The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the incompetence of technocrats. In a rational world, it should be a death knell to globalism. The chaotic response to a real plague would be forgivable. The closure of the health service for anything but Covid cases is not. Nor is the shutdown of the economy. The cost in suffering and suicide is likely to far surpass deaths from Covid. This is playing games with people’s lives. As for the statistics, there are “lies, damned lies and statistics”.
The crisis has exposed would-be technocratic masters, just as the Trump event has exposed the pretensions of unelected deep state bureaucrats to rule the United States. You don’t have to “believe Covid” or “support Trump” to be see your suspicions confirmed. Just open the eyes.
Technocracy proposes that the best qualified experts lead society in every sphere. Human experience shows that the connected and entitled elbow their way to to front, even among scientists. Even among goodly doctors and caring nurses. Profit and greed are up there in the mind of technocrats just as they are with other humans. And the only time it supposedly worked there was Rousseau’s lawgiver playing omnipotent mind in the form of Joseph Stalin.
Even Stalin’s vaunted industrialization was really a card trick in which the NKVD arrested millions in order to ship slave labour to the GULAGs to dig the gold to pay the American tycoons like Henry Ford, Armand Hammer and Fred Koch to build factories in the Soviet Union.
Technocrats do nepotism, too!
Technocracy remains a dynastic joke. Bill Gates displays an uncanny continuity with his eugenicist father. Gates IV’s claims to be a software genius or brilliant businessman do not stand up to scrutiny and as for being a medical seer or viral sage, it’s not even funny.
Elon Musk, is the goofy-toothed Mad magazine front man who's only there because his grandfather Joshua Haldeman was a founder of Technocracy. The cartoon works because of the "will to believe". Elon can magic up money and turn anything he touches into gold... except that it's all done with government subsidies.
Zuckerberg is the poster child for dubious success story. Yet again: no evidence he's a genius coder, or a businessman (his lack of social skills make that unlikely), and his poor communication skills give few possible outlets for his vaunted intelligence. Ditto many of the less-well-known techies who are lining up to create tracking apps for smart phones and all manner of spyware.
Knock down the set and reveal the fourth wall!
As in Shakespearean times, the theatre tells the people what they need to know. The movie, The Social Network, cemented Zuckerberg’s legend in the popular mind. Producer, Sherri Fink made two hagiographies of Bill Gates for Netflix. One is called Inside Bill’s Brain and he is portrayed as the nerd genius. The other is Pandemic. Sherri Fink also worked on health and fellowship positions for Bill Gates in the past.
Bill Gates “gives” billions to the media in return for favorable coverage, including $49 million to the BBC to pay for its Media Action Centre and $9 million to The Guardian to entirely finance its Public Health section. That looks less like philanthropy and more like a transaction or a deal to purchase publicity.
What the publicity does is to disguise the fact that the technocracy alliance "fighting" Covid is really a front for corporations, private health and insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. Global institutions that the public thinks of as the United Nations are controlled by private donors. And the sick joke is that the people running these institutions lack the appropriate skills. They are placemen, fronters and yes men to the corporations. The unqualified empowered by the unelected.
The most famous technocrat
Take away the corporations and the only model for technocracy is communism. Not surprisingly they use the same tricks. Both the corporatist and communist versions of technocracy have in common the manipulation of statistics, fulfilling the plan by doctoring the numbers and politically-determined planned outcomes regardless of the inputs.
The most famous technocrat of all time was arguably Trofim Lysenko, who claimed that the Soviet Union could overturn the laws of nature with sheer genius. He proposed to overcome Russia’s short growing season with winter wheat. Out with the old science, in with the new: he captured political minds, imprisoned geneticists and banned whole fields of research.
Was Lysenko a technocrat. He was more a scientist than Bill Gates is a medical doctor or a virologist. He was the poster child for an ideological system of governance in which decision-makers are selected on the basis of their expertise. Lysenko represented the triumph of the science of the day. That is why he is such an embarrassment to scientists and policy experts because he was a technocrat. Lysenko fits the description perfectly.
And you cannot say that because he was wrong he should be wiped from history. That’s using precisely the techniques that Lysenko himself used. Science is a working hypothesis. If we erect it into a form of government we have to acknowledge that it will be wrong as often as it is right.
Scientists are humans. They want security, wealth and status. They face all the temptations that humans do. Give them the power to shape opinion and they will turn the media into a Judas goat, trained to herd the rest of the animal kingdom. To utopia or doom depends on the working hypothesis of the moment.
Propaganda will cloak the failures of technocracy. The Victory over Covid will enter into legend. Free of the encumbrances of facts or honest numbers. Just as the myth of the magical industrialization of the Soviet Union persists to this day.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, citizens faced the difficult question, what happened to the great industries? The communists had gone, sure, but where were the factories, all those skills, all the technocrats? Surely that was not propaganda? Serious people told me in whispered tones that the West had sent its agents to destroy the factories, to steal the technologies and spirit them away.
The West does poach Russian experts and Harvard-backed oligarchs did attempt to take over Soviet assets after 1991 but spiriting away the glorious factories? No. Except in specific areas like satellite research, the great communist technocracy of scientific socialism was a myth. The West had always been more than happy to sell complete factories to the USSR, complete with people to run them, in return for oil and gold. Then one day the money ran out and the magical technocrats turned to mirage. Technocracy has always been nine-parts propaganda.
The crisis has exposed would-be technocratic masters, just as the Trump event has exposed the pretensions of unelected deep state bureaucrats to rule the United States. You don’t have to “believe Covid” or “support Trump” to be see your suspicions confirmed. Just open the eyes.
Technocracy proposes that the best qualified experts lead society in every sphere. Human experience shows that the connected and entitled elbow their way to to front, even among scientists. Even among goodly doctors and caring nurses. Profit and greed are up there in the mind of technocrats just as they are with other humans. And the only time it supposedly worked there was Rousseau’s lawgiver playing omnipotent mind in the form of Joseph Stalin.
Even Stalin’s vaunted industrialization was really a card trick in which the NKVD arrested millions in order to ship slave labour to the GULAGs to dig the gold to pay the American tycoons like Henry Ford, Armand Hammer and Fred Koch to build factories in the Soviet Union.
Technocrats do nepotism, too!
Technocracy remains a dynastic joke. Bill Gates displays an uncanny continuity with his eugenicist father. Gates IV’s claims to be a software genius or brilliant businessman do not stand up to scrutiny and as for being a medical seer or viral sage, it’s not even funny.
Elon Musk, is the goofy-toothed Mad magazine front man who's only there because his grandfather Joshua Haldeman was a founder of Technocracy. The cartoon works because of the "will to believe". Elon can magic up money and turn anything he touches into gold... except that it's all done with government subsidies.
Zuckerberg is the poster child for dubious success story. Yet again: no evidence he's a genius coder, or a businessman (his lack of social skills make that unlikely), and his poor communication skills give few possible outlets for his vaunted intelligence. Ditto many of the less-well-known techies who are lining up to create tracking apps for smart phones and all manner of spyware.
Knock down the set and reveal the fourth wall!
As in Shakespearean times, the theatre tells the people what they need to know. The movie, The Social Network, cemented Zuckerberg’s legend in the popular mind. Producer, Sherri Fink made two hagiographies of Bill Gates for Netflix. One is called Inside Bill’s Brain and he is portrayed as the nerd genius. The other is Pandemic. Sherri Fink also worked on health and fellowship positions for Bill Gates in the past.
Bill Gates “gives” billions to the media in return for favorable coverage, including $49 million to the BBC to pay for its Media Action Centre and $9 million to The Guardian to entirely finance its Public Health section. That looks less like philanthropy and more like a transaction or a deal to purchase publicity.
What the publicity does is to disguise the fact that the technocracy alliance "fighting" Covid is really a front for corporations, private health and insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. Global institutions that the public thinks of as the United Nations are controlled by private donors. And the sick joke is that the people running these institutions lack the appropriate skills. They are placemen, fronters and yes men to the corporations. The unqualified empowered by the unelected.
The most famous technocrat
Take away the corporations and the only model for technocracy is communism. Not surprisingly they use the same tricks. Both the corporatist and communist versions of technocracy have in common the manipulation of statistics, fulfilling the plan by doctoring the numbers and politically-determined planned outcomes regardless of the inputs.
The most famous technocrat of all time was arguably Trofim Lysenko, who claimed that the Soviet Union could overturn the laws of nature with sheer genius. He proposed to overcome Russia’s short growing season with winter wheat. Out with the old science, in with the new: he captured political minds, imprisoned geneticists and banned whole fields of research.
Was Lysenko a technocrat. He was more a scientist than Bill Gates is a medical doctor or a virologist. He was the poster child for an ideological system of governance in which decision-makers are selected on the basis of their expertise. Lysenko represented the triumph of the science of the day. That is why he is such an embarrassment to scientists and policy experts because he was a technocrat. Lysenko fits the description perfectly.
And you cannot say that because he was wrong he should be wiped from history. That’s using precisely the techniques that Lysenko himself used. Science is a working hypothesis. If we erect it into a form of government we have to acknowledge that it will be wrong as often as it is right.
Scientists are humans. They want security, wealth and status. They face all the temptations that humans do. Give them the power to shape opinion and they will turn the media into a Judas goat, trained to herd the rest of the animal kingdom. To utopia or doom depends on the working hypothesis of the moment.
Propaganda will cloak the failures of technocracy. The Victory over Covid will enter into legend. Free of the encumbrances of facts or honest numbers. Just as the myth of the magical industrialization of the Soviet Union persists to this day.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, citizens faced the difficult question, what happened to the great industries? The communists had gone, sure, but where were the factories, all those skills, all the technocrats? Surely that was not propaganda? Serious people told me in whispered tones that the West had sent its agents to destroy the factories, to steal the technologies and spirit them away.
The West does poach Russian experts and Harvard-backed oligarchs did attempt to take over Soviet assets after 1991 but spiriting away the glorious factories? No. Except in specific areas like satellite research, the great communist technocracy of scientific socialism was a myth. The West had always been more than happy to sell complete factories to the USSR, complete with people to run them, in return for oil and gold. Then one day the money ran out and the magical technocrats turned to mirage. Technocracy has always been nine-parts propaganda.
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