Editing Technocracy movement (section)

==Overview==
Technocracy advocates contended that [[price system]]-based forms of government and economy are structurally incapable of effective action, and promoted a society headed by technical experts, which they argued would be more rational and productive.<ref name=bur>Beverly H. Burris (1993). [https://books.google.com/books?id=I-k0hgtaiCcC&dq=%22Continental+Committee%22+on+Technocracy+Inc.&pg=PA31 Technocracy at work] State University of New York Press, p. 28.</ref>

The coming of the [[Great Depression]] ushered in radically different ideas of [[social engineering (political science)|social engineering]],<ref name=will>William E. Akin (1977). ''Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocracy Movement 1900-1941'', University of California Press, pp. ix-xiii and p. 110.</ref> culminating in reforms introduced by the [[New Deal]].<ref name=bur/><ref name=will/> By late 1932, various groups across the United States were calling themselves ''technocrats'' and proposing reforms.<ref>Beverly H. Burris (1993). [https://books.google.com/books?id=I-k0hgtaiCcC&dq=%22Continental+Committee%22+on+Technocracy+Inc.&pg=PA31 Technocracy at work] State University of New York Press, p. 30.</ref>

By the mid-1930s, interest in the [[technocracy]] movement was declining. Some historians have attributed the decline of the technocracy movement to the rise of Roosevelt's [[New Deal]].<ref>Beverly H. Burris (1993). [https://books.google.com/books?id=I-k0hgtaiCcC&dq=%22Continental+Committee%22+on+Technocracy+Inc.&pg=PA31 Technocracy at work] State University of New York Press, p. 32.</ref><ref name="Frank Fischer 1990 p. 86">Frank Fischer (1990). ''Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise'', Sage Publications, p. 86.</ref> Historian William E. Akin rejects that thesis arguing instead that the movement declined in the mid-1930s as a result of the failure of its proponents to devise a 'viable political theory for achieving change' (p.&nbsp;111 ''Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900–1941'' by William E. Akin), although many technocrats in the United States were sympathetic to the electoral efforts of anti-New Deal third parties.<ref name="NelsonAkin">{{cite journal|last1=Nelson|first1=Daniel|last2=Akin|first2=William E.|title=Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941|journal=Reviews in American History|date=March 1978|volume=6|issue=1|pages=104|doi=10.2307/2701484|jstor=2701484|publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press}}</ref> 

One of the most widely circulated images in Technocracy Inc.'s promotional materials used the example of a streetcar to argue that engineering solutions will always succeed where legislation or fines fail to adequately deal with social problems. If passengers insist on riding on the car's dangerous outer platform, the solution consists in designing cars without platforms.<ref name="washingtonpost/outlook/2018/Wythoff">{{cite news |last1=Wythoff |first1=Grant |title=Silicon Valley's attempts to self-police are anti-democratic. They're also not new. |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/silicon-valleys-attempts-to-self-police-are-anti-democratic-theyre-also-not-new/2018/08/17/cd44fb22-9b1d-11e8-843b-36e177f3081c_story.html |access-date=9 May 2022 |newspaper=Washington Post |date=August 17, 2018 |quote=Grant Wythoff is a visiting fellow with the Center for Humanities and Information at Pennsylvania State University.}}</ref>{{explain|date=March 2025}}