General Specifications

Before we begin some general definitions must be provided to give us clearer understanding of what goals this model aims to achieve. The concept of a Prototechnate (Wallace, 2007) being used in the upcoming paragraphs refers to a distribution and service area which operates accoring to technocratic principles. Among these are generally considered the use of Energy Credits (instead of money), sustainable development (opposed to perpetual growth), production according to demand (not accoring to profit) and so on. (Technocracy Incorporated, 2005)

Traditional technocrats claim that because we use machines and energetically rich natural sources (e.g. wood, coal, oil, gas, uranium) we have achieved a level of technological development that allows us a complete transformation of our social mechanism. They have set three prerequisites (Various authors, 2004) – if on a given geographical area there is:

• Enough potential in natural resources available for use,
• High technology that allows a transformation of resources into end products,
• Enough skilled workers who can operate said technological infrastructure

then a state of abundance can be achieved (Technocracy Incorporated, 2005). In other words, production capacity would reach such a level that all consumer needs and desires could be met. Technocrats claim that even though human desires may sometimes be infinite the ability to satisfy these needs through the use of products and services in a 24-hour day is finite. Later on we shall see why these three assumptions are important to us in our implementation model.

Organisational Determinats

The implementation technique used in this model can be considered a bottom-up approach as the main actors are organisations – also refered to in other technocratic literature as holons (Wallace, 2006) – which form a collaborative network with specific goals and characteristics. The organisations must be NPO's specialised in either production or services. As the organisation is non-profitable (but still makes profit) the only prerequisites applied are that the organisation and its resources are owned by everyone who work in the organisation and that the profits are not used for private matters, but rather for the fulfillment of this organisation's mission. Consequently, every member of this organisation owns exactly a percentage of the organisation and the wages that they receive reflect their working relationship with the organisation instead of their ownership over it. Even though they are owners of even shares of the organisation they cannot give or sell their part to anyone. The reasons for these rules count towards reducing the chances for exploitation and lighter transition to a full technate in which the purchasing power of all individuals varies much less than today (DevEcon06). The organisation itself and its members also benefit from such a system as there are more resources available for further investment into production and services as well as for higher wages.

Now we can sum up the important characteristics that these organisation hold which places them among membership cooperatives:

Network Functionality

So far we have explored the workings within individual building blocks of a technate, but in order to better understand this transitional model the interaction between single organisations has to be elucidated. For this purpose we will use the term 'network' which represents a technical, infomational and administrative entity that connects all organisations in the technate by providing them with universal operational principles and sufficient data regarding other organisations, consumers and the system as a whole.

While it would be possible (and sometimes even necessary) for organisations to acquire resources needed from outside the technate it will be shown that the network can provide a much more productive environment (which of course depends on many factors among which are also size and level of development of the technate itself).

The first benefit goes to the members of the organisations in the network as they can acquire at zero cost the products and services of all organisations in the network. Besides their regular wages they also have the aforementioned right as citizens of the technate, which they autoutomatically become by working for one of the member organisations. The second benefit applies for organisations which can acquire resources and energy from the network at no cost when producing for citizens of the technate.

This reduces their operational cost that would otherwise increse due to non-profitable production. It is made clear that the more resources and energy the technate has avaliable the better stability it can achieve and the less organisations have to concentrate on outside investment as well as dependance on the open market.