The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s • Hacker News Board

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#111

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

econ wrote: post #58

tovej wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read tfa? The key word here is populism. Finding scapegoats (immigrants, woke feminists, lazy unemployed people) to explain away societal ills caused by inequality. Of course tech billionaires prefer blaming the scapegoats to blaming themselves. It serves as a political shield, so that they can continue to hoard wealth and control. In the 30s, industry leaders aligned themselves with Hitler and Mussolini. The…

You can eat olives without martini. The actual problem with technocracy (if done right) is that the work of experts grows increasingly incomprehensible to average men. Even if things work out perfectly, experts can't properly take risks or make a leap of faith in other people's name. (Not to argue our current democratic model is any good at it)

The problem is that there's never any single "correct" solution for any engineering problem let alone social ones, and there's no single axis of "intelligence" or "expertise" that qualifies any single individual or set of individuals to make decisions in the long term on behalf of whole groups of people.

I am not a free market capitalist, I am a socialist; but I also believe in decentralizing decision making because centralized systems run by self-proclaimed people-of-merit always produces bad outcomes in the long run; left or right.

Having to find consensus is messy and difficult but always wins out in the long run.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#112

Post by RandomLensman » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

chermi wrote: post #72

recursivecaveat wrote: post #38

Technocracy always struck me as weirdly incoherent? If you take the economy, probably the most studied of government policies, it is not 1 number. There are many questions about what priorities ought to be. There is no 'expert' answer for how many starving poor people are a worthy trade off for a GDP point. Even if there was, there is an economist branch that disagrees with any possible position you might take. The q…

Hubris. Is the same mindset that leads to socialism, central planning, social darwinism, etc. The temptation of "theory" without the suffering from pesky reality.

Central planning of some sort is pretty standard in corporations, I'd say.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#113

Post by cedilla » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

AkelaA wrote: post #90

ccppurcell wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that but the 30s was the tail end of a period of reduction and unification in science. If physics and biology (large portions of it) could be reduced to a handful of principles, why not economics and politics. Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein, Hilbert, the Vienna Circle. It must have seemed like science was on track to explain more or less everything.

It’s interesting that the theory of Quantum Mechanics emerged just after this point and threw a wrench in the idea that the universe could be neatly explained through a universal single theory, suddenly there were more questions than answers. And Einstein famously hated quantum physics. There’s something to be said about the cultural impact of quantum mechanics and how it shifted people’s perceptions from a universe…

I don't know why it would matter, but Einstein didn't hate quantum mechanics. He literally got his Nobel prize for his role in discovering quantum mechanics. He is one of the earliest people to propose that light exists in quantised packets.

He had some strong opinions around interpretations of quantum physics, but that isn't even a question of science, it's a metaphysical discussion.

While we're at it, Einstein also wasn't a bad student, and he didn't hate mathematics.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#114

Post by macleginn » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

The article spends a lot of time on criticising technocratic ideas of tech capitalists, who haven’t actually achieved anything in the political sphere so far, and doesn’t even mention China where quite a few of strikingly similar ideas are being implemented under the guise of a Marxist/Jinpingist system with modern characteristics.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#115

Post by api » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:11 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #112

chermi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hubris. Is the same mindset that leads to socialism, central planning, social darwinism, etc. The temptation of "theory" without the suffering from pesky reality.

Central planning of some sort is pretty standard in corporations, I'd say.

There’s multiple corporations. When you have state level central planning there’s no adversarial check or feedback mechanism. Nothing challenges it to see if it’s actually doing a good job.

Of course this is also a strong argument for antitrust. In some markets today there is basically one corporation or a few that seem more interlocked than competing. That starts to be indistinguishable from Soviet bureaus.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#116

Post by api » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #52

codejake wrote: post #30

Commenters here are getting confused. There's technocracy, the governance[1]. And Technocracy, the pseudo-cult movement[2]. They quickly evolved into different things with different ideologies. The article is mostly about the latter movement. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement

Futurism is the same. It's an appealing concept but the actual Futurist movement was basically just fascist.

The Italian futurists went fascist. There were also Russian Cosmists who were IMO more interesting and didn’t seem fascist. They seemed more intellectual and heavily influenced science fiction. The Italian futurists were just on speed I think.

On the fringe right today there’s people who invoke Russian Cosmism and fascism, which I don’t get because historically they were distinct movements. But the fringe right is extremely incoherent. Fascism itself is also ideologically incoherent, and in that case it’s because fascism tends to be explicitly anti-rational.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#117

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:24 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #7

tovej wrote: post #6

Expected to read about past and current connections between technocracy and fascism. Was not disappointed. Musk, Altman, Thiel, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Page, and the like are trying to implement technocracy. And that's something we should be resisting at every opportunity.

> Musk, Altman, Thiel, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Page, and the like are trying to implement technocracy Several people (maybe all, I do not know for sure) on that list are pretty hard core right wing populists, correct? Isn't that completely at odds with technocracy? Or are you thinking that they are just taking advantage of a populist movement but are themselves technocrats?

Zero of them are right-wing populists. They share absolutely no characteristics or policies with anyone who had ever been called populist before 2015, both when the term was invented (as a description of left-wing people against plutocrats), or when it was later bastardized by plutocrats (as a description of anyone who thought the happiness of the population should have any affect on policy.) There is no resemblance between any position they hold and the positions of the People's Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States))

> The "Demands" adopted by the Ocala convention called for the abolition of national banks; the establishment of sub-treasuries or depositories in every state, which would make low interest direct loans to farmers and property owners; the increase of money in circulation to not less than $50 per capita; the abolishment of futures of all agricultural and mechanical productions; the introduction of free silver; the prohibition of alien ownership of land, the reclamation of all lands held by railroads and other corporations in excess of what was actually used and needed by them, held for actual settlers only; legislation to ensure that one industry would not be built up at the expense of another; removal of the tariff tax on necessities of life; a graduated income tax; the limitation of all national and state revenues to the necessary expenses of the government economically and honestly administered; strict regulation or ownership of the means of public communication and transportation; and an amendment of the United States Constitution providing for the direct election of United States senators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocala_Demands

People need to stop discussing reality through weird propagandistic brand names that people were literally paid to come up with, and talk specifically about material differences in policy.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#118

Post by RandomLensman » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

api wrote: post #115

RandomLensman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central planning of some sort is pretty standard in corporations, I'd say.

There’s multiple corporations. When you have state level central planning there’s no adversarial check or feedback mechanism. Nothing challenges it to see if it’s actually doing a good job. Of course this is also a strong argument for antitrust. In some markets today there is basically one corporation or a few that seem more interlocked than competing. That starts to be indistinguishable from Soviet bureaus.

There are multiple nations and states with feedback mechanism between them (see the cold war, for example).

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#119

Post by Ultimatt » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

yxhuvud wrote: post #108

tovej wrote: post #6

Expected to read about past and current connections between technocracy and fascism. Was not disappointed. Musk, Altman, Thiel, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Page, and the like are trying to implement technocracy. And that's something we should be resisting at every opportunity.

No, they are aiming for plutocracy. They don't want solutions that is good for society, they want solutions that make them richer.

With a side helping of something new, technofeudalism. Both of which are not at all related to technocracy.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#120

Post by jhbadger » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

ks2048 wrote: post #10

This idea seems to come and go all over the world. It reminds me of the "Científicos" [1] in Mexico during the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship (early 1900s). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cient%C3%ADfico

Or the "Whiz Kids" that Robert McNamara brought into the DoD in the 1960s who were supposed to win the war in Vietnam through game theory and other applications of science and technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen...