News & Analysis
The Technocrat Meme Descends
In defence of Europe's technocrats ... Outside Britain, experts have often played a positive role in politics. Is it time we stopped knocking the technocrats? Mario Monti, Italy's prime minister designate and one of the 'technocrats' criticised in the British media ... Leafing through the British press over the last week, you can't but notice the increased sightings of a rare political subspecies: the "technocrat". Prominent technocrats include the Italian prime minister designate, Mario Monti, and the Greek PM, Lucas Papademos, who have been parachuted into the top job, the papers say, in order to act out diktats of their "paymasters" in Germany and France. In the Telegraph, Christopher Booker has revealed that "EU architects never meant it to be a democracy": technocracy was always the plan. In the same paper, Charles Moore has proclaimed that "left and right should agree that this is not the time for technocrats and Frankfurters", but real democrats. – Guardian
Dominant Social Theme: Technocrats are good people and run nations well.
Free-Market Analysis: The Guardian is schizophrenic on the issue of technocracy. They've run at least one article deriding the swelling technocratic priesthood and another one (see above excerpt) that supports it.
To us, this talk of technocracy is an old, familiar dominant social theme. The power elite that wants to make a transition from nation-states to one-world government needs to establish the cult of the expert, or at least to re-establish it. Enter the technocrat.
In fact, the meme is historical in nature. Ever since Plato saw shadows on a cave wall (and long before, probably), the idea that "experts" could run the world has been popular. Leaders are always given extraordinary powers and said to possess unusual foresight and wisdom, though usually they don't have either.
Now we have the argument that technocrats can run EU states better than politicians because technocrats have less at stake politically and are generally more contemplative and disinterested. But even were this so, it doesn't hold here. The "technocrats" that the Guardian speaks of are actually central bankers who work within the larger citadel of Money Power.
You see, there are normal people and then there is the power elite. These elites are trying to create a one-world government in our view. They are trying to make progress. Right now, the EU is in the midst of an elite takeover whereby those who run the larger EU organization are now assuming roles within the nation-states themselves.
The justification is "technocracy." The individuals involved are supposed to be wiser than normal people. This is not, as we just pointed out, a new concept. In fact even in America, this has been a popular liturgy on and off. Here's some more from the article:
The word "technocracy" comes from the Greek words "tekhne", meaning skill, and "kratos" meaning power. Technocrats thus literally promise to be "problem solvers" – politicians who make decisions based on their expertise or specialist knowledge of a particular subject, rather than to please a particular interest group or political party. The term is commonly attributed to the engineer William H Smyth of Berkely, California in 1919, though the idea that a country should be organised and spiritually led not by the church, feudal landowners or the military but by industrial chiefs and men of science, goes back to the early socialist thinker Saint-Simon.
Yes, there's no harm in saying it: technocracy once used to be a big idea for the international left. In 1930s America, for instance, it wasn't a term of abuse but the programme for a new social utopia. In the middle of the Great Depression, an emergent technocratic movement led by engineers and dissident economists such as Thorstein Veblen and Howard Scott proposed that populist politicians simply weren't capable to fix the system: "The maladministration and chaos imposed upon the industrial mechanism by arbitrary rule of extraneous interest has reached such a point that many technicians feel the urgent need of confederating their forces in a program of industrial co-ordination based, not on belief, but exact knowledge," thundered a pamphlet by the Technical Alliance.
... Does that mean that technocracy is better than democracy? Of course not. But it might just be worth considering that a temporary technocrat rule may well be an acceptable – perhaps necessary – part of the democratic process at times of crisis. Would we prefer British healthcare to be run by technocrats (ie experts) rather than politicians and free-market ideologues? I think so. Would we be more confident in the judgment of British frontbenchers if most of them hadn't gone straight from university into politics? I think so.
Yes, technocracy is indeed a Leftist shibboleth, and we don't agree with the Guardian that it is a "better" choice. It also, in our view never, went away. It is just one more variant on a theme. In the US, it reached its peak popularity in the mid-20th century led by M. King Hubbert who invented the concept of Peak Oil.
Hubbert invented Peak Oil in our view to buttress his case for a technocratic class. He needed a problem in order to pose his solution. Technocrats often suggest technology-focused solutions and approach governmental problems with a "problem-solution mindset." The technocracy movement's influence may be seen within the modern "cult of technology" and the idea of an advanced "information society."
This fits in quite well with the idea that central bankers are good, gray men engineering the volume and price of money for the benefit of us all. It is surely an important theme. And it is one that might have worked up until, say, two years ago. But now this meme is in trouble.
People for the most part know that something is not right when central bankers have access to trillions while "normal" people have access only to thousands or hundreds. This was not generally recognized until recently. But now thanks to the Internet, the reality is evident and obvious. You can see previous articles we've written on the subject here – one on technocracy and the other on its result ("dreamtime"):
Thanks to the 'Net, more and more people understand the inequities posed by central banking and this comprehension has enormous ramifications. Another meme has now been caught in the larger backwash: the Technocrat.
Conclusion: Their rule over Greece, Italy and perhaps other countries as well may be retarded by this larger understanding of what modern technocracy is and how it has been implemented. This has enormous ramifications for Europe and for the elites themselves that are counting on a positive reception for the new technocratic leaders.
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Posted by rossbcan on 11/17/11 02:00 PM
"State is designed to be Static"
To be static is: dead, unchanging, requires great force to be expended against mankind's will to survive (which requires adaptation EQUALS change):
Click to view link
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Posted by Joe on 11/17/11 09:27 AM
The word State, is closely linked to Static in meaning. The modern State is designed to be Static as far as possible, the political is thrust in the forefront, false and superficially framed debates, ensuring that the destructive forces within each man are if not eliminated greatly reduced. Democracy is supposed to produce this Stasis and the so called End of History. The economic sphere is controlled by the finance oligarchs, always Totalitarian yet in the background almost invisible from the political.
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Posted by amanfromMars on 11/17/11 04:25 AM
Oh, and while we're all here, can anyone help out and correct alvinroast who posted a comment asking pertinent uncomfortable questions on a truthful news item and/or the Fed Now Largest Owner of U.S. Government Debt-Surpassing China, here ... Click to view link
If it walks like a Ponzi, and talks like Ponzi, and acts like a Ponzi, is it a Ponzi, AAA rated as Prime Crooked and Perversely Corrupt and a Great Game in the Employ of Grand and Delusional Idiots to be used and abused and perused as Useful and Useless Parasites/Psychotic Sociopathic Tools for Anonymous and Fools.
So, the Fed is now force feeding itself and eating its own toxic waste and empty promises. Hmmm, that is quite an incestuous and cannibalisitic purge and crazy surge and dedicated strategy guaranteeing failure in spades, and a sure sign of madness and core policy and lead protocols gone wrong, leading all on a road to nowhere but group extinction with the runaway train crashing into the buffers at the end of that particular line... ... which was well enough sign-posted to avoid.
But hey, madness is as madness does and all one can do is make inmates secure in a safe and controlled environment beyond their ken and influence.
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Posted by amanfromMars on 11/17/11 12:34 AM
As is always the case, DB, is it much more sophisticated and simply complicated than that. And yes, I suppose you can probably quite rightly presume that the money system and its controllers and leading benefactors are behind all of what the future can deliver too, if they play their cards right, although that is much simpler too, than may at first be imagined, for all it takes is just one brilliantly bright spark in that bonfire of the vanities, with easy lazy access to as much flash cash as will ever be needed, to lead and reprogram the controlling herd and the programmed masses in the beta direction of their and their agents choosing, and of their sponsoring with streams of credit transferred and quantitatively eased funding in that particularly primitive but/and peculiarly effective prime motivational model of human being operating system.
One cannot today ignore, no matter how hard one would try, and battle with oneself to deny oneself the pleasure, the Emergence and Rise of Virtual Machinery Creativity with Cloud Command and Control of CyberSpace Computers and Communications.
It is not necessary that you understand the working of what the future has in store for you, for others are constantly working and revising and developing and rebuilding its future system for you. It is just thought much more constructive that you be constantly advised as to ongoing progress in unfolding fields.
[blockquote]You bring the Loaves, we'll provide the Phishes …. Click to view link
Posted Thursday 17th November 2011 04:33 GMT
"Since the BIND developers don't yet know what payload triggered the crash, remote code execution is feasible, he said. 'Let's hope it remains a denial of service condition', he added."
Wow, that sort of burying your head in the sand, proffering a blind ignorant hope, always presents a prime target, Blair [Herr Strang, a security consultant at Australian company SenseOfSecurity] for servicing.
And do El Reg readers and base metadata scrapers see a parallel/singularity in that which is reported there, by Richard Chirgwin in "BIND security update protects against serious server crash … Attacks may already be underway" and what one can read here …. "*All that I would further wish to say is that no virtual presence indicates to any and all who are comfortably au fait with what can be easily done remotely with the presentation of text and/or binary and ternary manipulation of virtual machine codes, that the dangers may be well enough known to be realised to be a systemic exploitable vulnerability against which there is no viable defence or effective attack control …… and one which can be ruthlessly zeroday traded on financial markets for a fortune beyond compare and traditional imagination." … and which was shared elsewhere [and everywhere*] just yesterday … Posted on 11/16/11 01:35 AM … Click to view link ….. and which is just a very small part of a much bigger event happening ….. if you can believe the evidence presented for your eyes to relay to your brain for processing. The brain's acceptance of it as being perfectly true delivers ITs Virtual Realisation and Presentation of a SMART Future Program with Myriad Fabulous Memes/Novel and Noble Themes ….. which is the same as saying, "SMART Works in AI Progress are Impossible to Beat for they always deliver Fab Fabless Treats and Digital Feasts made Attractive for Everybody, which is No Mean Feat but not that difficult whenever one knows what can be done and can do it with practically nothing."?
What is stopping you from making the Quantum Leap into Virtual AIMachinery Worlds where everything is exactly as you have programmed IT to be, and everyone SMART ensures and assures and insures that everything is Seventh Heavenly on Cloud Nine, for of course, there are many Heavens to explore and enjoy and share when you dare care for to win win, which is far better and much greater that never ever losing.
And before you dismiss any or even all of that, please be advised that you have been here/there many times before, and Man has been found to be singularly lacking and deficient in the necessary simple advanced intelligence which can easily process basic information into sophisticated intelligence with application of the most sublime and immaculate of creative formulas for phormations …… Imagine, and it's true.
A John says hi, and would ask, "What on Earth are you waiting for whenever so much is known to be true? What are you afraid of whenever there is so much light streaming into the darkness showing the many ways" [/blockquote]
Interesting times ahead, DB, with the Future being nothing at all like the Past or the Present, but surely that is Perfectly Natural.
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Posted by rossbcan on 11/16/11 04:46 PM
"Occupiers want a technocracy"
Elites will be happy with anyone (whom they can subvert) but YOU making the CHOICES, in YOUR life:
Click to view link
The cannot subvert YOU, because YOU want to survive. Other "choosers" will weigh (as in scales of justice, balancing equal "right to life") YOUR survival as being less relevant than THEIRS.
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Posted by Bluebird on 11/16/11 04:46 PM
Haven't we all had enough of these brainiacs? Get rid of them and put in control some with just plain old common sense and we may just make it for another century or two. These jokers are doing us in.
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Posted by Dilence Sogwood on 11/16/11 03:03 PM
Kind of Bobby's Knight's career progression!
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Posted by Dilence Sogwood on 11/16/11 03:01 PM
... and the Occupiers want a technocracy... I've been watching this one develop and waiting for the DB to comment!
I did hear today that "business people" were being lumped in with the technocrats. More twisting.
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Posted by rossbcan on 11/16/11 02:22 PM
"The Technocrat Meme Descends"
Any competent systems design engineer will tell you (unless they are frauds, attempting to get rich by pretending to do the impossible), unambigously and flat out: you cannot design a system composed of self-interested, volitionally free components without their VOLUNTARY consent, meaning, they consider it to be in their survival interests. For the same reason that cats "cannot be herded" (not in their interests, nor nature).
Hence, as proven by history: NO stable civilization without "consent of the governed"
WHICH STARTED AS:
"fully informed, in all matters"
MORPHED TO:
"truth is destabilizing, neccessary to lie to people, for national security and other false pretexts. Broken political promises (fraud) also neccessary"
AND, FINALLY, CONVERGED TO WHERE IT IS AND MUST END:
"terror (to defy) of the governed" and, exponentially increasing tyranny and global war.
This is not rocket science. THINK about it:
Click to view link
exec summary: Those who claim that inherently free people can be forcefully orgainized in systems with any REAL outcome apart from full spectrum revolution and social / economic collapse are: FULL OF CRAP.
