Technocratic movement

:This article is a movement supporting the use of technology to enhance society. See Technocrat (disambiguation) for other definitions.

Errors with the price system

Certain long-term trends support the technocrat?s conclusions. It is a fact that the labor content of production drastically began to fall around 1910, and is continuing to fall today because of increased productivity. In the 1920's, less than 4% of North American production in foodstuffs, housing and manufactured goods was done by humans; the majority of the work, in a scientific sense, was being done by machines.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Technological developments in mechanization have caused a massive shift of employment towards the service sector. Further increases in efficiency and productivity means that most of these services could be (and are being) reduced or eliminated by better management, automation, and centralization. These trends, and future trends, should signal an increase in production possibilities. This is, however, not the case, as increased productivity often leads to lay-offs and lower wages because of competition between workers, and the standard of living falls for many or only rises minimally. Human labor has become abundant, replaced by inexpensive machines. Technocrats argue that the more we are capable of producing due to technology, the greater disparities of wealth will become and the less the potential benefit of technology will be shared.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As opposed to economists, who define efficiency in terms of full utilization of resources and using resources in a way that reduces costs, technocrats define efficiency in terms of empirical evidence. Efficiency for a technocrat is 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. Technocrats argue that the inputs needed to make most products are in abundance, especially those critical to societies needs like food, shelter, transportation, information, etc. Technocrats argue that most social ills are due to economics and improper use of technology. They frequently point out that the current price system is wasteful in that economics seeks to utilize all resources but only creates scarce products, whereas technocrats argue full use of our technology and resources should be able to produce an abundance. Thus, technocrats strongly disagree with the basic economic principle that human wants are infinite.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Significant examples help point out technocracy's perspective. Technocrats state that the price system causes business to create an artificial scarcity of their products. Artificial scarcity is the common management practice of deliberately reducing production to the level at which money is available to pay for the goods (gaining a competitive market value, and thus profitability). Economists would argue that by producing less of certain products, we are able to shift resources to produce another good. Before the industrial revolution, most products and services were naturally scarce due to the limited amount of human resources available. It is obvious to technocrats that social ills such as hunger and poverty are not due to limitations in productivity; the price system causes people to limit how products are distributed, artificially stratifying people into social classes and creating poverty.

Related Topics:
Price system - Artificial scarcity

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Technocrats claim that in the real world the price system and lack of purchasing power have 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 (according to some, ever since the Bank of England was founded). This debt includes the national debt, mortgages (see global debt), long term debt, credit debt, and the growing stock market; all things that would have caused severe inflation in the old world economies where products were naturally scarce. Technocrats claim that the price-system will eventually fail because of its contradictions with the real world, in which case the movement plans to have educated enough of the populace in order to peaceably make changes to the economic structure.

Related Topics:
Price system - Bank of England - National debt - Global debt

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• 1935 Speech on the Price System
• Two Worlds - One Real and One Economic