TECHNOCRACY

from Fancyclopedia 2

A plan for running North America as an engineering project. It had origin in Thorstein Veblen's distinction between the engineers who actually made the machinery run and the "Captains of Industry" who played with stocks and bonds. After the World War, says Speer (meaning the last World War but one), a group of scientists are said to have surveyed the continent's resources and concluded that every adult in the country could have goods equivalent to $20,000 a year for life by working 4 hours a day, 165 days a year, for 20 years. In addition, food and many basic services would be free.

New inventions, despite repressive tactics, are making people more and more productive, and the present Price System, it was declared, was fated to collapse about 1942; when this happened engineers and Technocrats (Technocracy, Inc, had elaborately-numbered study groups all over the place, especially strong in Canada and California) would take over and set up the Technate, according to blueprints which were drawn up in some detail. It was to be governed by a self-perpetuating oligarchy of scientists (much better than messy politics and incompetent voters). Income would be the same for all, social approval or disapproval supplying the stimulus that money gives now. Energy certificates (from which the stfnal "credit" apparently got its inspiration) were to be exchanged for goods by a beautifully worked-out bookkeeping system.

Technocracy was prominent among the plans offered to get us out of the Great Depression in '29, and was publicized by Gernsback's managing editor David Lasser. Under the New Deal it was little heard of, but about 1939 made a comeback under Howard Scott. It was taken up by Yerke and Hodgkins of the LASFS, interested Ackerman briefly, but made few converts till the outbreak of war when several Futurians, saying that that event had made internationalism useless for the time being, turned to Technocracy. (They were not welcomed by the Angelenoes.) It is said that Technocracy study groups still exist, but it's been little heard of in fandom for years now.