A part of Technocracy is the desire for a North American technate. However, this idea of large nations that can be internally independent in regards to resources can be applied to any region of the world. A common criticism that I hear is that it’s inherently imperialist or chauvinistic to want your country to have more land or unite with another country whose people would not have the same amount of influence and power. The Technate of North America could not be a larger version of the United States and without the plutocratic systems the US currently has, would be completely unrecognizable to anyone living in the US, Mexico or Canada.

To even get at the question if Technocracy is imperialist, we need to define what imperialism is. It doesn’t always mean land expansion and violent oppression for labor and resources like many European countries practiced up until the 1st world war. In modern times entire sovereign countries end up the same as colonies in practice, either out of necessity due to poverty or to puppet regimes that take orders from more powerful countries. South Korea for example is a sovereign nation but with American military bases everywhere with restricted political and economic sovereignty in exchange for military defense. Even less overtly politically aligned countries tend to have foreigners from wealthier nations outsource jobs so they can pay less and the foreigners can pocket the difference as extra profit.

If it is imperialism to dominate people for their labor and resources, and it is a gray area to extract labor and resources through economic coercion of the disadvantaged, then why is it imperialism to allow the willing entry of people into a country with better living standards and that will respect them? If the people of some foreign nation spend their days in mines and sweat shops but they want to join the technate to improve their lives, should we say no on the grounds that it would be imperialism? Even in a world where imperialists extract wealth from nations without military force? Technocracy and energy accounting can defend people from being economically exploited by wealthy foreign powers, so what would anyone besides the capitalist class have to gain from rejecting any person or nation from joining the Technate? I believe that the self-determination of any person or group of people includes the ability to join whatever nation they share ideals and ideology with, and if it’s the technate I don’t see any compelling reason that we should reject them.

It gets awkward when national and cultural differences are viewed as the basis of a nation or nationalism, but Technocracy is at a higher level of development where the basis of nationalism is Technocratic ideas. We should not be religious or cultural nationalists who refuse to share a country with people of different backgrounds. When the basis of your nation is Technocracy and not a culture, religion, or language, then the land of that nation should reach as far as the ideas of rationalism do.