This thread is for discussing technocracy as a form of government.
What is a technocracy? A technocracy has two related meanings.
A system of government ruled by an elite of academic experts in various fields who engage political decisions without influence of various interest groups, including the general public. These experts decide government policies outside of political ideology and instead solve political problems similiar to the way science conferences work. The members of government would be elected based upon academic merits by an independent jury, instead of by political/economic capital or popular opinions.
A rather futuristic scenario where all politics is decided by a variant of the scientific method. Thus politics would become a purely scientific activity that would based decisions on relevant fields such as sociology, economics, neuroscience etcetera. Alternatively, one could even imagine a system ruled by a supercomputer.
What do you think? Would technocracy be a good form of government or not?
I support the first definition of technocracy.
Why do I support technocracy instead of democracy or other form of government?
Political issues have objective answers. Thus political ideology is in my view irrelevant to the enterprise of government. Why do politics have objective and observer-unrelated answers? Because politics deals with issues that are at heart all objectively describable. This comes down to the fact that everything in societies is reducible to the human being. Human beings are both the atoms and the roots of societies, because societies are themselves nothing but human constructs. Since we can in principle fully understand the human being both individually and collectively by science, so too can we understand the true path of societies at large.
Democracy fails because it is ruled by non-expert opinions. Democracy rests on the idea that the common man or woman on the street has the same potential to envision a viable path as any expert. This is clearly not true, and this shows in the fact that most victories in democratic elections are based upon superficial traits such as charisma and nice sounding words coming from the politician, instead of ideology itself. Democracy therefore is not an election of ideology but of people who purport to represent ideology. Further both the general public and politicians themselves are often non-experts in the fields that highly relate to their decisions, thus minimizing the effectiveness and accuracy of political decisions.
Technocracy in contrast, would affirm the idea of searching for viable solutions unbiased of preconvieved ideology, through opinions that are rooted in high level knowledge. For one thing, it would be far easier to mobilize society for common goals if the government was unifiable by answers based on expert concensus. We see this in todays China where its pseudo-technocratic govenment has managed to bring millions of people out of poverty and to complete impressive projects thanks to the unity and technical skills of its rulers. Of course, I don’t support the Chinese government in other ways. It is after all also a Marxist government which in my view dillutes the whole idea behind a technocracy, that politics is an enterprise distinct from a priori-assumptions. There might of course be various interpretations of results, but the results themselves are not to be governed by obsolete methods of vague philosophizing and appeals to emotion but rather through evidence.
Individual rights such as freedom of expression is still compatible with a non-democratic system. Nothing says that you cannot necessarily say whatever you want just because you can’t practically affect government policies without the relevant qualifications.
Who determines what constitutes an “expert”? I’m not trying to be glib; you say that an “independent jury” would elect the technocrats based on academic merits. But who would comprise this independent jury? Further, what sort of academic merits would be taken into consideration? The number of articles published? The relative prestige of the university or policy center which employs them? (And of course, if so, how could you be sure that such prestige is based on objective criteria, and who would determine what those criteria are?) Some sort of ranking system where academics rate each other? (In which case there would seem to be ample opportunity for politicking anyway.)
Don’t get me wrong; I’m no big fan of democracy. But a technocracy introduces plenty of its own issues. I’d be curious as to your thoughts.
The first thing that one must understand about Technocracy’s proposals is that they apply to a social system that does not operate on the basis of a monetary system. If the necessary conditions for the operation of a price system disappear so will the price system. I machines replace enough workers and salaries fall to a level where people cannot buy the products the system is producing it will fall apart. Technocracy saw this as an opportunity rather than a disaster. Hence the design for a non-price system was formulated.
When you no longer have a price system human social order becomes a great deal more simple. The whole structure associated with money disappears and that is a lot. What one is left with is all the technology that currently produces our standard of living. North America without technology could support about 10 to 20 million people with a subsistence agriculture. Today that number exceeds 300 million. If we subtract the technology we have developed we would be in a lot of trouble. It is necessary to keep the technology functional. That requires those who know how to run it to keep doing just that. Those who have the knowledge know better than anyone else how to do that. To keep thing running Technocracy propose that when a vacancy appears in the management structure that those who would be directly under the supervision of that position know better than anyone who could do that job best. From among their group they would select the three they believe best for that spot. Then from the people who that position reports they would choose one of the three that best suits their purposes. Such a governmental structure would have only one real function. That would be to supply the population with what they wanted and needed where it was needed.
One also has to remember that with the disappearance of money approximately 95% of all crime becomes impossible to commit. Also with money gone the concept of property would disappear. That doesn’t mean that all problems would disappear. A structure for settling social disputes would be necessary but it is easy to guess that there would be far fewer of those.
And how would new people be trained as the old ones who understand/run the systems die off? And what if the qualified people for whatever reason don’t want to run the systems anymore? And who’s to say the current level of technology is the best, or even good enough for current needs? And in the absence of a price/money structure, how is it determined which people are the most qualified to run particular systems?
These are but a small sample of the huge number of questions your ideas raise.
And if you think the creation of “money” (and I’d be curious as to how you define that term) preceded the idea of “property”, I think you’re way off the mark.
I must admit this all sounds pretty ridiculous to me.
A system of government does not have to be ruled by a so called “elite” of “academic experts”, but merely functionaries, because the so called “elite” of “academic experts” can, should be slaves (and they are!) and/or [size=109]machines[/size] (and they are!). You merely need functionaries for technocracy. Rulers have merely one purpose: control (power). So what are all rulers doing in order to control? They are enslaving humans and/or creating machines by enslaved functionaries and/or machines. The risk is that there will be at last merely machines.
Because humans act in this way, their end is clear. The question is only: When?
There is a preconceived ideology in the assumption that technological solutions are the default solutions and technological experts are the ones with the correct values. There would be ideology around epistemological issues. And really, it is already the situation. Either technocrats or people who use them are in charge and are busy tranforming everything, I mean every thing, life form including humans, ecosystem, in the end all matter into modular mechanisms. And clearly they are incapable of seeing how necrophiliac this all is.