4 ms·

> Musk, Altman, Thiel, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Page, and the like are trying to implement technocracy Several people (maybe all, I do not know for sure) on that l

> Musk, Altman, Thiel, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Page, and the like are trying to implement technocracy Several people (maybe all, I do not know for sure) on that list are pretty hard core right wing populists, correct? Isn't that completely at odds with technocracy? Or are you thinking that they are just taking advantage of a populist movement but are themselves technocrats?

throwanem 6mo ago
Think it over. No one who leads a populist movement is ever ultimately sincere in his populism. But where, excuse me, where on Earth did you get the idea that any of those guys is a populist?
- rootusrootus 6mo ago
  Mostly by who they identify with. I get you, they do not personally seem likely to be populists, but that's the movement they're with.
  - throwanem 6mo ago
    Well, sure. The hammer that happens at times to be in my hand while I'm hanging framed art downstairs is, in an exactly equivalent sense, "the hammer I'm with." I don't care about it, you know? It's just a tool.
justonceokay 6mo ago
They wish primarily to use technology to control government/people more fully. Their current angle is to side with a populist government. But they were making deals with Obama and Biden as well. The only populist in my reckoning is trump, who truly seems to like the power for its own sake and will whip people into a frenzy to get it.
kerblang 6mo ago
They are trumpist, because Trump is highly narcissistic and disgusted by _weakness_ in others. They are elitist Nietzschean social darwinists at heart and believe IQ should determine social status. The populism stuff doesn't mean "We're protecting the little guy from elites who conspire against him." It means "We're protecting ourselves from other elites who conspire against us - but the little guy will still be better off with us as the authoritarian elite."
tovej 6mo ago
Did you read tfa? The key word here is populism. Finding scapegoats (immigrants, woke feminists, lazy unemployed people) to explain away societal ills caused by inequality. Of course tech billionaires prefer blaming the scapegoats to blaming themselves. It serves as a political shield, so that they can continue to hoard wealth and control. In the 30s, industry leaders aligned themselves with Hitler and Mussolini. They both focused on technology as a means of control. Capitalists also see the benefit of cheap labor and a war economy. Right wing populism and technocracy are a match made in heaven, because fascism is good for the bottom line.
- econ 6mo ago
  You can eat olives without martini. The actual problem with technocracy (if done right) is that the work of experts grows increasingly incomprehensible to average men. Even if things work out perfectly, experts can't properly take risks or make a leap of faith in other people's name. (Not to argue our current democratic model is any good at it)
  - tovej 6mo ago
    The actual problem with technocracy is that you create a formalized hierarchy of leaders and rabble based on some credential granting authority that the technocrats control. That's a recipe for disaster. The technocrats define who can be a technocrat, and can design the process to benefit them. The incentives are towards elitist, racist, cronyist policies that would select for sociopathic tendencies. What's the difference between a technocrat and a bishop in this case?
    - andrekandre 6mo ago
      > What's the difference between a technocrat and a bishop in this case? science (i say this with irony)
  - cmrdporcupine 6mo ago
    The problem is that there's never any single "correct" solution for any engineering problem let alone social ones, and there's no single axis of "intelligence" or "expertise" that qualifies any single individual or set of individuals to make decisions in the long term on behalf of whole groups of people. I am not a free market capitalist, I am a socialist; but I also believe in decentralizing decision making because centralized systems run by self-proclaimed people-of-merit always produces bad outcomes in the long run; left or right. Having to find consensus is messy and difficult but always wins out in the long run.
randallsquared 6mo ago
Openness to technology use and to technological progress is a separate axis. The whole left-right thing is a convenient grouping mechanism and doesn't have explanatory power. If you dissolve it into multiple axes (openness to tech, authority beliefs/morals/economics, tradition, etc) you can show much tighter groups of beliefs with more distinct boundaries, but in practice they are lumped into "left" or "right" at a given moment, even though some of those clusters have switched from one side to the other (and even back!) in living memory. See also "horseshoe theory", which is what happens when you try really hard to put everyone on a single axis. In contrast, populism is a style, not a set of beliefs.
- cmrdporcupine 6mo ago
  In most cases "populism" is a campaigning style / way of building hegemony more than it is any set of actual beliefs in popular power. Among many so-called "populist" politicians you will find very intensely elitist and anti-democratic belief systems, just kept quite mute.
pessimizer 6mo ago
Zero of them are right-wing populists. They share absolutely no characteristics or policies with anyone who had ever been called populist before 2015, both when the term was invented (as a description of left-wing people against plutocrats), or when it was later bastardized by plutocrats (as a description of anyone who thought the happiness of the population should have any affect on policy.) There is no resemblance between any position they hold and the positions of the People's Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States)) > The "Demands" adopted by the Ocala convention called for the abolition of national banks; the establishment of sub-treasuries or depositories in every state, which would make low interest direct loans to farmers and property owners; the increase of money in circulation to not less than $50 per capita; the abolishment of futures of all agricultural and mechanical productions; the introduction of free silver; the prohibition of alien ownership of land, the reclamation of all lands held by railroads and other corporations in excess of what was actually used and needed by them, held for actual settlers only; legislation to ensure that one industry would not be built up at the expense of another; removal of the tariff tax on necessities of life; a graduated income tax; the limitation of all national and state revenues to the necessary expenses of the government economically and honestly administered; strict regulation or ownership of the means of public communication and transportation; and an amendment of the United States Constitution providing for the direct election of United States senators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocala_Demands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocala_Demands People need to stop discussing reality through weird propagandistic brand names that people were literally paid to come up with, and talk specifically about material differences in policy.

throwanem 6mo ago

Think it over. No one who leads a populist movement is ever ultimately sincere in his populism. But where, excuse me, where on Earth did you get the idea that any of those guys is a populist?

rootusrootus 6mo ago
Mostly by who they identify with. I get you, they do not personally seem likely to be populists, but that's the movement they're with.
- throwanem 6mo ago
  Well, sure. The hammer that happens at times to be in my hand while I'm hanging framed art downstairs is, in an exactly equivalent sense, "the hammer I'm with." I don't care about it, you know? It's just a tool.

justonceokay 6mo ago

They wish primarily to use technology to control government/people more fully. Their current angle is to side with a populist government. But they were making deals with Obama and Biden as well. The only populist in my reckoning is trump, who truly seems to like the power for its own sake and will whip people into a frenzy to get it.

kerblang 6mo ago

They are trumpist, because Trump is highly narcissistic and disgusted by _weakness_ in others. They are elitist Nietzschean social darwinists at heart and believe IQ should determine social status. The populism stuff doesn't mean "We're protecting the little guy from elites who conspire against him." It means "We're protecting ourselves from other elites who conspire against us - but the little guy will still be better off with us as the authoritarian elite."

tovej 6mo ago

Did you read tfa? The key word here is populism. Finding scapegoats (immigrants, woke feminists, lazy unemployed people) to explain away societal ills caused by inequality. Of course tech billionaires prefer blaming the scapegoats to blaming themselves. It serves as a political shield, so that they can continue to hoard wealth and control. In the 30s, industry leaders aligned themselves with Hitler and Mussolini. They both focused on technology as a means of control. Capitalists also see the benefit of cheap labor and a war economy. Right wing populism and technocracy are a match made in heaven, because fascism is good for the bottom line.

econ 6mo ago
You can eat olives without martini. The actual problem with technocracy (if done right) is that the work of experts grows increasingly incomprehensible to average men. Even if things work out perfectly, experts can't properly take risks or make a leap of faith in other people's name. (Not to argue our current democratic model is any good at it)
- tovej 6mo ago
  The actual problem with technocracy is that you create a formalized hierarchy of leaders and rabble based on some credential granting authority that the technocrats control. That's a recipe for disaster. The technocrats define who can be a technocrat, and can design the process to benefit them. The incentives are towards elitist, racist, cronyist policies that would select for sociopathic tendencies. What's the difference between a technocrat and a bishop in this case?
  - andrekandre 6mo ago
    > What's the difference between a technocrat and a bishop in this case? science (i say this with irony)
- cmrdporcupine 6mo ago
  The problem is that there's never any single "correct" solution for any engineering problem let alone social ones, and there's no single axis of "intelligence" or "expertise" that qualifies any single individual or set of individuals to make decisions in the long term on behalf of whole groups of people. I am not a free market capitalist, I am a socialist; but I also believe in decentralizing decision making because centralized systems run by self-proclaimed people-of-merit always produces bad outcomes in the long run; left or right. Having to find consensus is messy and difficult but always wins out in the long run.

randallsquared 6mo ago

Openness to technology use and to technological progress is a separate axis. The whole left-right thing is a convenient grouping mechanism and doesn't have explanatory power. If you dissolve it into multiple axes (openness to tech, authority beliefs/morals/economics, tradition, etc) you can show much tighter groups of beliefs with more distinct boundaries, but in practice they are lumped into "left" or "right" at a given moment, even though some of those clusters have switched from one side to the other (and even back!) in living memory. See also "horseshoe theory", which is what happens when you try really hard to put everyone on a single axis. In contrast, populism is a style, not a set of beliefs.

cmrdporcupine 6mo ago
In most cases "populism" is a campaigning style / way of building hegemony more than it is any set of actual beliefs in popular power. Among many so-called "populist" politicians you will find very intensely elitist and anti-democratic belief systems, just kept quite mute.

pessimizer 6mo ago

Zero of them are right-wing populists. They share absolutely no characteristics or policies with anyone who had ever been called populist before 2015, both when the term was invented (as a description of left-wing people against plutocrats), or when it was later bastardized by plutocrats (as a description of anyone who thought the happiness of the population should have any affect on policy.) There is no resemblance between any position they hold and the positions of the People's Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States)) > The "Demands" adopted by the Ocala convention called for the abolition of national banks; the establishment of sub-treasuries or depositories in every state, which would make low interest direct loans to farmers and property owners; the increase of money in circulation to not less than $50 per capita; the abolishment of futures of all agricultural and mechanical productions; the introduction of free silver; the prohibition of alien ownership of land, the reclamation of all lands held by railroads and other corporations in excess of what was actually used and needed by them, held for actual settlers only; legislation to ensure that one industry would not be built up at the expense of another; removal of the tariff tax on necessities of life; a graduated income tax; the limitation of all national and state revenues to the necessary expenses of the government economically and honestly administered; strict regulation or ownership of the means of public communication and transportation; and an amendment of the United States Constitution providing for the direct election of United States senators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocala_Demands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocala_Demands People need to stop discussing reality through weird propagandistic brand names that people were literally paid to come up with, and talk specifically about material differences in policy.