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This idea began as a joke inspired by the thread about the effects of a Cold War between fascism and liberalism on culture and politics in the West, and it got me thinking: before the New Deal was enacted there were several different currents of reformist impulses in the United States, what if one of those got a moment in the sun? I'm specifically talking about Technocracy, a social movement that called for the replacement of political actors behind the levers of government with technical experts empowered to manage society in order to ensure production and distribution of resources and goods unhindered by the price system.

IOTL technocracy explicitly rejected revolutionary and political activity, but if we assume a scenario where the New Deal is delayed or halted entirely popular discontent could lead to a change in that policy. This raises the first question: does technocracy occur through a revolution (creating a new constitution), or democratically (through a far more expansive set of reform laws)? I lean more heavily toward the latter, as several goals (the institution of a tiled four-day work week most notably) can be achieved legislatively, and "rule by technical experts" can be achieved at least on paper by a large technical bureaucracy managing everything, or having a requirement for expertise in relevant fields to achieve committee assignments in Congress for example. You end up with a "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" scenario, but that's a feature not a bug of this little exercise.

As for fascism, what about a scenario where World War II is exclusively aimed at the Soviet Union? Germany would be hegemon of Europe, and, with the Soviet Union at least pushed beyond the Urals, free to start propping up fascist states in its regional neighborhood. If the US remained isolationist during this period given the technocratic program to achieve continental autarky from Panama to the Arctic Circle, you would end up with a scenario where a bloc of capitalist countries is locked into a Cold War with a bureaucratic managerial state that sits astride a continent, without having gotten into a shooting war with them first. What regional conflicts could serve as proxy wars? What is Japan doing this whole time? Who comes out on top in this struggle for the ages? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
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