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.