Yet even this modified formless democracy is too anarchic for many of those who make efficiency their first ideal. These worshipers of efficiency would like to have each man move in a social orbit meted out to him from his childhood, and perform a function to which he is bound as the serf was bound to the clod. Within the American social picture, it is shameful to have these yearnings, and this denial of opportunities implied by an uncertain future. Accordingly, many of those who are most attached to this orderly state of permanently alloted functions would be confounded if they were forced to admit this publicly. They are only in a position to display their clear preferences through their actions.

Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society