Yes.

Another important issue might be the issue of attached businesses, i.e businesses which are not doing so much real work (like advertising) which are earning us a steady revenue independent of the amount of members and real production that we have.

Enrique Lescure wrote:


Hmm. Never thought much about that. In some areas, like accounting which would be demanded by national laws and such there will be functions that the fully functional technate doesn't need. I'm not so sure about advertising though. Why would the proto-technate bother with such practices?

Because we are bothering with it today to try establish something to "suck the internet dry", as the Chinese faction in C&C Generals so eloquently put it. Besides, it could give us support of additional income which could speed up the process.

(finds himself in agreement with Enrique)

I have a different idea. Actually, that's sort of why I suddenly returned.

Why not for the technate like one would for a University? Think about it. Universities get funding for donor and the students who attend. The main difference i that instead of having students who only stay for four years, you have citizens with permanent residence. That could also be a good way to get early funding. A college education here in the U.S. could cost anywhere from $70,000 to $160,000. $150,000* seems like it would be a pretty good price for an education and permanent housing. Not only that, but the spirit of a university, being an educational establishment, more closely resembles that of a technate than a corporation.

*Of course, we would have to consider a few things. First, a large amount of money would be needed for the actual founding of the university/technate. Professors would need to be hired, buildings built, etc.

I have made a bit of a list.

Since the idea is to be at least somewhat economically independent for the start, we would need some things that a normal university would not.

Some things that we would need to find the cost of constructing:

residential buildings
educational facilities
power plants (wind, solar, coal or a combination)
various types of research laboratories
a gym
a recording studio
a fiber optic network
and electrical grid
a sewage system

There's more, but those are probably some of the things that will be needed early on.

Perhaps starting a charity and creating this university/technate in a poor country that needs it would be a good idea? The land and construction might be cheaper too.

I like that general approach, and pushing more in that direction would hopefully attract the right sort of people.

Perhaps specialise in areas such as physics, so one could cover such things as fusion, nanotechnology and optical computing.

I wonder what population size is needed for a minumn sized university, 10,000 ?

Looking at a university near me;

www.brunel.ac.uk/about/facts/people

Academic and Academic Related 1,063
Non-Academic 1,629

Student Numbers 11,430

That's the point. It's one of the biggest benefits of using this approach.




There are much smaller universities too. Some of the ones near me have as little as 2200 students. Of course, these have very hight student to faculty ratios. Small to medium-sized (about 8000 - 10,000) would probably be best for this though.

Post edited by: PBored, at: 2007/07/12 01:24

Would it be looking towards having students paying rather heavily for their courses ?

As such, that mainly means oversea students at a guess, as they have more money available.

At a guess, you'd have to charge an awful lot to cover your expenses, as such I tend to see a university as an expense, rather than an income generation approach.

But as a big part of a community, I could see it working from that aspect, though with a large number of oversea students, that wouldn't go down so well in many countries these days, plus again you would be helping the rich and priviliged, rather than the poor.

Enrique Lescure wrote:


Duh!

I was thinking along the line of advertising services and products, not the basic idea of Technocracy and its implications. (If I understood it correctly this time).

Well, there's one fairly simple solution to that problem I think, that advertising is actually more a question of education (or disinformation as the case might be), and education will be needed in a technate, so it's pretty much a basis of building up the educational sequence.

Initially, yes, but this would change once we begin turning a profit. You see, donations and fees are not the only income of the university-technate. One of the main aspects of education at the U-T will be to encourage active application of talents so that students (and professors) actually produce.

This is, however, a bit tricky. Since these students will likely be coming in from capitalist, price system societies, they might not be willing to let the U-T use their creativity to maintain itself. I'm hoping that giving students scholarships in exchange for the rights, in addition to the permanent housing and citizenship they already get by attending will convince them.

But, only if the some potential want-to-be Stalin doesn't preserve the price system and run the "technate" as his personal state-wide corporation. If the price system is preserved then what you have is essentially a corporation with the bosses being the government top officials.



You also would have to deal with powerful rich investors who would rather be managing their monopoly corporations as a personal fiefdom because it brings them so much benefits financially.



Not likely. I think any small scale experiment with technate forming would simply degenerate into a cult compound that is not really a self-sustaining system, but depends on the enclosing price system for material support.

Now if you're talking a technate global system it will be impossible for it to even have a chance to form without the collapse of the present price system. There are simply too many people, too many powerful interests with too much invested for the system to have anything like a mid-course correction in something as fundamental to the functioning of the price system as money.

Think of the fall of Rome. The gold currency as minted into the coinage of the empire slipped from pure gold to something less scarce gradually over time until when the collapse of the empire was close the coinage barely contained any gold at all. We should be witnessing something like this with the current devaluation of money which is inevitable with the decline of manufacturing and the rapid increase in speculative investments. Not that this is a bad thing as banking and price systems go hand in hand in destroying anything of real production value in the economy.

The danger is that another feudal age would emerge and another price system would take the place of the one that has declined and fell as witness in the medieval ages and the eventual rise of another banking and commercial system in the Renaissance which is ironically centered around the same place as it fell in the Italian peninsula.

The slim hope of something better taking the place of another price system emerging is the activism and education of the masses as to what is the nature of a price system and who would control them (another financial aristocracy) if another one should emerge and the proposal of energy accounting as an alternative to political control and horse trading which is what money is really about. This is the important thing that will need to be accomplished in the coming dark ages if history is not to repeat itself.

technatezin wrote:


Yes, which forms a good argument for forming a grass roots organisation. One formed from a network of educated (in technocracy) people and a skeletal organised proto-Technate. Although hat would not stop a dictator taking over it would make it harder.


technatezin wrote:


I think one of the ideas behind the proto-Technate is the demonstration of an alternative that could work, thus making it easier to transfer over to a Technate. Now, you say there are too many people with too many power interests to see that happen but what if we had a combined approach liking a proto-Technate, network of educated people, monopolies and a political side as well?

technatezin wrote:


Yes

technatezin wrote:


Yes and no (feels like this is becoming my standard phrase here...) Any small scale models with a pretence of being self-sufficient will probably go that route, I agree. However I think it is fully possible for small scale experiments with a well thought out method of expanding towards a fully functional technate is viable.

technatezin wrote:


Many (possibly most) companies don't really use a price system for production planning today. That is sort of tucked on at the end. An organization which internally doesn't use a price system and keeps expanding towards self-sufficience I think have a good chance of reaching that. It might not be global, but then again, that isn't really the goal. Once such a society is up and running (i.e. a fully functional technate) no matter how limited it is (as long as it is self-sufficient and can provide an abundance) there is an alternative.

Then the powerful interests with too much invested can play their game, but those who don't want to be a part of it doesn't have to.

technatezin wrote:


Then again, the fall of Rome, and the (hypothetical) collaps of the price system didn't/won't happen at 23.59 one day and at 00.00 the next another system took/will take its place. In fact I don't think that the price system as such will fall, since the ones with power in form of ownership surely will use that power to start new price systems when the current one begins to show serious signs of failing.

Unless there is an alternative people without that power will simply have to move into whatever new price systems that show up.

technatezin wrote:


The problem is that even if everyone got that understanding, the very same understanding means that those with power in form of ownership knows that they can use that power to keep it and expand it. Chances are that enough of them like that idea.

As much as I hate to admit it then our best "friends" are traditional Socialists and Communists. Some of them are idealistic. Most of these are the rank and file members, but people who join the leadership I'm not so sure about as they can be there for many different reasons including either misguided attempts at correcting a price system that is inherently flawed or intentional agitation and political manipulation for dictatorial powers.

I'm not very good at crowd manipulation as I get really impatient with illogical, over-emotional people, but you have to admit that people (sheeple) are like that otherwise political demagoguery wouldn't work and people would see politicians as the manipulative windbags that they are. The sad fact is that dry logic and reason doesn't work, but the passionate angry face smiley face and sad face does work. I doubt that this would really change that much, so the best strategy would be to present some tear-jerker, euphoric happiness advertising fluff for gaining the popularity of Technocracy on other boards.

Well, we are supposed to apply science to society so if any group should get there message across it should be us. Perhaps this is something for SeqRel and our resident psychologist to do? Come up with a plan to promote Technocracy and NET?