Yeah, I read this as alternate history as well, although in 1963 I guesss it would have read as just set in a fictional country. Anyway, I appreciated it in the way that our dear host did, as something that revealed more about the authors worldview than the world. Today, there is no way an unregulated industry run by engineers would be portrayed as a utopian endpoint. But his observations of the fallacies of socialist systems were pretty sharp. In my cynical 21st century mind, I also expected the expediter to slowly get corrupted by the power and that he would be the one that knocks, to pull in an contemporary reference. Of course, there is basically no emotional resonance here, but that's fine, because the story wasn't trying to achieve that.