"In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore."
https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-histo...
https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-histo...
Legislation is a rather complex sport that requires deep understanding of repercussions.
I've seen rather skilled blockchain hackers talking economics, finance, politics and monetary policy. Their understanding of the current system (in terms of structure) was appalling. One needs to know the role of central banks before bashing them.
I am afraid that your average engineer will make a pretty incompetent legislator. So let's leave legislation to legislators... :-)
I disagree. Aside from a few highly political engineers and/or software devs, almost all engineers I know insist on actually looking at the facts and evaluating them to the best of their ability, regardless of their political inclinations. This is a very rare characteristic in our society, and I can't help but to believe it's a very virtuous trait to have for a legislator.
Most engineers also aren't inflicted with the lust for power and status like so many (most?) attorneys I know.
Most engineers also have a pretty rare ability to listen to and to accept criticism. That's not always something legislators can boast of.
I think we need more scientists, engineers, software professionals, etc. in our political system, not less.
Also, what exact lack of understanding in terms of "structure" of the current system did you find appalling in those blockchain hackers? Can you be more specific?
Communist governments were super big on STEM and still implemented the same horseshit policies and woo woo beliefs.
>Most engineers also aren't inflicted with the lust for power and status like so many (most?) attorneys I know.
In the west, engineering doesn't attract those types. In other countries where its the quickest way to make buck? Hell yeah!
>I think we need more scientists, engineers, software professionals, etc. in our political system, not less
I think we need a bigger guild like organization with a lobby. Not some industry sponsored group either.
This is an excellent counterpoint. You're totally right that in many countries (former communist countries, particularly, as you say), STEM educated elites often were the top officials.
However, it doesn't detract from my point that in this country, we would benefit from more scientists and engineers in government.
> I think we need a bigger guild like organization with a lobby. Not some industry sponsored group either.
This may help us with professional issues, but it likely won't help our system of government.
I've been watching the various attempts at improving education in America and it smells Exactly like what india/china have.
There's many details but broadly there's 1 major forces that shape this
economics-jobs
1) as normal jobs dry up/stop paying a good wage, it puts a downward pressure on education in things like politics/English/arts/philosophy and so on. This means people shift to the only hope left - STEM
Talking to people on forums from America who were exposed to multiple streams (and not just STEM) I can say you guys have historically enjoyed a deep insulation/resilience to stupid ideas/half baked ideas. Because you had people with diverse information, you could always stop a neophyte engineer from executing a shortest path solution with costs not apparent to engineers.
Once you have no jobs left for those people, parents will force their kids into the only options left.
This saturates the system with posers - people who pretend to like engineering but would rather be psychologists, painters, marketers or any non technical job.
This overloads and blows the fuses in the higher education application process, which forces them to adapt by adding more criteria and stricter criteria to get in.
The kinds of engineers you produce tomorrow are going to be unconcerned with being engineers. They are engineers to finish their first job stint and get an MBA.
Ethics become a word and a course you waste your time on, because if ethics mattered you wouldn't be an engineer in the first place.
Any system proposed needs to build with this in mind. I think simply making it useful to have multi discipline knowledge will be a way to maintain Your cultural resistance.
Sorry if I'm rambling
Although admittedly in america, our lack of stem focus partially comes from the cult of money. Brilliant would be scientists and inventors are financially pushed towards the business, law, & finance fields.
It helps keep keep engineering well paid which is nice....but I suspect we've could have advanced much further if half the traders and quants on Wall Street were in an innovation oriented field.
Reminds me of a guy from a top comp science program getting paid to be basically a secretary in a finance firm.
And they won't be, until they get a taste for them.
The saying "power corrupts" exists for a reason, because it's true. Very few people in history have been able to resist the temptations that come with it and stay true to their principles.
You haven't had enough to know what it's like...
- How currencies are created by a population or state?
- How currencies are adopted/enforced to/by a population or state?
- What is the role of a central bank in a modern economy?
- How if the "Chair of the FED" appointed?
- What is the inflation rate?
- Why does a central bank get to decide the inflation rate?
- Why exchange currencies (e.g. USD, EUR, etc) are inflationary?
- What is democracy? (by extension is it in the best interest of a democracy having a CB-backed currency or a virtual currency?)
- Can a player with vast amounts of shares/bitcoins/USDs fix the price of the stock/share/btc?
- Can money be a-political?
> I think we need more scientists, engineers, software professionals, etc. in our political system, not less.
Two examples of technocratic governance are (A) Greece and (B) Economics/Finance:
(A) In 2015 Greece has been turned officially into a colony[1]. In essence it's been a colony since 2010. All major political decisions are taken from a technocratic board. Basically the Greek govenrment acts as the executive branch. The legislative power been delegrated to a supranational authority, which 60% of Greeks rejected btw. The technocratic board, known as 'Troika', has done mistakes[2]. While the IMF will issue a sorry we made a few mistakes statement and go home, people in Greece have to live with the consequences for the years to come. No Greek politician is capable of inflicting such MASSIVE amount of pain to an economy without getting a glimpse of hope in return, none. Only a technocrat can do that. Of course technocrats (much like neo-liberals or communists) will say that you're not technocratic enough, but this simply doesn't hold water: there's theory and practice. Practice shows that they've screw up massively, so massively that by the time they end-up with Greece, Greece may very well have been turned into a military-state of the worst kind.
(B) Currently finance relies on non-realistic financial models, to justify toxic asset risk dispersion/assessment. This dominance of mathematics in Economics (The queen of social sciences) has been going strong for the last 40 years or so. The problem is not that top university educated economists are not good with formulas. Some of those guys make rounds around your average engineer. The problem is that in order to explain social reality through a mathematical model they start accepting generilizations which are simply NOT true.
So in the end of the day, you have a mathematical model which is out of touch with reality and 2008 happens, Trump happens, Brexit happens... All these things happened because of the mathematicalisation of economics.
I think post-2008 it's really hard to argue replacing social sciences (and I believe legislation is a very social science, economics too) with technocratic counterparts. Everyone should have a say, but the final decision on social matters, should rest with social sciences.
[1]: https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/08/17/greeces-third-mou-memo...
[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-04-21/imf-needs...
Sadly, so does your average legislator.
We can no longer separate legislation from engineering. We need a way to get people who are good at both, whether that's training engineers as legislators, training legislators as engineers, or something else.
It's easy to see what he's referring to here, and thus, he demonstrates that he's captured by fake news as well, and doesn't even recognize it. Half-truths or intentional misreading of things Trump has said are bread and butter of the left wing's fake news organizations.
As a side note, he succinctly explains with what is wrong with a coincident push by the same people, banning of certain viewpoints off Twitter. Oh well it's a private company, and they can run it how they want! Your free speech is not being violated. But as he just admits, these private entities are extremely powerful brokers of speech, and what they decide stays and goes has a very large impact on society. But, consistency is not the strong suit of these people. It is entirely whatever argument works at the time.