State-regulated cryptocurrency and micro-managing people claiming welfare

Context

I’ve writtenmorethanone critical pieceabout the Government’s part-privatisedBehavioural Insights Team (Nudge Unit), particularly  with regard to its insidious and malevolent influence on the range of psychocratic policies aimed at “behavioural changes” which are being imposed on the poorest citizens. Technocracy is the “science of social engineering.” Nudge is a technocratic approach to fulfilling the requirements of neoliberalism. It’s about maintaining an established socioeconomic order, rather than advancing progressive change.

In 1932, Howard Scott and Marion King Hubbert founded Technocracy Incorporated, and proposed that money be replaced by energy certificates. The group argued that “apolitical, rational engineers should be vested with authority to guide an economy into a thermodynamically balanced load of production and consumption, thereby doing away with unemployment and debt.” Sounds like tosh, and of course it was. Bear with me, because there’s a couple of contemporary parallels I want to discuss.

The Conservatives prefer…