Here is a movie I urge you all to see. It is about how the food production in our world works.

We feed the world

I have watched the movie just earlier...

It is very interesting, how, at least from a "foodstuff" point of view, the economy today is still based upon scarcity, while it is no longer the case... In the movie it was said that with the World agriculture today, 12 billion people could be fed... Still, 850 million still hunger... I believe that the means to build a Technocratic society are out there... It's just that the way they are used (un-ecological and monopolizing) and the purposes for which they are used (profit) are wrong - but the means are out there...

The whole system of bringing goods from one place to another, is crazy - wasting fuel and by destroying the production of the particular place where the goods are being brought to... That is inefficient... Of course, it is efficient from a present economy point of view, because if it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be found in practice...

The region of Romania quoted as an example is only 15-20 km from where I live, but it's the same all over the country, exception maybe being the Western part, but the differences are not that great... From a Technocrat's point of view it might not be efficient (1) and "politically correct" (2) to have people working in the field and using horse powered carts, but I believe one should see the potential of the country - over here you can still find people selling their products locally, at the traditional market, and the idea of local production still exists although for how long, I am not sure, considering the Government's and Corporations' plans to bring it down... I don't want to sound nationalistic or anything like that, but I believe that Romania is a very good place for starting a Proto-Technate... The land is still relatively cheap around here, there is enough water, the lands are great for agricultural purposes, without much industrialization needed, there are enough other natural resources, the climate is good - everything just perfect for self-sustainable communities... The only thing we are missing is people and ideas...

Farmers always compains and are in the way of progress.
They should make tea instead or use it for bio-fuel.
For example suggar is a poison that are in everything nowdays because there is to much suggar
and EU wants to keep this important industry alive.
So everything becomes sweet but we could use the suggar for biol fuel.

It's just bad organisation and you read to much into it.
Scarcity is greated by inefficiency, conformism and worsth case scenarios of centralization
where the distant goverments only dream of reality and make wimsical plans.

Space Monkey wrote:


Well is it not more efficient than all the territories producing their own goods
that are more than they need so their productivity is wasted?

Actually it's more sound if one territory used it's entire productivity on one goods
and supply all the other territories with it so it gets to use it's entire industrial muscle
then the local production need to switch to something else or just get things for free and their state should pay for it.

The best would be if there where only one of each industry or as small agricultury as possible
for the entire world for each goods.
What Technate would need is are mass production of small parts for machines and therefore
as few of the same and as many different industries are better.
Thechnology itself will be enought to revitalise the industry and the economy
because it is it's own endless demand and supply.

Of course conservative workers doesn't want to switch jobs and they don't want to leave their homes but that is less important.

Competition and flexibility must relocated within each single industry/farm lands
so the workers doesn't have to move.
If "no single one" would own such super concentrated facilities then theire would be no monopol in it and would be flexible and subject to many ideas of the people working there.

In my mind the workers should be formed into something that would be seen as the equivalents of a plurality of companies competing for the best inventions, profit(or whatever self-gain there is) and thus efficience.

In a technate as you have described it I get the vague idea that since the machines do most of the work; well then all "the workers" are really the same as the "board of directors/the capitalists".
Why would people need multiple similar facilties to compare and compete if one automatized facility easy could provide rooms for multiple developement teams with little else to do.
Progress would probably be faster if they just compare result at once in the same building.
As for self-gain/profit of those "creative teams" I think it's needed even if no one owns the facility itself and even if the facility is service acting on the demands/consideration of the civilians what you shoul call them since everyone are civilians.
This profit/reward should be granted by the democracy with energy credits both as valuta and as votes which means that valuta should be granted not only as sallary but
as a reward for cooperating with the majority's decisions.
How could anyone gain valuta in such a society and not deserve it?
I think we should not see egoism as something that betrays society but
as what holds it together.
Valua as democracy, demands citizen sally.

So citizen sallary..is thus the first step to make the agriculture more efficient.

Of course I don't know what Technocracy truly means. I just try to think about it.

> Farmers always compains and are in the way of progress.

My experience of farmers is they are usually dragged along by governments, with many upset about how things are and what they are forced to do to make a living.

Eg. I used to get free milk because it was cheaper for the farmer to give away milk than to pay for it to be thrown away because he over produced on his quota. There was no free market for him, he was allowed a certain number of cows, and to meet his quota had to inject them.

And what do we get for us mass produced milk.. ?

A monopoly by the mayor supermarkets who charge us £1.44p for 2 litres, when the wholesale price is 92p. (my local shop charges me 95p..)

Due to the EEC fiddling with farming practices, as I understand it, food is 3 times more expensive than it would be in a totally free market.

As such, I reckon a technocratic approach would see the cost of food production fall, the need for injections to boost milk production removed and a more organic approach taken, so a win win for everyone. (Apart from those who used to make a fat profit from it all..)

In the UK we even have silly things such as paying farmers not to farm!

Farmers do not get in the way of progress... It's the fact that they are forced to follow the rules that favor another part other then themselves is what upsets them... Each and every farmer would like to have better means to facilitate progress, but they are kept away from those means...



I do not think that every Urbanate should have its own massive airplane assembly factory, for example... We're mostly talking about production of food, energy production, and other small goods that one community needs to run properly... There chances for over-productivity are smaller when the amount of data processed, in order to figure out the demand, and how the numbers are put to practice are managed on a small scale... This where big time governments fail - they believe that they can administrate better from the top, with all data at once rather than each part managing itself independent from the center, which might or might not really have a good grasp on what the needs of a particular region are... Plus that it is far more efficient to grow the products as close to the consumer base as possible... Transport is unnecessary as it is inefficient -a waste of fuel/energy...

Localization of production in a particular territory would only lead to monopoly, in the end... As there would be no competition, between territories/urbanates/etc, there would be no need for increases of production, so the chances for over-production are reduced...



Eliminating/replacing competition would be a vary hard task... It is a basic animalistic instinct and it has flourished in the recent era, with the expansion of the Western Capitalized ideals... I really don't know what top make out of it... I believe that competition between individuals raises efficiency... But it also creates conflict... I guess it could be put to good use, it's just that I don't really see how...

I believe that Romania is a good place as well, and that we should try to build 5 communities simultaneously in three or four different countries.

The main problem might be the lack of interest coming from people... From what I have observed, here technocracy is misunderstood as a bad thing, because of the old Communist regime who wanted to implement "technocratic" ways of management, by assigning more specialists, who turned out to be a bunch no-goods, most of the time... But the region is great, I believe for a technocratic commune...

I'll try to expand the technocratic ideas as much as I can, however, I only found one person that might be interested in Technocracy...

Our communes would not only be composed of local people.

As for recruitment in Romania, connect the issue to sustainability.

Is there much written about the Communists attempt with the technocratic approach, that we might learn from their mistakes ?

Nanos wrote:


The communists never attempted technocracy in the sense we are speaking of, and were probably not even aware of technocratic theories or the technocratic movement. I know that the syndicalists in Hungary were interested in technocracy during the 1930;s but that is all.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_%28bureaucratic%29

There wasn't real "technocracy" involved in what the Romanian Communists tried to do... Our former leader Nicolae Ceausescu used to use this term as he proposed that the management of resources would be done by specialists - that is the only approach they did to Technocracy... Why did they failed - the actual specialists were no-goods - diplomas of engineering and science were handed out to everybody who wanted to finish a University, and so a lot of people ended up "specialists" without deserving their title - it was more about the number of "specialists" in the statistics, rather than what those people actually did... The second mistake was that they were used as mere puppets, even if some of the were qualified for the job - they would receive orders from the top, regardless of the weather those decisions were scientific or logic, at least, and coming from a man whose profession was a boot-maker - Ceausescu - you can't expect a lot of results... Even with a lot of real specialists around, you can't expect a lot of results, when they are not let to do their job by giving them independence of how to act...

Completely classical example of bad management.

When the Romanian wikipedia article is written, I think we will have a better base.

Space Monkey wrote:


I agree on all that, decentralisation is better for emphiristic pragmaticism.
But a coalition system where each specialised region decide who to trade with would not be a centalised beurocracy.
You eliminate the over-productivity but you don't use your fully use the potential productivity.
There are no "small needs".

Transports depend on fuel, but collective trafic and a efficient intfastructure change that.
If all transports go by train it would cost less.
Private cars should be for emergency, roads just cost to much to maintain compare to railroads and sea.


My favorite topic roads and trafic.
In short, we need a super-infrastructure for a super-society.

I'm a big fan of infrastructure.

Talking of which, I wonder if airships will make a comeback, and also see them being thought of for space travel;

www.jpaerospace.com