This-essay is a7309123.htm which is available at the web-site www.essayz.com. See more notes at the bottom. Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay By-Months By-Years By-Words Webs of Like-&-Un-Like ESSAYS <==> Like-&-UN-Like This-One ========================================================== %COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS 730912 The existence of a highly developed science and technology presents society with a large number of possible ways of allocating its scarce resources. Associated with each of the many possible allocations are associated costs and benefits which may be classified as: direct and indirect; pertaining to non-renewable, renewable, or continuing resources; certain and problematic, individual or corporate, gained opportunity or lost opportunity, tangible or intangible, etc. Many of the value judgments which modern citizens must make pertain to the political actions mandated by the existence of technological possibilities and the associated human desires. The complex interplay of human desires with technological possibilities is so new that there has been relatively little in the way of a systems analysis of it on the part of typical citizens. It is a new phenomena of which few are aware; and so regarding which there is very little mutual understanding. Thus many people are the victims of technocratic manipulators of human desires, motivations, and technology. The democratic process is sometimes undermined by the ignorance of the citizens regarding what the most fundamental value questions are. Most citizens have a tendency to approach values in excessively absolutistic states of consciousness. Persons in such rigid states of consciousness are relatively easy to manipulate---if their behavior patterns are adequately studied through objective data gathering and the statistical analysis of their behavior---considered from within the cause and effect state of consciousness. These analyses technocrats find relatively easy to do, and so the manipulation of such citizens in relatively easy to accomplish---with them being none the wiser. Technocratic manipulations, which may often be mutual, will continue so long as citizens are not liberated from their absolutistic states of consciousness and their ignorance of the complex interplay between costs, benefits, values, self-images, technology, death, and life. So long as typical citizens can not be authentic participants in the cost-benefit analysis which generate the political actions of our governments---so long will our democracy be a hypocrisy, if not an oligarchy. Through mutual use the citizens and the democracy may cease to live full and meaningful lives. (c) 1999 by Paul A. Smith in GO: essayz.com "Search for Integrity and Honesty" (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================
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