Mayor Bloomberg Signs Emergency to Establish Odd-Even License Plate System for Gasoline Purchases to Reduce Wait Times … Mayor Bloomberg today signed an emergency order to establish an odd-even license plate system for gasoline and diesel purchases to reduce wait times and lines at gas stations in the five boroughs. Hurricane Sandy caused significant flooding and damage to petroleum infrastructure throughout the tri-state region – causing refineries to shutdown, pumping stations to lose electricity and terminals in the region to close. – Mike Bloomberg.com

Dominant Social Theme: When there is a crisis, it's a good thing for the government to step in.

Free-Market Analysis: This isn't the biggest story in the world but it is one with clear power elite memes. The dominant social theme obviously has to do with the need for government, the larger the better. The subdominant social theme is that oil is in short supply generally and needs to be rationed at the first sign of a crisis.

It's always irritating to see "Mayor Mike" inflict his peculiar brand of technocratic crackpot-ism on New York City. Few realize it, but New York IS being run in a technocratic way.

Technocratic regimes are running Italy and Spain, too. The nomenclature comes from a 1930s movement led by M. King Hubbert (see Peak Oil) and other scientists who believed that white collar specialty professionals such as engineers and other technical experts should be in control of decision making in their respective fields.

Technocracy seeks "experts" to run things via political power. It is a variant of the Socratic vision of "philosopher kings" – those who by virtue of their innate superiority are born to rule. The corollary is that such rulers should gain their positions based on "knowledge" not political maneuvering.

Mayor Mike is a big proponent of technocracy. It's actually a fundamental tenet of the coming transition to globalism now being managed by the power elite. Ideally, government is to be run much like central banking, another insane concept that benefits from a logical presentation.

When good, gray men gather together to present authoritarian concepts in smooth, non-threatening tones, power elite nostrums are reinforced. Bloomberg is not exceptionally good at this – his contempt and arrogance are too often on display – but his perspective is perfectly aligned with the coming technocracy of governance.

We wrote about this back in September in an article entitled, "Can't the Parties Just Get Along?"

Of course, we wouldn't mind seeing America's political parties collapse. But we are not speaking of their MERGER. People like NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg want the parties to merge. He's suggested as much.

For Mr. Bloomberg, it's all about technocracy. The best "manager" is to be elected, not the best or most popular pol.

This is convenient for people like Bloomberg who are enamored of the status quo. In Bloomberg's universe, central banks print endless torrents of money and technocrats pass endless torrents of regulations to manage it. The state swells endlessly until technocrats manage all.

Government is by its nature a sloppy business that allows people to pursue their own self-interest in a concealed way. Politicians like to talk about public service but it is merely a euphemism for private enrichment.

In the case of Bloomberg, the man doesn't need a great deal more money. He's already a billionaire by virtue of his Wall Street computer services and burgeoning financial-media empire.

But his fortune is in part based on a certain worldview … and it is the reason as well that he never misses an opportunity to impose his technocratic vision on the city. It is not "nannyism" that Bloomberg proposes (as usual, the mainstream media gets it wrong) but a form of "expertism" affiliated with the larger faux-management of technocracy.

It is the cult of the expert that Bloomberg celebrates whether he is inflicting a ban on trans fat or disallowing "big gulp" soft-drink cups. Always, Bloomberg knows better. Always government knows better. Each "emergency" order is merely a further metaphorical illustration of his argument:

The Mayor made the announcement today at City Hall … "Last week's storm hit the fuel network hard – and knocked out critical infrastructure needed to distribute gasoline," said Mayor Bloomberg … "Earlier today, I signed an emergency order to alternate the days that drivers can purchase gas, which is the best way to cut down the lines and help customers buy gas faster."

We have no idea whether Bloomberg's latest jeremiad will "cut down the lines" and make the buying and selling of gas more efficient. The result is likely to be the emergence of a kind of gray market of gasoline sales to drivers in desperate need of fuel on the wrong day.

Bloomberg won't admit to any such evolution, of course. Technocracy is "the bomb." Bloomberg (in his own mind, anyway) is a perfect technocrat.