THE LATEST THEORY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 433, 18 January 1933, Page 4

THE LATEST THEORY

The word "technoeracy" has frequently been used in recent reports of politico-economic discussions in America. Just what that word has meant it has been diffieult to grasp, because our friends in the United States have rather a predilection for coining new words and phrases to suit their own outlook. But apparently there is quite a lot behind technoeracy and it may be explained as meaning that the world "must abandon its agelong ideas of price values for a new guiding principle in which the basic factor of social life is the amount of energy available for productive purposes and enables the proper synchronisation of production and consumption by which human needs are fully met and the necessary amount of human work is equally divided." It is the doctrine of a group of distinguished scientists who are investigating the technica'. development of America, in the course of which they have ascertained such astounding facts as that modern machinery will enable the farmer to accomplish in an hour a task that requirec 3000 hours a century ago. It is emphasised that American factories, even if they resumed the peak production of 1929, coulc employ only one-half of the present unemployed owing to recent mechanyical developmen?:S. Tnj deed, they could supply their own j needs if adults worked four hours a day for a four-day week. I Technocracy's main thesis is the scientific discovery that engi- , neering skill, if properly employed would empower mankind to 1 obtain a life of leisure and plenty. Unfortunately, the pathI way to the new era is blocked by I the "riff-raff of social and ecol . _ . _

nomic mstitutions which results in an unprecedented economy of plenty among a hodge-podge of debt and unemployment." Technoeracy declares that "America cannot longer deal with the lack of purchasing power, unemployment, and debt by individual establishments. They can be dealt with only as part of our industrial complex." This revolutionary thesis is keenly discussed by thoughtful Americans, including some of Mr Franklin Roosevelt's advisers. Professor Soddy, Oxford prof essor of chemistry, who is mentioned in America as being the originator of technoeracy, denies paternity in the Daily Mail, but agrees that technological advances have already rendered existing' social institutions and economic systems obsolete and dangerous. He also agrees that the world' s physical needs can be supplied in far greater abundance than at present with a shorter working day and week. The professor does not advocate the American proposal to substitute payment in "energy certificates," though something similar may he forced upon civili'sation if science continues to expand. He condemns as a "blesphemy against truth" the c'urrent idea that everyone must severely economise because so much was wasted in wartime. "This is as idle," he says, "as trying to recoup- the overload on a power station by shutting it down. The present unemployment is caused by the attempt to recoup the wartime overloading by partially shutting down the station."