Theories of Technocracy

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 186, 4 May 1933, Page 11

Theories of Technocracy

Sir, —"The Dominion” to-day, Alay 2, gives space to the New Zealand Welfare League, enabling it to deliver an adverse opinion regarding what is known as Technocracy. Dr. Virgil Jordan, quoted by the Welfare League, is admittedly one of the high priests of economics of the old school, but one can hardly expect him to give an unbiased dictum on the new religion, when his whole prestige rests on a totally different conception of what constitutes political and social economy in 1933. In order that both sides may be viewed by “The .Dominion’s” public, I shall be grateful if you will print the following remarks by one of the “new” economists. Air. A. R. D. Fairburn writes: “Orthodox economics from Adam Smith onwards up till the present day, is a body of thought worked out in relation to a condition of scarcity. Applied to a condition of plenty, its basic, assumptions become untrue —just how fantastically untrue. ou. occasion, you will realise after reading some of the leading witch-doctors. “If one insists on working on the assumption that any and every commodity is normally scarce, when it is obvious that, as a result of a revolution in technique, all tiie major commodities are being produced to the point of glut, then one’s deductions will be crazy.

‘‘Alost of the professional economists, having good jobs, are content to Jive on in a fog" of out-of-date theory, which is no doubt the reason why certain of them, as soon ns they touch on matters _of common experience, give the impression of being something less than half-witted. ’ —I am. etc.. BERNARD THOMPSON. AVeilington, Alay 2.