Technocracy

If you research the countries of the world who are called dictatorships by foreign policy analysts, they are called such because they are ideological regimes where a state ideology determines the actions and policies put forth by a government. This creates a society we would consider undemocratic, but this puts more pressure on the state to perform well even if it is just to prevent dissent. It must be noted though that true tyranny can exist under systems legitimized in both ways. South Vietnam was a brutal dictatorship and a colonial puppet of the US regime, and they were put into power by the US and considered the democratic alternative for Vietnamese people. Look at India, where people unable to vote are treated like garbage by politicians, and where the caste system especially shows how brutal elections can be. It can be argued that in America or the western world everyone has an equal say, but there are various reasons this is not true including but not limited to money, influence, marginalization, lack of political knowledge, misinformation, organization of the system, lack of party representation or even a complete lack of political representation as we see with third parties in the US.

In societies where political systems gain legitimacy through elections as we see in America, Western Europe, or elsewhere we see wealthy businessmen hijacking politics to serve their interests a majority of the time, and this is because they can give a candidate resources to put them in charge and have them win elections. You also cannot get any straight answers from your elected representatives because they want to keep themselves as ambiguous as possible to gain the most votes since they gain their power from votes and not real success or ideas.

I am going to be bold and say that the American experiment of democracy especially has proven disastrous for humanity, with their government participating in some of the worst forms of open corruption and imperialism the world has ever seen. The influence of capital has created a system where politicians serve the interest of capital almost exclusively and where voting in every election does not grant the people any real control of what happens in the country politically.

Living my entire life under such a government, I see no value in democracy and would prefer to live in a society where technocracy is a state ideology, and where we are given policy explanations and political theory by the party. A strong single-party state with no elections may not be popular for the perception it gives about limiting personal participation in politics, but it has historically been shown to be the most resilient to outside influences such as corruption by the bourgeois class and it must react well to challenges that arise because another party cannot be scapegoated for the current situation in an attempt to get votes and stay in power.

An urbanate is the technocrat replacement for a city. An urbanate is a living environment where homes, amenities, and necessities would be within walking distance or a very short and comfortable commute away from the homes of its residents. Since a technocracy would be working towards environmental friendliness, access to facilities and living standards of citizens, an urbanate may even resemble some large hotels, cruise ships or amusement parks with gyms, hospitals, eco-units, grocery stores or even places such as theaters or pools accessible through a series of hallways or transit systems such as railways that require a fraction of the power necessary for cars and cause a hundredth of the environmental pollution.

While an Urbanate does not necessarily need to be completely indoors and some may be created with outdoor walkways and gardens where the climate is favorable, the creation of indoor urbanates would greatly increase the ease and desirability of living in the northern regions of the world, where the cold weather is extreme and can even be an existential threat. With the climate changing for the worse due to the destruction of the environment, this may even be desirable for the warmer regions of the world or even necessary in the coming decades.

An urbanate would be designed to be as resistant to natural disasters as possible. While we could technically build a large black cube or long rectangle city like a proposed Saudi mega project that is never going to be built, we must consider the aesthetic value and the desire of people to live in the urbanate environment. While a large metal or stone cube containing an urbanate would likely resist disasters well, there must be a certain degree of liveability that does not compromise its resilience against natural disasters, especially because there would be a large amount of people living in such a compact space. Perhaps even vault-like units built into the sides of mountains or cliffs could help to grant extra security to the urbanate during a storm or extreme weather events.

Despite even the best designs, a direct hit from a tornado may be a lot for any kind of man made building. An efficient urbanate could be rebuilt from the portions still standing and a technocracy would be able to assign the displaced citizenry accommodations and they could simply use their energy credits to replace whatever they lost. If all else fails, then the transportation systems between the urbanates should be designed to facilitate mass evacuations of urbanates. While this may seem like a grand task, it should be more rewarding and efficient in many ways than the maintenance and creation of the road systems we already have which are less efficient and cause even more problems than the automobile-based systems currently used around the world. With the increased efficiency that a technocracy would give society, this task will likely not seem as unfathomable to us as it does now.

We already have the architectural and logistic technologies to create urbanates, but the reason we do not see them happening is mostly economic. Billionaires are proposing to build new cities in land they own which are supposed to solve issues cities have, but without applying technocratic principles and even basing their city on capitalistic ones, this city would inherit a lot of the same issues that currently exist in cities, with land ownership preventing any authority from organizing it efficiently as a technate would. All across the US everything is so far apart because every person owns their own plot of land, and the road needs to connect them. The technate makes ownership of land obsolete, so they can instead create the urbanate in the way which benefits the largest number of people and expand or remodel it as necessary to keep up with demands of population, nightlife, amenities, healthcare, education, childcare, or anything else that the technate provides.

Rather than abolish the use of currency or have a ration-based economy that we see in Cuba and societies based off of Marxist-Leninist economic plans, Technocracy is based on a system called energy accounting. This system is based on thermodynamic interpretations of economics and the idea that all human economic activity requires energy. The currency of a technocratic society would not be money as we currently know it today, and would be a form of credit that represents the energy cost to create an item and available resources. Every citizen would be given energy credits and could then use energy credits to purchase what they want, and this would make the economy sustainable.

Because energy credits can be designed to expire and only a set number of them would exist within a given timeframe, this would safeguard against wealth inequality or abuse of wealth in ways we see in the modern world such as bribery of politicians, hoarding of wealth, or entire populations being deprived of resources in favor of a small elite. It would also remove poverty from anyone in the system, because energy credits would be given as a universal income similar to a UBI.

With profit and most of our typical economic incentives removed from the system, energy credits could be used by the vast majority of people to obtain their needs. Implementation of energy credits also makes the issue of private property irrelevant, because without money to be gained or lost, the technocracy can simply allow the means of production such as factories or markets to give the people their necessities. With money gone, the technocracy could distribute resources such as homes more efficiently, since landlordism and home ownership become redundant without a financial basis on which to benefit from them. Even the war machine we have in America now is purposeless without profits for the ruling class that uses news to push for war and foreign interventions across the world.

It should be noted however that the use of the word “Currency” for energy credits under a technocracy is a tricky one because of the nuances that come with the idea of currency and money. A good technocracy would put various rules and regulations on energy credits to prevent them from being exploited for the unfair personal gain of a single person or in ways that harm the technocracy, its citizens, or the environment.

It should also be noted that the transition from current systems of money to energy credits would solve a large amount of issues, there will always be a few opportunists who seek to abuse any system and profit off of the expense of others. Without safeguards, a person could possibly be extorted or blackmailed for their energy credits or somehow coerced for them the same way that they could be for money. A person could also attempt to fraudulently gain energy credits or counterfeit them in some way. These issues do not necessarily disprove energy credits or are even unique to energy credits (As these same issues apply to the money we use now) they are things that a technocracy would likely end up dealing with at some point. A good technocracy would have a department to watch for abusive behavior and be two steps ahead of any person who tries to abuse such a system.\

Marxism is the third highest stage of development, after nationalism that most countries exist in now and with religion-based societies and tribes being the lowest tier of human development. Marxism is based in class struggle and most issues will be seen as issues of class, where the person will consider one option potentially benefiting one class and another option benefiting the greater society and the masses. Even if we are looking at an issue that seems relatively esoteric or awkward in relation to class struggle, it can somehow usually be related even distantly. An example is how the rise of flat earthers could be linked to a failing society and a public education system which has declined in quality due to political agendas that serve the ruling class. The existence of a bourgeois class is traditionally tied to capital ownership such as factories or any business profiting off of employees which is why many Marxists would want them owned by the state or a privately owned entity as much as they possibly can.

If you are a left technocrat like me and believe in the ideology of class struggle, there are two possible ways to incorporate it into technocracy. The first is to seek a society where the means of production are owned by the community through the technocrat party or some other publicly controlled entity that exists outside of private control.The other way would be strict ideological vetting of a technocrat party to ensure they will not act in the interests of the bourgeois class for whatever reason or take a big tent approach that will sometimes throw concessions to the wealthy.

It is very important for a technocracy to have safeguards against corruption and hijacking by wealthy elites, because they will engage in class struggle on behalf of their class every chance they get. Such a situation where the wealthiest of society take over a technocratic state would be a scenario out of dystopian science fiction. Comparable to how socialism is so fixated on defending itself from corruption by capital and money in politics, Technocracy would cease to exist as soon as money changed the motives and motivations of a majority of those in power. Of course, a single member taking a bribe and cherry picking experts from Trump university to justify a decision would be remedied by purging them from the party. However, large scale infiltration and corruption is always a potential threat.

A very special benefit of a technocratic government is that by doing what is scientific and logical in regards to economics and that would benefit the largest number of people, is that the existence of such wealth inequality are unlikely to reach the same proportions that they do under liberalism. There are of course neoliberal economists who will argue that privately owned corporations should have unlimited power and be free to ignore worker’s rights, but a good technocrat party will see why this is not scientific, logical, or beneficial to the largest number of people, aside from the obvious ulterior motive thinly hidden in such a statement. This power that technocracy has to analyze and make experts with data and concrete facts makes a technocracy especially difficult for the bourgeoisie or other malicious to manipulate without direct bribery or sabotage. Misinformation campaigns, propaganda and even radicalization towards extremist ideologies to the population of a country would not affect the technocratic party or their way of governing since they would still follow experts and not need input from the population or even elections. In regards to class struggle, this inability to manipulate public opinion against the technocracy helps put a muzzle on the bourgeoisie and other enemies of the working class such as violent hate groups or the clandestine agitators since they all tend to use similar methods of that a technocracy is well-equipped to defend itself against.