Opinion of Technocracy?

[Yelnoc]

As the title says, what is your opinion of Technocracy?  If you are unsure of what Technocracy is, watch the video series by the North American Technate.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A very good idea in theory, which, once applied, always turns into a disaster.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Seems to have the some striking similarities to Communism:

- claims to be scientific
- defines value as input, but only in this case all energy instead of just labor
- equal distribution of goods
- centrally planned economy
- removes all individual decisions about work and consumption
- oligarchical
- requires fundamental cultural transformation, with religious traditions and nationalism as obstacles to implementation

[RI]

Option 1, depending on your exact definition of technocracy, but whatever was in that video is...out there. So, not that.

[Redalgo]

I voted "other," but after further consideration think I should have voted for option two. My prime reservation is that scientific means appear incapable of objectively resolving conflicts of human interests that involve moral virtues and culture. Perceptions of knowledge are oftentimes illusions and cannot be proven to a point of total certainty. Policy aims are subjective in their merits, and processes involved in attaining those goals are relative in their "rightness."

Centralizing power into the hands of technocrats does not strike me as being free of the kinds of troubles that beset other authoritarian forms of government. Though I believe it is important for intellectuals and technical specialists to have their abilities harnessed by government for the common good, in one way or another, technocracy itself unduly marginalizes the significance of feelings and the arts - which arguably pertain to social studies every bit as much as science. A lot of things are liable to change in the future, sure, but I do not see technocracy as a desirable next step.

[Beet]

I just wasted over an hour of my life watching these videos. Sorry, but no. What this guy is calling for is basically a communistic system without wanting to call it that. He does make some valid points regarding the nature of money, the problem of balancing consumption and production, the problem of reduced man-hours, the explosion of debt, the volatility of capitalistic finance, and so on, but the end is just laughable. The idea that measuring efficiency on a per unit basis is a novel idea is hilarious; the idea that that is all that is needed to micromanage production lines is saying that solving the derivative of x^2 is all the math is needed to put a man on the moon. Communism will never work because of the unpredictability of human behavior. Once we have lost all ability for spontaneity and can be modelled by supercomputers, then communism will become viable.

[Gustaf]

Redalgo and Beet seem to have it right -I'm not going to bother watching it.

[Yelnoc]

I just wasted over an hour of my life watching these videos. Sorry, but no. What this guy is calling for is basically a communistic system without wanting to call it that. He does make some valid points regarding the nature of money, the problem of balancing consumption and production, the problem of reduced man-hours, the explosion of debt, the volatility of capitalistic finance, and so on, but the end is just laughable. The idea that measuring efficiency on a per unit basis is a novel idea is hilarious; the idea that that is all that is needed to micromanage production lines is saying that solving the derivative of x^2 is all the math is needed to put a man on the moon. Communism will never work because of the unpredictability of human behavior. Once we have lost all ability for spontaneity and can be modelled by supercomputers, then communism will become viable.

Technocracy does borrow a lot of "communist" principles, but I feel like it fits better with the modern world, addressing some of the pitfalls in "radical left" theories on labor.  That said, I agree this kind of top-down structure is unwieldy and open to a lot of abuse and corruption.  The basic principles of economic and infrastructure engineering by "technocrats" seems workable to me on a smaller level.

[Person Man]

This actually sounds like a NeoConfucian state or what I think of when someone "wants to run the country as a business". Most people think that means that we should run the Feds so that they make a profit. I think it means a government that is literally staffed and managed like a private business. I think of a government that basically run by a privately hired BoDs...though in technocracy, there would be no seperate owners. In Corprate Republicanism or some semi-accurate and cynical view of what we already have, there are.

[izixs]

From what I can gather its a moon bat idea looking for a reason to be implemented, inspiring leaving out important facts and basing its philosophy off of a singular metric.