Re: FYI:TECHNOCRACY (fwd)

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:47:20 -0400


Eugene Leitl wrote:
>
> This has been posted to the technocracy list, as a reply to my request
> regarding the goals of technocracy. Could somebody please comment on
> these guys' approach validity? I know that the loss of jobs due to
> automation problem is real, probably forcing us to do some (discriminate!)
> wealth redistribution over long. However, I somehow fail to see how below
> approach should solve any problems at all...
> |karpal|
>

Here are my comments:

1) I always get nervous when people use capitalized words a lot in
midsentence, as if they are trying to preach a sermon.

2) Beyond what is clearly a new form of the communism/socialism Free
Lunch meme, the idea of economic measurement by energy budgeting is only
a part solution. For a truly balanced system they would need to also
measure the mass involved, as well as the amounts of recyclable and
unrecyclable waste product.

3) It totally ignores the behavioral aspects of economics. As the fall
of communism and the widespread abandonment of much socialism has
proven, refusing to incorporate human productive motivations (whether
physical or intellectual labor) into the equation and process leads to a
downward economic death spiral.

4) What the poster is espousing is eerily like the benevolent State in
Niven's Known Space universe prior to the advent of the Kzin Wars. Read
up.

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!
			Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
mailto:retroman@tpk.net		Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com
Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com	http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/

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