Why I Uphold Howard Scott

People view Howard Scott’s model of technocracy as being outdated, ideological, or in some way not as good as just putting the experts in charge regardless of the government system that exists. We live under capitalism, so the experts are going to say that the best course of action is to give all the political power to billionaires or other departments or organization that are indirectly controlled by billionaires since these people have always exerted undue influence on many parts of society, especially in the United States where plutocracy is the way that the government operates and major privately owned corporations are the ones who provide funding and resources to all of the elected representatives.

Even members of the ruling class in America such as Elon Musk see themselves as technocrats because since they have the funds to conduct and facilitate research, they can simply justify the policies they want by controlling the scientific studies that they conduct and pay for. In their minds, they would be running a country with scientific governance but the science would be so influenced by them to cherry pick their desired policies, that it would be no different than the systems we have now. The only difference is that anything that the ruling class wanted would be justified with some biased studies.

The scientific method does not exist in a vacuum and with enough studies done to get the conclusion they want, any nation on the planet could claim to be a technocracy. And if we are defining technocracy as the rule of experts in general, why would any government not just claim their politicians are experts in politics since they know how the political systems work and gain power within them? Even an anti-science regime like America could claim to have technocratic principles since they have different agencies managing over things like the environment or public health. Technocratic principles themselves are good, but any successful government needs some scientifically based principles simply to stay in power because without them any policies put out would be completely unhinged nonsense.

I’m not saying it’s bad or that anyone is wrong for calling themselves a technocrat if they aren’t following the model of Howard Scott or Energy Accounting, but I think that you’re just pro-science and pro-meritocracy. Both of those things are good, but I think that if your technocratic goals can be satisfied under any government system, why be a technocrat? It is almost like being a Marxist-Leninist solely for the desire to get universal healthcare. It is technically correct, but your goals are relatively moderate which makes participation in a more radical ideology feel out of place. Additionally, any changes made to further technocratic principles can be undone by the ruling classes of capitalist regimes since the billionaires would continue to hold all of the wealth and power.

This does technically make Technocracy an ideology, but that just means a set of ideas and principles. Even a set of beliefs that lead you to avoid having an ideology is paradoxically an ideology. As such, nobody who is conditioned to live in a society is free from ideology which makes the whole conversation pointless. I do not mean to put down the non-ideological technocrats or those who think differently, but I hope I have successfully illustrated why the Technocracy movement exists in the form that it does.