Does any one know if their is any Misean refutation of Technocracy either from Mises himself or some follower of his school? By Technocracy I mean the specific economic school thought devised by Howard Scott in the 1930s as a solution to the Great Depression and is continuing through the think tank of Technocracy Inc.
As far as I know Mises didn’t address Howard Scott’s specific ideas, but from what I can gather of Scott’s ideas the calculation argument deals with them all.
The calculation arguments deals with technocratism (which is just another word for central planning/socialism).
The calculation argument of Gossen and Hayek or its more advanced form by Mises and Brutzkus are not required to dispose of the nonsense of “chickens flying into peoples mouths already roasted”, as Mises might have described the assumption of technocracy. The laws of thermodynamics deal with technocracy:
Technocracy = “we will produce robots, and those robots will produce robots, and those robots will produce robots, …, and those robots, will produce goods, and other robots: and we will sit back and collect” = “there is no problem of scarcity, so now only the question of distribution remains, and distribution of free resources should be equal.”
Obviously, technocracy assumes scarcity has been dealt with and just declares government must give “fair” distribution of so-called “infinite” resources.
Technocracy is essentially based on post-scarcity.
Think anarcho-communism, aka the Venus Project.
If I remember correctly one of Technocracies main features is an energy currency, in which everything is priced in the amount of energy a thing took to create or has embodied in it. Mises cirtainly did not critique these guys directly, but indirectly his critique of the use of labour hours as a tool for economic calcualation is very close. As value based on energy fails for much the same reason that value based on labour does. I suggest the original Economic Calculation in the Socailist Commonwealth, I find its discussion of labour hours deficentcies clearer personally then in Socialism.
Also I remember where I found a critique of energy theory of calcualtion it was in Dickinson’s Economics of Socialism . In the chapter Methods of caluculating cost. After a long critique of labour as a unit for calculating cost he writes of Scott’s & proffesor Soddy’s(whoever he is) idea -
‘‘The defects of this method of costing are similar to those of costing according to labour time. In particular , it ignores the varying degree of scarcity of different kinds of labour, since scarcity is not necessarily proportional to energy consumption, Thus nether(engery or labour) method measures true economic cost in the sense of the relative scarcity of the means of production. By neither method is it possible to compare properly different methods of production entailing the use of different kinds of concrete labour. Both methods ignore the scarcity of naturally occuring raw materials, of land , and of stored up past production embodied in instruments of production.’’
Dickinson himself was anti Mises thinking that a trial & error aproach to economic calculation could overcome Mises problem. However he did take on board that Mises had offered a real problem, meaning that both market socialists like Lange & Dickinson were together with Mises in opposing plans based on arbitary units of value like labour and energy.
So is Technocracy just another name for Communism or is it a different theory that shares superficial similarities?
Well its not Marxism if that’s what you are asking. But it is a form of government & society where experts(scientists/engineers ect) rule, and think of social and economic problems as an engeneering problem to be solved, just like building a bridge. Whether it is a form of socialism or not it is a form of centrally planned society. In that sense it can be put in the same catagory as all really existing communist countries. Marxism does not have anything in common with Technocrats in their theory however. Except that they both want to replace the Market, technocrats with energy & (some) Marxists with socially neccessary labour. In fact I think that most marxists would find the idea of technocarcy quite distasteful, or at least they should considering that Technocracy it is an elite class of scientists ruling & not their precious proletariat.
Technocracy is basically an engineering approach to central planning or interventionism. Its methodology is scientistic, and its plans fall sway to the normal problems of resource allocation and disruption of trade.
A pure market system could be described as a real technocracy, as opposed to government pseudo-technocracy, since under a market the actualk data required (technical and monetary) for rational investment and management are available and the real experts and professionals are most effectively put in command of resources required to implement these plans.
Aside from the egalitarian fetish and cultural protectionism of the conservatives the market anarchist system is actually a far more deserving of many other names: socialism, since market cooperation and coordination really are what social activity is; technocracy because it is real management by experts and professionals; nationalism since it actually allows free association, secession, security and order; and globalism/universalism since it actually integrates all who are not forcibly prevented into a system of worldwide coordinated action and universal human rights.