Upload
logan-barton
View
219
Download
1
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
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.