Technocracy

Federal vs. unitary is one part of politics that is tricky, because you cannot really say one is inherently better or helps human progress go faster than the other one. Federal systems allow smaller regions to adopt laws which means they can influence the rest of society if they are proven successful, but the same can be said for regions that are regressive or tyrannical. Living in Florida, I have personally experienced not having the same rights as people in other parts of the same country. On the other hand, a unitary state can potentially block regional progressive movements or can become tyrannical itself.

For Technocrats I think a unitary state is best since we would need to pass a lot of reforms and build a lot of infrastructure. I wouldn't mind if the technate became federalized after all the necessary foundations were built, but then it creates the question about why morality magically changes when state lines are crossed, if some parts of the country have different laws both based on morality.

People don't want to live under systems that end in breadlines, especially for the military or those literally working in the government. It seems like a good time to destabilize the regime either through protests, propagandizing, or other actions that we can take to weaken the government's grip on power or the loyalty of the citizens. What are some ideas you guys have about activism during these times?

I want to do a video for youtube about why I choose to follow Howard Scott's ideas instead of Marxist-Leninist ones. I think my main reason is because it's a higher stage of development but also because many people do not have any real political ideologies or coherent understanding of the world, which leads to them being easily swayed or manipulated on the issues. I think the working class should have civil rights, freedom from exploitation and landlordism, but I don't believe that the general proletariat is necessarily the best at addressing every issue in society. Especially more complex or specific issues like the climate. Here in America it is also very difficult to trust the masses because they have historically voted for egregious things or provided political support for them. People here have lost the ability to know when something is a fact or opinion, and rationalism would need to be restored and enforced before the masses could ever be trusted with political power.

What are some reasons you personally choose Technocracy over Socialism/Anarchism, etc.?

Society may not have reached the level of cultural and political development yet to achieve technocracy, but there exist many ideas now that reflect the ideals and spirit of technocracy even if they do not necessarily come from the technocracy movement.

The first one which is obvious to most people is to take the money out of politics. Even the liberals do not like money being the basis of politics. There are various propositions for this. Most want to end lobbying, others want to increase political education because they believe that will cause people to take actions that will prevent it from continuing. Even though they would kill someone for advocating against plutocracy or spreading political education in the United States, it remains possible and can be made easier through the internet. While a technate would take money out of politics in a different way, the removal of money from politics would allow society to progress and bring humanity closer to achieving technocracy without a ruling elite sabotaging their progress.

Participatory planning is a policy where every person provides an estimate of the products they will consume, so that production of them can be matched. While obviously this is never exact, this policy helps prevent waste and stops the excess production of resources such as food, clothing, or other amenities. It is efficient and pro-environment and would change the functioning of the economy to suit actual needs as opposed to excess production for profit leading to waste and invented scarcity.

Universal Basic Income is another idea that has gained attention, but struggles to become reality in some parts of the world. Some may even advocate giving more UBI to more productive citizens which defeats the purpose and is against the spirit of UBI. People struggle to think that every member of the population would get a certain amount of income just for their basic needs or whatever else. In the modern era where work is scarce and there is not a large amount of labor needed this will be a requirement. Even under Technocracy, it will be difficult to find outlets for all of the human labor that society can produce as well as with the technology that will make it more efficient. This would also allow the population to explore other ways of contributing to society that they can appreciate or to cope with disability if they suffer from it. It’s not energy accounting but it seems to be the closest that a non-socialist economy can get to it.

15-minute cities are cities where every amenity or necessary shop can be accessed within 15 minutes of walking. Infrastructure designed around cars exclusively is harmful both to the environment, those who cannot afford cars and those who cannot drive cars for whatever reason. Cities tend to naturally develop in walkable ways, and the idea of exclusively car-dependent cities is unique to the west. Car-exclusive infrastructure is also used by authoritarian regimes to make it more difficult for people to gather and protest against them, or to segregate neighborhoods so that only those who can afford cars can enter them. I could go on, but in summary a technocracy naturally strives for eco-friendly and human-friendly ways of public transport or walkability. This is basically a less radical restructuring of cities than turning them into urbanates.

So while technocracy seems very far off, these ideas show that people want various kinds of changes in society that reflect technocratic ideas. If we can push for these ideas or use them as examples of how technocracy functions, we can show the power of science and data in policy making.

The black and white checkered flag associated with racing is an apolitical symbol, but technocrats should adopt it even if just as an alternative to the current one. We should keep our gray and persimmon historical flag, but in contexts where it is absent or there is no practical way to obtain a technocracy flag such as when buying them online, using flag emoji or with flag patches, a checkered flag could be a very useful substitute. It is already commonly used and it also follows one of the design principles behind the technocratic flag, which is that both colors share even amounts of space to represent equal amounts of production and consumption. The Monad symbol itself causes some confusion, but I believe it should still be kept.

Of course if we’re displaying a flag online or the internet where physical flags are not needed we could make the colors gray and persimmon to stay consistent with party colors, but until the technocracy movement is popular enough to have flags widely available this can be used as a symbol of the movement. If it’s too ambiguous we can also modify the checkered flag in some way such as painting red, black or gray stripes on it at the base, or other simple modifications to it that allow it to be accessed by technocrats. I find the checkered flag to be very aesthetically pleasing personally but other ideas are welcome.

Pacifism is great, but as technocrats we most likely believe in energy accounting or other kinds of economic ideas that are incompatible with capitalism. This would make us all targets for surveillance and even assassination assuming you live in the United States. Martin Luther King was a pacifist, de did manage to change society, but he died as a martyr. and government documents exist suggesting he was psychologically tormented by the CIA until his death, even with letters being sent to his house encouraging him to commit suicide.

We are people that look at data and make decisions with logic free from influence of other systems, so from this point of view I’m sure some of you noticed how society works against any person that threatens the social order that exists. We are encouraged to be pacifists in a country overrun by gun violence and police brutality. When people defend themselves, suddenly there is a rush of sympathy for the oppressor. “They have a family” but so do the oppressed. “They are wrong for using violence” but the oppressor can do it with impunity. “They could have voted or protested peacefully” but the elections are rigged and peaceful protests get brutalized by the police. What am I supposed to think? I believe pacifism has its validity in certain situations, but the regime has turned it into a default mode of thinking to make dissent less of a threat to the system. If we truly want a technocracy or even a change to the system, will it just happen one day while we are all sleeping, with a peaceful transition out of a system that has been maintained through violence and colonialism for hundreds of years?

To be clear I am not telling you to commit violence or encourage people to commit violence, but when an oppressor in society is the victim of violence, sympathizing with them is egregious. If we do not disqualify people from sympathy due to being oppressors then by that logic we can literally argue sympathy for slave owners who were killed in revolts, or war criminals who suffer from harsh consequences in trials. If you think about what people are actually saying when they express sympathy for those kinds of people, it’s not a good look. If any leftist political movement starts taking positions like this, they are contradicting themselves ideologically, assuming they believe what they say they do. Sympathy is great and it is our natural human response, but manipulation through empathy is a tool used by various abusers. It’s why victims of various crimes by various organizations are so difficult to help. Politics is just like our personal lives, there are times to be sympathetic and there are times to be cold and calculating.

The better thing to do is to be honest and say that you are personally uncomfortable with violence. There is nothing wrong with you opposing violence itself, but some reactions that come from discomfort to violence can be disrespectful to the people defending themselves and supporting one side. An example is during Israeli-Palestinian conflicts where less informed commentators condemn the violence “On both sides” which condemns Palestinian self-defense. The recent shooting of a healthcare CEO is another example where the working class people of a country were being oppressed by an organization, one of its high ranking members was killed, and now there is no sympathy. Sympathy for the man almost feels ridiculous considering how many people suffered, were unable to receive medical care, or died due to his company keeping the money that would have been used to care for them. Having sympathy for this person almost feels like a dismissal of all the harm they have done. If we start going down the path of giving eulogies to people like this, the technocracy movement will die out fast.

I think that assassinations and violence are what happens when laws and legal systems fail to protect people, so from that perspective you can argue the breakdown of society is way overdue. I think technocrats should speak out in favor of Luigi Mangione since from a logical rationalistic perspective, I cannot think of a reason to sympathize with the CEO, besides police possibly harassing you or maybe if you are scared of the current society falling into chaos. What do you guys think?

People have a tendency to want to include as many people in their groups as possible. However, the Technocracy movement simply is not for everyone if it is meant to stay true and conducive to its purpose. It is theoretically possible for some right-wing ideas to be compatible with rightism, but there is a lot we must unpack and analyze before we can have that discussion. I am going to separate both cultural rightism (Reactionary thought) as well as economic rightism separately so these ideas can be discussed coherently.

First, you need to really understand their ideology which is difficult because they speak in ways that make their desires and ideas less immediately identifiable as problematic or offensive to the average person. We can separate their talking points into “The spoken part” and “The quiet part”

For example, when the spoken part is “I’m scared of white people becoming a minority in America” it’s practically an entire manifesto in one sentence, and I will explain why.

They realize (Whether they admit it or not) that minorities are treated badly in the country, but Instead of changing society to treat minority groups better, they just want to make sure they never become one. They believe white people have some sort of inherent right to be the majority group of the country. This goes back to eugenics and white supremacy. The implications become dark when the possibility is considered of actions being taken to alter demographics, such as increasing white birth rates or decreasing others. Mass support for deportations, removal of public services and excessive policing seem to be a manifestation of this.

The modern rightist will never say these things because they know they would be too extreme for potential viewers to be radicalized. However, before a person can get warmed up to these more extreme ideas, rightist propaganda exists to ridicule cherry-picked examples of leftism and/or pure misinformation to create the impression of progressive ideas being extreme or the lifestyles of modern people living outside of traditional established ideas (Which may be based in colonial ideologies) being nonsensical or ridiculous. Examples are ridiculing women who embrace feminism or dress in alternative style, or ridiculing gender identities that fall outside of gender-binary. These people either do not have good intentions, or are being influenced ideologically by people who do not have good intentions. Religion can fit into this as either establishing what is considered traditionally acceptable or putting social pressure on people who do not conform. To say the very least, cultural rightism is based on a very distorted basis of what is actually going on in the world and what issues are important in politics.

Getting cultural rightism out of the way, we move on to the issue of economic rightism. Policies that fall under economic rightism tend to favor elites of the country, business owners, wealthy people, or even those who have conflicting incentives with the working class such as landlords or anyone who makes profit from land, labor, or capital. Marxism defines this, and explains in great detail how the ruling classes use economic systems to extract labor and the value of services from the rest of humanity, and how right-wing economic policies exist to keep these economic systems going and prevent any of the current beneficiaries of capitalism from losing their privileged status. Monarchies fall into the category of economic rightism in most cases but they tend to lean culturally right for their own preservation. These things do not have a good performance record for the economy for the entire population, more so for the ruling class and it is why socialist states are so hostile towards the accumulation of wealth if they allow it at all.

Singapore which is believed by many to be a technocracy is an example of what a right-wing technocracy would be in practice, an authoritarian state making great progress, but with 25% of the population in poverty and an authoritarian conservative government that punishes its citizens for not voting how they want. Singapore is technocratic as far as meritocracy, but rightism makes it so the main beneficiaries are the ruling class of their society just like in any other capitalist regime in the world.

I’m not saying that a person who participates or previously participated in rightism cannot be a technocrat, but they should be ready to experience quite a whiplash once the data does not support anything they stand for and clashes with most things they believe. Technocratic policy making and theorizing does not serve the psychological motives of having arguments with strangers online, getting angered constantly or scapegoating groups of people for life problems. Of course, you can incorporate any vaguely-right wing ideas into a technocracy if they are supported by holistic and unbiased data.

Many people can easily realize that arguing online with one person about politics is a waste of time. However, activism and spreading ideas to change or improve the political system can often end up in a similar situation where the energy and emotional labor involved does not get your ideas and influence as far as possible.

The reason that many political discussions are as pointless and frustrating as they are is because many people living in the United States do not have actual ideologies they articulate and follow consistently. They want the candidate they view as better to win elections so they are constantly shifting and reforming their wishes and desires to match whatever the ruling class approves as a candidate for the elections they control. The politics that people believe within electoral societies based on liberal ideas are based on an idea that everyone has a valid opinion and through voting, the largest number of people get the decision they want. There is no objective truth in this ideology, it accepts what the largest number of people decide as the truth. Technocracy is an ideology based on scientific facts and data, so we are basing our decisions on the most objective facts we possibly can in our current time period and within our modern understanding of the world. This naturally also makes us incompatible with modern people who make emotion-based decisions unless those decisions are supported by the data. After a certain point the discussions are just completely unproductive.

Writing theory is more productive than speaking with other individuals who are just seeking out things to argue about, but even better is bringing attention to the theory and the ideas of technocracy. Writing theory is the most logical and effective way to participate in technocracy, because t. The theory is either well-received because it is intelligent and accepted by the community to advance and shape the ideology further, or it is ignored for not being a good application of the theories or the ideology. Accepted theory contributes to the overall ideology and gives outsiders more information about technocracy and the general thought process behind it which encourages compatible people to participate.

While this topic does not fit perfectly into the ideals and theories of technocracy, It has become a very prominent issue and cannot be ignored by any political ideology. Much of this theory also applies to various other groups in society and most likely will be relevant when a new group of people is marginalized or mistreated. In a society that uses distorted science to justify human rights violations and systematic mistreatment of groups of people they marginalize, I feel that technocrats need to speak up and make their positions known. Scientific research has shown brain differences in transgender individuals and current hypotheses state that hormone levels affect the brain of the person during development in different ways than the person’s body, and that there may be other genetic or prenatal differences that contribute towards a person becoming transgender. It is also noted that being transgender is intrinsic and support from family can lower the risk of self-harm or ideation from 60% to 4%. Many of the motivations that some individuals have to try and force transgender people to conform to their own ideas of gender or expression come from right-wing extremist or religious ideologies that have yet to be proven by unbiased science. Even the argument about chromosomes causes many real scientists to shake their heads due to many cisgender people sometimes having varied chromosomes or variations that make their chromosomes different from the assumed standard.

Additionally, technocrats must be aware of how the mistreatment of transgender people is being executed and justified by society. There exist claims of transgender people engaging in sexual crimes or using transition as an excuse to enter the bathrooms of the opposite gender, but the actions that the people suggest as solutions show that they are not honest about their own motives. Instead of gender neutral bathrooms or security to protect anyone in bathrooms from harassment, they go on to put bounties on transgender people in public bathrooms (Texas) or simply pass laws that allow for the arrest and detention of any person who uses a bathroom that does not match the gender assigned to them at birth (Florida). Trans people are not the first group of people to be denied access to bathrooms under shaky pretenses. Black Americans were historically forced to use separate bathrooms under Jim Crow and the justification at the time was just as unconvincing as the ones being used in the present day. The politicization of people’s human rights is a common tactic used by extremist groups and this kind of thinking should not be validated or it can empower bad actors to do more and more harm as well as give encouragement to hate groups. Historically, making the rights of any group of people into a political issue with different parties measuring the pros and cons has been itself harmful to the group while also allowing the society to descend into more barbaric behavior. In a society that has a history of internment camps (Japanese during the second world war and modern ICE facilities) I am very reluctant to yield to anyone wanting to make another person’s existence into a political issue.

While a technocracy is not typically equipped to handle social or cultural problems, technocrats make policy decisions based on experts and science, and this is an issue where the science does not support what is currently being done to a marginalized group of people, and most likely never will. Some people may feel the issue is too sensitive, some people may find it off the topic of technocracy, but being a technocrat means promoting the use of science and data in government policies so I cannot sit idly by when primitive appeals to religion or hatred of people are used by the regime to harass and bully people who need our support.

People view Howard Scott’s model of technocracy as being outdated, ideological, or in some way not as good as just putting the experts in charge regardless of the government system that exists. We live under capitalism, so the experts are going to say that the best course of action is to give all the political power to billionaires or other departments or organization that are indirectly controlled by billionaires since these people have always exerted undue influence on many parts of society, especially in the United States where plutocracy is the way that the government operates and major privately owned corporations are the ones who provide funding and resources to all of the elected representatives.

Even members of the ruling class in America such as Elon Musk see themselves as technocrats because since they have the funds to conduct and facilitate research, they can simply justify the policies they want by controlling the scientific studies that they conduct and pay for. In their minds, they would be running a country with scientific governance but the science would be so influenced by them to cherry pick their desired policies, that it would be no different than the systems we have now. The only difference is that anything that the ruling class wanted would be justified with some biased studies.

The scientific method does not exist in a vacuum and with enough studies done to get the conclusion they want, any nation on the planet could claim to be a technocracy. And if we are defining technocracy as the rule of experts in general, why would any government not just claim their politicians are experts in politics since they know how the political systems work and gain power within them? Even an anti-science regime like America could claim to have technocratic principles since they have different agencies managing over things like the environment or public health. Technocratic principles themselves are good, but any successful government needs some scientifically based principles simply to stay in power because without them any policies put out would be completely unhinged nonsense.

I’m not saying it’s bad or that anyone is wrong for calling themselves a technocrat if they aren’t following the model of Howard Scott or Energy Accounting, but I think that you’re just pro-science and pro-meritocracy. Both of those things are good, but I think that if your technocratic goals can be satisfied under any government system, why be a technocrat? It is almost like being a Marxist-Leninist solely for the desire to get universal healthcare. It is technically correct, but your goals are relatively moderate which makes participation in a more radical ideology feel out of place. Additionally, any changes made to further technocratic principles can be undone by the ruling classes of capitalist regimes since the billionaires would continue to hold all of the wealth and power.

This does technically make Technocracy an ideology, but that just means a set of ideas and principles. Even a set of beliefs that lead you to avoid having an ideology is paradoxically an ideology. As such, nobody who is conditioned to live in a society is free from ideology which makes the whole conversation pointless. I do not mean to put down the non-ideological technocrats or those who think differently, but I hope I have successfully illustrated why the Technocracy movement exists in the form that it does.

Technocrats may wonder how they should view actually existing socialism, historical examples of socialism, and even modern countries such as the US or European nations in terms of political development. This does not mean technological development which can be separate and we have historically seen cases of technologically advanced societies actually being more primitive politically if we look at the technocratic markers of political development.

If we understand the four phases of development being religious, nationalist, marxist, and technocrat then we can look at historical societies as not just being exactly at each stage, but typically combining characteristics of these different stages, such as Christian nationalists and Socialist states with extremely nationalistic ideas and policies. For example, we see that many right-wing extremists as well as monarchists (Yes, people exist who advocate monarchy in the modern world) are somewhere between the stages of religious and nationalist. Modern China, Stalin and Mao would be in stages between nationalist and marxist. Modern Russia is even less politically advanced than the Soviet Union, regressing towards nationalism with religious backing. We can also begin to understand similarities in different societies in different stages in development, with the most barbaric societies in world war 2 being cult-like and therefore both religious and nationalistic in nature which shows how they are even more primitive and less politically developed regardless of their technological capabilities.

Many western societies are easily categorized as nationalistic, since they are engaging in various forms of colonialism and imperialism. From this point of view, we can even determine that liberalism is a nationalistic ideology and it all begins to make sense. However, regions of the country as well as some sectors of the population can be more politically advanced leaning into early marxism, or more primitive leaning into religious or tribalistic ideologies they apply to politics. However it should be noted that many liberal ideas are not progressive because they try to end the mistreatment of people and improve living standards through ways we would consider nationalistic and not Marxist. The ideas of creating more black billionaires or improving the standards of LGBT by allowing them into the military are extremely nationalistic ideas, because they serve to integrate minorities into a nationalistic and capitalistic society rather than progress it towards the next stage of development which is Marxist.

Party politics is also a good example of nationalistic thinking because all the parties of modern societies assume the national identity of the society, but represent the different social classes and interests which give an illusion of social cohesion, national unity and collaboration between all the social classes for the betterment of the nation. In marxist societies, it is understood that the origin of political parties are economic social classes and as such, a society with more equal distributions of wealth would find political parties redundant.

If you’re wondering what a society would look like once it passes the stage of Marxism where nationalism is entirely abandoned, you would find traces of the proto-technocracy. Many marxists and socialists can accomplish similar things to technocrats, but people are unlikely to accept ideas that are more politically advanced than what they understand because it will sound idealistic or unrealistic to them. The technology exists nowadays that allows technocracy or other ideologies to the left of marxism or communism to exist in the modern world, but political development is constantly being sabotaged and even violently suppressed which is why the world is stuck with nationalistic, religious regimes dominating most of the world with a few societies managing to evolve into nationalistic Marxist ones, usually requiring extremely large militaries or needing to constantly deal with interference and external sabotage from the less politically advanced societies that fear revolutions and the downfall of their ruling classes and social orders.