Technocracy If Engineers Ruled the World Technocracy 1.History 2.The Ideas 3.What Happened?
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Transcript of Technocracy If Engineers Ruled the World Technocracy 1.History 2.The Ideas 3.What Happened?
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.