[Slayer of Cliffracers]

Technocracy is flawed, beacause the essential assumption, that there is no scarcity, is flawed. The world cannot sustain 6 billion people, consuming the resources of people in the US, for any length of time.

Give people more resources, and they waste more. Eventually they will become so wasteful, that any amount of abundance, becomes scarcity, unless more resources can be siezed/aquired/traded, all of which are fundermentally against this theory.

[chearn73]

Um.....ya....well...okay. What else can I say.

[DigitalNoface]

Also note that 'scarcity' as used in economics refers not to the amount of resources in ratio to total human need. It refers to the amount of resources in ratio to total human desire, which is endless. I read the 'intro to technocracy' page and noted that they seem to think we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity. This is true in the literal sense of the word. However, in the economic usage of the word it is patently false. As a natural survival instinct evolved over many millenia, humans always want more than they have. As such, scarcity is unavoidable (unbless we can find practically limitless resources).

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

I'm afraid that what is "flawed" is your understanding of what Technocracy is saying. This is common enough so I can't really blame you. First of all, Technocracy does not say that "there is no scarcity". Instead, it shows how the majority of manufactured goods as well as an increasing number of services in North America have been made abundant thanks to the extensive introduction of powered machines and automation in industry. This is a demonstrable fact, as there are limits to human consumption.

Secondly, it is stated rather ubiquitously in Technocracy literature that it is not a plan for the entire world, but rather just North America. It is possible given higher technology that other areas may one day reach the requirements needed in order to sustain a society of abundance, but this was not the case at the time the original research was done, hence they focused on North America only. In fact, it was Howard Scott, the founder of Technocracy, himself that said something to the effect that it would be physically impossible to raise the standard of living of China to that of the United States, that it would require all the resources of several Earths (I forget the number, but he calculated it).

The problem is that North America is far from bieng self-sufficiant. It relies on foreign trade to provide many resources that it cannot produce enough of itself to meet domestic demand. Thus it needs foreign trade, with the non-technocratic world, which technocracy does not allow.

To be very honest, a society of abundance refusing to trade, would likely attract a militery response in order to force trade upon our technocratic society, in order to avoid it bieng conquered by all.

Raw materials are not limitless, they are limited. The automation of production, allowing us to produce ever more products, is likely to deplete ever more rapidly the supply of raw materials, beacause abundance encourages waste, waste drives more production, which itself creates a greater degree of consumption of raw materials.

While I might question the validity of this observation, I cannot deny that it could easily be seen in today's society. However, human behaviour in a Price System is remarkably different than it could be expected in a properly designed society of abundance. If you would care to do more studying on the matter rather than issuing blanket objections, then I'm sure that you will find that there is significant evidence to support this. I can help you with that if you like.

Ah yes, the price system. However, in order to limit waste they have an energy credit system.

However, energy credits is just the elimination of all cash economy except that of the horizontal interaction between technate and population. A total state monopoly on currency, not allowing any to have currency but the state, since energy credits once spent are annihilated.

The total stock of currency (or energy credits) is irrelavent, beacause in effect the amount a currency is worth, is relative to the stock of resources available.

If there is one pound in the country, then all of us before very long will be trading in infinately small fractions of that pound.

In effect, this system still applies. If there is a certain amount of a resource, the amount of energy credits issued is relative to the amount of resources available.

So technocracy is dependant on finding some magic 'couldran of plenty', which does not exist in North America or anywhere else, where an amount of goods, equal to the highest POSSIBLE level of extravagance and waste, can be produced without rapidly enhausting the raw material supply.

However, as mentioned above since the value of money is essentially relative to the supply of purchasable commodities, it is hardely neccesery to invent a new kind of economy or goverment in order to adapt to the couldran of plenty.

All feasable goverments and economies regardless of orginisation would function and achieve universal abundance, if they found the cauldron of plenty.

Of course, the actual reality is that the couldran of plenty is a myth. Even if I went to the end of the rainbow, to the magical continent of North America, I would not find it. [/quote]

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

Not quite. The reason North America is not "self-sufficient" right now is because of two reasons: 1) The Price System failed in 1930s, and has needed to be propped up ever since. This is standard for any Price System; once it has finished its natural life cycle, it has two options. It can either die violently, requiring a revolution of some sort (French revolution, etc.), or it can exploit other nations as a form of "life-support". This can take the form of either one-sided trade practices (see: WTO, IMF), or imperialism (see: WWII, ancient Rome, etc.)

The other reason is because the North American Price System wastes a tremendous amount of resources in keeping itself going. Everything from advertising, to overpackaging, bloated legal system, inefficient social programs... the list goes on. By making all the important activities of a nation as efficient as possible, you eliminate this waste, and can then produce an abundance for your people.

The price system, is not the problem in and of itself. Prices exist for the simple reason that people don't want to do something for nothing. By trading in currency, people can avoid having to trade directly in goods.

The reason that the North American 'price system' is so wasteful, is that it has too many resources as a result of the exploitative nature of capitalism, at which it is the epicentre.

Abundance breeds inefficiancy and waste, by it's very nature.

Where there are little resources, there is a definate enforcer of efficiancy, beacause inefficiancy has definate and bad consequences.

However where abundance is found, there is no definate connection between inefficiancy and loss, which ensures that abundance is a tempory state, beacause the more abundant resources are, the more they waste.

This is entirely possible, but how would that be any different than now anyway? The fledgling Technate would still have the same capacity to defend itself as North America does now, and if any time passes (10 years, 20 years, etc.), its ability to defend itself grows far greater than ever before.

But really I don't see this as being very likely, or if it did happen it would be on a small scale. Most countries are in very one-sided agreements with the US and would welcome their lack of interference. China and Japan represent a problem however, since N.A. represents a large market for them. They might be angry about the change, but that doesn't mean that the new Sequence of Foreign Relations would be powerless to smooth over any ruffled feathers.

Overall, it's a tricky subject. But honestly, given all the benefits of Technocracy (assuming we can agree on those), and all the problems we face, both now and in the future, if we don't switch, would this kind of fear of international retribution really be sufficient reason to stop?

At present, if a nation has resources that you demand, that is abundance, you can trade for what they have, for what they are scarce in.

However, in a situation where trade is impossible, militery invasion is the only way to get what you want. If you look at history, you will see that the primery driver of Imperialism has been the desire to obtain resources that are scarce, at a better price than the natives would offer on their own. To put it this way, the primery purpose of Empire has been to aquire raw materials which the locals would otherwhise charge a high price for, whether it is gold, tea, coffee, suger, etc.

If you utterly refuse to trade your resources with others, then you are in effect doubling the normal incentive for foreign aggression.

An interesting view, but completely false. One only needs to take a closer look at the Great Depression as a classic case for this. There was a time when we were producing goods and services at an exponentially increasing rate, and what happened? People actually started consuming less! Now, this was because of the problems of the Price System, and is therefore not applicable to a Technocratic scenario.

So what would happen then? Well it's simple, really. You see, while in a Price System, it is theoretically possible to "own" any number of possessions, and therefor consumption is theoretically unlimited, in a Technocracy, ownership plays a different role. In an economy of abundance, what one "owns" isn't important, instead only what one "consumes". Now, there are very definitely limits on how much a human being can physically consume; for example, there is only so much they can eat, only so much time they can spend travelling per day, only so much education they can partake of, etc. Thus, with these limits already in place naturally, people will be able to consume all they can, and then no more. It will be far less wasteful than a single person in a Price System owning several cars, two yachts, their own jet, a huge mansion or two, etc. The more people can waste like that, the more resources get wasted. That simply wouldn't happen in a Technate.

The production of the pre-Great Depression era, fell afoul of something called the 'overproduction trap', in which so much is produced that it becomes unprofitable to produce a small amount, so they produce more and so on, until everything goes crunch.

The primery cause of this is economic competion between buisnesses, so lauded by economists. Nobody in a sane or rational world would overproduce, beacause overproduction means more work for them, and people are lazy are they not?

On the other end of things, the other problem is usury. On one hand banks take from the rich, and give them even more riches for nothing, while they bleed the poor dry.

The value of goods, is dependant on the amount of money in the economy vs the amount that can be bought, so if one person gets more money, without producing anything, then someone must suffer as a consequence.

As a result, only the wealthy can afford the goods that are produced, which means that the price of the goods goes up, since the more money there is in a market, the higher the price. This leads to a situation in which those who are not on the right side of the banks, find their cost of living increasing, while their income is not.

Because of my previous explanation, I hope you can see how none of this (or the rest of your post) is valid in a Technocracy. "Value" has no relevance economically, except in terms of how much of something is produced. If people consume more, then more is produced. If less, then less. Simple as that. The energy cost of anything remains the same because it is a physical measurement, not one of value. This gets rid of so many problems that have plagued Price Systems ever since they started.

In effect what you are doing, is creating an arbitery measurement of 'energy', and then dividing up the resources on the basis of this measurement.

However, energy costs something to produce, the power stations and power-lines still have to be mantained for instance.

There is not a limitless supply of energy in the world, and energy is itself based upon finate and exhaustable resources, in fact more than anything. Just to think about it, energy is either by nature limited, or it is finate.


Think.
Wind- Limited
Solar- Limited.
Water- Limited
Nuclear- Finate (uranium).
Coal- Finate.
Oil- Finate.
Gas- Finate.

And finally.
Human muscle power- Limited.

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

Most of what you say here is true, but only in a Price System/scarcity environment. This is a good deal of why Technocracy is tricky to learn, because we are all used to thinking exclusively in these terms. We accept maxims and axioms handed down to us because they have always been true. They have always been true because we have always lived in a in a scarcity environment. Thus, understanding Technocracy requires one to "think outside the box" for a little bit, but this is easier with some explanation:

What is a scarcity enviroment? An enviroment in which there is a limited amount of products that can be produced, and a certain amount of labor required to produce them.

If that is the definition of scarcity enviroment, then we have never in fact left it, beacause that is still true.

The "problem" as we often try to point out, is the fundamental incompatibility between high-energy converting technology and the scarcity model. As the article clearly demonstrates, once you have the ability to produce "more than enough" (i.e. abundance), you have to lower prices and therefore lose workers, which further lowers demand and therefore prices, spiralling down until you get an economic crash. Thus, a new model is needed to deal with abundance, since you have the choice of either getting rid of the old model and keeping abundance, or getting rid of the abundance and keeping the old model (what we have chosen to do thus far).

However, we are still living in the scarcity model, just with somewhat less scarcity. We cannot consume as much as we want to of everything, without having to put in a certain amount of work to compensate.

The amount of work we can do, is dependant upon the amount of time that we are willing to work and the amount of time we are able to work.

As you have demonstrated, the amount of work needed to produce industrial and agricultural goods for most history was comparitively high. The following two things, the amount people were able to work, and how much they were willing too work, limited production for most of history.

However, in the industrial revolution was discovered a means to replace human biengs with power in the production process.

As a result, most of the population ended up working in the production of power, for the industries and the maintainance of machines.

However, eventually people managed to work out how to use power to make power, and to make machines need less maintainance.

However, the sheer expendature of power, is based upon finate resources, that is coal, oil, gas, uranium etc.

All these things require enviromental devestation in order to work, and they will run out. Either the enviromental damage caused by their use becomes too great, or the resources themselves run out.

This is a popular misconception/generalization often used by Price System supporters to get people to ignore alternative distribution models. Don't let it fool you. A more correct statement would be: "People don't want to do jobs they find boring, tedious, draining, and unfulfilling." Virtually everyone has something they would like to do that could benefit society in some way, but in the Price System there are simply too few (read: scarce) avenues for them to pursue them. Thus they are stuck doing things they'd rather not be doing, and so the only motivations left become survival and profit.

In Technocracy's system, virtually all such work would be automated, thus freeing people to pursue those things they find interesting and fulfilling. One might argue that too few such people exist, but that might only be true today, where such behaviour is discouraged for the reasons I just mentioned. When they are taught all of their options, and given the resources and encouragement to fulfil their potentials, I think that you would see a lot more people accomplishing amazing things.

You were assuming there, that I was using the term as a capitalist would. What I meant to say, is people don't want to do something, which does not ultimately produce something of tangible value to themselves, or their group.

Sure, people might want to become artists or musicians, but they still want that to produce art and music, so they don't really do it for nothing.

The creation of a society in which every neccesery work is automated, is quickly becoming technologically possible but the sheer enviromental destructiveness of such a system, would be hideous.

The reason is, automata eat energy. Energy is either finate or limited. The finate energy would run out all the quicker if every task was automated and then we'd quickly find ourselves forced to go back to Square 1, limited forms of energy, just like we used before the Industrial Revolution.

Capitalism is simply an advanced stage of the Price System. There are limits to the efficiency of any Price System because of... scarcity. You always have to make a choice between one thing and another, usually one evil or another. Lay off workers, or keep on polluting? Not a pretty picture. This is the advantage of an abundant scenario, where you no longer have to make such choices. You can have the best of both worlds. That's what "abundance" means.

The abundance scenario does not exist. Scarcity cannot be wished away, it is still with us, and it will always be with us.

The supplies of oil, coal, gas and uranium in the world, are limited.

It is funny you should say, lay off workers or keep polluting. In fact, it is beacause we laid off workers that we are so polluting. We traded work for pollution.

Again, you are right, but only in a scarcity scenario. A more accurate statement might be "abundant resources have a strong tendency to make scarcity systems more inefficient." Yes, there is no natural "enforcer" of efficiency in any environment, except for our own intelligence. Thus, we have to devise a way to do this ourselves, and we have. A katascopically-designed distribution system with efficiency as one of its requirements would be easy, and in fact necessary if another goal of yours is the "highest possible standard of living for all citizens for the longest possible period", incidentally the stated goal of a Technate. Various pieces of Technocracy literature demonstrate how easily this is accomplished once you remove scarcity artifacts such as money and politics. I can give you some links if you like. These processes are not foreign ideas; they get used in engineering design all the time. Technocracy is merely the first to apply them to the continent as a whole, instead of only its parts.

This is like double-think. Abundance creates inefficiancy and waste, in a scarcity situation.

Abundance and scarcity are opposites. Where abundance is, there is no scarcity.

Abundance creates inefficiancy and waste, beacause it removes the link between waste and shortage. Abundance absorbes waste and inefficiancy, and allows people to delay coming to terms with it, allowing the problem to grow more serious.

Wealth is abundance, abundance creates wealth. Waste destroys abundance, and thus wealth.

Meanwhile, scarcity creates efficiancy. Efficiancy creates abundance and thus destroys scarcity.

I'm afraid that this is not what abundance means. Abundance means "more than enough". So in the case you submit, you would have to have an existing resource already in abundance in order to trade another country for something they have in abundance. Only in this way can abundance be maintained. However, this is often not the case, and even if it were, it would affect prices so badly that trade would be difficult at best, impossible at worst. How can you put a price on something that is abundant? You can't, except by artificially inflating that price, and to do that you have to restrict access to that resource, thus making it artificially scarce.

The classic example of this is software. Since it can be duplicated infinitely at virtually no cost, it has no monetary "value". If people can download it for free, they are not going to pay any price for it. Thus, in order to get them to, you have to restrict it, such as restricting access to downloads, and making it illegal to "pirate" software.

Sorry I meant to say, if a nation has resources that you demand, that are in abundance in their nation, you can trade for what they have, for what they are scarce in.

Software, is kind of deceptive beacause what is really being sold is the right to use the software, not the software itself.

Software costs a fair deal to produce, beacause the people producing the actual program, need to be paid for their efforts.

It may look arbitrary if you have not read anything on Energy Accounting, but this is not just a fancy name for another form of currency. Energy was selected because it is the only common and objectively measurable factor to all production and consumption. For example, it takes a certain amount of energy to dig x tons of ore out of the ground, it takes a certain amount to transport it to the factory, a certain amount to process it, manufacture the item, and finally transport it to the consumer. With all these factors measured and known, it becomes possible to control the production and distribution process to a) make it as efficient as possible, and b) make it match consumption, avoiding both waste and shortages. Since these measurements are not subjective like "value" used by money, they do not fluctuate because of subjective reasons, only objective ones, such as changes in the manufacturing process. If fewer people want chairs, then the energy cost of the chair does not change, but the Technate can register this reduction in consumption and thus produce less chairs. The same can be done if more chairs (or whatever) are wanted. By being completely measurable and objective, accuracy can be achieved that is not possible in a Price System, where the whims of the market may take any shape for any (subjective) reason.

I've read energy accounting sure enough. The problems is that energy is not free. It costs something to produce.

In your society, how do you pay the people that produce the energy that your society needs. What do you pay them in?

Energy?

So why wouldn't the people producing the energy, expect something in exchange for the energy they produce? We're back to where we started out.

Some people produce energy and they are traded something else in exchange for energy. We are back to essentially barter or a slave economy.

Either the producers of energy are slaves, or they will expect something in return for energy.

[Slayer of Cliffracers]

It seems that the majority of the disagreement here stems from our different definitions of "scarcity" and "abundance". I will try to be clearer. Abundance means "more than enough". This is most easily seen with air. Air is abundant because anyone that wants it gets all that they need and more any time they want it. Air is most certainly limited however, so abundance has nothing to do with finiteness. Now, what this means economically is that air has no monetary "value". It still has value since without it you would die, but you cannot "sell" air. It's price is infinitesimal. Would you buy a can of ordinary air from me? No, because you can get all you want and keep your money/goods and the same time. You do not have an "unlimited" supply, but since you can only consume so much of it during any given time period, and it regenerates at a rate faster than that, then your supply over time is effectively "unlimited", relative to your consumption rate. This is abundance.

Scarcity is "not enough". This can be demonstrated by locking someone in a bank vault. Now, their air is still limited, but can no longer regenerate faster than their need to consume it. Thus, their supply is limited over time, compared to their rate of consumption. What this means economically is that air now has "value". You could very easily sell that person some additional air, because they will need it to survive longer.

The upshot of all this is, once you have the capacity to produce any product or service at a rate faster than a population's ability to consume it, then you can produce an abundance. This is what was achieved before the Great Depression, and why the value of things crashed: they became like air, too cheap to sell and therefor run a business on. Thus scarcity economics failed and a new form of distribution is required.

This is the whole buisness with technologists. You believe that at some date, before the Great Depression, someone magically created a situation where mankind would be able to consume as much as it is humanly possible to consume, in other words the magic couldran of abundance was finally discovered at the end of the rainbow.

That is not true, before the Great Depression, humanity was producing at MAXIMUM CAPACITY. Consuming vast quantities of raw materials, which were only available beacause of the increasing network of infrastructure, opened up resources that had not yet been tapped.

If humanity at any era had worked to maximum capacity, then they would have got an abundance of resources too great for them to consume, however to be honest most people in all eras have had this or that festival to celebrate, so they quite wisely didn't ever work at that capacity.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Now things were run in order to maximise profit for people whose workload didn't change a great deal as a result, indeed quite the reverse. Capitalists.

In order to maximise profit, new techniques were developed to increase efficiancy and people had to work long and regular hours (unlike the peasants of most of history with this or that holy day).

What happened is the more people worked, the less they consumed and things were getting more efficiant. Before very long, the Capitalists (who were a small minority) were unable to consume most of the resources for mass-consumption which were bieng made, nor were the people that were working hard to make them.

The reason for this, was economic competion. As prices fell, they produced more, the reason they produced more is that their profits were falling, until the whole system went on a spiral down to destruction.

Of course not, but remember that since we do have the ability to produce an abundance, our scarcity is artificial. It was meant to be this way in order to drive up the value and therefor price of goods so that people could get paid again. The Price System and abundance are mutually incompatible, one of them has to go. We chose to get rid of abundance by destroying it. Read up on the 1930s. They burned crops, slaughtered livestock, destroyed goods, poured oil over oranges, etc. People still alive that remember that era will tell you the same thing (I know several in fact).

We have the capacity to produce an abundance and there is nothing new about this. It was just that capitalism broke the link in the minds of the people making the decisions, between a high production and a large amount of work.

Ultimately the solution is to cut the amount people work by placing the economy in the hands of co-operative producers who exist in a completely open system to fix prices for their products. People naturally want to work less and the fixing of prices removes the reducing prices which stimulate increasing production (and work).

All in all people have two competing demands, they want to work little and get a lot of wealth for doing little. Allow them to fix prices AND ensure the people fixing the prices are the producers, and you solve the problem.

quote]
This was only true in the past. Now with self-powered machines, each person can do the work of many, and it has been increasing exponentially since the mid-1800s. The Price System has had to come up with many ways of both slowing this down, and getting around the extra ability to produce. This is most commonly done with waste. By increasing waste, you throw away productive capacity while keeping actual useful goods and services low, i.e. scarce. One (of many) ways of doing this is planned obsolesence. If you produce a product that lasts 100 years, you probably won't stay in business very long. Produce one that lasts only a single year, and people will have to keep coming back to you every year, guaranteeing your income and business.

Mankind has always used tools to reduce the amount of work they need to do. The difference is that the focus of technology changes from doing as little work as possible, to producing as much as possible due to capitalism.

Your example of planned obselescance, is a typical example of how abundance creates waste. For most of human history anyone trying such a wasteful system, would find themselves working themselves to death. Thus quality was everything, making something that would last 100 years, was a good idea since it meant less work making replacements.

This is a direct result of a combination of capitalism (which seeks the highest possible output) and the machines you mention, allowing that output to reach abundance.

In order to "solve" the problem, one has to create a co-operative system, where people will obviously work as little as possible (beacause they are the one's producing), and remove competion through price-fixing.

Not quite. Again, you're looking to the Price System for examples of how Technocracy would work. The environmental damage you mention is due to the waste I had just mentioned, as well as the fact that Price Systems require exponential growth in order to survive. Thus, since human beings can only consume so much, you have to find ways to get them to "buy" more. This comes with producing junk items, overpackaging, inefficient production practices, planned obsolesence, etc. etc. It's like getting people to buy water from France because it is somehow 'better' than local water, or designer clothes, or anything else that is purposely limited in production in order to raise their value and therefore price. It's the Price System that's wasting the planet, but this needn't be so.

Technocracy is a classic command economy, pulling something like this off would be so expensive that the system would collapse under the weight of it's own buerocrats, expecially on the kind of scale that it needs for "self-sufficiancy".

The waste is a result of the abundance created by machines+capitalism. The trick is to remove capitalism. Since people are lazy and producers no longer compete very much, this should ensure people not only do not waste the enviroment or create economic crisis through overproduction, but also do not work long hours.

Again, limited does not mean scarce. We can easily produce energy (solar, nuclear, whatever) at a rate faster than people can consume (even with properly run automation), and not faster than our ability to gain more, and thus not have to worry about "running out".

Nuclear energy is finate, uranium would run out pretty fast if everyone in the world used nuclear power exclusively, not to mention the nuclear waste and the 'accidents'.

Automating everything, would increase energy demands even more.

Solar and Wind power are more or less unlimited, if one is willing to cover the entire planet with them I guess.

The sheer energy demands for automising everything that humans presently work at, would probably be beyond the capacity of this system.

You misunderstand. Allow me to be more clear: Abundance encourages waste when one continues to use a scarcity-based economic system. I'm referring to two different things here: the technological abundance, i.e the "physical reality" of the situation, and the methods used to deal with that abundance, in this case one based on a scarcity model. This situation is called "artificial scarcity". It's what happens when something that is abundant, like air, is suddenly restricted even though it need not be, like putting a person in a bank vault. Or, for a more real-world example, taking something we can easily produce more than enough of, like say food, and limiting the supply just to raise prices. Did you know that this is why the government subsidizes farmers? Because we are capable of producing so much food that if we did produce enough to feed everyone, then the price of food would be to low for farmers to stay in "business". If they produce less, then they don't get enough money either. Thus the government has to "take up the slack", letting them produce only a small amount so that prices remain high. I'm sure that this is aggravated by profit motive as well, but it was one of the ways we destroyed abundance in response to the Depression.

No, it is not caused by abundance, it is beacause of abundance that there is waste. In your technate people demands would still increase to the point that your technate couldn't cope, vast waste would set up.

In a rational world, the farmers (or the goverment) would agree on a set price for food which they will *all* trade at,
removing the economic free market that drives overproduction.

Once farmers no longer have to produce as much, they can work less, or change the use of their land to something else. This has the positive effect of not only making their lives more pleasant, but protecting the enviroment.

Indeed, they could cut their fertiliser costs by leaving land fallow to regain their fertility. Which has enviromental benefits also.

The problem is that people worship the free market and they consider wasteful and excessive consumption to be a sign of success, beacause obviously consumers like lots of cheap goods AND the big companies like it also beacause it ensures that ultimately they corner the market.

This would only be true if "abundance" meant "the massively increasing inefficiency and waste produced by the capacity to produce more than enough when using artificial scarcity measures." Again, it is what we have today, but not what would be in the Technate. With all artifacts of scarcity removed, you can then make everything very efficient, and thus eliminate waste. You can see some of the ways to do this in this article. One example is Load Factor. If you take all the factories producing at only 33% (normal 8 hour work day), and make them produce at 100% (24 hours a day), you would need only one third of the factories in order to produce the same amount as before. Thus, you have saved 66% in what can only be called waste. And this is only a small example. There are hundreds of them (a few in that article), some saving up to 99%+ waste! There are just so many ways in which we can produce an abundant standard of living for people by ditching scarcity methods that it becomes scary that we do not! But you have to do more reading on Technocracy to see many of them (assuming you don't know how to find them on your own). When you do, you can start to see the waste everywhere. It's terrible!

The factories work at maximum capacity, if they do not they will go bust, and beacause they do this they go bust, all except the most productive who obviously work at maximum capacity. And so it goes on.

Getting all the factories to work at lower production, is what needs to be done. Or getting all the people together into fewer factories maybe.

[Lux]

It is not about production. It is about capacity. But I'll agree that the technate has partially, in a distorted form, been realised through the post-war welfare states. Consumerism is about creating more demand than necessary, and there are several branches where we could cut production very much, thus freeing more resources.

It is about our planet.

[skip sievert]

But, is it Technocracy ? NO.
These two are bundled together and misrepresent basic Technocracy concepts/ideas. They support one another in that disinformation aspect. -------------------------------------------------------------New Logo, same disinformation. Webmaster of Technocracy.Ca. A disinformation site. technocracynet.eu Subject: A letter To: Justin Alick, You are now firmly in the hands of a few ignoramus's. Kolzene`s little rant was pure disinformation. I have never said anything about Police Tactics in a Technate. --- I have never called for a banning of religion. Not once. If he read my book, he did not understand it. I defend religion while making fun of it, and I go further back than Judea/Christian stuff. - His ignominious comments, are maybe a little comic. Again you are dealing with someone that does not know much, that is acting like a cog for the Price System as is NET. Technocracy would have no value as far as human freedom and liberty under a so called 'democratic approach' as the Euro`s and Techca envision. The original material does not allow for control by special interests of Political, or belief system groups, (democracy). -As said that is a dead site, their core members reforming as Net, a game site. Network of European Technocrats. They are much like Technocracy Mage the Ascension gaming site. - They have no idea what they are doing. Just Jingoistic stuff about control freak issues. They seem to think they can improve the design ideas. Rather funny considering what they are debating, as a group they are no where near the peer level of the original thinkers, and their debates extend around controlling people issues. Not Technocracy issues at all. They have obviously given everyone who is serious about Technocracy a good laugh. They are NOT Technocrats. Moralizing and preaching. Not any Science there. Certainly not Technocracy ideas. Kolzene has called for building church`s in a Technate among other things. As Kolzene is a witch person or 'Wiccan' I guess that includes building Witch coven buildings also, since that is a 'church' as much as any church is. Good luck on that slippery slope. In case you have not heard witches think they can put spells on people to control them or manipulate them. NET ate all that up. Most of them endorse that concept, excepting Dr. Wallace Phd. who is a real doctor of something. He represents a little voice of reason except for his pseudo/proto Technate ideas, which are beyond naive. NET will dead end itself in egoistic strife about controlling people. Any questions ? They do not seem to have any. They quote also the T.T.C.D. Faq`s material over and over on their new site, and that material is no longer officially sanctioned material, as it is spin off, rewrite stuff from the mid 1970`s, and more recently Kolzene rewritten bad material. -Technocracy is different in that Special Interests of Belief or Politics, were not put into the design. Special Interests deprive fellow citizens of their rights, liberty, and share of resources. - I defend peoples right to believe as they wish. El.Diablo. or Mansel Ismay, who lists his 'occupation' as a 'psychologist', on his TechCa. introduction, apparently took Kolzene material hook, line and sinker and all the Euros follow Kolzene.- The Euros, 'leader' was 'educated' by Kolzene with the phony material of the Ttcd, Faq`s. Almost all the Euros were. - As far as Kolzenes defense of the Ttcd, F.A.Q.`s material , that 'crap' has been around since the mid-seventy`s when it was written by a disinformation branch of Yechno-crats from Canada and some others including a Scientologist. There was a scramble to gain control of the organization when Howard Scott died, and that is when Technocracy lost its integrity. It was all over by 1975, and has been downhill since, until recently, when it was decided to regain the organization.---- If Howard Scott were alive today he would make short work of people trashing Technocracy ideas. Since he is not, we will. Read the beginning of this site Justin if you are interested in Technocracy Technocracy - The Design of the North American Technate. or go to the file site where you can get a free copy of the original Study Course Beyond The Cloak Of Deception | About there, or here for file copy`s -- Google Base: Technocracy Study Course. original.-- Also, Beyond the Cloak of Deception -Book- Skip Sievert. Ok. anyway , I don`t care what you think. ---Do as you please. From what I have seen you write, I am not impressed anyway. Your Political incarnation of a Technate puts you into the social engineer zone in a negative way, and Kolzene and NET are all about manipulation and social control/engineering. You can dither away with them. If you want to understand Technocracy read the Study Course. -We are making a flow chart currently of different projects. We could use your help if you get your act together. You are hanging with the wrong (read , ignorant ) egoistic crowd in the meantime. ---- The little fight and debate are over. That which ceases to function ceases to exist, and Kolzene and crew, and the Euros are dead ended with Price System thinking. That my friend is not Technocracy, but belief system Cog behavior.

[Metal Gear]

Though Scarcity cannot be "wished away," we could be doing better than we are. There are always new ways to improve the situation. The grass will always seem greener on the other side, but that doesn't mean that one side is not better than the other.

[fanfarecircuit]

this was a fascinating thread, but i'm left wondering about skip's post... i thought kolzene did a good job describing basic principles of technocracy, but skip seems to think he's just a hack. what a weird post he wrote... almost paranoid.

i'm new to technocracy and don't want to fall into any traps when learning about the system, but i can't for the life of me figure out where kolzene is going wrong. skip's post seemed almost completely irrelevent. i can't find any "moralizing and preaching"... no reference at all to religion or anything un-scientific. am i missing something?

[Socinus]