Technocracy

Technocracy is an organizational system in which decision makers are selected on the basis of technological knowledge, often because of some conflict or competition where technological escalation is a constant feature.

Table of contents

1 Terminology
2 Derogatory usage
3 Criticism of technocracy
4 Further explanation
5 Technocracy and democracy
6 System of governance
7 See also
8 External links

Terminology

The term was coined in 1919 by American engineer W.H. Smith. It came into common usage through management theorist James Burnham's 1941 work Managerial Revolution. The term became widely used to describe politics and now generally refers to an elite who governs through use of technology/technological prowess. The situation usually described is one in which the elite are selected through bureaucratic processes on the basis of specialized knowledge rather than through democratic or other processes. The term may be either positive or negative.

The general term has been applied to a number of governments, most notably Singapore, Chile under Augusto Pinochet and the Chicago boys, and the current government of the People's Republic of China.

Howard Scott started the Technocracy movement as the "Technical Alliance" in the winter of 1918-1919. It started as a research organization that recruited scientists, architects and engineers. In 1933 it incorporated in the state of New York as a non-profit, non-political non-sectarian organization. In 1934, Howard Scott, then director-in-chief (his organizational title was "Chief Engineer"), promoted the organization and its goals with a North American lecture tour. The group remains in existence, and still recruits members.

The specific term Technocracy Incorporated applies to a movement started by Howard Scott using ideas from chemist Frederick Soddy and economist Thorstein Veblen. Technocracy Incorporated wanted to use full automation for full production, computers to track consumer demand, and energy credits for money. Technocracy Incorporated is opposed to the price system. The organization was established in 1933. Their magazine The Technocrat is still published today.

Derogatory usage

In current usage, "technocracy" or "technocrat" often have a derogatory meaning. They allude to a form of bureaucracy where decisions are handed down by unelected officials chosen according to their real or supposed technical knowledge, for instance in the economic field. The implications are that:

the decisions lack democratic legitimacy;
the decisions are often inadequate, because they are taken remotely and do not take into account the actual parameters of the situation;
the decisions reflect the ideological biases of the technocrats.

For instance, the European Commission is often criticized as a haven of technocracy.

Criticism of technocracy

One essential criticism of technocracy is that many governmental decisions are not technical, but political in essence. A technical decision is one that may be reached through know-how, expertise and experience, using rational arguments. A political decision is one that reflects some subjective choices, for instance regarding human values, or some choice regarding some very uncertain future.

For instance, a technocrat may follow neoclassical economics and decide that some factory is not economically efficient and thus that it should be closed. Still, closing this factory will result in a local social disaster, with many people forced out of jobs and the usual consequences. A political decision will have to take human distress into account.

Also, technocrats may focus on their particular area of expertise, whereas many governmental decisions have to approach matters from different points of views. An environment technocrat may seek to limit pollutants, while one overseeing industry may seek fewer restrictions on pollutant emissions. The problem is that each technocrat seeks to optimize efficiency in his particular field of expertise. Political arbitration then has to be brought in.

Finally, technocracy lacks popular sovereignty. Democratic governments govern in the name of the people, and the people may influence their decisions. Technocracy in its purest form is a variant on the old theme of oligarchy. Even without the assumption that popular sovereignty is good, technocracy, like all oligarchies, has tendencies to derive into a self-promoting regime that disregards the objectives that it was supposed to seek.

Further explanation

Technocracy, the politico-economic movement, advocates the optimization of the welfare of human beings, by means of scientific analyses and engineered action. It does not limit itself to established economic, political and administrative forms, but considers those as human artifacts subject to optimization. As a result, the group's reforms seem quite radical to many people.

Technocracy advocates an economic system in which production is run at full capacity at all times, and purchasing power equal to the productive capacity is evenly distributed to all. The organization claims that this will guarantee both well-being and security for all.

Certain long-term economic trends encourage technocratic beliefs. It is a fact that the labor content of production peaked around 1930, and is continuing to fall. At this time, less than four percent of the people of North America produce all foodstuffs, housing and manufactured goods. Every other working person performs services of some type, and most of these services could be (and are being) reduced or eliminated by better management, automation and centralization.

The result is that more than 95% of the population of North America could become a permanent leisure class, and not a poor one, either.

Technocrats argue that artificial scarcity prevents this outcome. Artificial scarcity is the common management practice of deliberately reducing production to the level at which money is available to pay for the goods. This is the "overcapacity" problem so frustrating to economists and managers.

In practice, a large number of people perform services, however, there are rational limits to the amount of medical, dental, personal care, banking, insurance and other services we can consume. As the arts of these services advance, we can expect to consume more services, with ever less labor content as well.

Since less than 4% of people can perform physically valuable work, this means that if people are paid only for the physical value they create, most people will become permanently impoverished by artificial scarcity.

In the real world, technocrats claim, the money system has been propped up by increasingly huge amounts of debt, which began to increase exponentially after 1930. This has been concealed as the national debt and mortgages. However, this system will eventually fail because of its contradictions with the real world.

Technocrats say that the rational thing is to begin to give away valuable things, and keep production running.

The concrete plans for this include such concepts as non-transferable credits (money) with an expiration date, representing a unit of consumable production. This would be supplemented by credits with longer expiration dates, redeemable for housing or machinery.

Technocracy and democracy

It has been argued that a constant progression to a more technocratic society is inevitable as many issues have become too complex for most people to easily grasp. Thus, as a theory of civics, it may be that technocracy opposes democracy, which has as a basic assumption that almost no issues are in fact too complex for most people to grasp.

A variant of technocracy is anticipatory democracy which relies on prediction markets and other such somewhat inclusive means to find the most accurate predictors of scientific and technological trends.

System of governance

Technocracy can also refer to a system of governance in which laws are enforced by designing the system such that it is impossible to break them. For instance, to prevent people from riding the trolley without paying, you could simply design the trolley cars so that no one can hop on without first inserting payment into a slot which causes the door to open.

The same idea can be applied on much larger scales, with automated public surveillance by semi-intelligent systems that automatically control or limit the actions of individuals to prevent illegal activity. This is called the carceral state, in which the whole state is effectively a prison with strict rules - and all individuals are supervised to ensure compliance.

The principles of anticipatory design, wayfinding, and B. F. Skinner's vision Walden Two, to some degree echo this potential, but relying on psychology and conditioning exclusively, and not on any intrusive technology to enforce the rules.

External links

In the role-playing game ' published by White Wolf Game Studio, the Technocracy''' is a group who is said to control reality through means of "application of new concepts."