【文章】Ira Basen - In science we trust | A group called Technocracy Incorporated wanted to reorganize..
Back in the first half of the 20th century, a group called Technocracy Incorporated wanted to reorganize society by putting scientists in charge. The movement flamed out, but its underlying message still appeals to many in Silicon Valley.
在 20 世紀上半葉，一個名為「技術官僚協會」（Technocracy Incorporated）的組織想要通過讓科學家掌權來重組社會。這個運動最終失敗了，但其背後的信息仍然吸引著許多矽谷的人。
連結
原文及個人翻譯
On Oct. 13, 1940, a Regina chiropractor named Joshua Haldeman appeared in city court to face two charges under the Defence of Canada Act.
His alleged offence was belonging to Technocracy Incorporated, an organization that had been banned by the Canadian government several months earlier as part of a larger sweep of groups it considered subversive to the war effort.
Technocracy Incorporated was not a political movement – in fact, politicians or members of political parties were not allowed to join. It was founded in New York City in 1933 as an educational and research organization promoting a radical restructuring of political, social and economic life in Canada and the United States, with science as its central operating principle.
1940 年 10 月 13 日，一位名叫約書亞·哈爾德曼（Joshua Haldeman）的Regina脊椎按摩師出庭，他面臨根據《加拿大保護法》提出的兩項指控。
他被指控屬於「技術官僚協會」（Technocracy Incorporated），該組織在幾個月前已被加拿大政府禁止，作為更大規模打擊被認為對戰爭努力具有顛覆性的群體的行動的一部分。
「技術官僚協會」並非一個政治運動——實際上，政治家或政黨成員不允許加入。它於 1933 年在紐約市成立，是一個教育和研究組織，旨在推動加拿大和美國的政治、社會和經濟生活進行激進重組，其中科學是其核心運作原則。
There would be no politicians, business people, money or income inequality. Those were all features of what Technocracy called the “price system,” and it would have to go.
There would be no countries called Canada or the United States, either – just one giant continental land mass called the Technate, a techno-utopia run by engineers and other “experts” in their fields. In the Technate, everyone would be well-housed and fed. All material needs would be taken care of, whether you had a job or not.
Joshua Haldeman was a leader of Technocracy Incorporated in Canada from 1936 to 1941, but eventually became disillusioned with both the organization and the country, and packed up his young family to start life anew in South Africa.
In June 1971, Haldeman’s daughter Maeve gave birth to his first grandson. His name is Elon Musk.
將不再有政治家、商人、金錢或收入不平等。這些都是「技術官僚」所稱的「價格體系」的特徵，必須被廢除。
也不會有名為加拿大或美國的國家——只是一個巨大的大陸陸地，名為技術國，一個由工程師和其他各個領域的「專家」管理的技術烏托邦。在技術國，每個人都會擁有良好的住房和食物。所有物質需求都將得到滿足，無論您是否有工作。
約書亞·哈爾德曼（Joshua Haldeman）是 1936 年至 1941 年加拿大「技術官僚協會」的領導人，但最終對該組織以及這個國家感到幻滅，於是帶著他的年輕家庭前往南非開始新的生活。
1971 年 6 月，哈爾德曼的女兒梅芙（Maeve）生下了他的第一個孫子。他名叫埃隆·馬斯克（Elon Musk）。
Musk’s estimated net worth today is more than $150 billion US. He’s clearly done very well inside the price system his grandfather would have railed against. But Musk has not completely abandoned his Technocracy roots.
Musk doesn’t talk about a Technate on Earth, but he has invested billions developing rockets to send people to Mars, with the intent to colonize it. He wants to see a city of a million people there by 2050.
In 2019, Musk tweeted, “accelerating Starship development to build the Martian Technocracy.”
Most of Technocracy Incorporated’s ideas for the Technate were neither practical nor achievable. But they raised at least two important questions that we’re still grappling with today: How should governments respond when large numbers of people lose their jobs to automation – and how can representative democracy, with all its obvious imperfections, function effectively in a world where science and technology play an ever more dominant role?
馬斯克（Musk）目前的估計淨資產超過 1500 億美元。他顯然在這個他的祖父會反對的「價格體系」中取得了很大的成功。但馬斯克並未完全放棄他的「技術官僚」根源。
馬斯克沒有談到在地球上建立「技術國」，但他已經投資了數十億美元來開發火箭，以便將人們送往火星，並有意在那裡建立殖民地。他希望到 2050 年，那裡能有一個一百萬人的城市。
2019 年，馬斯克在推特上發文：「加速星艦（Starship）的開發，以建立火星上的技術官僚體系。」
「技術官僚協會」關於「技術國」的大部分想法既不切實際，也難以實現。但它們至少提出了兩個我們今天仍在努力解決的重要問題：政府應該如何應對大量人員因自動化而失業的情況？以及，在科學和技術發揮越來越主導作用的世界中，具有所有明顯缺陷的代議制民主如何有效地運作？
A clash between obsolescence and modernity / 過時與現代之間的衝突
In a speech to an American audience in 1963, Howard Scott, the founder and leader of Technocracy Incorporated, declared that “as far as Technocracy’s ideas are concerned, we’re so far left that we make communism look bourgeois.”
That may not have been the most effective recruiting slogan at the height of the Cold War, but Scott wasn’t entirely wrong.
Technocracy was far from the only protest movement to emerge from the economic collapse of the 1930s. Social Credit in Alberta and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan, the forerunner of the NDP, also attracted a lot of support. Some groups across the political spectrum had ties to European political movements. Some had charismatic leaders, like Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin in the United States.
But Technocracy was a uniquely North American movement that may have been the most radical of them all. And in the depths of the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of Canadians and Americans were prepared to embrace it.
1963 年，霍華德·斯科特（Howard Scott）向美國觀眾發表演講時表示：「就『技術官僚』的思想而言，我們離左派太遠了，以至於我們讓共產主義看起來像是資產階級的。」
這可能並非冷戰時期最有效的招募口號，但斯科特並沒有完全錯。
「技術官僚」並非 1930 年代經濟崩潰中出現的唯一抗議運動。在艾伯塔省的社會信用運動和薩斯喀徹溫省的前身是新民主黨的合作自治聯合會也吸引了許多支持者。一些政治派別的群體與歐洲的政治運動有聯繫。其中一些擁有魅力非凡的領導人，例如美國的休伊·朗（Huey Long）和查爾斯·考夫林神父（Father Charles Coughlin）。
但「技術官僚」是一個獨特的北美運動，可能是其中最激進的一個。在經濟大蕭條的深處，成千上萬加拿大人和美國人準備擁抱它。
Technocracy’s ideology defies easy characterization. It was anti-capitalist and anti-democratic, but not fascist. It was anti-government, but not libertarian. It believed in a radical form of social and economic equality, but it was not Marxist.
It rejected all those ideologies because none of them accepted the idea that science and technology were transforming North American life, and that only highly trained engineers and experts were capable of building a “new” North America.
While other political parties and protest groups were touting plans for putting people back to work, Technocracy response was: don’t even bother. The world had changed, and the jobs destroyed by machines were not coming back.
「技術官僚」的意識形態難以概括。它反對資本主義和民主，但不是法西斯主義。它反對政府，但不是自由意志主義。它相信一種激進的社會和經濟平等形式，但它並非馬克思主義。
它拒絕所有這些意識形態，因為沒有任一意識形態曾接受這個想法：科學和技術正在改變北美生活，並且只有經過高度培訓的工程師和專家才能建立一個「新」北美。
當其他政黨和抗議團體都在宣揚讓人們重返工作崗位的計劃時，「技術官僚」的回應是：不要費心。世界已經改變，被機器摧毀的工作不會回來。
Before the Industrial Revolution, most manufacturing was done by hand, and there were never enough goods to go around; it was an economy based on scarcity. Now, machines could produce more than enough of everything for everybody with significantly less human labour.
But this industrial system capable of producing abundance was being stymied by the price system, a pre-industrial, scarcity-based construct ill-suited to a world where machines were replacing humans in the workplace.
At the heart of the price system was money. It was what forced people to go into debt, break the law, become greedy and engage in all kinds of other bad behaviours. But help was on the way.
“The march of technology, with its increasing abundance, will destroy every value of the price system,” Scott declared in a speech in Sylvan Lake, Alta., during a western Canadian speaking tour in September 1939. “It is a clash between obsolescence and modernity, between technology and value, between science and chaos.”
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because doomsday scenarios about massive unemployment and social unrest caused by technological change have been around since at least the Industrial Revolution.
在工業革命之前，大多數製造業都是手工完成的，而且從來沒有足夠的商品供應；這是一個基於稀缺性的經濟體系。現在，機器可以生產出遠遠超過每個人所需的一切，並且只需要更少的人力。
但是，這個能夠產生豐饒的工業系統受到了「價格體系」的阻礙，而「價格體系」是一種前工業時代、基於稀缺性的結構，不適合一個機器正在取代人類工作場所的世界。
「價格體系」的核心是金錢。它迫使人們負債、違法、貪婪，並從事各種其他不良行為。但幫助即將到來。
1939 年 9 月，霍華德·斯科特（Howard Scott）在加拿大西部發表演講巡迴時，在艾伯塔省錫爾凡湖（Sylvan Lake）發表了一篇演講：「隨著技術的發展和豐饒程度的提高，它將摧毀『價格體系』的所有價值。」「這是一場過時與現代、技術與價值、科學與混亂之間的衝突。」
如果所有這些聽起來很熟悉，那是因為自工業革命以來，關於技術變革導致的大規模失業和社會動盪的末日情景一直存在。
In the 1770s, when the use of the spinning jenny became widespread, many weavers who had been spinning cloth by hand from their homes lost their jobs. But the spinning jenny made it cheaper to produce cloth, which meant more people could afford to buy clothes, which meant many more of them were needed to work in the factories where the cloth was now being produced.
This has been the story of technological change up to now: The jobs that machines have taken they have invariably given back in even greater numbers. The price system has proven to be much more resilient and adaptable than doomsayers like Howard Scott had imagined.
But today, as robots and artificial intelligence make ever deeper inroads into our offices and factories, the doomsayers are back, predicting a tsunami of unemployment that will crash into workplaces like banks and law offices, which until now have largely resisted automation. They fear this time, the story will in fact be different.
According to a 2019 report by the U.K. research group Oxford Economics, around 1.7 million jobs have already been lost to robots globally since 2000. Even the people who have helped engineer the tsunami are worried.
“We are experiencing the greatest economic and technological shift in human history,” declared Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Yang during his unlikely run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “We need a way to help millions of Americans transition through this period.”
Yang’s solution was a $1,000 US-a-month universal basic income. It’s an idea that has gained considerable traction among Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs in recent years – even among those who are usually opposed to any kind of expansion of government.
At the World Government Summit in Dubai in 2017, Elon Musk ― who constantly wages war with agencies trying to regulate his cars and rockets, and whose plan for fully autonomous vehicles could cost millions of jobs ― expressed his support for a guaranteed basic income.
“Mass unemployment” will be a “massive social challenge,” Musk warned. Echoing words that his grandfather likely uttered many times, Musk concluded, “There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. With automation will come abundance.”
在 1770 年代，當紡紗機的應用變得廣泛時，許多曾經在家手工紡織布料的人失去了工作。但紡紗機使生產布料的成本更低，這意味著更多人能夠負擔得起購買衣服，這意味著需要更多的人在工廠工作，因為現在布料是在工廠生產的。
到目前為止，技術變革的故事一直是這樣的：機器取代的工作，它們總是會以更大的數量回歸。與霍華德·斯科特等末日預言家所想像的不同，「價格體系」證明了它比他們想象的更具韌性和適應性。
但今天，隨著機器人和人工智能在我們的辦公室和工廠中發揮越來越大的作用，末日預言者們回歸了，他們預測將會出現一波失業潮，這股浪潮將衝擊銀行和律師事務所等工作場所，這些地方到目前為止都很大程度上抵禦了自動化。他們擔心這次，故事實際上會有所不同。
根據英國研究機構牛津經濟研究院 2019 年的一份報告，自 2000 年以來，全球已經有約 170 萬個工作崗位被機器人取代。即使是那些幫助引發這股浪潮的人也感到擔憂。
「我們正在經歷人類歷史上最偉大的經濟和技術轉變」，矽谷企業家安德魯·楊（Andrew Yang）在 2020 年競選民主黨總統候選人的過程中表示：「我們需要一種方法來幫助數百萬美國人度過這個時期。」
楊的解決方案是每月提供 1,000 美元的普遍基本收入。這是一個在過去幾年來在矽谷工程師和企業家中獲得相當大關注的想法，甚至包括那些通常反對任何形式的政府擴張的人。
在 2017 年的迪拜世界政府峰會上，埃隆·馬斯克（Elon Musk）——他不斷與試圖監管他的汽車和火箭的機構作對，並且他關於完全自動駕駛汽車的計劃可能會導致數百萬個工作崗位流失——表達了他對有保障的基本收入的支持。
「大規模失業」將會是一個「巨大的社會挑戰」，馬斯克警告說。呼應他祖父可能多次說過的話，馬斯克總結道：「機器人可以做得更好的工作越來越少。隨著自動化，將會帶來豐饒。」
You can only patch up the symptoms so far / 你只能在一定程度上緩解症狀
For Technocracy, schemes like a universal basic income simply postpone the inevitable day of reckoning for the price system.
“You can’t fumble along with the system and just patch up the symptoms,” explained Tom Mason in a recent phone interview from his home in Tampa Bay, Fla. Mason is 99 years old and has been involved with Technocracy since the 1940s.
“Politicians today don’t want to address the disease. They just want to treat the symptoms ― and you can only patch up the symptoms so far.”
對於技術統治主義者來說，像普遍基本收入這樣的計劃只是推遲了「價格體系」必然到來的清算日。
「你不能在現有體制下摸索，只不過是緩解症狀」，湯姆·梅森（Tom Mason）最近在一通電話採訪中表示，他住在佛羅里達州坦帕灣。梅森 99 歲高，自 1940 年代以來就參與了技術統治主義運動。
「今天的政客們不想解決這個問題。他們只想治療症狀——而且你只能在一定程度上緩解症狀。」
For Technocracy, addressing the “disease” meant doing away with the price system and the political infrastructure that supported it. They could provide citizens with far more security than any kind of guaranteed basic income.
“Under the Technate, we will be responsible for the health and well-being of every human being,” Howard Scott declared. “That is more than any political government ever did.”
Technocracy’s plan was to replace the price system with a system based on energy. In the 1920s, Scott and his colleagues began a hugely ambitious program called the Energy Survey of North America. The idea was to establish a value for all the goods and services produced on the continent, not by measuring how much labour was expended or how much money was spent, but on the amount of energy used to produce them.
They would then divide the total amount of energy used by the number of citizens in the Technate over the age of 25, and issue each of those citizens an equal number of Energy Certificates, whether they were employed or not. These certificates would be the Technate’s currency.
對於技術統治主義者來說，解決「疾病」的辦法是廢除「價格體系」，以及支持它的政治基礎設施。他們可以為公民提供比任何有保障的基本收入更多的安全感。
「在技術統治下，我們將對每個人類的身心健康負責」，霍華德·斯科特（Howard Scott）宣稱：「這比任何政治政府所做的事情都更多。」
技術統治主義的計劃是用一個基於能量的系統來取代「價格體系」。在 20 世紀 20 年代，斯科特和他的同事們開始了一個雄心勃勃的計劃，名為北美能源調查。這個想法是，通過衡量生產出來的所有商品和服務，而不是測量所消耗的勞動或花費的資金，來確定整個大陸上所有商品和服務的價值，而是根據生產它們所使用的能量數量。
然後，他們將用在技術統治下 25 歲以上的公民人數來除以用於生產的所有能量總量，並向每位公民發放相等數量的能源憑證，無論他們是否受雇。這些憑證將是技術統治下的貨幣。
Every time you bought something, some of your energy credits would be deducted, and because the certificates would be issued directly to the owner, they couldn’t be bought, sold, traded or stolen. No one would be able to accumulate more than anyone else. It was a prescription for a radically egalitarian state that might have made a Bolshevik blush.
In the Technate, your work life wouldn’t begin until age 25. Once you joined the labour force, you’d work 16 hours a week, you’d get about 78 days of vacation a year and you’d retire when you’re 45.
Only a small percentage of adults in the Technate would have jobs, and Scott thought that should be a cause for celebration. Most of those “hand tool” jobs were not very good to begin with, so why weep if they could now be done by a machine? People who clung to old-fashioned ideas about the value of work were “suckers.”
“One of the lowest social diseases is the belief in the morality of work,” he told an audience in Calgary. “If you want to know what work has done for you, go home and look in the mirror and see what a mess you are.”
每次你購買某樣東西時，你的部分能源積分會被扣除，而且由於憑證會直接發給所有者，因此它們不能被買賣、交易或盜竊。沒有人能夠累積比其他人更多的財富。這是一種激進平等主義國家的配方，可能會讓布爾什維克感到臉紅。
在技術統治下，你的工作生活不會始於 25 歲。一旦你加入勞動力市場，你每周工作 16 小時，每年可以享受約 78 天的假期，並且在你 45 歲時退休。
技術統治下只有一小部分成年人會找到工作，斯科特認為這應該是一個值得慶祝的事情。大多數這些「手工工具」工作本身就不是很好，那麼為什麼要為它們感到悲傷呢？那些堅持關於工作價值的舊觀念的人是「傻瓜」。
他告訴卡爾加里的聽眾：「社會上最糟糕的疾病之一是對工作的道德信仰。如果你想知道工作對你做了什麼，回家看看鏡子，你會發現你有多麼一團糟。」
Scott believed that people, freed from having to work for a living and secure in the knowledge that all their material needs would be taken care of, would be able to fulfill themselves through the arts, recreation, religion or education, all of which would thrive in the Technate.
This idea that people longed to be relieved of the burden of their labour has been a staple of utopian literature since the 19th century, but it ignores some deeper realities.
Speaking to the World Government Summit in 2017, Musk acknowledged that a guaranteed basic income would address only one part of the problem caused by technological unemployment. “The much harder challenge is, how are people going to have meaning?” Musk asked. “A lot of people derive their meaning from their employment. So if there’s no need for your labour, what’s your meaning? Do you feel useless? That’s a much harder problem to deal with.”
斯科特認為，一旦人們擺脫了為生計奔波的束縛，並且確信所有物質需求都會得到滿足，他們將能夠通過藝術、娛樂、宗教或教育來實現自我，而這些領域都將在技術統治下蓬勃發展。
這個觀點，即人們渴望擺脫勞動的重擔，自 19 世紀以來一直是烏托邦文學中的一個常見主題，但它忽略了一些更深層次的現實。
2017 年，馬斯克在世界政府峰會上表示，有保障的基本收入只能解決因技術失業而導致的問題的一部分。「更困難的挑戰是，人們將如何找到人生的意義？」，馬斯克問道。「許多人從他們的就業中獲得意義。因此，如果你的勞動不再需要，那麼你的人生意義是什麼？你會感到無用嗎？這是一個更難解決的問題。」
On a different plane than regular people / 在與普通人不同的層面
Howard Scott was a tireless worker on behalf of Technocracy Incorporated, an organization he founded and led until his death in 1970. He spent most of those years travelling across North America preaching his path to a better world. A book called Words and Wisdom of Howard Scott, prepared by a Technocracy chapter after his death, runs to more than 2,000 pages.
Scott was a polarizing figure. For better or for worse, he was always the public face of Technocracy.
At six foot five, Scott was an imposing figure with a deep, resonant voice aided by a lifetime of chain-smoking cigarettes. In his public interactions, he often came across as arrogant and condescending, but most Technocracy members were captured by his intelligence, charisma and ability to reel off facts and figures about global industrial production.
“He was on a different plane than regular people,” recalls longtime Technocracy member Ed Blechschmidt, in a recent interview from his home in Pennsylvania. Blechschmidt said Scott, who he first met in the ‘60s, “would talk and explain things and smile and be friendly. But if you asked him a question, he immediately would spout off twenty minutes of something you couldn't even understand.”
霍華德·斯科特是技術統治公司的一位不知疲倦的倡導者，他創立並領導該組織直到 1970 年去世。 他在這些年裡花費了大部分時間遊覽北美各地，宣揚他通往更美好世界的道路。 在他死後，一個技術統治分部準備了一本名為《霍華德·斯科特的言論和智慧》的書籍，該書包含超過 2,000 頁。
斯科特是一個極具爭議的人物。 無論好壞，他總是技術統治的公開面孔。
身高六英尺五英寸的斯科特是一位令人印象深刻的人物，擁有深沉而有共鳴的聲音，這得益於他一生的吸煙習慣。 在與公眾互動時，他經常表現出傲慢和居高臨下的態度，但大多數技術統治成員都為他的智慧、魅力以及他能夠快速背誦有關全球工業生產的事實和數據所吸引。
「他與普通人不同」，長期技術統治成員埃德·布萊希施密特在最近一次來自賓夕法尼亞州家中的採訪中回憶道。 布萊希施密特說，他第一次見到斯科特是在 20 世紀 60 年代，「他會談論和解釋事情，並且面帶微笑和友善。 但如果你問他一個問題，他立刻會滔滔不絕地講述你甚至無法理解的內容長達 20 分鐘。」
Scott was also a savvy marketer with a flair for the dramatic. He liked to stage what he called “symbolizations.” These were spectacles designed to show the wider world that Technocracy was a force to be reckoned with.
The largest symbolization took place in June 1947. It was called Operation Columbia and involved a motorcade of hundreds of cars that proceeded up the west coast of the U.S. into British Columbia, where Scott delivered a speech to a capacity crowd of 5,000 people at the Vancouver Forum.
In its public outings, Technocracy Incorporated had an oddly militaristic look. Its members, both men and women, wore tailored grey suits and drove cars that they also painted grey. They greeted each other with salutes.
To Scott’s critics – which included many of his former allies – the uniforms and salutes were evidence of a penchant towards authoritarianism. They considered him to be an egotistical blowhard. In fact, he appears to have seriously inflated his resume, falsely claiming to have an academic degree and work experience as an engineer. That last point mattered, because in the Technate, engineers and other experts would be in charge.
斯科特也是一位精明的行銷專家，擅長戲劇性表演。 他喜歡舉辦他稱之為「象徵活動」。 這些是旨在向更廣泛的世界展示技術統治是一個不可忽視的力量的盛事。
最大的象徵活動發生在 1947 年 6 月。 它被稱為「哥倫比亞行動」，涉及數百輛汽車組成的車隊，沿著美國西海岸一路行駛到不列顛哥倫比亞省，在那裡斯科特向聚集在溫哥華論壇的 5,000 名觀眾發表了演講。
在公開場合，技術統治公司給人一種奇怪的軍事化印象。 他們的成員，無論男女，都穿著剪裁合身的灰色西裝，並且將他們的汽車也塗成灰色。 他們互相致敬。
對於斯科特的批評者（包括他許多以前的盟友），這些制服和致敬是傾向於威權主義的證據。 他們認為他是自負的狂言家。 實際上，他似乎嚴重誇大了他的簡歷，虛假聲稱擁有學位以及作為工程師的工作經驗。 後一點很重要，因為在技術統治下，工程師和其他專家將負責管理。
Technocracy believed that in a world that revolved around science and technology, only people with proven expertise in those areas should be responsible for its governance. That excluded all the usual suspects ― business people, lawyers, bankers, academics ― none of whom had the practical skills the modern age demanded.
“Those who create a civilization will eventually dominate it,” Scott proclaimed in a speech in Winnipeg. “The engineers and mechanics created this civilization, and will eventually dominate it.” Technocracy was building “a technological army of the functionally competent.”
This meant there would be no room and no need for democracy. All the normal functions of government ― education, health, sanitation, public safety ― would be run by experts chosen by their peers. Doctors would vote for the person in charge of the health-care system, teachers for the person who’d run the schools and so on. There would be a cabinet made up of about a hundred of these experts, and they would select a “continental director” to oversee the whole thing.
This was how Technocracy planned to overcome its core complaint with democracy: that it led to too many incompetent people being in charge, or that too many people made bad decisions because they lacked the necessary expertise or were motivated by profit, ambition or something else that would lead them astray.
技術統治認為，在一個以科學和技術為中心的世界上，只有那些在這些領域擁有證明過的專業知識的人應該負責管理。 這排除了所有常見的嫌疑人——商人、律師、銀行家、學者——他們都沒有現代時代所要求的實際技能。
「創造文明的人最終將控制它」，斯科特在溫尼伯的一次演講中宣稱。「工程師和技術人員創造了這個文明，並且最終將控制它。」 技術統治正在建立「一支由功能上勝任的人組成的技術軍隊」。
這意味著不會有任何空間或需要民主。 所有的政府正常職能——教育、醫療、衛生、公共安全——都將由同行的專家來管理。 醫生投票選出負責醫療保健系統的人，教師投票選出負責學校運營的人，以此類推。 將會有一支由約一百名這些專家組成的內閣，他們將選出一名「大陸總監」來監督整個事情。
這就是技術統治計劃如何克服其對民主的核心抱怨：它導致太多無能的人掌權，或者太多的錯誤決策是由於缺乏必要的專業知識或受到利潤、野心或其他會使他們走樣的東西的驅動。
In the Technate, all the normal functions of government would be run by experts chosen by their peers. They would select a cabinet called the Continental Board, which would then choose a continental director. (Technocracyinc.org)
在技術統治下，所有政府的正常職能都將由同行的專家來管理。 他們將選出一支名為「大陸委員會」的內閣，該委員會然後將選擇一位「大陸總監」。
You are not welcome among us / 我們不歡迎您
This idea was not new. Plato believed society functioned best when it was run by experts. Technocracy’s focus on engineers was rooted in the conviction that there was a technological fix to almost all of society’s problems.
Today, the idea that governments are too slow, too inefficient, too lacking in expertise to solve hard problems is widely shared among the engineers and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley.
This libertarian impulse has always been part of the ethos of Silicon Valley. One of its first and most forceful expressions came in 1995, when tech pioneer John Perry Barlow delivered his “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel,” the Declaration began. “I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”
這個想法並非新穎。 柏拉圖認為，當社會由專家管理時，運作效果最佳。 技術統治對工程師的關注源於一種信念，即幾乎所有社會問題都可以通過技術手段解決。
如今，政府太過緩慢、效率太低、缺乏專業知識以解決複雜問題的想法在矽谷的工程師和企業家中廣泛流傳。
這種自由主義傾向一直是矽谷精神的一部分。 它的第一個也是最強烈的表達之一發生在 1995 年，當時技術先驅約翰·佩里·巴洛向瑞士達沃斯的世界經濟論壇發表了他的「網路空間獨立宣言」。
「工業世界的政府們，你們這些疲憊的血肉和鋼鐵巨獸」，《獨立宣言》開始道。「我來自網路空間，這裡是思想的新家。 我代表未來，請求過去的你們讓我們獨處。 你們不受歡迎。」
Silicon Valley’s attitude towards government has become more accommodating since Barlow delivered his declaration, both out of choice and necessity. But there remains a conviction that, left to their own devices, tech companies are better able to solve problems in areas like transportation, education and health care, where decades of government regulation have put a break on innovation.
“There’s a lack of focus on efficiency,” lamented former Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on a panel about government and technology in 2019. “The reason there's no innovation in government is there's no bonuses for innovation. In fact, if you take a risk … and it fails, your career is over.”
This is the kind of overblown rhetoric we’ve come to expect from engineers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, and their insistence that governments should step aside in favour of true problem-solvers is clearly self-serving. But the idea that we should be looking to experts rather than politicians for solutions to massively complex problems like a deadly pandemic or a climate emergency is gaining traction everywhere.
“The idea of an apolitical world is appealing more and more to people,” argues Eri Bertsou, a senior researcher at the University of Zurich and co-editor of a 2020 book called The Technocratic Challenge to Government.
“People are tired, and they are put off by the commotion and the disagreement of representative politics,” Bertsou said. “So it's this appeal of an efficient machine-like system … where problems can be identified through evidence, facts, reason, rather than ideological beliefs. I think that a lot of people find that appealing.”
Bertsou has been studying the rise of “technocratic” governments around the world, especially in Europe. In February 2021, Mario Draghi, an economist and former president of the European Central Bank who had never held political office, was named Italian prime minister to help manage the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery.
Draghi is a “technocrat,” chosen for the specific experience he brings to the job. Italians are fond of technocrats, especially when times are tough, and Draghi is the fourth technocrat prime minister there since 1993. You can also find cabinet-level technocrats in Greece, France and Lebanon, among other countries. But none of them would be embraced by Technocracy, because they are still operating within the price system, still treating “symptoms,” not the disease.
自巴洛發表了他的宣言以來，矽谷對政府的態度已經變得更加寬容，這既是出於選擇，也是出於必要。 但仍然存在一種信念，即如果讓科技公司自行運作，它們能夠更好地解決交通、教育和醫療保健等領域的問題，因為數十年的政府法規阻礙了創新。
「缺乏對效率的關注」，前谷歌執行主席埃里克·施密特在 2019 年關於政府和技術的討論會上抱怨道。「政府缺乏創新的原因是沒有為創新提供獎勵。 實際上，如果你冒險……並且失敗，你的職業生涯就結束了。」
這就是我們已經習慣於從矽谷的工程師和企業家那裡聽到的誇張言論，他們堅持認為政府應該讓路給真正的問題解決者，這顯然是自私自利的。 但尋求專家而不是政治家來解決像致命疫情或氣候緊急情況這樣的大規模複雜問題的想法正在世界各地獲得越來越多的支持。
「非政治的世界觀越來越受到人們的歡迎」，蘇黎世大學高級研究員、2020 年出版的《技術官僚對政府的挑戰》一書的聯合編輯埃里·伯茨解釋說。
伯茨表示：「人們感到厭倦，並且對代議制政治的喧囂和分歧感到反感。「因此，這種高效的機器式系統具有吸引力……在這個系統中，問題可以通過證據、事實和理性的方式來識別，而不是通過意識形態信仰。 我認為很多人覺得這很有吸引力。」
伯茨一直在研究世界各地「技術官僚」政府的興起，尤其是在歐洲。 2021 年 2 月，一位經濟學家、前歐洲央行總裁，從未擔任過政治職位的馬里奧·德拉吉被任命為意大利總理，以幫助管理該國的疫情後經濟復甦。
德拉吉是一位「技術官僚」，他因其為此職帶來的特定經驗而被選中。 義大利人喜歡技術官僚，尤其是在困難時期，自 1993 年以來，德拉吉是意大利第四位技術官僚總理。 您還可以在希臘、法國和黎巴嫩等其他國家找到擔任部長級職位的技術官僚。 但他們中的任何一位都不會被「技術統治」所接受，因為他們仍然在價格體系中運作，仍然只處理「症狀」，而不是病根。
While the number of technocrats in government is on the rise, so, too, is the number of populist politicians who wear their lack of expertise like a badge of honour.
During the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump mocked his opponent, Joe Biden, for saying he would “listen to the scientists” when it came to managing COVID-19. “If I listened totally to the scientists,” Trump proclaimed, “we’d have a country right now that would be in a massive depression.”
But there’s been a price for not listening to the experts. Countries run by populist leaders of various shades – particularly the U.S., Brazil and the U.K. – have recorded among the highest COVID-19 death rates.
For longtime Technocracy Incorporated supporters like Ed Blechschmidt, the idea that anyone would question the science around the pandemic, or anything else, is mystifying.
“You can’t argue with science and technology,” he insisted. “Science exists and scientific fact is fact. You can’t have a political position about it. You have to recognize it and implement science.”
But as we’ve discovered during the pandemic, science can sometimes speak with many voices, and by definition, representative democracy requires a constant balancing act among competing interests. Governments have to listen to the scientists ― but also to business people, parents and others.
雖然政府中技術官僚的人數正在增加，但同時，也越來越多的人民主義政治家，他們將自己缺乏專業知識視為榮譽勳章。
在 2020 年的美國總統競選期間，時任美國總統唐納德·川普嘲笑他的對手喬·拜登說，他會「聽取科學家的意見」來應對 COVID-19。 川普宣稱：「如果我完全聽從科學家的意見，現在我們這個國家將處於大規模衰退之中。」
但沒有聽取專家意見也付出了代價。 由各種色調的民粹主義領導人統治的國家（尤其是美國、巴西和英國）記錄了最高的 COVID-19 死亡率之一。
對於像埃德·布萊希施密特這樣長期支持「技術統治」的人來說，任何人質疑關於疫情的科學，或者其他任何事情的想法都令人費解。
他堅稱：「你不能與科學和技術爭論。「科學是存在的，科學事實就是事實。 你不能對此持有政治立場。 你必須認識到並實施科學。」
但正如我們在疫情期間發現的那樣，科學有時會發出許多聲音，而且從定義上講，代議制民主需要不斷在競爭的利益之間取得平衡。 政府必須聽取科學家——但也必須聽取商人和父母以及其他人。
Bertsou believes that by insisting on finding the one correct solution to every problem, Technocracy has presented a false dichotomy. “There is not one type of scientific knowledge, and no one way of governing social problems.”
Technocracy Incorporated began nearly a hundred years ago by seeking answers to two important questions: Why on a continent so rich in natural resources, energy and industrial capacity, were so many people suffering? And how could democracy, with all its obvious imperfections, continue to function effectively in a world where science and technology played an ever more dominant role?
Technocracy’s answers to both those questions were bold, radical, overly complicated and wildly impractical. Today, no one is talking about a North American Technate or a 16-hour work week or replacing money with energy certificates. But it would be wrong to dismiss Technocracy Incorporated as just another failed utopian scheme – not while the answers to those two questions remains so elusive.
伯茨認為，通過堅持對每個問題尋找唯一正確的解決方案，「技術統治」提出了虛假的二元對立。「沒有一種科學知識，也沒有一種管理社會問題的方法。」
「技術統治」近一百年前開始時，試圖回答兩個重要問題：為什麼在一個自然資源、能源和工業能力如此豐富的大陸上，卻有那麼多人受到苦難？ 此外，民主如何才能在一個科學和技術發揮越來越主導作用的世界中繼續有效地運作，儘管它存在明顯的缺陷？
「技術統治」對這兩個問題的回應既大膽、激進、過於複雜，又極不切實際。 今天，沒有人再談論北美技術國、16 小時的工作周或用能源憑證取代貨幣。 但將「技術統治」僅視為另一個失敗的烏托邦計劃是錯誤的——尤其是在那些問題的答案仍然如此難以捉摸的情況下。