Excerpted from OpEdNews.com
May 25, 2014 edition
“Competition, taking and hoarding are higher values than cooperation, sharing and gifting.”
The western worldview says in essence, that technological progress is the highest value and that we were born to consume, to endlessly use and discard natural resources, other species, gadgets, toys, and often, each other. The most highly prized freedom is the right to shop. It’s a world of commodities, not entities, and economic expansion is the primary measure of progress. Competition, taking and hoarding are higher values than cooperation, sharing and gifting. Profits are valued over people, money over meaning, and entitlement over justice, “us” over “them.” This is the most dangerous addiction in the world, not only because of its impact on humanity but because it is rapidly undermining the natural systems that sustain the biosphere.
Bill Plotkin
George,
When we remove the profit motive from society, what motivates the development of new and better goods and services? Or even the simple completion of necessary tasks? Altruism? That strikes me as a profoundly naïve worldview.
Yes Brian, the concept removes politics from the equation, but it also removes any similarity to any of the various Price System’s economic interests. Basically, Technocracy’s concept is an accounting system, predicated on the very basic and fundamental element that is intrinsic in all we do and use – and that is the amount of energy required to create, make and deliver goods and services. With the use of advanced technology, the Price System operators have had to curtail production because of our ability to produce so much that it destroys the scarcity conditions that create value and curtail any need for expansion. Technocracy advocates that we need to account for what, when and where supplies are needed and to distribute those supplies to all.
In Response to the second part of your comment:
First thing, there is no such thing as a “free exchange or free market.” If there were, we would by now, for example, have an array of alternate energy sources such as solar panels, wind, water (tidal and hydro), geothermal and etc. Money is used as a medium of exchange but it is also used to protect the profits of certain business and will be used to either buy up, make unlawful or discredit competition. The “them” as indicated in the question is really all of us. We as consumers control what we want and need. We do that now to some degree when we use our credit cards, only Technocracy goes a major step forward by replacing that credit card with an Energy Debit Card. This card is the backbone of not controlling, but of determining the “what, when and where” indicated in the first question. We hear so much about “personal freedom” from our pompous leaders and others, but we are now only as “free as our pocket books.” Technocracy’s concept would truly free us all in this regard. (See The Energy Debit Card displayed on our website)
All accounting systems are set up to define metrical data in terms of finite resources, George. In order for anything to have value it must be demonstrated to be scarce, and hence the need for any and all price system considerations. If we indeed lived in an infinite world beyond specific measurable magnitudes related to any specific resource factors, then accounting systems would be deemed unnecessary to our entire production and distribution processes, and hence price would not be needed, though price is now used to account for the energy equalizing method for determining our self worth through socially accepted agreements that are always dependent upon the price we willing agree to pay for the finite resource we wish to attain to support a mythical price on our heads.
Another view is that power over people is valued more than individual choice and well-being in a forced collectivist society. People are already experiencing harm from the utility monopoly system that is forcing wireless “smart” meters on everyone, even people who know wireless radiation is biologically active and damaging. Even people who purchase NO wireless products in the free market are being FORCED to have them by utility monopolies. This is what happens with monopolies. People are being harmed, and given no choice, unlike the free market. Same with electric cars, supposedly good for the environment. Some people get sick from electromagnetic radiation even in gasoline autos. But electric cars will multiply EMR. Some people will not be able to use them. As for a wireless data collecting society, it is going to have many victims of unprecedented biologically active radiofrequency exposures. The Dept. of the Interior recently complained to the FCC that its exposure limits are obsolete and migratory birds are at risk from very low NON-THERMAL wireless radiation. The wireless basis of Technocracy is bad for people, nature and the future of life. DNA itself is at risk. Please consider the biological damage from Technocracy that is based on unsustainable damaging RADIATION. Thanks.
First let me say thank you for contacting us. We value all who do be it a glowing appraisal or a tart lemon-like review. You know, it is difficult to absorb what Technocracy is all about. We as a species have only a history of a system of governance that slowly evolved when we came out of our caves, and that is the problem. The use of technology to do work, render services and make products is a very, very late development. The system of governance in which we are mired we call the Price System because of the use of trinkets, pretty metals, folding money and now electronic transactions with our debit and credit cards to buy things. You talk of a “forced society” – try doing anything without us being forced to garner as much money or wealth as possible. You also write something about our “wireless” capabilities and the possible effects of it emitting radiation charges. Well, in the functional dynamic design of Technocracy, profit is no longer key, and the whole premise of the advanced system is to have people control our technology instead of it (the profit system) controlling us. Every one, everything that is detrimental to the human condition, from an adulterated food supply to having more guns sold than our total population is directly tied to the workings of the Price System. In a Technocracy the profit motive is removed and we can create a life with the emphasis on a clean environment, products that do not harm people, and the right to exist without the interference of a so called “market place.” What we as a society have to do now, as the redundant saying goes, is to “think outside the box.” Divorce ourselves from the Price System machinations and use our imaginations as to what is really possible. My best to you and yours,
George Wright
I find the Technocracy theory fascinating. While the association distances itself from politics, It seems you’re describing an economic system built on political tyranny and collectivism.
Our current market system is designed for the free exchange of goods and services. When it’s implemented, how will the one’s controlling (the “them”) be controlled? Are there any checks and balances in this new economic order?
Hello Brian,
One needs to take into consideration the psychological aspects as they relate to control. In nature we won’t find ducks fighting over bread if there’s enough bread for every duck, or monkey’s fighting over bananas if there are enough bananas for every monkey, will we.. Oh, yes there will be a few, a few that are pathologically unfit and we’ll sort through all that…. In other words, if people are guaranteed all that they require for sustaining their lives from the cradle to the grave, what psychological need will there be for any of us to control others, or the resources we depend on? The producers and distributers will simply produce without any political price system interference, and hence roughly 99% of all corruption will go away, and so maybe 1% will remain that will be pathological by nature…
Technocracy is a brilliant application for solving our most complex, social energy and environmental problems, it is in fact here now, but obviously not operating up to optimum functioning capacity because of political-price system interference. Though brilliant in original conceptual form, technocracy has yet to include the entire world in it’s design plans, and to me, it has to move beyond any need for energy accounting for it to be a viable alternative form of governance. For the very nature of the current operating insanity is based on the control or ACCOUNTING of energy. Abundance beyond our willingness to account for any energy resource is required for the concept to genuinely take hold.