Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather

Into that maelstrom came a renowned scientist and engineer named Howard Scott. With a doctorate from the University of Berlin, he’d commanded complex projects around the globe, including British munitions plants and industrial projects for U.S. Steel. Scott and a small group of fellow engineers and scientists had made a diagnosis of civilization’s ills and a prescription for relief. The current capitalist system, they said, was irrevocably broken, and—as one magazine summarizing the movement put it—“we are faced with the threat of national bankruptcy and perhaps general chaos within eighteen months.” Scott described the solution in the language of an engineer—a civilization “operated on a thermo-dynamically balanced load.”