If Technocracy had been taken up

Anaxagoras

Banned
For all the oh wouldn't it be great if we just let the experts be in charge of everything it has the inherent potential, some would say susceptibility, of falling into authoritarianism.

It would fall into authoritarianism.

It would already be authoritarianism.
 
Wouldn't Mexico and Canada be given a vote to consider at least Technocracy? Could North America invoke a partial Technate without them?

Could? Sure. Would? I doubt it.

Well - 4 day working week - living on a consumption of 2-3k USD a day - sounds alright?

There's no way to know if that can actually be achieved without making the experiment - but I am personally extremely skeptical. It's really easy to make promises about how well your system of governance will work when you don't actually have power. Watch, I'll do it right now: if you institute a xenocracy led by the Zeta Reticulans, who deliver their commands to me via psychic transmission, their advanced technology will mean no one will have to work, we will all live forever, and every morning a free hot fudge sundae will be delivered to you in bed by your own personal robot! There is only slightly more reason to believe that the technocrats could deliver on their promises as there is to believe that the Zeta Reticulans could deliver on theirs.
 
:) what I mean is -- coming back down to earth - and the idea philosophically about what it means to be human - infinite desire, limited resources -- could Jack's estimate be valid? Could we live in an abundance of spending 2-3k USD each -- but also would or could the pendulum swing the other way - where we are limited to an impoverished state. Some argue -- if you have an energy credit allowance and then - you don't have enough you can't get more until the next allocation - then in some ways it would be illegal to borrow off another - cause in a way that would be fraud - and there would be all sorts of rules right regulated by the Energy Credit police. A lot of people get a glorified notion of this utopia like state -- but then some are really fearful because its giving away a lot of power to untested systems. Also the systems we know of that did do away with money failed, big time.
 
infinite desire, limited resources

As I've already posted, there's no actual evidence to support this claim.

To reiterate:

More likely, human desire is instead very large - each human only has a few cupfuls of grey matter to imagine things to desire and that grey matter can only work so quickly. It has been proven that the level of desire where people are happiest has been proven to be quite moderate - in the UK of 2000, it was around £15,000/year worth of consumption, which was below the GDP/capita of the UK at the moment. (It appears that desire is stressful, so at some point the gains of fulfilling more desires is LESS than the stress caused by seeking that fulfillment.)

This is one of those daft ideas that was just plucked out of the air by people 300 years ago and that has hung around like a bad smell since.

Could we live in an abundance of spending 2-3k USD each

According to here, $100 in 1939 is $1,762.27. That's the daily resource allocation. 1,762.27*365=643,228.55

$643,228.55 per year would comfortably put you or I in the top 1% of earners in the US today. It is, bluntly, steenkin' rich.

Of course, people would be less able to accumulate wealth, since you couldn't spend your resource allocation on buying the means of production, so $643,228.55 per year worth of energy credits wouldn't exactly be like having this sort of income in today's America is. If Technocracy was implemented "by the book" there'd be no savings and no investments. It would be enough to cover most any medical emergency or reasonable requirement for education, services or physical goods a family might have just out of the basic stipend for one person.

Personally, I think a smaller stipend of energy credits combined with some sort of retail banking and insurance industry would be healthier.

but then some are really fearful because its giving away a lot of power to untested systems.

Burkean conservatism (which can be summed up as: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by getting too radical too fast) has a few saltmines worth of grains of truth in it.

fasquardon
 
"Burkean conservatism"
^ yeah but I suppose its the entire North American continent or not

"I think a smaller stipend of energy credits combined with some sort of retail banking and insurance industry would be healthier"
^ yeah but its based on the current calculation of next month's energy quota - how much energy they could generate next month - then it gets divided up.
 
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