The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-01-04
TECHNOCRACY IS
 PRESENTING NO
 NEW SUGGESTION
Productive Power Has In. creased Beyond Human. ity's Capacity to Absorb All the Products
By SIDNEY B. wHIPPLE tCopyrlght, 1888, By United Press)

II AAVNFNEh8hAa AgWDS e~S
 New York, Jan. {. (UP)-In itf theory that the machine age has increased mankind's productive Dower beyond humanity's capacity 10 absorb the flow of manufactureo products, technocracy presents no new sS,REcstion. Practically every economist agrees with that;
 But in it's theory that this new age has smashod the price sys- tem"--the system by which the flow of goods, wealth and the material requisites for life is reg. ulnted--technocra has presented O thought that Is widely attackeo by students of economies. The technOcrats say that the price system, which is the yard stick by which work and produc- ton are measured, may have been fitted for past ages, but that It is antiQuated, broken down, and use- less as a measure to-day.
 In their attacks on the price sys- tom, the technocrats point out that not even the followers of Karl Marx, the socialists, or the com munists have advocated doing away entirely with monetary standards, Technocracy would wipe them out and measure labor and production by some unit of energy--the erg and the joule, or perhaps the calorie. How mankind Is going to 1.-Two on ergs, or transport ergs, or or eat ergs, the technocrats do not say.
 But the theory Is this:
 eARvRaa rae aVa ARnU m n ha m an a- ured in ergs. A dollar may be worth, buying power, so much to- day and more or less tomorrow. A unit of work, or heat, or energy, never changes.
 On the other hand, they argue the dollar is an arbitrary unit that has no relation to "tho physical operation" of our continent.
 Furthermore, tho price system operates so that all wealth Is pros dueed only by the creation of debt, and Q man Is wealthy when he Is . vast creditor. In other words, the wealthy man owns stocks, bonds public and private obligations. and eurrency--which Is 0 debt of the government itsolf.
 These debts, the technoorats ob- serve, must be paid by tho process of increasing the quantity of goods sold, by trade expansion, by in- creased production, and, in q ylci- ous circle, by increasing machinery to step up further production. But the very machines throw men out of work, decreasing mankind's g power of consumption--and there you are, whore you started from, with the wealthy man still piling up what he thinks is property, but what Is actually nothing but other peoples dobts to him.
 Tho technocrats reclte the 'puz- zling case of Henry Ford, whose family, they say, made profits of $44,000, 900 in one year. These mil- lions represented the "debts" of the country to them. But there was only one thing they could do with these millions. They couldn't eat or wear them. So they reinvested them in further stocks and bonds and cash, debts which must bo paid by further production.
 Under this system they do nothing but run around in cipelesi each time humanity runs around tho circle gets bigger. Tho circle will soon got 50 big 1t will explode and "20, ,000, 900 Americans will bt out of work"---if the theories hold and if somebody doesn't "do some. thing about it."
 When you ask teehnoerats, then what they propose to do, they shrug their shoulders.
 (Tho third article in this series will bo carried to.morrow.)