Technocracy: Information in English - Technocracy is science in the social field

Technocracy: Information in English

MAN HOURS PER UNIT
TOTALINDUSTRIAL EMPLOYMENT IN MAN HOURS
PHYSICAL PRODUCTION

NORTH AMERICAN TECHNATE ADMINISTRATION CHART

TECHNOCRACY CALENDAR

Technocracy Is Unique

TECHNOCRACY and its program are unique in approach to and analysis of our outmoded social mechanism. Technocracy Inc. is the only organization in existence that has a scientifically formulated design for a social mechanism that can succeed and replace the Price System and actually measure up to the physical and technical requirements of this Continental Area. Technocracy makes no compromise with the Price System. Technocracy makes no compromise at all, for compromise in any direction whatsoever would defeat the purpose of Technocracy. Technocracy has the only answer to the social problems of North America, as correct as scientific methods and scientific knowledge circa 1951 make it possible to be. Therefore, any deviation or compromise would serve only to depart from and lessen its verity and rigor.

Perhaps, if we fail to stop and consider the matter, this may sound rather dogmatic. Actually, it isn't. The statements stand, and will continue to stand BECAUSE Technocracy IS NOT dogmatic. Technocrats do not have a doctrine codified from a set of opinions and myths, with a few inescapable facts rationalized to fit. Technocracy is wholly conditioned by the facts of this physical world in which, despite any philosophical aspirations we may cherish, we are forced to live; and as and when new facts are found bearing on our social problems, Technocracy will conform as the facts dictate. Physical facts are uncompromising, as we may learn if we try to disregard them.

And so it is easily understood why the Technocrat is so little interested in 'prestige by association' with 'big names' or the 'right people.' If we are right, then only one conclusion is possible: they are all wrong. It isn't too surprising. Those with 'names' and 'position' are the kind who happen to fit well into the particular kind of civilization we have under a Price System. It isn't to be expected that they would fit some other kind of activity so well.

This doesn't mean that all the rest of the army is out of step with the Technocrat either. They're all out of step with themselves and with everybody. Being guided largely by opinions and prejudice, they agree on nothing. There are as many sets of opinions as there are individuals. There is no unanimity anywhere.

There IS unanimity among Technocrats because the physical facts are the same for everyone everywhere, and Technocracy is the same wherever it is found on the Continent. Technocrats are all working on the same job, building for the New America.

—The 'Co-Ordinator,' published by Section 1, R. D. 10553, Prince Albert, Sask.

Technocracy: An Alternative Social System

A presentation by Arvid Peterson on Technocracy, an alternative social system based on science.

Part One: America's Dilemma

Segment 1:

Hello, I'm Arvid Peterson, and this is the first of a two part presentation on Technocracy, an alternative social system.

Because of the turmoil throughout the world, and because of the uncertainties about the future of North America, it is not surprising that many Americans are becoming quite concerned.

The relentless bombardment of conflicting statements that come from our business and financial leaders, the inane rhetoric pouring from the mouths of politicians, and the fragmented bits of news that come from the media all add up to general confusion throughout the land.

Fortunately, however, there is a solution to the many problems facing this country and this continent, and the purpose of these discussions is to talk about those problems and to delineate the kind of solution that is needed.

To introduce to you the subject science applied to social operations.

These programs are not intended to entertain or amuse you, nor are they meant to scare you.

We are making a new approach.

It is not political, financial, philosophical, legal, religious or moral.

It is a technological approach.

Technocracy is the scientific answer to America's social problems.

The analysis that we shall make is quite different.

And the design for social operations that will be presented a little later is uniquely American.

It has no counterpart anywhere else in the world.

You are aware of many of the problems that are facing this country and this continent.

Here are a few of the most obvious of them:

We have runaway inflation, ever increasing taxes, chronic unemployment, political corruption at all levels of government, serious energy shortages, business instability, rampant crime, poisoning of the environment and so forth and so on.

As a nation we have failed to solve any of these problems, because we refuse to recognize the cause.

All of these difficulties emanate from a single source, and that is the outmoded economic system under which we are operating.

The basic cause of our troubles is the Price System.

Now that term Price System may be new to you, but it is the fundamental structure that is out of step with twentieth-century North America.

We're not talking about capitalism or free enterprise, or any of the terms the economists are prone to use, nor are we referring to political controls.

We're talking about the basic system that all nations use in their day-to-day affairs, buying and selling in the marketplace.

Here is the definition:

Any social system that exchanges goods and services based on commodity evaluation and uses debt tokens or money is a Price System.

And today, all nations, regardless of what political ideology they may hold, whether its democracy, autocracy, plutocracy, monarchy, socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever, you name it, all of them operate within the framework of a Price System, every one of them buy and sell goods in the marketplace and they all use money in one form or another.

Price Systems everywhere, past and present, have two basic requirements; there must be scarcity and there must be growth or expansion.

Now in the past, these two conditions were met in the United States, and the Price System did work moderately well, scarcity was needed of course to establish value or price, and scarcity was a natural phenomenon.

In the development of this country and in the westward movement, there was plenty of room for growth and we certainly did grow.

Today however, these two conditions are very elusive and the Price System is running into much much trouble.

Scarcity has been abrogated by the advent of technology, and in the absence of scarcity there's just less growth.

We have reached a point in our national development, where we can produce more of everything than we can consume, so expansion just isn’t needed.

In the Price System, money, or debt, is the lifeblood of the system, and therefore it is necessary to continuously create new debt to validate the existing debt.

So our financial manipulators are always seeking new ways to justify the creation of additional debt.

Now to better understand the present social instability we should review the principle physical events that have led up to the current mess in which we now find ourselves, and to get a better perspective, let's establish a time reference.

These two dates have little significance in themselves but they demarcate three general eras:

The time prior to 1800, the century between the two dates, and the time since the turn of the twentieth century.

We are going to add many more details to this chart, but, to begin with, we will state positively, that prior to the year 1800, North America was a low energy civilization.

Now why was it a low energy society?

Because all through history, the principal engine for converting energy to do work was the human being, and we know that an adult man or woman can convert energy at the rate of 1/20 horsepower per hour over an extended work time.

Now that's very small.

The average home refrigerator has a 1/4 horsepower electric motor in it, several times larger than what a human engine can convert.

But in spite of this low rate of energy conversion, all through history, 98% of all work done was a result of human toil.

The other 2%, because it came from sources outside of human muscle power, we call it extraneous energy, and as you well know, it came from draft animals, horses and oxen or crude waterwheels and windmills.

Because the human engine was limited, the output from that engine also was limited, and therefore no matter how many people were on the job, or how long they worked from dawn til dark, they could never produce quite enough.

There where always shortages.

Therefore, prior to the year 1800, every society was locked into conditions that we call scarcity.

Let us put the two factors on our chart the 98% and the 2%.

If we consider this line to be 100% percent from the bottom up to the top, the 2% extraneous energy line would be close to the bottom, something like that, and the 98% human energy line would be up near the top.

If we where to extend these two lines backwards from the year 1800, backwards, no matter how far you want to go, they would remain straight and parallel, there would be no ups, no downs.

Which means that throughout the 7000 years of recorded history, and in the untold centuries before that, society was locked into what we call a social steady state.

That means that there was no change in the rate of energy conversion, no change in the way of doing work to produce goods.

There were changes or there were various events that happened, of course, cultures flourished and cultures disappeared, there were political upheavals, wars, migrations, droughts, floods, plagues and so forth, but there was no change in the rate of energy conversion, no change in the way people produced consumable goods, and scarcity prevailed everywhere.

If ever a few people did enjoy a decent standard of living, it was always at the expense of the many who existed at a bare subsistence level.

Some individuals glibly talk about how wholesome life was in the past, ignoring the fact that all through history, perhaps 95% of all people were either peasants, serfs, or slaves.

Even as late as George Washington's time, the majority of our people were either slaves or indentured servants.

Now just prior to the year 1800, a very significant event occurred, I believe it was in 1782, about when the United States became an independent country, over in Scotland, a young man by the name of James Watt developed the first double acting steam engine.

Segment 2:

Now Mr. Watts invention was the beginning of an entirely new way to do work.

A new way.

It was the beginning of the widespread use of extraneous energy, and since that time, there has been an accelerating procession to bigger and faster more efficient energy converting machinery.

That parade has marched across the face of North America more dramatically then anywhere else on earth.

This is one of the factors that makes America unique.

In the winter of 1918-19 there were a group of people in New York City, and they recognized that for the first time in history, these two lines had started to change ;

The extraneous energy line had started going upwards, something like that, and the human energy factor, or human energy line, had started downward, something like that.

That group that realized this become known as the Technical Alliance in 1920.

They were the forerunners of Technocracy.

They were curious to determine what impact these changes would have on the social structure, and they began a very extensive study.

It was called the energy survey of North America, and it took them fourteen years to complete it.

They gathered data on every basic industry in the United States and Canada, charting the growth of production, the rates of energy conversion, the declining man-hours per unit, and the overall effects on employment.

They predicted that if these two trends continued, the lines would cross, and end up looking something like this.

The Technical Alliance were probably the first ones to recognize that we had evolved from a low energy society to a high energy society.

That is, the 98% human energy factor had dropped way down to 2%, and the extraneous energy factor of 2% had gone all the way up to 98%.

This was a condition that was just the opposite of what it had been all through history.

Today in the United States, we have over 27 billion horsepower of installed prime movers.

Now that might have little significance to you, but consider the magnitude of this change in this way :

Prior to the year 1800, it is doubtful that any society ever had an energy conversion of more than 2000 kilogram calories per person per day.

In North America now, we are converting over 220 000 kilogram calories per person per day of extraneous energy.

That represents more than a 100 fold increase, a gain of over 11 000 percent.

This is what makes America unique.

No other area is quite like it.

The United States possesses over one third of the technology of the world, and we have only 6% of the population.

We are the first and only country to reach a stage of technological development where we can produce more than we can actually consume.

Therefore our problems are different from the problems of any other country.

Our problems are different because the physical conditions here are different.

For the past 60 years the Price System has faltered on the North American continent because the two basic requirements no longer exist.

The Technical Alliance recognized this and they predicted that there would be some major economic dislocations.

The data on their charts supports these conclusions.

Now their original survey covered every manufacturing industry and they plotted its growth on an individual chart.

We can summarize all of their findings on a single chart, just like this :

This chart is a composite of all of the individual charts made by the Technical Alliance.

As you can see it is entitled “irreversible trends shaping, or that shape, America's destiny”.

There are going to be three curves on this chart, and they show the long time trends.

The many small oscillations of the curves have been smoothed out to show those trends.

Now the first of the three curves is on physical production, and you will note that from 1830 to 1900, that production was rather low, and the growth was slow, then it moved into a period of rapid growth.

This was due to the installation of more and more energy converting machinery and the greater use of extraneous energy.

So from 1900 to about 1930, there was a rather spectacular growth in physical production.

The growth was about 7% per year, compounded each year.

That represents an exponential type of growth, which means that the rate of growth each year was greater than the rate of growth of the preceding year.

That went along for about three decades, but as nothing in the physical world can grow at an exponential rate indefinitely, a leveling off was inevitable, as shown on this part of the curve.

Now the second curve is somewhat different.

You might say that it is a negative form of growth, because the line goes downward.

It is labeled “man-hours per unit”.

A man-hour, of course, is one person working one hour regardless of his task, and back in the 1800's, 1850-1860, man-hours per unit was quite high because production methods were quite crude, and very little extraneous energy converting machinery was in existence.

But it was inevitable that industry would install more and more technology, because it was cheaper ;

You see, a kilowatt-hour will do the work of 26 man-hours, and it costs only a few cents.

Therefore, as the curve indicates, as more technology was installed, man-hours per unit drops very radically.

The trend is always towards fewer and fewer man-hours per unit, it is never going to reach zero, but it tends towards an irreducible minimum.

Now, in the 1980's, we have a very, or should have, a very happy situation, with a very high capacity to produce, and an ever declining need for human toil.

Now this would be just great for everybody, if it wasn't for the interferences of the Price System.

You see, in the Price System, labor also is a commodity that is bought and sold in the marketplace, and the third curve shows us what happens to labor, and consequently, what happens to purchasing power.

The third curve is titled total man-hours, which represents the sum total of all time put in on the job, in manufacturing, by all people.

And as you can see, that from 1830 to the turn of the century, total man-hours was low and the growth was slow.

It followed the growth of production quite closely, then it moved into a rapid period of growth, just at the time of this exponential growth of production, but it didn't level off as production did.

It reached a peak and then turned downward.

This is an event that occurs in every industry.

Total man-hours rises to an all-time high, and thereafter declines.

It is an event that occurs only once in any given industry.

And of course on this chart, it occurs just once because it is a composite of all industries.

The peak in total man-hours in manufacturing in the United States was reached way back in 1920, and for the past 60 years, the Price System has experienced increasing instability, due to the discrepancy between these two lines.

Segment 3:

 The ever widening gap between the green line and the red line indicates that the easier it is for us to produce more, the harder it becomes to distribute.

Now the reason for this anomaly is that there is a close relationship between total man-hours worked and purchasing power.

Most of us receive our income from time at the job.

We get wages or salaries.

And declining man-hours usually indicates declining purchasing power.

Now isn't it rather ironic, that the greater our ability to produce becomes, that we should suffer a diminishing ability to consume?

This is what happens in the Price System.

Now the basic problem in the 20^th century is not balancing the budget, no.

It is to balance production with consumption.

And of course the rules of the Price System prevent us from doing that.

You see in the Price System, distribution is carried on by a series of exchanges based on scarcity values, and money is used to make these exchanges.

Money is a species of debt.

And we try to balance production with consumption by creating more debt.

And it just simply doesn't work.

The reason is because there is little relationship between the creation of debt and anything in the physical world.

This curve is a physical phenomenon, the growth of debt is an abstraction.

Let us examine the growth of debt and you will see the difference.

Over here is a chart that represents total debt in the United States, all debt private and public.

And you'll see from 1860 to the end of World War One, the debt was low and the growth was relatively slow.

And then at this point right after the Armistice in 1918, debt started to move up rather rapidly, and that was the period we called the roaring 20's.

The reason for this increase in debt was because technology had caught up with us.

During the war, we had installed more technology, we could produce more than we could readily sell.

Therefore during this decade, that institution known as installment buying, or buying on credit, came into existence.

That is if you couldn't afford something you were urged to buy it anyway and pay for it out of next month's or next year's income.

Well this meant an increase in debt, an extension of credit, but by the year 1929, something had happened.

We had overextended that credit, and that great big gambling mill on Wall-street collapsed.

With the crash of the stock market, we plunged into the Depression.

It took four years to reach the bottom in 1933, at which time there was a population in the United States of 135 million people.

12 million were unemployed.

That represents about 22% of the work force without jobs.

It was pretty grim.

People were hungry, cold, and ragged, and the situation was bleak.

Now the government stepped in because it had to.

And what did it do?

It tried to bolster the failing system, by creating more debt!

How did it do this?

They began the practice of spending more money than they took in in taxes, which is called deficit spending.

During the Franklin Roosevelt administrations, they tried to bolster the economy by giving purchasing power to unemployed people, by means of the “dole” or “relief” or “welfare”.

And of course failing businesses also were put on the welfare.

However they referred to that as “subsidies”.

And we're still doing it.

You might say that the government, or the Price System, went into hock in 1933, and the Federal government has been on a deficit spending binge ever since.

Now this infusion of government funds did stimulate business and debt started upwards again.

Now at this point, something else happened;

There was another reprieve for the failing system, in 1941, World War Two broke out, and that provided a glorious reason to put all the unemployed people back on the job, or into the armed forces, run the factories wide open, turn out a tremendous amount of goods, ship it overseas and blow it up.

Of course the war didn't solve any of our problems, and as you can see, debt has skyrocketed ever since.

Total debt is going way up into the wild blue yonder reaching phenomenal heights, and no one knows where its going to end.

Now in spite of the hardships of the depression, and the heartbreaks of the war, the Price System didn't come to a complete stop, we have stumbled and bumbled along in one way or another.

How has that come about?

We have kept the failing system from complete collapse by various and devious ways.

We have maintained scarcity artificially.

Back in the days of the depression when there were so many people without jobs, and there families were hungry, we had tremendous surpluses of food stored around the country.

Was it given to the people?

Oh no.

Back in the early 30's we began the practice of destroying crops, or killing off livestock.

This was done to maintain scarcity.

You remember, plowing under cotton, killing off little pigs, pouring oil on oranges and so forth?

This was done to validate the Price System.

Now that was a long time ago, but we're still doing it.

Since 1933, the government has spent about 200 billion dollars paying farmers NOT to grow.

And of course currently, we are, the government, is spending about three billion dollars each year to curtail the production of corn and wheat.

You see in the Price System, when food becomes too plentiful, we destroy it.

This is to sustain price, or value, to keep the system going, and if people happen to be hungry, it seems to be of little importance.

Industry uses different tactics.

They operate on a low load factor, or that is they operate one shift or two, or they shut down completely, and a more wasteful practice is churning out shoddy merchandise, inferior products that break down or wear out in short order.

This is done to ensure a high turnover.

Everyone has heard of the thousands of automobiles that are recalled every year because they're faulty.

The same thing applies to all other goods, clothing shoes houses, appliances, foods, furniture, toys and so forth, you name it.

There are hundreds of thousands of junky Price System products turned out every week in order to ensure a high turnover for a fast profit.

This is the way the system works.

Of course the most destructive and the most heinous of all human activities is the perpetration of war, and we've had four hideous wars since the turn of the century, they haven't solved one single problem, either at home or abroad.

World Wars One, Two, Korea and Vietnam resulted in the deaths of thousands of patriotic young Americans, and the destruction of millions of tons of irreplaceable resources, but our social problems are still with us.

The so-called Truman Doctrine that was created about 33 years ago in the name of national security has cost the United States about 2 trillion dollars.

We have spent a 195 billion dollars overseas on what they call foreign aid.

Since 1960, the United States has financed both sides of fourteen foreign wars, and still the world is in greater turmoil than ever.

You see spending money or creating debt doesn't solve our social problems.

Up to this point, we've been talking about symptoms of a failing economic order.

The Price System, born of agrarian culture, with hand tools and human perspiration, and all its scarcity values, is incapable of managing affairs in a high energy civilization.

At the beginning of our program we said we would examine some of our problems and we would also offer a solution.

Now to find that answer, we must make a new approach, seek a new idea, employ a different technique.

And Technocracy is a new design for social operation that is based upon science.

It is the vehicle by which we can move into a new era for better living.

In our next presentation, we are going to examine the system of energy determinants.

Technocracy's design is based on energy measurements.

We will talk about the overall design and discuss some of it's details.

You will find it quite interesting, we hope that you can be with us.

I thank you.

Technocracy: An Alternative Social System

A presentation by Arvid Peterson on Technocracy, an alternative social system based on science.

Part Two: A Functional Social Design

Segment 4:

Hello, I'm Arvid Peterson.

In our last presentation we reviewed the principal physical events that have occurred during the 200 years of our industrial history.

The early stages in the use of extraneous energy were mentioned, and it was pointed out that the scarcity values of the Price System were a natural result of hand-tool production and human toil.

The industrial revolution that began in England and then spread to Europe eventually had crossed the Atlantic, where in America, technological advancement soon surpassed all of that in Europe.

We also reviewed the problems and the paradoxes that exist today due to the conflict between the rapid advancement of technology and the immense growth of energy consuming mechanisms on the one hand, and the long established customs and folkways on the other hand.

And it is the resolution of this conflict that must take top priority, if we are to continue as a high energy civilization in North America.

Now in the past, we operated mainly as independent productive units.

In both agriculture and industry, the operations were handled by individuals, or by families, and the interdependence among the many small operations was very slight, or maybe it didn't exist at all.

And the total production was the statistical sum of all of the small operations.

The opening or closing of any one of these little establishments had small effect on any of the others.

And the probability that a major number of them would open or close simultaneously was remote.

Human labor, of course, played a principal role in that kind of a productive process.

Consequently any increase in production always required a corresponding increase in the hours of human effort.

Individual ownership of farms and factories made possible the direct exchange of goods on a barter basis, or with hard currency, and a relatively stable economy did exist.

Individual wealth could be and was acquired through, or for a return for diligence, thrift, and hard work.

Today however all these conditions are changed.

Let me explain.

In 1830 the population of the United States was about 12 million, and we consumed 75 trillion British Thermal Units of extraneous energy in that one year.

Today the population is approximately 225 million, and we are using over 86 quadrillion British Thermal Units of extraneous energy each year.

In other words, during the past 150 years, our population has grown about 20 times, but the use of extraneous energy has increased 1150 times.

This is an entirely new order of magnitude.

Science, as a system of investigation, is only about 400 years old, and technology, as a means of applying scientific knowledge to performing practical tasks, is probably half that old.

Science and technology, with the concomitant widespread use of extraneous energy, has changed our way of life more in the past 80 years than in the previous 70 centuries.

Our industrial progression was something like this:

The small plants began to get bigger, and employ more workers, and competition got keener.

Then, extraneous energy converting machinery was designed and installed, and the plants got still bigger.

Then companies were formed, mergers took place, and more technology was installed.

As markets began to grow geographically, corporations were formed, and then automation came into existence.

And throughout all of these steps, the number of plants has steadily declined. For example, at one time there were several hundred manufacturers of automobiles, today there are less than a dozen.

Likewise with food processors, textile producers, furniture makers, shoe and clothing manufacturers and all of the other commodities that we use.

Today, in some industries, a mere handful of plants can produce enough goods to supply the whole nation.

In a few instances a single factory can supply the entire population, and in agriculture the same thing applies.

The many small farms got larger and fewer, or they became agro-industries.

As all products come to be made by a small number of plants, and the control of those plants rests with an even smaller number of corporate bodies, the financial restrictions on one begins to bear on all the others.

And with our present day conglomerates and multinational corporations, this effect crosses commodity lines as well as national borders.

This condition creates the probability that as one company, or one corporation, increases or decreases production, so will all the others, and it is this unison of increase or decrease, and the financial restrictions that accompany it, that magnifies the oscillations, from near capacity output to near complete shutdown.

Today, almost the entire population is dependent on the uninterrupted operation of our technological mechanism.

Almost three quarters of the population live in urban centers, one quarter in rural areas.

However, one hundred percent of our population is dependent upon the continuous flow of goods and services.

Even the farmer depends on gas, electricity, telephone service, clothing, and most of his food from sources outside his own place.

When human toil was the principal source of energy, it was possible to maintain a tolerable distribution of goods by monetary payment for hours of labor.

But today, any distribution that's based on hours of toil can lead only to frustration for individual persons and stagnation for the whole system.

The archaic system of exchanging goods on the basis of scarcity values, and the fictitious concepts of property rights that go along with it are completely out of phase with our modern methods of production.

Not only does the Price System interfere with the welfare of most Americans, but it has become a dire threat to our very survival.

Humans have learned to design, build and operate energy consuming devices of such magnitude that the whole planet earth is in danger of total destruction unless a functional form of operation is adopted soon.

Now the complex of circumstances that have just been summarized forms the basis of our current economic and social problems.

And ironically, it contains the essence for the solution.

Technocracy's design is a scientific approach to human affairs.

It is based on the proposition that all phenomena involved in the functional operation of a social mechanism are measurable.

Segment 5:

The common denominator for all activities is energy conversion. Everything that we produce transport and consume requires energy degradation in some way.

Nothing in this physical world occurs without the consumption, or the conversion of energy.

And energy of course is measurable.

Technocracy's design for social operations will balance production with consumption, by means of energy measurements.

If the American people stop sitting on their brains, if they wake up and face the reality that a functional form of social mechanics is the only means by which we can survive, where would we start?

We start in North America because it is here that this idea was conceived.

And North America is all of the water area and the land mass, from the northern rim of South America all the way to the North Pole.

And it includes the Islands in the Caribbean, Bermuda, and Greenland and it extends all the way across to the international date line on the West.

Now this area was not chosen arbitrarily, this area meets the specifications laid down by the physical requirements for function.

This area has all of the essentials.

The mineral and energy resources, sufficient freshwater supply, climatic range, installed technology and trained personnel to operate a high energy civilization into the indefinite future.

This is the minimum area for the maximum efficiency of operation.

It is the minimum area that can become self-contained and self-sufficient.

It is the minimum area for the maximum defense.

This represents North America as a contiguous continentalism.

Now, if North America is where we start, how should we start?

Well the first thing is to inform the American people of the need to abolish the Price System.

And second, is to stimulate the will of the people to act upon that need.

The Price System, with all of its inefficiency, its waste and its destruction, must be abandoned if we are going to survive.

And then, in place of the Price System, we must establish a Continental Energy Accounting System.

And that system has to do two things:

It has to produce, and it has to distribute.

Now what does it produce?

It must provide for the production of the optimum quality goods and services at the most efficient energy cost.

What does that mean?

That we manufacture or produce goods for the maximum service.

The longest useful life at the minimum input of materials and energy.

Let us give you an example:

Optimum quality, shown on this chart.

Let us consider automobile tires, and we will call them tires A, B, and C.

You can see that tire A costs, in energy, it costs 50 energy units to produce, and it has a useful life of 20 000 miles.

Tire B costs 100 energy units to build, and it lasts 60 000 miles.

Tire C takes 150 energy units to make, and its life is 75 000 miles.

Now it's quite obvious that tire C is the best tire because it runs the longest, or the most miles.

However, tire B is the optimum.

Why?

Let's look at this column:

“Miles per unit of cost”

Tire B runs 600 miles for each unit of energy of its cost.

Whereas tire A runs only 400 miles per unit of cost, and tire C 500 miles.

Tire B is the optimum of the three tires, and that is the one that would be manufactured in a functional economy.

And likewise for all other things.

The same criteria would be used to determine which of all other kinds of products would be manufactured.

Now the second requirement of this Continental Energy Accounting System is to distribute the maximum amount of goods and services equally to every North American.

And with the elimination of the Price System, and in the absence of debt tokens, or money, how will an individual make a purchase?

How will a person acquire the things that he needs?

Well an intrical part of this Energy Accounting System is the Energy Certificate, or the Distribution Certificate.

Now this is a piece of paper.

And it's printed up in little booklet forms, issued to every adult, man and women.

Everyone gets an equal share of the total.

Now you might think that the Energy Certificate is merely the substitution of one kind of money for another.

But that's not so.

Money is a debt token, it is a promise to pay a debt.

The Energy Certificate is part of a measuring system.

There's a vast difference between the two.

Money is a medium of exchange, and it has value.

The Distribution Certificate is a medium of distribution and it is used for measuring.

There's quite a difference.

Let's consider how they differ.

The Certificate is issued for a specific time period and then it is canceled.

Not so with money.

The Certificate is issued to a specific person, and only that person can use it.

Money, by the way, or otherwise, is negotiable by anyone!

The Certificate identifies this person, or the owner.

It tells who you are, where you are, and what you are.

Money doesn't do that.

The Certificate also records when you made your last purchase, where you made it, and it even describes the item that you bought.

Money doesn't do any of those things.

Now the Certificate is also part of a 24 hour inventory control.

Money isn't.

The Certificate helps to maintain a supply of stock on hand at all times, and it's an intrical part of the system for planning production schedules.

Further, it is a guarantee of security because it is issued to every person male and female alike, not so with money.

The Certificate is issued to everybody as a right of citizenship and no one can deny you that right.

There are many interesting features to the Energy Certificate, for example let's consider how the use of this would affect crime:

We are told in the Price System, by the police, the judiciary and the criminologists, that most crime is committed for reasons involving money.

Maybe 95% of it is committed for that reason.

The Certificate would probably eradicate most of that kind of crime for a number of reasons.

First of all, it's issued to an individual, that means that you couldn't loan it, borrow it, lose it, steal it, give it away, or bribe somebody with it.

Nor could you control or curtail production, nor could you exploit another human being with it.

And it is good for a given time period and then it is canceled, that means that it would be useless to try and save it, hoard it gamble it or invest it.

In other words, all you can do is spend it.

And you must spend it only on things that you yourself can consume.

There are many other features to the Energy Certificate, but let's consider a second major component of Technocracy's overall design.

Segment 6:

Technocracy's overall design is predicated on the balanced load.

Now this requires a slight modification to the calender.

And we suggest a functional kind of calendar wherein the days of the year are numbered consecutively, 1 through 365.

This chart shows a portion of such a functional calendar.

And it runs from the 81^st through the 94^th day.

You'll note that there are seven groups listed over here on the left.

And the seven groups represent the functioning or the working populations.

That is they are both men and women, between the ages of 25 and 45, and these groups work on a staggered work schedule.

For example, group 1 functions, or works, four days, they're off three, on four, off three, on four, off three, and so forth, for 41 periods.

Now this totals 165 working days for the year, leaving an annual vacation of 78 consecutive days.

This service of course would be required of everyone, male and female alike, for 20 years of their lives.

And at age 45, it would be possible to retire, with absolutely no reduction in purchasing power, or any other rights of citizenship.

Now the working shifts probably would run about four hours a day.

Therefore, by staggering the hours in the day and the days in the week, each individual would put in about 16 hours per week.

However, all of our facilities would run 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

That means that we could greatly reduce the number of facilities, factories, plants and so forth, at a tremendous savings in energy and in materials.

And this balanced load, or this would put a balanced load on all of our production facilities, all transformation and communication systems, all recreational facilities, and so forth.

The rush hours, morning and night, would no longer occur, the jammed highways on weekends, and the crowded recreational areas that stand empty so much of the time in the Price System would simply become something of the past.

Now the balanced load would mean a far less hectic schedule, for most people, instead of the rat race that we live in in the the Price System.

And leisure time of course there would be many activities that would allow for greater self expression.

For many people it might be the very first time in their lives that they actually have time for living.

The functional calendar has other ramifications, but let us examine one more very important feature of Technocracy's overall design.

Segment 7:

Energy shortages are becoming of greater and greater concern to more and more Americans every day.

Therefore, let us consider the design for a Continental Hydrology.

This is a plan to engineer with the nature, to build a huge integrated system that would tie together all of the water resources of the entire Continent.

All of the lakes and rivers of North America would form a vast network of waterways that would provide deepwater transportation from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific, and from the Gulf of Mexico right into the Arctic.

The lakes and the rivers of North America are so situated as to present the greatest opportunity on earth to build a continental hydrology.

It is possible, on this Continent, to construct a water transportation system that would provide more miles of river highways than all of the rest of the world.

There would be two main transcontinental systems, one across Canada, and one across the United States.

On the chart are shown the many interconnected rivers and lakes.

And to build this Hydrology would require the construction of a number of high dams, at the proper places of course, and to drill some huge tunnels of perhaps 20 to 30 feet in diameter through some mountains.

But this is an entirely new concept, to handle water on a continental scale.

And of course, modern hydraulic liftlocks would need to be built.

These would be capable of raising or lowering 65 000 tons a height of 400 feet in only 15 minutes.

Such a Continent-wide system would also include the design and construction of self-propelled barges of about 25 000 tons capacity each.

And the barges would be interchangeable, therefore when they are coupled together, 2 wide and 6 long, making up a marine train of 12 units, they would have a capacity of 300 000 tons.

These marine trains would become the backbone of a new transportation system of North America, carrying freight to every area of the continent.

And we might mention also that these trains could be designed or modified so as to carry classrooms and dormitories on their top decks.

This would provide the means by which young people, during their educational years, could travel the length and the breadth of North America, and they could see for themselves firsthand how America works and plays.

Water transportation is by far the most economical forms of transportation.

Let me give you some comparisons of cost in energy.

To move 1 ton 1 mile it takes about 41 000 British Thermal Units of energy to do it by airplane.

It costs 24 000 BTUs to move 1 ton 1 mile by truck.

720 BTUs by railroad, and only 450 BTUs to do it by waterways.

So you can see water transportation is by far the cheapest in energy cost.

Conversely, another way of stating these energy comparisons would be this:

1 gallon of diesel fuel will move 1 ton 3 miles by airplane, 50 miles by truck, 180 miles by rail, and over 300 miles by water.

So you can see water is by far the most economical means of transportation.

There are many other benefits to a Continental Hydrology besides low cost transportation; there would be electric power generation would be maximized and transmission of power would extend to every area of the continent, water for potable uses would become plentiful in all areas, down in the arid parts particularly, water for industry and irrigation, again in the arid areas would cover much broader regions, there would be greater flood and erosion control and desert growth could be arrested, refertilization greatly improved, and water for recreational uses would be greatly, greatly enhanced.

Even some climatic modifications might be acheived.

A Continental Hydrology automatically includes a system of hydroelectric generation and transmission.

Today in the United States there are about 3500 independant, inefficient, loosely afiliated power systems, and their main objective is making money, not power.

Now a Continental Hydrology would make possible the generation of much much more electric power and transmitting it all over the Continent.

The Hydrology of course would use all presently installed equipment, which is mostly 60 cycle 3 phase automatic current.

We would, using the Hydrology, would generate current with present equipment at generator voltages, and then it would be stepped up to 1 million volts AC 3 phase, and converted to direct current.

Now the direct current, as shown on this chart, would be transmitted by long distance transmission lines at 1 million volts DC, and the conductors would be 2 and a half million circular mil copper conductors or aluminum equivalent.

They would be encased in pipes, buried underground, this would provide protection from the weather, or the hazards of idiots with guns and things like that, and there would be two circuits, two parallel circuits, transmitting current at 1 million volts or greater, DC, we can move it, or transmit it, all across the continent, a distance of 3000 miles with a line loss of only 10 percent.

Now for local distribution of the power, it would then be converted at 1 million volts back to AC and stepped down to the necessary voltages for secondary distribution.

This way, we would not have to scrap any of the existing equipment.

Now a Continental Hydrology, along with a Continent-wide system of rail transportation that Technocracy has designed, using the latest in diesel propulsion, on 3 meter gauge tracks, would provide faster, safer, and far more efficient transport for both freight and people.

The two systems combined, the Hydrology and the rail system, would end for ever our dependance on any and all foreign sources for energy.

Now we have given you only a few of the highlights of Technocracy’s design for a New America.

There’s a great deal more to it, because this program encompasses every aspect of life in North America.

It is an overall concept covering production, housing, education, public health, recreation, the arts, defense, research, and so forth and so on.

It is a vast program.

It is hoped, that this brief introduction to the subject science applied to social operations has aroused your interest and whetted your appetite to learn more, because there’s a great deal more to learn.

We have a Course of Study available, and it’s available to every interested North American.

We hope you take advantage of it.

Social change is due on this Continent.

Social change is coming whether you like it or not, social change is coming whether you are prepared for it or not.

And Technocracy is the means by which you can prepare yourself so that you can decide whether you want science, or chaos. Thank you.

__________

Throughout human history selfishness, greed, and wars have been constant. Simultaneously, some dreamers have engaged in a gigantic effort to erase from the face of the earth all “evil” among individuals, groups, and nations. The approach has been an attempt to reform and convert the individual with the hope that an international gathering of “good” men and women could bring about peace and equality. There is no need to describe here the futility of this approach and its very evident failure to accomplish these idealistic ends.

It is perhaps one of the major ironies of history that a new and the only adequate approach should be offered by certain interpreters of applied physical science who distinctly disclaim as their motivating force an idealistic search for truth, love, peace, harmony, and other imponderables.

These interpreters, early Technocrats and people of science, undertook an analysis of the operational problems of the North American Continental area. From this analysis, they synthesized a Technological Design of Social Operations that they predicted as the next most desirable and probable form of society. It was objectively presented. By it, human history can become for the first time a planned progression based on a quantitative analysis of the continental resources.

- Howard Scott, July 1937