Evening star., 1932-12-27
STIRS INTEREST.
BUT IDEAS REMAIN FOGGY
Theories Set Up Energy Unit" in Place Of
Dollar Values as True Basis for Ex-
changing Goods and Services.

same amounts would be OF the same
value.
This might, or might not, involve the
substitution Of certificates Of expended
energy for money. 1t might be that
the workmen at the end of the week
would be paid with a certificate that
he had expended SO many ergs Of en-
ergy in his weeks work. Or it might
be that cent, for example, could be
given the arbitrary value of 10 ergs-
by which would be purchasable any
object whose production involved only
10 ergs. The basis Of money would
be energy-not gold. silver, credit or
any other arbitrary basis.
In this way. says the technocrat.
values could be gotten down to basis
of reality. Money. Of course, has no
value except as symbol. Nobody can
eat 1t, wear it, or live in a house made
of it. And symbol has no value ex-
cept as it symbolizes actuality. The
remoter the symbol from actuality, the
less its validity.
Right here comes a plank In the
philosophy Of the technocrat which may
be very far-reaching in its implications
As Veblen pointed cut more than a
decade ago-and assCarlyle pointed out
before that-industry can be analyzed
into two basic elements. production and
business. The engineer is concerned
Of energy units. AS an engineer he does
ness man thinks in terms of money As
business man he does not think in
terms Of energy units. OF course. engi-
neer and business man may be one and
the same individual-in which case this
individual is thinking in two sets of
symbols.
Real Wealth Is Object.
The engineer is concerned with max
ing shoes. AS an engineer, he is not
concerned with making money. The
business man is concerned with making
money. AS business man, he is not
concerned with making shoes. The
making Of shoes Is an incident-perhaps
an irritating incident-in the process of
money making. But to the engineer
the making Of money is incidental to
the making Of Shoes-not directly in
volved In the making of shoes at all.
The technocrat would take industry out
turn it over to the engineer would
make the basic object the production Of
real wealth rather than the production
OF course, any specific business man
may be mostly interested in the pro-
duction of goods. If this is SO, under
the division proposed by the techno-
crat, he is essentially an engineer and
only incidentally a business man. On
the other hand, he may even be inter-
ested in curbing production or may look
upon production as an irritating Incl
dent
Up to this point democracy is clear
enough and has a very respectable
basis-the opinions of some Of the fore
most philosophers of all time.
But from here on Washington econ
omists are in questioning mood. They
mostly agree that it would be a good
thing for money to represent objective
rather than subjective values-that
such a transition would mean radical
and far-reaching changes in the whole
structure of social life. But how the
technocrats propose to bring about the
transition, and especially how they pro-
pose a distribution Of such real wealth
as to better radically the lot of the
average man-these things only they
know and they are silent.