Now that we know that the end goal for Trump and Elon is for us to live in a technocracy or a technate administered by a gov-corp, another step toward global government or a New World order, what would libertarianism and its founding leaders think about this?
I asked X’s AI tool Grok: What do Mises, Hayek and Rothbard and libertarianism say about technocracy?
They wouldn’t care for it. Grok’s response:
Human Action: The Scho…
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Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and the broader libertarian tradition offer critical perspectives on technocracy, rooted in their emphasis on individual liberty, spontaneous order, and skepticism of centralized control. While they don’t address “technocracy” as a single, unified concept in identical terms, their works critique systems where technical experts wield authority over economic or social life, which aligns with technocracy’s core idea. Here’s how each thinker and libertarianism generally approach it:
Ludwig von Mises
Mises, an Austrian economist, didn’t explicitly target technocracy as a movement but critiqued centralized planning and expert-driven control, which technocracy often implies. In Human Action (1949), he argues that economic calculation is impossible without market prices, a point he developed in his 1920 essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” Technocracy, with its vision of engineers or scientists managing society based on efficiency, would fall under his critique of socialism—replacing market signals with bureaucratic or technical directives leads to inefficiency and tyranny. Mises saw the market as a decentralized process where individuals, not elites (technical or otherwise), coordinate resources through voluntary exchange. A technocratic system, even if well-intentioned, would stifle this by imposing top-down solutions, ignoring the subjective nature of human preferences.
Friedrich Hayek
Hayek’s critique is more direct and nuanced, particularly in The Road to Serfdom (1944) and “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945). He argued that centralized control—whether by politicians, planners, or technical experts—fails because no single authority can possess the dispersed, tacit knowledge held by individuals across society. Technocracy, with its faith in experts optimizing systems, exemplifies what Hayek called the “fatal conceit”—the belief that human reason can fully design complex social orders. In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), he warns against “scientism,” the misapplication of scientific methods to social affairs, which technocrats often embody. Hayek admired technical progress but insisted it thrives best under spontaneous order, not engineered governance. A technocratic regime, to him, risks authoritarianism as experts inevitably coerce compliance to enforce their plans.
Murray Rothbard
Rothbard, an anarcho-capitalist, took a harder line, blending Mises’s economics with a radical rejection of all coercive authority. In Man, Economy, and State (1962) and For a New Liberty (1973), he dismantles any system—technocratic or otherwise—that overrides individual sovereignty. Technocracy, to Rothbard, would be another flavor of statism, where “so-called experts” (he’d likely scoff at the term) impose their will, violating property rights and free markets. He’d see technocrats as a new aristocracy, cloaking their power grabs in scientific jargon. Rothbard’s disdain for government-funded science (e.g., his critiques of NASA in The Logic of Action) suggests he’d view technocratic schemes as parasitic, relying on taxation rather than voluntary cooperation. His ideal—pure market anarchy—leaves no room for technocratic overlords.
Man, Economy, and Stat…
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Libertarianism Broadly
Libertarianism, drawing from these thinkers, is inherently skeptical of technocracy. It champions individual liberty and free markets over any centralized authority, technical or not. The Technocracy Movement of the 1930s, led by figures like Howard Scott, proposed replacing politicians with engineers and managing resources via “energy credits”—a system libertarians would decry as collectivist and anti-market. Modern libertarians, like those at the Mises Institute or Cato Institute, often critique technocratic trends (e.g., central banking, regulatory overreach) as distortions of spontaneous order. They’d argue that technological progress flourishes under liberty, not expert diktats—pointing to Silicon Valley’s early deregulated days versus today’s bureaucratic creep.
Synthesis
Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard would agree that technocracy misjudges human nature and economics. Mises would focus on its impracticality (no price mechanism), Hayek on its hubris (knowledge problem), and Rothbard on its immorality (coercion). Libertarianism echoes this, favoring decentralized innovation over engineered utopias. They’d likely see technocracy as a shiny veneer on the old problem of power: it promises efficiency but delivers control. As Hayek put it, “The more the state ‘plans,’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual”—a sentiment that cuts technocracy to its core.
