TechnocracyTechnocracy

If Engineers Ruled the World

Technocracy

1. History

2. The Ideas

3. What Happened?

Forerunners of the Technocrats

• Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis, UK, 1627

Forerunners of the Technocrats

• Saint-Simon, Du Systeme Industriel, France, 1802

`Industrial ability must replace feudal and military power; it is more important that administrators be competent than that they belong to a particular political party.’

Saint-Simon’s Three Chambers of Parliament

1. `Invention’: engineers and artists

2. `Examination’: scientists

3. `Execution’: industrialists

Prosper Enfantin,disciple of Saint-Simon

Technocracy in North America

1899: Bellamy publishes `Looking Backward’, a look

ahead to the distant future (2000 AD)

1911: Taylor publishes `Principles of Scientific

Management’.

1916: Gantt organises fifty engineers into `The New

Machine’.

Technocracy in North America

1917: The US enters World War I

1921: Thorsten Veblen publishes `The Engineers and

the Price System’.

Hoover publishes the results of the Committee

on the Elimination of Waste..

Technocracy in North America: 1919-1934

1919: Howard Scott, a disciple of Veblen, forms the Technical

Alliance.

The Alliance includes Charles Steinmetz, chief engineer

of GE; Richard Tolman, later Dean of Physics at

CalTech; and Veblen himself.

1921: The Alliance breaks up among accusations that Scott has

mismanaged its funds.

1929: The Great Crash, followed by the Depression.

1931: Scott and Rautenstrauch form the Committee on

technocracy.

Official and unofficialTechnocratic publicationsfrom the 1930’s

Pre-Industrial Economy

Most of an item’s value comes from the human energy expended to make it.

So, given a society of N citizens, an individual can exchange a year’s labour for 1/N of the goods produced in the society that year.

The institution of `money’ provides a way to ration scarce goods among the citizens.

Industrial Economy

Most of the energy needed to produce an item is supplied by technology; human energy represents less than 2% of the total energy input.

Thus a citizen can only exchange their labour for a tiny fraction of the goods produced by society.

Money is no longer an efficient way to distribute abundant goods among the citizens.