The Future We Deserve

 

Introduction

We have the world we have today because of the actions and inactions of people in the past. Similarly, the future will be the future it will be because of the actions and inactions of people today.

The world we live in today isn't really the world that I, and others, envisioned 30 - 50 years ago. It seems to me that our imagines of the future was much brighter than it turned out to be. This article is one of three that aims to look at what we have, what we could have, and how we could still achieve a better future.

A Future So Dark

There are many actors in the past and active today that are or have been pro-active in building, what I would consider, a dystopia. From religious fanatics to techno-fascists [tf]. And they have had success. Take religious fanatic groups such as the Taliban [tali] in Afghanistan, who came to power for the second time in 2021. Since then there has been a worsening situation for many Afghans. Human rights abuses are up. Religionous fanatics are not just limited to Afghanistan. They are pro-active from Iran to West Africa and onwards, including Europe and the US [xright, xtrump], where the religious right has been pro-active in implementing their idea of the future [2025].

But it is not just religious groups that are proactive in creating a dystopia. Dark enlightenment [dark] has appeared to have influenced American politics [darkp] with its dystopian, anti-egalitarian, “Snow Crash” [snow], vision of the future. Dark enlightenment can be seen as a type of fascism. And it appears, at least to me, that neo-fascism [neof] is on the rise with right wing popular parties gaining, or partly gained, power [rise] in many democracies such as in Sweden, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Finland, and France to name but a few. The Republican party under Trump, in the US, could be seen as having some anti-democratic and neo-fascists ideological elements [trumpf, soul].

Neo-liberalism could be seen as another ideology that is creating a dystopia. It could be argued that neo-liberalism has resulted in unsustainable damage to the environment and decrease in individual freedoms, and an increase in authoritarianism, exploitation, and inequality as it put profit above all else and making billionaires richer [scidir, scipsy, work, profit].

Techno-fascism [musknazi] is something that a number of influential individuals and organisations seem to promote such as Musk and J. D. Vance in the US [boar, kyle]. Some of the actions of the Trump government could be seen in terms of techno-fascism and Musk’s support of right wing parties would fit as well [afd].

A Future So Bright

On the other side, there are visions for a brighter “Star Trek” like future that people have been working on. We can start with the Technocracy movement [techn] in the US. This reached its peak in 1933 with people like Howard Scott, Thorstein Veblen, and Harold Loeb in the US and Peter Palchinsky in Europe. Of all the early technocracy organisations from that time, the only one to survive into the 21^st century is technocracy Inc. Technocracy envisioned a moneyless society of extreme equality. There are a number of offshoots of technocracy that offer a similar vision of the the future. One of the most well known is The Venus Project (TVP) [tvp]. TVP was started by Jacque Fresco, who was a former member of Technocracy Inc. TVP promotes a future, technological, moneyless society and a resource based economy.

Another technocratic organisation that actively works toward building a better future is the Earth Organisation for Sustainability (EOS) [eos]. Based in Sweden, EOS promotes a moneyless, sustainable, socioeconomic system based on the application of science to society where our needs are balanced with the needs of the planet.

Another vision of the future is the Millennial Project proposed by Marshall T. Savage, which is, today, represented by the Living Universe Foundation. The vision of the future sees humans expanding into the Universe, colonising planets. [luf]

Going the Wrong Way

It maybe a bit of a subjective opinion (and, perhaps, even a false dichotomy), but allow me anyway; given the choice we have between the dark future or the bright future, we appear to be choosing the dark future. At least, those who want to build a dark future, as it seems to me, are more proactive and more successful in their aims than those who wish to promote a brighter future. Why? What went wrong with the bright future that was envisioned in the 70s? In his video, “Why doesn’t 2025 feel like “the future”” [why], struthless puts forward three possibilities:

1. Extremists with political power and wealth that doesn’t promote or act in ways to benefit people as whole.

2. Negative media bias.

3. Unfettered capitalism.

Techno-fascism, pointed out earlier, would fit into point 1. When struthless mentions point 1, he also points out that the people who want to build a brighter future are also the sort of people that doesn’t want political power. This, I think, is another reason why. Technocracy Inc., for example, didn’t want politicians to become members. Politics is about people’s opinions and there manipulation where as people who want a brighter future are often focused on technical, practical solutions not people’s opinions. I think there is also a sense that politics will water down or distort the ideas.

The second point is about media’s tendency to sell the negative but are not interested in presenting solutions or ideas as that makes money (perhaps they don’t have solutions?), which leads into the third point.

The current socioeconomic system is all about making profit at whatever cost. Not about developing the best society for all or building a better future (if we get anything better then that is as a side effect not as a goal). I would argue that we are unlikely to get the bright future that we want within the current socioeconomic systems. We have to think of another system. The current system is too focused on profit making and is fundamentally unsustainable given its need for infinite growth with finite resources.

I would add another reason; in my experience, there was an expectation that the future was going to be as it was envisioned in the 70s without having to do anything to create it. It was inevitable, so we didn’t act. But others did and they build the future they wanted. So, we ended up with supermarkets instead of colonies on Mars. In the end we got the future we deserved through our own inaction. But I don’t think it is too late to build a better future. But what future? In the next article I aim to layout a vision for a brighter, sustainable, future, for all.

References

[tf] https://liberality.net/what-is-technofascism-part-one.html

[tali] https://www.nytimes.com/article/who-are-the-taliban.html

[xright] https://theconversation.com/the-christian-right-is-taking-over-america-according-to-talia-lavin-but-what-is-the-best-response-253232

[xtrump] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-energizes-conservative-christians-with-religious-policies-and-assaults-on-cultural-targets

[2025] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do

[musknazi] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfYjPzj1Xw

[snow] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

[neof] https://www.cadtm.org/The-Age-of-Neofascism-and-Its-Distinctive-Features

[trumpf] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/24/trump-fascism-what-to-do

[dark] https://time.com/7269166/dark-enlightenment-history-essay/

[rise] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66056375

[soul] https://peri.umass.edu/wp-content/uploads/joomla/images/publication/Palley-June-2021b.pdf

[tvp] https://www.thevenusproject.com/

[techn] https://technocracynow.com/about-technocracy

[eos] https://eosprojects.com/

[darkp] https://cascadeinstitute.org/dark-enlightenment/

[scidir] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352154620300905

[scipsy] https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12438

[work] https://www.workers.org/2023/01/68835/

[profit] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_over_People

[boar] https://theboar.org/2025/03/founders-funders-fuhrers-is-techno-fascism-on-the-rise/

[kyle] https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/the-history-of-techno-fascism

[afd] https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-why-elon-musk-is-promoting-the-far-right-afd/a-71186763

[luf] https://luf.org/

[why] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zZ3uWQyx5w

The Beginning ...

 

We have the potential to build something better ...

Introduction

 

President Trump

 

On the 5^th November 2024, the US electorate decided to vote Donald Trump to the highest office in the land. He is the first convicted felon to be elected president (imagine! If only Nixon had known!). He has been convicted in a US court of falsifying business records and of liable but did not serve a prison sentence. Instead, he ended up pardoning himself. He also pardoned several people involved in insurrection. Trump has also been accused of rape and is the first president to be impeached twice. He can be seen as anti-American and anti-West and pro-Russian [rus]. Since elected, he has used his presidential powers to make a number of controversial decisions such as ending DEI programmes, reevaluating foreign aid, and closing government databases. He has been supportive of Christian Nationalists [cn] (not that Christian Nationalists are Christian [cn2] nor are they nationalists as Christianity in the US is more like the worship of money [cm] and the Christian Nationalist don’t exactly support the US constitution). His pro-Russian position makes war more likly [war] as he proposes defeat for the West, NATO, and Ukraine in his "peace plan" for Ukraine. And he has the support of the majority of the American people [sup] to do all this.

Along with Trump comes a set of controversial figures. For example, Elon Must has connections with far right movements and performed a Nazi salute at a Trump rally. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, is considered a threat to national security [DNI]. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State for Defense, supports far right ideologies and has been accused of sexual assault as well as being accused of using funds from a non-profit for himself [ph].

And there is more but I think that is enough to get the point; to many, Trump and his associates are not the best people for the US nor the West and they have come at the worst time for the US and the West.

The End if Nigh

“… it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time;” - Winston Churchill.

To some people, to have had such a set of controversial figures elected to rule the US is understood as a failure of democracy [failed]. But has democracy failed? Democracy is the rule of the people. But the US doesn’t have a true democracy. Like many democratic countries, the people don’t rule but representatives of the people rule. And those representatives are elected every few years or so with the one that gets the most votes taking office. There is nothing in the definition of either democracy or representative democracy that says that the government so elected would be competent, moral, ethical, or even work for the best interests of the country. One could argue that when it comes to how society works, many politicians in democratic countries have little clue about things. So, I would argue that democracy has not failed in America. This is just part of how it works. If we actually want a competent government then we need people in charge that have expert domain knowledge of how the system works. And that would be a type of technocracy.

Another argument I have seen is that Trump represents the beginning of the end of the US [end] or even the West. Is it? People tend to be here and now thinkers. We tend to think what is happening now as being all important. In some ways it is but it is also part of a bigger picture and we need to see that too. I would say it is too early to tell if we are seeing the beginning of the end. Empires do fall but they can also stumble and get back up again.

On the other hand, it could be argued that Trump is not the problem but only the symptom of a deep rooted problem that has plagued the US for a long time. Only 79% of US citizens are literate [lit] with over half of Americans having a reading age worse than a 12 year old (the poor level of education in the US is evident to those of us who have interacted with many Americans on the Internet). Poverty [pov] is about 14% but social security is paid out to 27.8 million Americans to keep them out of poverty. The US also has many social problems [prob]. With internal problems such as those, one could be forgiven for thinking America is on the way out. But we will have to wait and see if this is really the end of America (personally, I'm expecting a mixed bag. Some good stuff and some bad stuff including damage done to the US and the West).

The Future is Bright

An easy life is not our friend.

It is not just the US where we find problems. We have problems the world around. Global warming (we all remember the fires in California?), resource problems, poverty, to name but a few. But could all this actually work to our advantage?

Jacque Fresco used to argue that the current system has to collapse before we can build something better but maybe we don’t have to go that far. When things are easy and we are comfortable, we tend not to want to act. Even when we see the danger before us. Global warming, for example, we have known about for over 100 years but so far haven't acted (one could argue that Trump’s government is even acting in the opposite direction to what is needed). But Trump’s government and the effects of global warming, just to name a couple of problems, are starting to make things a bit uncomfortable. That could be good. We have a potential here to move in a better direction as people might seek out alternatives to the current system. And EOS offers such a system [EOS]. The more people and the more resources we have the greater our potential becomes to build a sustainable, moneyless, "Star Trek" world. At the very least, we could start building a Foundation for the future to act as seeds for a brighter future. So, if we are seeing the end of the US and the collapse of the West, we could also, potentially, be seeing the start of a brighter future. Trump could be the catalyst that we need. The potential is there but we need to make it happen. We need to act. Will we? If we don't, we will only have ourselves to blame.

"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." - Those Who Remain by G. Michael Hopf,

 

References

[DNI] https://democrats.org/news/tulsi-gabbard-is-a-threat-to-americas-national-security/

[ph] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/pete-hegseth-5-controversial-facts-about-the-new-us-secretary-of-defense/articleshow/117542597.cms?from=mdr

[sup] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/09/trumps-approval-rating-at-53-in-new-poll-but-americans-are-less-sure-about-elon-musk/

[rus] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/12/trump-russia-putin-fbi

[cn] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/trumps-executive-order-anti-christian-bias

[cm] https://medium.com/backyard-theology/christianitys-love-of-money-ed6cd56a5e97

[cn2] https://www.johnwhitsett.com/blog/authentic-christianity-versus-christian-nationalism 

[war] https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2014086/donald-trump-making-world-war

[failed] https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/guest-commentary-america-failed-democracy/

[end] https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/11/10/trump-act-ii-spells-the-end-of-the-american-empire/

[lit] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now

[pov] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-283.html

[EOS] https://eosprojects.com/

[prob] https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/examples-of-social-issues-in-the-us/

The Expert in the Room Problem

 

Introduction

Peter Joseph did a podcast in December 2024 called “Revolution Now! Episode 53”. Somehow I managed to miss all the previous episodes but I caught this one and listened to the whole thing.

The first part was a good explanation of why we need to explore the idea of an alternative socioeconomic systems. For me, this is a bit of preaching to the choir as I’ve been looking into this sort of stuff since the 1990s. To me, the unsustainable nature of our current system is obvious but to anyone new to the subject, the first part of Peter Joseph’s podcast is worth listening to.

The part that interests me the most starts around the 49:22 mark, so I will concentrate a bit more on that.

Self organising and all that jazz

The thing that caught my attention most with Peter Joseph’s podcast is the overview that he gave of a possible future socioeconomic system. What was proposed has a lot of similarities that the system proposed by the Earth Organisation for Sustainability (EOS), which is based in Sweden, and is laid out in The Design. To start with Peter Joseph talks about self organising distributed, decentralised, systems. At 51:39 he states:

“Efficiency

Efficiency emerges through decentralised cooperative networks, with all knowledge shared, infused with direct democratic mechanisms to arrive at economic action.”

EOS also proposes a decentralised cooperative network. Not much is given in the podcast about the network topology however. The impression I got was it was a full connected network. EOS, however, does present more details about the network topology. In EOS’s Design the network is a holonic system. Holonic systems form part – whole constructs, similar to what we find in nature. These type of cooperative decentralised systems can work well if a number of criteria are met:

• Goals

• Communications

• Rules

The system has to have an overall goal. Peter Joseph doesn’t actually say anything as such about goals but goals can be inferred. EOS, however, explicitly states the goal as:

Highest standard of living for the longest time possible

That goal is borrowed from Technocracy Inc. and I would imagine that the goal of Peter Joseph’s network would be much the same (or at least compatible).

Communications is the next important attribute that self organising systems need to function. Peter Joseph talks about feedback loops and certainly feedback in such systems is vital for them to work. However, there is more to communications than just feedback. New ideas need injecting into the system as well, for example.

The last thing that self organising systems need is a set of rules to work with. At the very least they will have the laws of physics to work with but a network of human communities would need other rules in common. Such as a basic set of human rights.

These aspects of self organising systems weren’t explored (although I can infer them as “natural law standards” and “scientific analysis” is mentioned) in the podcast probably because the last section was really a short introduction to a complex subject. I hope, however, Peter Joseph will go into these in more details in later podcasts.

An example of how these three aspects enable self organisation can be seen in the following video. In the video the metronomes fail to synchronise at first. They have rules (the laws of physics) and they have a goal (to measure time) but there is no communication channel. However, when they are put up on to two cans, the vibration form each is able to influence the others. With communications established, the metronomes synchronise automatically.

An other interesting overlap is the presentation of food production as an example. That is something that EOS has also been looking at. EOS was part of a cooperative project to build a biodome in Sweden. 

 

The biodome built by EOS in Umeå, Sweden

 

The technical aspect

Now we come to the bit I have most problem with. Both Peter Joseph’s ideas and those presented by EOS aim for a hi-tech society. Both see the system being demand driven rather than centrally planned. Both look at efficiency using science driven analysis and AI. Both see the system as being open source. So far so good. But then we come to complexity. Peter Joseph makes the point at about 54:12 that as participation grows complexity grows. Yet, the system proposed by Peter Joseph relies on democratic mechanisms. I would argue that that is going to require management by technical experts if this is to work. Peter Joseph does make a quick reference to the need for management and how that can be worked out later. I would argue that this point is so fundamentally important that it needs to be worked in from the start.

If the system is to use scientific analysis then it will need people to understand that scientific analysis. If the system is to have technology, then it will need people who can understand that technology and can design and implement it. If the system is to have zero waist then it will need to be able to efficiently manage its resources and that will take knowledge and expertise.

The problem with knowledgeable experts is they tend to be in the minority but the majority, who have a poor understanding of the subject, tend to over estimate their abilities. Thus, you will most likely get wrong decisions being confidently made and correct decisions being overruled if you leave the decision making to the masses. This is known as the expert in the room problem. Imagine needing brain surgery and the brain operation being decided by the masses who have no idea about brain surgery. How confidant would you feel about going under the knife?

You can still have the people participating in what a society does and what is produced. But at the level of a customer. The people can demand what is to be produce but behind the scenes you will need a team of experts making the decisions to get the whole thing to work. This problem is addressed from the beginning in the Design preposed by EOS.

This system will also need regulation and control. Both Peter Joseph’s and EOS’s systems are moneyless systems but there still needs a control mechanism. As they say, you can’t control what you can’t measure and from what I see there is no measurement system in what Peter Joseph proposes. There is a mention of time banks, which is something that could work on a small scale but this system wont take into account the energy and material needs of the system. And as the system becomes more complex, I would expect a system using time banks to run into problems. EOS has a system energy accounting. All systems require energy to work and we can measure the energy we have available and what we need to produced items. If we allocate the energy to the people, this becomes a mechanism to allow people to decide what gets produced. It also allows us to monitor demand and production and to manage the system. The energy accounting system will also scale as the system becomes more complex.

Conclusion

Much of what Peter Joseph proposes is compatible with the Design proposed by EOS. However, there is a need of expert management behind the system. This need for expert management will become more important as the system becomes more complex. This is something that is central to The Design by EOS but appears to be an after thought in Peter Joseph’s proposal.

Technocracy : What is it and why would we want it?

 

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.” - Winston Churchill, UK parliamentary speech, 1947 – 11 – 11

Introduction

In this article I want to give a quick introduction to technocracy as an alternative form of government. It could be interesting to look at this form of government given the complexity of the world we live in and the apparent difficulty we are having with dealing with serious problems such as global warming as well as our failure to build a sustainable society. Perhaps we are unable to fix the problems our current system has created within the same system? Perhaps we need to look to an alternative if we really want solutions?

What is technocracy?

To put it simply; technocracy is the rule of the skilled. That is, a government formed of people who know what they are doing. The word “technocracy” comes from combining two Greek words. The first is “tekhne”, which means “skill”, and it can be found in other “tech” words such as “technique”. The second word is “kratos”, which means “power”, and can be found in words like “democracy”.

Why would we want it?

The why we might be interested in exploring technocracy can be summed up in one word; “complexity”. Modern society is complex. Many of the other forms of governance were developed in less complex, pre-industrial, pre-scientific, times. They were not developed to handle the modern complex world. It could be argued that that is why we have been failing to deal with complex problems such as global warming, just to take one example. Global warming is a complex technical problem and it could be argued that we haven't even started to solve that problem (we have even done the opposite like muddle the waters and call it “climate change”). And there are many other such problems. There is nothing in other forms of government that actually guarantees technically competent people will be in a position to make the necessary complex decisions. Authoritarian regimes reward loyalty and democracies reward popularity. No technical skills, qualifications, or even understanding of society are required.

So, why would we want technocracy? Because it is the only form of government that guarantees technically competent people will be making the technically complex decisions in our modern technically complex world.

So, what is technocracy?

I’m coming back to the first question again. I gave a simple answer above and then a brief explanation as to why we might want to look at technocracy. So, now I want to given a better answer to the first question. I’m going to look at technocracy in a little bit more detail with the idea that we live in a complex society in mind.

The Rule of Scientists

One of the most common views of technocracy that I have come across is the view that the government would be made up of scientists. A good view of that type of government was presented in an old children’s programme from 1970 called Timeslip. In the episode called “The Year of the Burn Up”, two children travel forward in time to a future world of the Technocracy, where a government of scientist are remaking the world according to the “master plan”. Things go wrong and the planet starts to warm up to the point where all life on Earth was threatened with extinction.

Personally, I’m not surprised a “rule by scientists” would end in disaster. If you ever meet a real scientist you would understand why they may not be suitable to run a country. Just because a person is skilled in one area doesn’t mean they are skilled in another area. A physicists may be brilliant with physic but it doesn't follow that they would know the first thing about ruling a country.

The Rule of the Computer

Another type of technocracy could be seen in The Venus Project (TVP). TVP originates with Jacques Fresco, who was at one time a member of the Technocracy movement in the US. TVP envisions a society run by computers. Computers would monitor all the variables that are vital for running society such as crop production, the water supply, energy supply, and so on. The computer would then make what ever decision is needed to run society. Jacques Fresco didn’t go into details of how all this would work but I would imagine it would be a distributed system with many computers inter-connected. It would also need teams of experts to manage the system but this is another detail that isn’t clear to my mind. The system is a moneyless system but, again, how it would work isn’t fully explored in Jacques’ works but there are a nice set of ideas for future buildings and cities. 

Jacques Fresco

 

The Design

“The Design” is another form of technocracy, this one has been put forward by the Swedish based group called EOS. The Design see society divided into two; the people side and the technology side. The people side deals with cultural issues and communities and is ruled by direct democracy. The technological side then deals with the technical aspects of society such as production, transport, computers, and so on. It is the technical side that is more of interest so I’ll focus on that. The technical side is run by teams of experts. The aim is to apply science to society but the experts are not all scientists. They are teams composed of experts from a variety of domains. Food production, for example, could be managed by teams composed of biologists, ecologists, agro-engineers, and farmers. The teams work towards a goal;

Highest standard of living for the longest time possible

This goal originates with Technocracy Inc. in the US. The goal puts people first so we see rights such as the freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, etc., as an integrated part of the over all goal. Also part of the overall goal is the idea of sustainability; the need to balance our needs with those of the planet.

To achieve the goal, the Design calls for a moneyless system based on the idea of energy accountancy. This idea originates with Technocracy Inc., but the Design extends the idea. Instead of energy, the Design uses exergy as exergy is the usable energy and that is more of interest when managing a complex system.

The Design also advocates the use of technology to minimise work. That would give people more time to be human. This is achieved through the technical management of resources, automation, and robotics.

Of all the designs for a technocracy, The Design is probably the most comprehensive. However, it is not complete. The Design calls for testing and verification in order to develop the ideas to a complete system (taking a scientific approach).

Technocracy Inc.

The ideas of technocracy go back to the 19^th century but the oldest technocracy organisation still in existence is Technocracy Inc. in the US. They date back to the 1930s. They have a plan that includes forming urbanates (cities of the future), how to manage food production, and energy production but they have a more American focus.

Further reading

This was only a very quick look at technocracy but if you want to know more there are various publications / sites to read to go into this subject in more detail.

One good starting point is Technocracy Inc. site and their plan. The Venus Project has a book called the “Best That Money Can’t Buy” by Jacques Fresco and that can be found at their web site. Kenneth S. Keyes, Jr. and Jacques Fresco also wrote a book called “Looking Forward”, which also explore the ideas of TVP. That book is free. The Swedish EOS group has published their ideas in a book called the Design.