Technocracy Incorporated

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Technocracy Incorporated

The Technocracy Monad, representing balance, is the official symbol of Technocracy, Inc.
The Technocracy Monad, representing balance, is the official symbol of Technocracy, Inc.
Abbreviation TechInc
Formation 1933
Type NPO
Headquarters Ferndale, Washington
Official languages English
Website http://www.technocracy.org/

Contents

[edit] Technocracy

A form of government in which scientists and technical experts administer; "technocracy is described as that society in which those who govern justify themselves by appeal to technical experts who justify themselves by appeal to scientific forms of knowledge".

Technocracy Incorporated is a North American organization formed in the 1930s after the dissolution of the Technical Alliance. Howard Scott became the founder and leader of the organization which sought to implement the findings of the Technical Alliance and create a new kind of society based on energy accounting. The group was incorporated in the state of New York in 1933 as a non-profit, non-political, non-sectarian organization. Led by Scott, then director-in-chief or "Chief Engineer", the organization promoted its goals of educating people about the Technical Alliance's ideas via a North American lecture tour in 1934, gaining support throughout the depression years.

The precedent document of Technocracy Incorporated is the Technocracy Study Course first published in 1934. The Technocracy Study Course includes the Technate design for North America in its last two chapters, also an introduction to science, and an explanation from the point of view of Technocracy Incorporated of what a price system is.

Technocracy Incorporated information is presented as a scientific social design alternative to a price system method. Howard Scott noted that the science behind the ideas of Technocracy Technate design are based on the work of an American scientist Willard Gibbs. Scott cited Gibbs as the intellectual scientific forefather of the concepts of Technocracy.[1][2]

One notable member of Technocracy Incorporated was M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist who proposed the theory known as Peak oil.

[edit] Organization

The standard unit for the organization is the chartered Section, consisting of at least fifty members. At Technocracy's height in popularity, many cities contained more than one Section, sometimes as many as a dozen or more.[citation needed] These sections undertook the majority of Technocracy's work, including the research that continued after the Technical Alliance.

The organization receives its funds entirely from dues and donations from its members. Because of the goal of abolishing political controls, membership is open to any citizen of North America, except politicians.

Technocracy's Continental Headquarters ("CHQ") was originally situated in New York. It has moved several times through its history, and is currently located in Ferndale, Washington.

[edit] Ideas and goals

Trends of the price system with technologic escalation.
Trends of the price system with technologic escalation.
A diagram of the Technical Administration of the North American Technate showing the Functional sequences and their relationship to one another.
A diagram of the Technical Administration of the North American Technate showing the Functional sequences and their relationship to one another.

Technocracy Incorporated aims to establish a zero growth socio-economic system based upon conservation and abundance as opposed to scarcity-based economic systems like capitalism or the so called planned economic system (within a Price System) used by Communist states.

A core conclusion reached by Technocracy Incorporated is that a price system, or any system based on scarcity, is an illogical means of distribution in our technologically advanced world. The Technate design concept as explained by Technocracy Incorporated sees established economic, political, and administrative forms as relics of a traditional past.

The organisation argues that developments in mechanization have caused a massive shift of employment towards the service sector.[3] Further increases in efficiency and productivity mean that most of the tasks performed by human employees could be reduced or eliminated through better management, automation, and centralization. These trends should signal an increase in both production possibilities and leisure time since more can be produced with less human labor. Within a market system, however, increased productivity often leads to downsizing because companies need fewer workers and lower wages because of competition. Consequently, the standard of living falls for many. Thus, Technocrats argue that we are faced with a fundamental paradox: As inexpensive machines become available to replace human labor, they do not make our lives easier; on the contrary, they make them harder. The more people are capable of producing due to technology, the greater the disparities in wealth will become and the potential benefit of technology will be shared less. The basic cause of this problem, in the view of Technocracy Incorporated, is the fact that we rely on a money-based system to make economic decisions.

As opposed to economists, who define efficiency in terms of maximal allocation of limited resources, in order to provide the most utility to their owners, Technocrats define efficiency in terms of empirical evidence. Efficiency, for a Technocrat, is measured scientifically: a ratio of energy applied for useful work to energy applied in the complete system. Technocrats argue there exists a massive rift between the real world of science and the world of economics. They claim the inputs needed to make most products are in abundance, especially those critical to society's needs like food, shelter, transportation, information, etc. Technocrats argue that most social ills, such as poverty and hunger are due to faulty economics and improper use of technology. They frequently point out that the current price system is wasteful as it utilizes as many resources as possible but can only create scarce products (excludable and rival private goods). Technocrats argue that full use of our technology and resources should be able to produce an abundance.

Technocrats claim that the price system entails a severe lack of purchasing power, and has been propped up by wasteful tactics, major patches to the economic system, and increasingly huge amounts of debt, which began to increase exponentially after 1930.[citation needed] This debt includes the U.S. national debt, mortgages (see global debt), long term debt, credit debt, and the growing stock market. Technocrats see growing debt as a threat to the stability of capitalism. Technocrats claim that the price system will eventually fail, in which case the movement hopes to have educated enough of the populace in order to peaceably make changes to the economic structure and create a Technate.

[edit] An alternative to money: Energy accounting

See main article: Energy Accounting
An elderly Howard Scott with John Gregory at Technocracy Inc. Continental Headquarters (CHQ), then in Rushland, PA. Background maps show the proposed area of the Technate overlaid with the Continental Hydrology.
An elderly Howard Scott with John Gregory at Technocracy Inc. Continental Headquarters (CHQ), then in Rushland, PA. Background maps show the proposed area of the Technate overlaid with the Continental Hydrology.
A Technocracy Inc. event, the map in the background is of the proposed North American Technate
A Technocracy Inc. event, the map in the background is of the proposed North American Technate

Energy Accounting is a hypothetical system of distribution, which would record the Energy used to produce and distribute goods and services consumed by citizens in a Technate. The units of this accounting system would be known as Energy Certificates, or simply Energy Units, these would replace money in a Technate, but unlike traditional money or currencies, energy certificates could not be saved or earned, only distributed evenly among a populace.

The amount of units given to each citizen would be calculated by determining the total productive capacity of the technate and dividing it equally after infrastructure requirements were met. The Energy units or certificates themselves would probably not have to be physically used by the populace as the system would be computerised. In energy accounting the Technate would use information of natural resources, industrial capacity and citizen’s purchasing habits to determine how much of any good or service was being consumed by the populace, so that it could match production with consumption within a sustainable resource base.

Some reasons given for the use of Energy Accounting are, to ensure the highest possible standard of living, as well as equality, among the Technate’s citizenry, as well as prohibit expending resources that go beyond the productive or ecological capacity of the technate.[4] Technocrats point out that energy accounting is not rationing; it is a way to distribute an abundance and track demand. Everyone would receive an equal amount of consuming power via this method in theory.

[edit] The North American Technate

The North American Technate is a design and plan to transform North America into a Technocratic society. The plan includes using Canada's rich deposits of minerals and hydro-electric power as a complement to the United States's industrial and agricultural capacity (Many of the details of this plan are presented in the Technocracy Study Course).

The North America Technate would be composed of all of North America, Central America, the Caribbean, parts of South America and Greenland, encompassing some 30 modern nations (as well as numerous Non-Self-Governing Territories). If the Technate were set up today, it would contain nearly 600 million citizens and its total land area would be over 26 million square km (making it the largest nation on Earth). Its territorial claims would stretch from the North Pole in the north, to the Equator in the south and from the Caribbean in the west, to the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean, to the east.

[edit] Urbanates: A technocratic replacement for cities

Once a technate has been established Technocracy Incorporated advocates a form of living environment called Urbanates. An Urbanate is essentially an assembly of buildings where people live and work. These places would have all the facilities needed for a community, including schools, hospitals, shopping malls, waste management and recycling facilities, sports centres, and public areas.

Technocrats plan for Urbanates to be something akin to resorts, designed to give each citizen the highest standard of living possible. Getting around in an Urbanate would be inherently easy and efficient.

Urbanates would be connected via a continent-wide transportation network envisioned by Technocracy, which would involve a High-speed rail network linking every Urbanate, the Continental Hydrology (a Canal network), and air transport. These systems would also be connected to the Technate's industrial sites for easy transport of goods to consumers, and to all recreational and vacation areas of the continent.

The reason given by Technate advocates for all this ambitious restructuring of urban life is that modern cities are often extremely poorly planned and built in a haphazard way leading to major inefficiencies, waste, and environmental problems. Technocrats propose that rather than trying to solve these problems within the framework of existing cities based on current economic or price system agendas, new living constructs would reflect new values in a non monetary system.

[edit] Technocracy Incorporated Publications

The organization has published several magazines throughout its history, including the The Technocrat, The Northwest Technocrat and Technocracy Digest, it currently publishes the North American Technocrat[5] and the movement still continues after more than 70 years of history (for a more complete list of past publications see here [1]).

  • Technocracy Study Course [Technocracy, Inc.] (1934)
  • Technocracy Handbook [Technocracy, Inc.], (1939)
  • The Sellout of the Ages, Howard Scott, (1941)
  • Our Country, Right or Wrong, (1946)
  • Continentalism: The Mandate of Survival, (1947)

[edit] Further reading

Books on the early history of the Technocracy movement:

  • William E. Akin, Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941 (University of California Press, 1977) ISBN 0-520-03110-5
  • Henry Elsner, The Technocrats, Prophets of Automation (Syracuse University Press, 1967)
  • Harold Loeb, Life in a Technocracy. What it Might Be Like (The Viking Press, 1933)
  • Allen Raymond, What is Technocracy? (McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., LTD., 1933)

Elsner's account is from a sociological perspective. Akin's book is much more detailed, though deals mostly with the intellectual history of the movement. The authors argue that Technocracy gained a fair amount of national press attention in the midst of the Great Depression, but their time in the national spotlight lasted scarcely a year, from 1932-33.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ History and Purpose of Technocracy by Howard Scott
  2. ^ The Origins of Technocracy. From the Technocracy Movement website - Scott's statement is on the video
  3. ^ Akin, William E. (1977). Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03110-5. 
  4. ^ Energy Accounting An article on Energy Accounting as proposed by Technocracy Inc.
  5. ^ What are we?. Technocracy Inc.. Retrieved on 2007-06-25.