Technocracy Inc.

Wilton Ivie

1958

Published in:

• Technocracy Digest, August, 1958
• An article reprint circulated to this day.
• The Northwest Technocrat, 4th quarter 1996, No. 345

This article was slightly updated for the 1996 printing.

THE CONTINENT of North America is a social Area, having the soil, climate, resources and population to make it a self-contained and self sustaining social unit. It also has the knowledge, the personnel and the technology to install an efficient, low-cost operation with abundance and a high standard of general welfare for its inhabitants. What is lacking is the proper organization -- an integrated, efficient, Continent-wide organization designed to produce the most for the least cost in human effort, natural resources and energy. Trade and cultural intercourse with the rest of the world, while desirable and in some ways beneficial to North Americans, is only incidental to the operation of this Continent; they are certainly not crucial.

Before attempting to comment on Technocracy's projected reorganization of the Continent, we might try to visualize this Continental area without social organization of any kind (although we realize that such a condition could be only hypothetical). Under such a condition, each individual would be free of all social regulation as well as benefits, being a truly rugged, anarchistic individual. An individual might be respectful of the ``rights'' of others or might be predatory and homicidal in behavior. There would be no law or other control over that person, other than the possibility of reprisal by individuals. There would be no cooperative effort and no division of labor. Each individual would have to be self-sustaining.

The very nature of human reproduction requires that humans form family or communal units for the care and protection of the children; hence, absolute anarchy is out of the question. With family life, there comes a primitive order of organization. It might be a loose, mutually-cooperative group; but more likely it would be a patriarchal (possibly sometimes a matriarchal) tyranny.

It is only a matter of social evolution, step by step, through family groups, small tribes, large tribe