Re: BOYCOTT CHINESE GOODS IN MAY

Posted by Alberta Mike on May 02, 2001 at 08:25:41 from (206.75.218.36):

In Reply to: BOYCOTT CHINESE GOODS IN MAY posted by carl on April 30, 2001 at 18:02:13:

Back in the '30's an American by the name of Howard Scott had the whole problem figured out, and he established sort of a "think tank" group called Technocracy Incorporated. He believed that North America had EVERYTHING they needed to live affluently (raw materials, labor force, energy, etc.) without becoming involved with any foreign country with regards to trade or economics. The other part of his idea was that the country (continent) should be run by engineers (and not by lawyers) and the price system should be banned because it is built on the concept of creating scarcity. Since he believed there would be no scarcity on this continent, the price system could not function. In it's place would be so-called "energy certificates" where every product produced here would be worth so many energy units (that it took to produce the product). When being employed (so to speak) at your job, you earned energy points or values which you used in exchange for the goods that you desired. Since no scarcity would exist, the energy value of a particular product would not change. Also, since all products would be produced in abundance (or at least to the levels of consumer demand), the whole process would be a stable market without prices. There would be no need to hoard or stockpile since doing so would serve no purpose (because most would have what they needed).

Obviously, the idea never got off the ground, however there are still a lot of old time "technocrats" that believe the system would have worked. My father was one (at least he thought like one but never really got fanatic about it) and he would often explain things to me as a technocrat would. For example, fresh free drinking water out of a public fountain cannot be charged for until a scarcity exists (or is created) and people would never even think of hoarding it when there is an unlimited supply. Well, anyways, that was the theory.

The arguments posted here are obviously all about things which naturally happen within the price system. Interesting comments have been made. By the way, I am not a technocrat of any type myself, however I remember many of my dad's explanations and they always made sense to me. It might be interesting to search out the technocracy thing on the internet, there are still pockets of people throughout the country that think that it is still the solution to all the economic problems that face North America.

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