Joshua N. Haldeman

I just want you to...

Can you talk to people a little bit about, uh, technocracy and that movement? Because I think it's, it's fascinating when, especially when we deal not just with Howard Scott, but Joshua Haldeman.

Yeah.

So, um, one of the things my book does is sort of try to trace out ideas about the relationship between techno- techno- technology and politics and, and the state over time.

Hmm

... that would find a way between a state-regulated economy th- that is communism or is, uh, and the laissez-faire capitalism that, um, FDR thought was insufficient to dealing with these challenges.

So then technocracy very quickly fades in the United States, but it continues for a bit in Canada, where its leader is this guy, a, an aviator and chiropractor named Joshua Haldeman, who is kind of a true believer through the 1930s.

Uh, Canada outlaws democracy in 1940, and he's briefly sent to prison.

um that i know as an individual there might be communities but you better be tied into them um so gold silver obviously to transfer the wealth the you know water source to stay hydrated don't die uh in food because you got to eat um interesting thing that you bring up elon musk and let's just touch on this for those that think oh this could be fear margarine or just trying to promote something uh buy from me buy from someone else but buy metal i think i'm pretty damn good though um Who's Elon Musk's grandfather and what was he a part of?

Joshua Haldeman.

He created the Technate Party in Canada.

He got booted out of Canada and went to South Africa to look at underground ancient civilizations that were written about in scrolls.

universal basic income.

And now it's on our face.

Well, Elon Musk himself had said that he, everything he does today is just to finish the work that his grandfather started, who of course that grandfather, Joshua Haldeman was a father of his mother, May Musk, who of course there's a lot of questions surrounding her as well.

But yeah, it all came from Canada.

Where did the book come from? The book came from a lot of places, but, but like that sort of precise moment was the ChatGPT moment.

You mentioned the podcast series you made about Elon Musk and how he does feature quite a bit in this book, um, and, and it's fascinating how you trace his thinking back even farther to his grandfather, who is a prominent Technocrat with a capital T, and you sort of explain that movement to remind us as readers that the modern state as we know it didn't arrive out of nowhere fully formed but Came about incrementally in conversation with historical forces.

It changes.

It continues to change.

We participate in its changing.

When it comes to the idea of technocracy or being a technocrat, what is this somewhat forgotten political movement that Elon Musk's grandfather was involved in, and, and how do you think that's paved the way for some of the ideas that are popular in Silicon Valley today?

Yeah.

So one of the things I was trying to...

And And there emerged at that moment a movement called Technocracy Incorporated and it had headquarters in New York, but it was really a North American movement, really Canadian and American.

The leader in the United States was a guy named Howard Scott and the leader in Canada was an amateur aviator and chiropractor, kind of an adventure, former rodeo cowboy named Joshua Haldeman.

And technocracy was opposed to democracy.

You said, as you said, that the popularly elected leaders, people weren't smart enough to elect people who could understand modern machinery and the modern industrial economy.

And there's also a kind of weird...

And I think to many people, it certainly surprised me when I discovered in the archives...

Because Joshua Haldeman, who was the leader of the movement in Canada, even after the movement was completely collapsed in the U.S., Haldeman continued to be an avid leader of the technocrat movement in Canada.

Canada outlawed technocracy as subversive to the government.

And the movement just really gathers steam, like, almost overnight, and it seems, you know, by 1931, 1932, as if technocracy might replace democracy in the United States.

There is one individual, a technocrat who has a number instead of a name, who you spend some time with telling us about Joshua Haldeman, fascinating, uh, individual figure who's a real true believer in this movement.

Tell us a little bit about him, and as you do in the book, save to the end why we might find him particularly interesting.

Yeah, so, so Haldeman was actually born in Minnesota, and he, he moves to Canada as a young man.

He becomes very attracted by South Africa, which in 1948, um, openly declares, publicly announces apartheid as the official policy.

And then Haldeman moves his family, his young family to South Africa.

And the reason why we're spending so much time talking about him is that young family in South Africa will, uh, sire a grandchild of Joshua Haldeman, and the name of that grandchild is?

Elon Musk.

Yeah, right in the absolute lowest point of the Great Depression.

Uh, the economy has cratered, things are incredibly unpredictable, and there's this guy named Joshua Haldeman.

Right.

And Haldeman decides he is just entirely finished with the messy, chaotic nature of democracy.

Numbers were clean, numbers were efficient.

And numbers could be easily processed.

Joshua Haldeman becoming a number wasn't some fringe eccentricity.

It was a logical conclusion of their ideology.

FDR was elected in 1932 and ushered in the New Deal.

The American technocracy leader, Howard Scott, was later revealed to be a fraud.

His Canadian counterpart, Joshua Haldeman, eventually moved to South Africa in 1950 because he supported the apartheid system.

He self-publishes a lot of crazy white supremacist tracts, anti-Semitic tracts.