Abstract

Scrambled Ergs. An Examination of Technocracy

According to the author, the problem of technological unemployment in the United States demands attention; the suffering caused by that unemployment. while it lasts, is grave and widespread. But it is far from the major cause of their present difficulties. When car loadings are 57 percent of normal, when steel production is 17 per cent of normal, it is obvious that the men laid off by the railroads and the steel companies were not displaced by machinery. The remedy for technological unemployment lies in the assumption of social responsibility for it-in compulsory unemployment insurance, government employment agencies, perhaps governmental industrial training schools. And when one come to that millennium when everything in the world will be produced by one man's pressing a button, even that total unemployment will be perfectly satisfactory if each man owns his proportional part of the machines or gets his proportional usufruct.