The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s • Hacker News Board

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#121

Post by jhbadger » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

skywal_l wrote: post #92

An interesting critique of the meritocracy/technocracy: The Rise of Meritocracy by Michael Young. Written in the 50s it's prescient to what has been happening since. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

You can argue that a true meritocracy still wouldn't be ideal (as Young did), but that argument seems irrelevant -- the problem in the real world is that we pretend that we have a meritocracy, but often the person who gets the promotion or whatever isn't actually the best at their job, but is a cousin or fraternity brother of the person in charge -- the old "it isn't what you know, but who you know".

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#122

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

martin-t wrote: post #78

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…

I don't think so. Ideally, you still have normal people deciding tradeoffs like today, it's just that the reasoning and the suggested solutions to problems have to be scientifically and logically sound. The submission[0] right next to this one shows why. Apparently, in the US, you are now a criminal if you fly drones half a mile from ICE vehicles. Some of which may be unmarked and even if marked, how exactly do you v…

[deleted]

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#123

Post by chermi » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

intalentive wrote: post #59

trhway wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 1930s the fascists, communists, and New Dealers all took the reins and governed their societies in new technocratic ways. ... They are technological means by which to manage populations. As Yuval Harari puts it, the answer to "unnecessary people" is "drugs and computer games". while "New Deal" have a lot of issues, note that 2 other approaches totally failed. At least for some time we considered them as fail…

Seems to be working fine in China. Bad management happens, and does not refute the idea of management itself. Good management works.

What is working in China? Because it certainly isn't communism if that's your point.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#124

Post by chermi » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

aetagj wrote: post #25

simianwords wrote: post #19

“ However, the overall track record for technology being revolutionary on its own is poor. For the last 20-some-odd years, technological progress has been reduced to maximizing attention in the form of gimmicks, addiction, and apps nobody needs. It’s hardly the sci-fi future many once wrote about. ” Ah yes all technological progress like AI, EVs and biotech are all bad because social media bad. Why is this article ta…

AI is a gimmick and most money goes into distracting Internet and advertising tech. We can barely reach the moon again.

How can some one on hn think AI is a gimmick? I truly don't understand this. You can completely ignore 99% of it that is distasteful to you it seems to me you would still have to come to the conclusion it's not a gimmick. Is alphafold a gimmick? Are boltzmann generators gimmicks? Are improved weather predictions gimmicks? Are diffusion models gimmicks?

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#125

Post by c-smile » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:29 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

USSR at big extent was there too.

Like OGAS[1] - a unified economic management system. The idea was simple yet technocratically rational: if the system has enough sensors and effectors on society then it can reach a maximum of satisfaction for the society as a whole (with the given set of common resources).

[1]https://museum.dataart.com/short-stories/ogas-the-red-bit-sy...

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#126

Post by y-c-o-m-b » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #69

Weird - that's the 2nd mention of "Technate" I see in 24 hrs - never heard of that before today. (Other instance was PredictiveHistory‬ youtube here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrmERlHUqBk ). Guessing that's not a coincidence

I watch his channel regularly mostly for entertainment and to help form my own thoughts and opinions on the subject matter relative to other sources. I do think some of his content is accurate and useful, but a lot of it isn't. I've caught him regurgitating conspiracy threads from reddit in his teachings on more than one occasion. I think he reads those threads and possibly uses AI to design the topics around them along with a dose of some cursory research into those subjects. I'm guessing he got the term "Technate" off of reddit as well, as I've seen it mentioned there.

EDIT: looks like it might be based off this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement#The_techn...

It's probably influenced by findings after Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin conspiracies started spiking in popularity in recent months

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#127

Post by believme1123e4 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#128

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

steve1977 wrote: post #89

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…

One issue with economy as a science is that it's a very soft science at best and just pseudoscience at worst. Which then kind of defeats the purpose of experts in the sense of technocracy. As an analogy, you can make a PhD in theology, but that is not proof that God exists.

Economics is very deliberately a pseudo-science. Orthodox economics starts from neoliberal moral beliefs and tries to justify and excuse them.

It's about controlling the narrative, not about modelling consequences.

Example: the way the supply shocks of the oil crises in the 70s and 80s were converted into a "keep wages low and raise interest rates to prevent inflation" narrative, when the rational solution would have been to move the economy away from dependence on oil as soon as possible.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#129

Post by AngryData » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #95

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.

How ironic that you were downvoted. HN is full of left-populists these days and any slightly negative mention of socialism or central planning (their equivalent utopian vision) triggers them. I think this suggests it's more than just hubris, it's religion. These aren't just ideas, they are belief systems and identities for people. Hence why someone would downvote a benign internet comment like yours. The steady decli…

I would equate similar values to people who think socialism and central planning are somehow linked and share the same criticisms. Probably 90% of criticism I hear about socialism is complete and utter nonsense. Co-op businesses are socialist ideals in practice and co-ops have consistently gained market share over the last 80+ years, and it is neither linked to or shares any of the problems as central planning.

Im all for reading criticism about economic models, but it seems like the vast majority of it has nothing to do with anything Marx proposed or idealized and is just translocated hatred of authoritarian policies which is far more often in opposition to Marxist principles than supporting them. Socialist ideaology far more directly supports democratic workplaces and democratic economic decisions than centralized leadership and control.

Re: The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s

#130

Post by ccppurcell » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 6:15 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…

Around the same time, Gödel proved the incompleteness theorems and Turing gave us the halting problem. These and the uncertainty principle tell us not only that the universe is somehow statistical and not mechanical, but that there are certain unknowable facts. That's got to be a major psychological blow.