector as a local hero, willing to put up with an unpleasant situation all for the sake of the greater good. And if that is too pie in the sky, let's just stick with the notion that young people would be willing to take on tough manual labor jobs because they know it is the gateway to the glamorous career of civil engineering down the road.

Or it could be a way for the criminal element to shorten their sentence (we already have a similar process of rewarding "good behavior" with parole, and allowing inmates to work state construction jobs and the like).

Or some form of a conscript system where everybody has to put in some number of hours per year as a "labor tax" on otherwise undesirable manual labor (with truly awful jobs requiring less hours than easier jobs, making the incentive more time to spend on your own personal desires. For instance, spending three weeks at sea on an offshore oil rig would equate to four months teaching a highschool class, etc.).

edited 5th Mar '12 6:12:43 PM by MyGodItsFullofStars

Dude, do you have any idea how long it takes to train people to work on an oil rig? That's a training intensive job, much like plumbing and engineering is. Hell, a lot of oil drilling is engineering, because you have to figure out how to get at the stuff! And keep the oil rig working right, which takes a hell of a lot of training.

I begin to suspect you don't realize how long it takes to train and educate a person for all these kinds of engineering work. Three weeks will never cut it for working on an oil rig; you can't train anyone to be able to do the job worth crap in that time and you will wasting everyone's time that way. And taking away the material reward in this case is stupid; no one's going to come to view the plumber as the local hero because it's a disgusting job to do. And the material reward is a big incentive in doing any job; people like getting physical rewards for the work they do. This includes engineers of all stripes, and internet techs, and all those other kinds of people. You are also going to need those material rewards to fund all these projects.

Also, civil engineers include people who do things like design buildings. Students aren't going to like taking on jobs not directly related to what they want to do with their lives.

Hm, B.F. Skinner wrote a book called "Walden II" that tried to answer these questions at the level of a small community. He proposed using "work credits" or something like that instead of money, but I'll have to dig out my old copy first...

Could never sustainably exist.

After all, look at the Pyramids, and the Grave Goods found in many Graves back to the Paleolithic era...

edited 6th Mar '12 2:37:37 AM by Greenmantle

The issue is that people always want more. Millionaires don't go "Welp, I never have to do anything ever again, time for sexy parties and xbox till I die." They instead say "I want to be a billionaire."

So a technocracy still has to deal with that aspect of the human condition. I guess you could have a technocracy with money but then you can't prioritize the kinds of things a technocracy would care for.