Top left – Joshua Haldeman, an American who first moved to Canada and later to South Africa. In the late 1930s, he joined the Technocracy Movement (Technocracy Inc.).
Top right – Howard Scott, the founder of the movement.
The technocrats aimed to replace the market economy with a system where engineers held power and everything was measured not by money but by energy consumption. Their vision was a massive “Technate” spanning Canada, Greenland, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, and parts of Colombia and Venezuela—you can see the map behind Scott. The movement was eventually banned in Canada, and Haldeman was even arrested.
During World War II, the technocrats backed the USSR, a stance Haldeman opposed. Interestingly, Soviet technocrats were also persecuted (the “Industrial Party” trial). Some claim he harbored antisemitic views and had sympathies for Nazism. Eventually, he relocated to South Africa, where he supported the apartheid system. Haldeman was Elon Musk’s grandfather on his mother’s side.