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China is run by engineers. America is run by lawyers

164 points by m-hodges 1y ago

DaveZale 1y ago
[flagged]
bearjaws 1y ago
I think its less a problem of lawyers and more a problem of age. I learned today Chuck Grassley plans to run again and would be 95 years old in congress. This is insane. If you've worked retail you know many above 75 are not all there, plain and simple. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/01/SR_25.01.16_age-of-congress_1.png?resize=1024,723 https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025...
- ourmandave 1y ago
  ...anyone above 75 is not all there, plain and simple. Yeesh, ageism, plain and simple. But yeah, Grassley needs to hang up the spurs.
  - lm28469 1y ago
    It's not ageism, people deciding the future of your country shouldn't already have a foot in the grave Just look at Trump and Biden speeches VS Bush or Obama
    - wqugugqhugqhuh 1y ago
      [dead]
    - lazide 1y ago
      That’s like literally saying someone going off on someone because of their skin color (exclusively) isn’t being racist. It’s in the definition. Words have meaning.
      - lm28469 1y ago
        [flagged]
        lazide 1y ago
        It is, literally. Just because it’s legal doesn’t change what it is.
        lm28469 1y ago
        OK so let's say it's ageism, why should I care again? If your president can barely finish a coherent sentence and literally pisses in a plastic bag strapped to his leg I don't care how you call it but I want none of it Same reason I don't leave my newborn baby alone with my 95 years old grandma who has dementia, call it ageism if you want, I call it basic common sense
        lazide 1y ago
        Ageist is thinking the reason it’s a bad idea to leave a baby with your grandma is because she’s 95 - not because she has dementia. Which she could also have had at 50. Or even 35. Yes, early onset dementia is a thing.
        lm28469 1y ago
        Cognitive functions start to slowly decline after 50, and rapidly after 70 All I'm saying is that people in charge should have their full cognitive capabilities, see it's not ageism anymore!
        lazide 1y ago
        Make a test, and I bet you more folks than you expect would pass. then it’s not ageism.
        tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
        Congratulations, you've labeled something. What's your point?
    - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
      Trump is about the same age as Bush and Clinton, oddly enough, but they were presidents in very different times.
    - leptons 1y ago
      It has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with corruption, greed, and hate. And that is what a lot of people keep voting for.
  - frmersdog 1y ago
    "Muh ageism" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for these kinds of conversations. You have to make an effort to actually argue against the statements you disagree with. Are people 75-and-older agile and flexible enough, mentally, to perform in these positions? To connect with the constituents they represent? If the incidence of the requisite acuity does indeed drop with advanced age, are the individuals in government disproportionately among those who avoid issues? And, if so, how do you know?
    - leptons 1y ago
      >Are people 75-and-older agile and flexible enough, mentally, to perform in these positions? All of them? No. But I also could introduce you to plenty of 25 year old's that aren't "agile and flexible enough, mentally to perform these positions". And it's often not even "mental agility" that is the problem with people in power, it's corruption, greed, and just plain old hate that is the problem. Those things don't have any age limits except maybe below 6 years old, and even then I've met some pretty nasty, spoiled toddlers.
      - frmersdog 1y ago
        >But I also could introduce you to plenty of 25 year old's that aren't "agile and flexible enough, mentally to perform these positions" There are vanishingly-few 25-year-olds in national office, certainly not in proportion to their chunk of the overall population. But bringing them up at all is beside the point. The contention at hand is that there are too many elderly people, who are beyond their ability to perform adequately, in positions of power. If you would like to address that, feel free. But please stay on topic.
        leptons 1y ago
        >There are vanishingly-few 25-year-olds in national office Well thank [deity] for that, because many of them aren't fit for it. Neither are 75 year olds, but age doesn't really play that much of a factor - it's the people voting to put shitheads in positions of power no matter their age that are causing this damage in the first place. >> "Muh ageism" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for these kinds of conversations. >There are vanishingly-few 25-year-olds in national office, certainly not in proportion to their chunk of the overall population. But bringing them up at all is beside the point. Yes, it is the point - you made it the point with your "muh ageism" quip. I simply pointed out that age doesn't make a difference, but greed, corruption, and hate do. >The contention at hand is that there are too many elderly people, who are beyond their ability to perform adequately, in positions of power. There are also old people in power that are not "beyond their ability to perform adequately", and that's also a very subjective goalpost you're setting. Some of those shitty old politicians are doing exactly what their shitty constituents want them to, even if they are just holding the pen while someone younger moves their hand. >But please stay on topic. You made this about "muh ageism" not me, so all ages are fair to comment about. Shitty 25 year olds are actually worse than shitty 75 year olds, because shitty 25 year olds will be around much longer doing much more harm than a shitty 75 year old politician could. And again, it has nothing to do with age, and everything to do about corruption, greed, and hate. Those things are ageless.
  - bearjaws 1y ago
    Totally fair to call out blanket “anyone 75+ isn’t all there” as ageist. But the governance point still stands: even sharp octogenarians are often out of sync with modern life (platforms, tech norms, digital risks). Only 8% of adults 65+ say they’re online “almost constantly,” vs 48% of 18–29 a proxy for how different the information environment is that shapes decisions.
    - daveguy 1y ago
      The word would be a better place if everyone was offline more often. They wouldn't be as subject to the propaganda oligopolies.
  - serf 1y ago
    >Yeesh, ageism, plain and simple. we take it for granted that someone below the age of 15-ish in the United States shouldn't be behind the wheel of an automobile, but that's not universally true. We try 18 year olds as adults, and that's not universally true, either. It isn't a far leap to presume that people past a certain age meets the same psychological and mental/cognitive decline as the average person that age without testing. You wouldn't expect a 95 year old to be eagle-eyed and athletic, to presume that their age isn't a deficit whatsoever is ageist from another perspective. If I saw a person using a wheelchair I wouldn't wait for them to tell me that they needed a ramp for the staircase at the restaurant -- this too is -ist, but I see no real problem with it as a wheelchair user myself. Somewhat similarly : the amount of 'with-it' and sober 95 year olds that I have met in real life makes me really question their fitness as an important member of a government group. Just like the presidency, these roles should probably be qualified into by participants with more than just votes. If you're a 95 year old that passes the mental health and physical health examinations, more power to you , welcome to <government group>.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    If you're too old to staff an airport control tower, you're too old for Congress and especially the Oval Office. Not just because your faculties aren't what they once were, but because you have no stake in the outcome of your decisionmaking.
  - linhns 1y ago
    How can you expect them to legislate for the nation when they know they won’t be around when the policies come to fruition?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bdangubic 1y ago
  60 should be HARD limit for any politician (including scotus)
  - delusional 1y ago
    Why would there need to be a hard limit on something the electorate is already directly voting on? You might say every election is an election on if people above X age should be in congress.
    - bushbaba 1y ago
      Aging population means that many democracies will have more old than young voters. Couple that with the American culture of f you I’ve got mine, leads to a prioritization not on the future generations.
    - nomadygnt 1y ago
      Which really makes you wonder how well the system is really working. Of course I don’t know this but I feel like if you asked everyone, the majority of people would say that 95, or 90, or 85 is too old to be in congress. But somehow they keep getting reelected…
      - metabagel 1y ago
        Incumbents have an enormous advantage. We would need publicly funded elections in order to change this.
      - bearjaws 1y ago
        Almost like people vote in people of similar age. Baby boomers was the largest generation far larger than the preceding and later generation.
    - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
      Because people vote for the party and not the individual in most cases.
    - 1y ago
- jordanb 1y ago
  One thing I've realized it that the Democratic party is a machine. It rewards loyalty and waiting your turn. It punishes getting out of line and challenging incumbents. Parts of the Republican party are too of course (hence Grassley) but it's been the target of several successful insurgencies. First the tea party and then Trump. Now it's turning into something completely different.. a cult of personalty for a dictator. But the intact machine is the reason why the Democrats can not rise to the occasion. Their whole system is one designed to produce dour grey apparatchiks.
  - regularization 1y ago
    DP is corporate funded and exists to squash movements from the left. Most people have to see this up close to see it though.
- regularization 1y ago
  I remember in the 1970s when the Soviet Union was called a gerontocracy. Gorbachev becoming general Secretary at the age of 54 was seen as a breath of fresh air. As your chart shows, one third of the US Senate is over the age of 70. We have people like Biden and Trump as president. Sign of the times (who are respectively 10 and 7 years older than Xi). Incidentally, Xi is the oldest member of the Politburo Standing Committee.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Only one third? I'm highly surprised that it's that low.
- master_crab 1y ago
  There is another sort of old age the US suffers from. The government is now amongst the oldest nation-state organizations on the planet with probably the oldest written national laws (the constitution) still in use. The cruft that has built up (from the 2nd amendment, to the electoral college) over 250ish years is a serious problem.
  - shakna 1y ago
    > with probably the oldest written national laws (the constitution) still in use. The UK would easily disagree, with their founding codification in 1215.
    - jrflowers 1y ago
      The Magna Carta was a list of stipulations relating to a monarch as the absolute head of state. The UK does not have that anymore.
      - defrost 1y ago
        The Magna Carta was a second, more forceful, iteration of the Charter of Liberties introduced a century earlier in 1100 by Henry I of England. Clauses of both are still part of the basis of English Common Law (the Common Law cited in the US Constitution) and the Magna Carta is still being cited in recent times by politicians and lawyers in support of (UK) constitutional positions, and still, albeit rarely, cited in UK courts in 2012 the Occupy London protestors attempted to use Magna Carta in resisting their eviction from St. Paul's Churchyard by the City of London. In his judgment the Master of the Rolls gave this short shrift, noting somewhat drily that although clause 29 was considered by many the foundation of the rule of law in England, he did not consider it directly relevant to the case, and that the two other surviving clauses ironically concerned the rights of the Church and the City of London and could not help the defendants. It's firmly a part of the continuously evolving history of UK law: Magna Carta carries little legal weight in modern Britain, as most of its clauses have been repealed and relevant rights ensured by other statutes, but the historian James Holt remarks that the survival of the 1215 charter in national life is a "reflexion of the continuous development of English law and administration" suggesting that what the UK lacks is the stagnation of US law which hasn't yet evolved past the errors of scale that have crept in since its foundation; the US electoral could also do with a revamp to better serve the people. * two quotes above sourced from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
- teddy-smith 1y ago
  My grandma is 80 and speaks 7 languages and is a professor and teaches classes. She's smarter than me. What you just said is agist.
  - rileymat2 1y ago
    There are incredibly smart and talented 12 year olds that are not allowed to vote due to age. Agism is pervasive in our culture, old and young, so we should ask if the discrimination is pragmatic or not. Moral or not. Legal or not.
    - general1465 1y ago
      While young people can be considered immature until certain age, old people have big taboo about senility and dementia. As you are not allowed to vote and drive until certain age, you should not be allowed to vote and drive since certain age, because your brain could be considered immature again through degeneration.
    - teddy-smith 1y ago
      There's dumb black people and smart black people therefore black people are dumb. Its PRAGMATIC TO THINK THIS. You see how stupid you sound?
      - rileymat2 1y ago
        That is a complete mischaracterization of what I was saying. There are multiple considerations, both legal and moral. But pragmatism plays a role in the pervasive ageism in our culture, as we have decided it is largely legal.
        teddy-smith 1y ago
        If you're capable of abstraction I'm reframing your point EXACTLY. Also, Discriminating based on age is largely legal. Are you sure about that?
  - 1y ago
- g42gregory 1y ago
  There is a saying that, in China, the top political career starts at 70. I don't think the age is the problem. It's corruption.
  - AndroTux 1y ago
    Luckily there’s no corruption in China
    - t-3 1y ago
      At least corruption is sometimes punished in China. The agriculture minister was just given what's essentially a life sentence for corruption.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        Sometimes isn't good enough. That's just selective enforcement, which is arguably worse than no enforcement at all.
        t-3 1y ago
        No law is enforced absolutely on every offender. That's impossible. Selective enforcement is a problem, but I would never say it's worse than no enforcement unless the law is bad in the first place.
        jacquesm 1y ago
        It is when it is mostly used as a weapon rather than as a law. And China, unfortunately, has quite a lot of that.
        hermitcrab 1y ago
        “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
      - 1y ago
- horns4lyfe 1y ago
  Ya they’re all old lawyers
- johnisgood 1y ago
  We have an age limit in so many fields. Being in congress should have one, too. Aging affects many parts of our brain (negatively) responsible for cognition.
- jasonsb 1y ago
  It's lawyers. Definitely lawyers and copyright laws. You could also add corruption and age, but these are problems that can be found in China as well.
- FpUser 1y ago
  >"anyone above 75 is not all there" - this is pure BS But yeah allowing Chuck Grassley to run at this young </s> age is pure insanity.
- micromacrofoot 1y ago
  if we have a federal retirement age we should just use that
- atmavatar 1y ago
  It's about more than just whether a congressperson is all there or not. A bigger concern to me is that many of them are old enough that any long-term impacts resulting from bills they pass simply won't happen until they're gone. And, I would expand that to include more than just Congress - I think major executive offices (e.g., President, VP, cabinet members, etc.) and the Supreme Court should have an age limit for the very same reason. Anyone in government office whose decisions can have long-lasting effects should be young enough they need to keep that in mind. Anyone who (statistically) has only a few years left to live and especially anyone past the average life expectancy are welcome to hang around in advisory roles, but they should have limited (if any) power to directly affect future policy because they simply don't have any real skin in the game any longer.
  - xyzzy123 1y ago
    Isn't family "skin in the game", in a fairly literal sense? People don't come from nowhere, they have families, affiliations, communities etc. Politicians in particular are selected for this.
    - jackstraw42 1y ago
      > Isn't family "skin in the game", in a fairly literal sense? It is as long as the person really cares about their family. You sure they all do?
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      Their families are very well insulated from any negative consequences of their actions.
- ugh123 1y ago
  Both can be true. Old lawyers are probably the worst
- general1465 1y ago
  Old people are voting for old people, because they are not going to vote for kids. Does not matter that the "kid" is 45 year old who is much more attached to everyday reality than old people.
- Gibbon1 1y ago
  Up until 40 years ago the US was run by lawyers. Now the US is run by MBA's and financial capitalists.
- fathermarz 1y ago
  It’s less about them being “not all there” and more like the level of disconnected they are from modern society. The last time they had the average job (if ever) was before credit cards existed and it was $0.50 for a loaf of bread.
- mcphage 1y ago
  Many above 75 aren’t all there, but that doesn’t say anything about a specific person.
- ajross 1y ago
  > I learned today Chuck Grassley plans to run again and would be 95 years old in congress. This is insane. The age of the senior senator from Iowa is like 537th on the list of major problems this country is facing. I mean, let's be real. Would a bunch of spry 30-somethings in the senate have prevented the Assault on Tylenol or the coming invasion of Portland? Seems beyond dubious.
- smsm42 1y ago
  There are 13 Senators, out of 120, who are over 75, as far as I can see. I don't think we can attribute all the problems to them - there's not enough of them. I mean, some of the elders in Congress - like Pelosi, Waters, Nadler, Durbin, etc. - would do well to retire, but not every single one of them is "not all there". By a coincidence, I've met one of those 13 about a month ago (not personally, on an event, but it was a small event and I could see and hear him very well) and he certainly wasn't a youngster but I didn't see any obvious degradation of mental facilities. That said, I don't think term limits and mandatory retirement age is such a bad idea for top politicians, just don't expect it to fix much.
elteto 1y ago
Nope, China is run by the Chinese Communist Party, which itself is run by Xi. That's it. Just look at Jack Ma for a clear example that China is not run by engineers or tech people.
- tern 1y ago
  As far as I know, this isn't true. Many members of the CCP have engineering degrees. A relevant podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1TeeIG6Uaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1TeeIG6Uaw
  - elteto 1y ago
    What exactly isn't true? That Xi doesn't control the CCP? And presumably they also have doctors and even lawyers in the CCP! Come to think of it, I wonder if China is not actually run by lawyers as well...
    - canadiantim 1y ago
      My understanding is that Xi’s control actually slipping and it isn’t complete control like a standard dictator
      - hermitcrab 1y ago
        I thought he had purged his opposition under the cover of anti-corruption drives?
        canadiantim 1y ago
        He did yes but more recently seems like there’s been a coup behind the scenes and Xi is more of a figurehead. See: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/all-eyes-beijings-annual-reshuffle-military-chiefs-amid-signs-xis-waning-power https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/all-eyes-beijings-ann...
        1y ago
gwbas1c 1y ago
I listened to this podcast earlier this week, and yesterday listened to another in the series exploring the difference between corruption in the US and China. It's always good to learn how other cultures govern themselves. China learned a lot from the US and other countries, adapted, and then benefitted immensely. In the US, we can learn a lot too.
- sigfubar 1y ago
  > In the US, we can learn a lot too. Alas, American exceptionality as part of its premise precludes any act of learning from anywhere other than itself. Culturally, this is what inbreeding looks like.
Animats 1y ago
That's well known. On the other hand, DOGE didn't go a great job running America.
- bearjaws 1y ago
  DOGE was an attack on every agency that MAGA didn't like. The goal was never to save money. The deficit is the largest its ever been.
- kklisura 1y ago
  IMHO, DOGE's result wasn't an engineering strategy to run a country, it was a businessperson's approach to running country.
  - atemerev 1y ago
    "Data grab" is easier to write.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  Well DOGE also ran into a lot of obstructionism, and had to also move quickly due to the short political cycles America has. That doesn’t mean the concept itself is fundamentally bad.
  - NegativeK 1y ago
    I suspect, strongly, that we disagree on the fundamentals of what DOGE's aim was.
  - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
    If DOGE was actually trying to make things more efficient, it would have made very different choices. Firing thousands of workers that you still have to pay for half a year is not efficiency, it's massive waste. Not only did DOGE not actually save money, it burnt a ton of money breaking things our government now has to fix. Even if they had taken an extra month to learn the systems they were cutting into, would've saved many months of wasted employee-hours with what happened.
mwkaufma 1y ago
Freakonomics: laundering conservative talking-points into "the npr set" for 20 years and still going.
- tacitusarc 1y ago
  The conservatives I know think it’s another mainstream democratic mouthpiece. So I guess they’re doing something right.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - mwkaufma 1y ago
    No, just sounds like you know some dense conservatives.
- asdff 1y ago
  A broken clock is right twice a day. America has some of the highest numbers of lawyers per capita by far out of developed nations. These lawyers do not work for us, most middle and low income people do not get legal representation that they need at all. You learn where these lawyers actually work when you work in corporate, and you see quickly how this single department has complete unilateral control over all operations of the organization. Everything goes through them and they can shut down anything. Even directives by the chief executive officer who is supposedly at the helm are crafted by legal. And when you understand that the american government is controlled by corporations, given the above logic that really means it is controlled by their lawyers. Most politicians in representative government come from law backgrounds as well.
  - metabagel 1y ago
    Law is central to government. It makes sense for most politicians to have a background in law as opposed to, for an extreme example, real estate.
    - 1y ago
bbor 1y ago
America is run by entertainers, at the moment…
- herval 1y ago
  as it was repeatedly in the past (Reagan, Schwarzenegger and a bunch of others local officials). Circus sells.
  - bbor 1y ago
    True, though having unelected entertainers running e.g. the DoD, FBI, and Medicare is something new, I'd think!
ummonk 1y ago
Not any more it isn't. America is run by influencers now.
- hinkley 1y ago
  And failed reality TV stars.
  - metabagel 1y ago
    He’s a successful reality TV star, and he has turned our whole political system into a reality TV show. I like to think that the job of the president is to take care of the nation’s business so most of the rest of us can get on with our lives, but Trump demands constant attention, and he continually invents emergencies which prevent us from being able to just go about our existence in peace. The never-ending narcissistic distraction is exhausting.
hermitcrab 1y ago
Lawyers and accountants. Just look at the way that once great engineering companies like Boeing and Intel have been run into the ground by bean counters ('financialization').
- fluidcruft 1y ago
  I generally just have this growing opinion that capitalism is fundamentally about lawyers and accountants. Capital is ultimately nothing more than paper or numbers and worthless in the real world without lawyers and accountants.
- terribleperson 1y ago
  It's neither the accountants nor the lawyers, in my opinion. In my experience, both accountants and lawyers tend to be non-prescriptive - they tell you how things are, options, and likely outcomes. The people responsible for taking those options and making the choices they do... business and finance.
  - criticalfault 1y ago
    Aka mba
    - raxxorraxor 1y ago
      Having an MBA for strategic business decisions probably is more relevant than having an engineer aside from some highly technical niche sector. You need an open culture to discuss strategy and involve different perspectives (No, it doesn't matter if your MBA of choice is black or not). Most MBAs know too that wanking to quarterlies doesn't make a good long term strategy. Most companies just forget to do any long term strategy as long as such basic controlling data points look decent.
      - lomase 1y ago
        Unless you have built hundreds of tools you are not an experience engenieer. Most MBA don't know shit because they have not built hundreds of companies.
hn_throw_250926 1y ago
Old but good.
pessimizer 1y ago
It's the difference between people who understand that the physical world is real, and a bunch of innumerate conmen. Both of them might rob you, but the latter will often end up killing you both in the attempt.
baron816 1y ago
> Engineers, he explains, are driven to build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct. This is kind of the criticism that’s provided in Abundance. American Progressives intentionally made it extremely difficult to build anything by giving everyone a veto to block anything they don’t like. There’s a lot of people on the Left (Center Left, at least) who want to revisit this approach and make it easier to build things again. I also want to note that they point out that the current administration has a policy of scarcity. Even if we get rid of a lot of regulation, tariffs, deportations, and high government deficits make it hard to buy materials, hire labor, and finance projects.
- fooker 1y ago
  > There’s a lot of people on the Left Great, I guess then it won’t be too difficult to name ..say.. five prominent politicians who have made this stance clear?
  - davidw 1y ago
    The governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, has been very pro-housing. She liked my 'legalize housing' hoodie so much she wanted a photo with it: https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k64c26 https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k...
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - majormajor 1y ago
    In California Gavin Newsome has talked it and signed some stuff loosening CEQA, we'll see what happens with SB79. As for four more - just grab some of the authors/supporters of SB79.
    - lkey 1y ago
      Gavin Newsom is not a 'Leftist'. He destroyed a homeless encampment on camera. He would be mad you implied this. His first guest on his podcast was the late Charlie Kirk. Leftists I know have already sworn to never vote for him under any circumstance. Sincerely, how did you ever come to believe this?
4ndrewl 1y ago
Is the answer "you only need lawyers if you don't live in a totalitarian state?"
- DangitBobby 1y ago
  How is not being run by lawyers the same thing as not needing lawyers? You think it's impossible for the US to be run by non-lawyers?
  - 4ndrewl 1y ago
    No, I think it's impossible for China to be run by lawyers.
syntaxing 1y ago
Odd lot has a good episode on him too!
NegativeK 1y ago
How do we have political topics in this forum without the discussions devolving into quick quips and rhetoric?
jopsen 1y ago
This is a tech forum, and we like to think engineers make the world. But it's quite possible that the rule of law, capitalism, freedom, democracy, western institutions, etc. is what allows engineers to build stuff. Technology advances when it is financed.
- NoboruWataya 1y ago
  Yes - full disclosure, I am a lawyer, so I am biased and perhaps sensitive about this stuff. But I see a lot of this kind of tribalism on HN. Engineers can do no wrong, lawyers and accountants can do no good.
  - tokioyoyo 1y ago
    By the way, the main point of the book is “China needs more lawyerism, America needs less of it” if that makes you feel better. A lot of people seem like didn’t read it before discussing it, but a good chunk of it discusses problems in Chinese structure as well.
majormajor 1y ago
It's the same thing you see in companies. Once you have something built that is making you comfortable, you get complacent and protective. And there's nothing sexy about maintenance. (For instance, China wants to build best-in-world industry and infra, which they didn't have before, but they are not running their government in a growth- or building- engineering-driven sense. Not a lot of move-fast-and-break-things iteration there! Lots of people comfortable and protective of that system.)
intalentive 1y ago
China is run by the state, which employs the engineers. The West is run by finance capital, which employs the lawyers (and buys the politicians). There was a post here a while back about engineering grads in the UK who couldn't get engineering jobs. So they ended up working for quant firms and banks instead. Under neoliberalism the economy ends up oriented away from productive activity and toward rent-seeking and wealth transfers. Hence the growing gambling "industry", the pump and dump crypto scams (run by heads of state, no less), the legally protected private cartels like banking and medicine. We get people like Vivek Ramaswamy who became a billionaire while producing nothing of value. Pinning these massive systemic issues on lawyers is frankly stupid. They are just one piece of the puzzle.
treis 1y ago
I don't think this is really true about either country. America builds plenty. When people talk about it not being able to build they really mean mass transit and to some extent certain types of housing in some areas. Everything else gets built just fine.
- hollerith 1y ago
  I agree. Also the US seems to be smarter about what to build: the US has not built cities the size of Manhattan that stand empty year after year like China has.
- pengaru 1y ago
  > When people talk about it not being able to build they really mean mass transit and to some extent certain types of housing in some areas. Everything else gets built just fine. https://www.npr.org/2011/09/16/140515737/california-turns-to-china-for-new-bay-bridge https://www.npr.org/2011/09/16/140515737/california-turns-to... immediately comes to mind
- tokioyoyo 1y ago
  Theoretically you’re right. But having read the book, I agree with the general thesis. Things just move so much faster in China when it comes to making or building anything. Like I know firsthand people whose towns were converted from run-of-the-mill village to a T2 city in the span of a couple of decades. When hundreds of millions of people experience major change in their lives in front of their eyes, it’s a nit different than waiting for 5 years to start a new bridge across the river. I’m not even talking about factories, or policy course-corrections, or long-term goal settings either. You can make a lot of arguments in this debate, but in terms of speed and execution, there’s a clear winner.
  - AuthAuth 1y ago
    Its easier to upgrade a city when you can just move people out of their house. In the west its a nightmare to get anything changed because people own their spot and dont want to leave.
tayo42 1y ago
Its a long podcast, I'll respond to the title lol But I would probably say America is run by mbas, not lawyers.
FergusArgyll 1y ago
That would be an indictment of engineers! luckily it's a silly caricature
canjobear 1y ago
This is less because of any special attitude toward governance, and more because the only university degrees you could get during the Cultural Revolution were in engineering.
tnt128 1y ago
A lot of people here focus on the political side of this topic, so I want to share an engineering perspective instead. At the core, solving any problem really follows the same pattern: first you figure out what the problem is, then you set up a way to measure it, come up with a possible solution, and test it against your measurement. If it works, keep going. If it doesn’t, try something else. The key is just running this loop quickly enough. This process applies no matter what kind of problem you’re tackling—engineering, politics, or social issues. The U.S. has this loop at the company level. China has this loop at the local government level. In China, the central government decides what the goals are and how they are measured, and then the local governments carry out the implementation. Local officials who perform well against those measures get promoted; those who don’t are demoted. If the U.S. really wants to build this kind of feedback loop at the government level, voters need to judge election candidates based on their track record, not just campaign rhetoric. And for that to happen, the country needs a well-educated population with strong critical thinking skills. I should also add that China has been operating this way for thousands of years. It’s not without problems, though—like the old saying goes: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. For example, GDP used to be the main measure of success. That pushed local governments to chase higher GDP numbers at all costs—regardless of whether the projects were actually practical or useful. This led to overbuilding, unnecessary construction, and even ghost towns.
- orwin 1y ago
  > I should also add that China has been operating this way for thousands of years. It’s not without problems, though—like the old saying goes: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Yeah, that's a really good point. Chinese "democracy" is not one from our viewpoint, but from their, an oligarchy this large (10% of the population vote) is the perfect balance between democracy and their old imperial system. When they coined "Communism with Chinese characteristics", in the west most people focused on "Communism", on all side of the political spectrum, but what's really important was "with Chinese characteristics".
  - prewett 1y ago
    Having lived in China, the whole control part that's part of Communism (and Chinese dynasties) drove me nuts. The market economy part, though, that was great. In the late Hu years China seemed like a place where you could get anything you wanted (special order? no problem), and every Chinese person seemed optimistic. I gather that feeling has changed (by increased government control, it seems), which is sad, because it was a great time. I share the article's interviewee's opinion that Americans and Chinese are similar, I came to the same conclusion. I think China has so much to offer the world, and Americans could easily think of it sort of how we see the UK. The reactions I get from Americans when I mention I lived in China makes me think that Americans want to love China. Kind of the way that the "otherness" between men and women acts to attract. (And also to make relating difficult.) Unfortunately, the Communist engineering the human soul is completely at odds both with flourishing humanity and American's rampantly individualistic culture.
more_corn 1y ago
No, bullshit artists.
deleted 1y ago
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thisislife2 1y ago
I wish people who write such stuff would first work in a political system and understand what politicians actually do, and the constraints of their political systems they work in. No, America's problem isn't because of lawyers in power or lack of engineers in power. It's simply about the political system - the US is a federal democracy and the Chinese an authoritarian one-party State. An authoritarian state that isn't answerable to the people can do a lot of things that a democratic one simply cannot (at the same pace) because a democratic country first has to reach a consensus with all the stake holders involved. Chinese leaders can allocate whatever money they want to a project. They can order their citizens, in mass, to move away from an area. They can ignore labour rights and force workers to work in hostile conditions. They can ignore their own laws, or quickly change it when they want, if it impedes some project they have deemed important. They can ignore any ecological concerns. And so on ... India and the USA cannot do all this, because of the constraints their democratic system places on their governing leaders. This is why Rahul Gandhi (India's current opposition leader) says that the biggest challenge that both the US and India face today is to figure out how to revive domestic manufacturing without sacrificing our democratic values.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Nothing you just said is really about the political system, though. America has plenty of politicians willing to cross the red tape, but they only do it for personal gain. The economy is always what it boils down to. Americans see factory work as hazard duty, and you can't exactly take untrained vagrants and put them on the construction site. If you want Americans to build you things, you have to pay them an American wage. Otherwise the market economy doesn't work. China isn't burdened by any of this, not because they're authoritarian but because their economy is planned. If they want to make cars domestically, it doesn't matter what Mexico charges for labor - whatever the state says, goes.
- curious_riddler 1y ago
  I don’t think either Trump or Modi is known for waiting to reach a consensus with all the stakeholders involved.
  - 1y ago
constantcrying 1y ago
China is run by people with a long term plan of becoming a world superpower through industrialization on a gigantic scale. The US is alternating between two rival factions, who's number one goal is reversing the effects of whatever the other faction did. My home country, Germany, is a total clown show which still hasn't decided if it wants to keep being an industrial nation. It really is very easy to figure out who is going to come out on top.
NalNezumi 1y ago
I listened to Dan Wang on this podcast [1] and found his talking points around industrial policies interesting. His take around how China managed to do capitalism better than US when it comes to EV & Solar panels (if he's not wrong): massively fund the industry as a political / social objective, set (artificial) demand and create a local market by restricting import / competition for a while, then cut funding gradually when there's a sprawling eco system of startups, letting them brutally cannibalize each other leading to consolidation (such as BYD) to create global leaders. Is not uniquely Chinese but are just tactics out of Japan, Korea and even Germany (historically). I can kinda understand the point that this process works better when there are some technical people in power, such as engineers. They can probably reason timing and industry a little better: Solar was pioneered by US but industrialized by Germany but then out competed by China. Yesterday at a conference I came to know the history of bipedal/quadrupedal robot development by a MIT professor, claiming most of the Chinese robots are just descendant of that technological choices made by MIT research. Humanoid robotics seems to just be in that process of "massively fund the industry" in industrial policies (I saw so many humanoid robot companies at the conference, Chinese, that I haven't even heard of). To me I guess the "why now?" is the question, and I guess some technical person must've been in the process of making that decision. We can't really emulate the political system of China, but that mindset of having technical/expertise close to power is probably something we shouldn't forget. Especially in a era where political positions seems to be handed out based on loyalty than merit [1] https://youtu.be/ZNK3vNg13XA?feature=shared https://youtu.be/ZNK3vNg13XA?feature=shared
- karmakaze 1y ago
  I watched the same podcast/interview. Dan Wang expresses his views in a very neutral tone, only on the things he knows. There are some subjective statements, but they seem balanced to me and didn't find anything that was hard to believe.
rchaud 1y ago
Does it matter if American elected officials are often lawyers if they don't read the bills they vote on? [0][1]. Or if the bills in questions often contain language copy-pasted from lobbyists' memos? This topic runs the risk of being reduced to the same "Humanities v STEM" binary that so much of US public discourse has been reduced to. The real point of discussion should be that an engineering background may instill a political culture more focused on risk aversion, efficiency and longevity. A lawyer-heavy political culture may end up in the arena of "let's see what we can get away with". Do these highly simplified stereoptypes apply to contemporary America? I'm not sure if an America led by the likes of Zuck, Ellison, Andreessen etc would end up differently from the one we see today. Whatever particularly genius they were able to leverage into massive wealth, they are all ultimately subservient to the same national culture of short-term gains, popularity contests and superficial macho posturing that afflict the political class. What goes unsaid in this podcast is that a large number of CCP officials have a military background as well which inherently instills a a long-term view of governance, whereas the most successful American politicians with a pro-military stance (GWB, DT) have routinely denigrated rival politicians who served their country (John Kerry, Tammy Duckworth) while maintaining, not coincidentally, a low profile while in public office. [0]:https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/penn-statim/dont-be-silly-lawmakers-rarely-read-legislation-and-oftentimes-dont-understand-it-but-thats-okay/ https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/penn-statim/dont-be-silly... [1]: https://www.heritage.org/commentary/congress-read-it-voting https://www.heritage.org/commentary/congress-read-it-voting
dylanzhangdev 1y ago
我是一个一直居住在中国的中国人，今年快40岁了。个人观点，我觉得这篇文章的最核心的观点已经错了，中国自古以来没有由工程师管理过，一直是官员，在古代是读书人，是士，工匠是贱籍。即使现代，工厂里是官员说了算还是工程师说了算？如果是后者，就没有那么多国企倒闭，没有下岗潮了。你可以去街头随便调查100个人，你问问他们觉得国家是谁在管理？ ---------- I'm a Chinese who has lived in China my entire life and am almost 40. Personally, I think the core point of this article is wrong. China has never been run by engineers, but by officials. In ancient times, it was scholars, or literati, while craftsmen were considered lowly. Even in modern times, do officials or engineers have the final say in factories? If it were the latter, there wouldn't be so many state-owned enterprise closures and layoffs. Just go out and survey 100 people on the street and ask them who they think is running the country.
- anal_reactor 1y ago
  There are people who think that China is about to replace America as world's obviously dominant superpower, and there are people who think that China is about to collapse, nothing in-between.
  - tuatoru 1y ago
    China;s history has been one of repeated 300-year to 500-year cycles. But this time is looking more like slow decay everywhere, true. Collapse? People need to know and understand Adam Smith's remark that "there is a lot of ruin in a nation".
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    I think it will probably do neither, though as an American we're making a good faith effort to ensure the first.
- fancl20 1y ago
  As a Chinese who have a lot of live/working experience in both systems just provide some clarifications for this comment: most Chinese people don't understand the difference between politicians and bureaucrats because as the country invented the bureaucracy thousands years ago there is never a clear difference between them. The parent comment is talking about the country is running by bureaucrats which IMO is irrelevant to this topic.
dylanzhangdev 1y ago
我觉得在HN上面，很多黑客过于天真，对威权国家抱有梦幻滤镜，因为他们离得足够远。所以，此类文章，隔三差五在首页出现。而对于一直生活在这里的人们，这是两回事。有句笑话说，我可以捐款100万，因为我没有，但是我不能捐一头牛，因为我真的有。 ---- I think many hackers on HN are overly naive, holding a dreamlike view of authoritarian states because they're so far away from them. Therefore, articles like these appear on the front page regularly. But for people who have lived here their entire lives, it's a different story. There's a joke that goes, "I can donate 1 million yuan because I don't have it, but I can't donate a cow because I actually do have it."
bithead 1y ago
America was founded by lawyers
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
One factor is how much agreement is needed to get going. It’s a lot easier to agree what should get built when a) you can point to wealthy nations and say “lets try to have what they have” and b) you’ve seen projects go fast and deliver big in your own country done by people just like you. By contrast in the US it’s often a debate over which incremental improvement to make and why; without unilateral clarity on outcomes or value. This “run by lawyers” / “run by engineers” claim is a symptom of that difference - it’s a byproduct, it’s not the core problem needing solving.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Hu and Jiang were engineers, but Xi isn’t. After the schools re-opened, he was rushed through an accelerated program at Tsinghua and given a degree in chemical engineering, and then went off to be an official full time never actually doing any engineering work. He is a pure official like his father, and unlike his predecessors, never even bothered learning a foreign language. As much as I think of his background and his authoritarianism (getting rid of the two term rubber stamp for the presidency), he has actually delivered for China. This is the most dangerous part: imagine if Trump was actually smart, if he actually delivered, we would be really confused about democracy.
smsm42 1y ago
If that is true - which I don't think it is - then I am happy I live in a country run by lawyers. I am not a huge fan of lawyers, but at least lawyers do not put millions of people into concentration camps and don't disassemble them into organs. Maybe it's appropriate to call those people "social engineers" but I wouldn't like to be a subject to that kind of engineering.
eesmith 1y ago
The Soviet Union Politburo also had a lot of engineers. "43 percent of Politburo members attained higher education credentials during their life, while in a close second place, 32 percent of members earned an education in technical engineering." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Par... FWIW, Brezhnev was a metallurgical engineer. While I think the Soviet Union comparison would be relevant to the article, the only connections I could find are: > At various points in China’s recent past, the entirety of the senior leadership, all nine members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, had degrees in engineering, and this was engineering of a very Soviet sort. and > ... what the Chinese are interested in is being an engineer of the soul, which is a phrase from Joseph Stalin that Xi Jinping has recently repeated. Note that Stalin's phrase is, more fully, "As comrade Olesha aptly expressed himself, writers are engineers of human souls" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_of_the_human_soul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_of_the_human_soul and Xi Jinping's is: "In 2018, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, stated that “Teachers are the engineers of the human soul and the inheritors of human civilization. They carry the important task of spreading knowledge, spreading ideas, spreading truth, shaping soul, shaping life, and shaping newcomers. The fundamental task of education must be nurturing capable young people well-prepared to join the socialist cause. Better education and guidance are needed to build the noble ideal of Communism and the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics among the students.”" That comes across as less top-down or state-controlled than implied in the text, and more metaphorical.
psadauskas 1y ago
In the US, around the turn of the last century, it used to be that if you had an idea for a new invention, you could wander into any mid-sized city and have your pick of a dozen different a machine shops that could make you a prototype. It was an incredible time for innovation in this country, and a big part of the boom that led to the US ramping up from zero to the largest producer of war materiel in WW2. That's how China is now. Any decent city will have machine shops and plastic injection molders and electronics makers, everything you need to get a new idea off the ground. They spent the last few decades stealing every good idea from the West, just like the US stole every good idea from Britain and Europe 120 years ago, and now they're well into the transition of being the innovation hub of the world.
- fragmede 1y ago
  I'd go a bit further and say it's not just access to a machine shop than makes it. I don't think I'm belong pedantic, but manufacturing has evolved since the 80's. If it were just access to a team of people with a couple of machines for metal, those aren't that difficult and those still exist, albeit far fewer of them. What China does have is one stop prototype to full stack mass manufacturing places. For even the simplist device, a machine shop won't do. You'll need (powder coating) painting, packaging design and manufacturing, and shipping. The attitude of the US machine shop is that it's your problem. "We're just a machine shop, you gotta deal with the rest yourself. Which, I mean, fine, but I don't want to become an expert in manufacturing products. My specialty is writing code for my product. Meanwhile, China's got a one stop shop to take my prototype that I ghetto rigged with cardboard and duct tape with a breadboard, and make iterate on a professional protoype with me, and then take it to a mass manufactured product I can sell to consumers, with a smile on their face. The Americans are going to make fun of me to my face for not knowing the difference between 316L vs A500 structural tube. Now, one could argue that I need to develop thicker skin, but fuck that. China's gonna do what I want without being a bag of dicks and help make me a pile of money. So tell me which one you'd choose.
tsoukase 1y ago
How can we conclude anything about China without knowing its political internals, business culture, detailed proceedings and anything else we might need right away?
waltercool 1y ago
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myroon5 1y ago
He also wrote this recently: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/china-america-tariffs-trump-economy/683895/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/china-amer...

164 points by m-hodges 1y ago

[flagged]

I think its less a problem of lawyers and more a problem of age. I learned today Chuck Grassley plans to run again and would be 95 years old in congress. This is insane. If you've worked retail you know many above 75 are not all there, plain and simple. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/01/SR_25.01.16_age-of-congress_1.png?resize=1024,723 https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025...

ourmandave 1y ago
...anyone above 75 is not all there, plain and simple. Yeesh, ageism, plain and simple. But yeah, Grassley needs to hang up the spurs.
- lm28469 1y ago
  It's not ageism, people deciding the future of your country shouldn't already have a foot in the grave Just look at Trump and Biden speeches VS Bush or Obama
  - wqugugqhugqhuh 1y ago
    [dead]
  - lazide 1y ago
    That’s like literally saying someone going off on someone because of their skin color (exclusively) isn’t being racist. It’s in the definition. Words have meaning.
    - lm28469 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - lazide 1y ago
        It is, literally. Just because it’s legal doesn’t change what it is.
        lm28469 1y ago
        OK so let's say it's ageism, why should I care again? If your president can barely finish a coherent sentence and literally pisses in a plastic bag strapped to his leg I don't care how you call it but I want none of it Same reason I don't leave my newborn baby alone with my 95 years old grandma who has dementia, call it ageism if you want, I call it basic common sense
        lazide 1y ago
        Ageist is thinking the reason it’s a bad idea to leave a baby with your grandma is because she’s 95 - not because she has dementia. Which she could also have had at 50. Or even 35. Yes, early onset dementia is a thing.
        lm28469 1y ago
        Cognitive functions start to slowly decline after 50, and rapidly after 70 All I'm saying is that people in charge should have their full cognitive capabilities, see it's not ageism anymore!
        lazide 1y ago
        Make a test, and I bet you more folks than you expect would pass. then it’s not ageism.
        tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
        Congratulations, you've labeled something. What's your point?
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    Trump is about the same age as Bush and Clinton, oddly enough, but they were presidents in very different times.
  - leptons 1y ago
    It has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with corruption, greed, and hate. And that is what a lot of people keep voting for.
- frmersdog 1y ago
  "Muh ageism" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for these kinds of conversations. You have to make an effort to actually argue against the statements you disagree with. Are people 75-and-older agile and flexible enough, mentally, to perform in these positions? To connect with the constituents they represent? If the incidence of the requisite acuity does indeed drop with advanced age, are the individuals in government disproportionately among those who avoid issues? And, if so, how do you know?
  - leptons 1y ago
    >Are people 75-and-older agile and flexible enough, mentally, to perform in these positions? All of them? No. But I also could introduce you to plenty of 25 year old's that aren't "agile and flexible enough, mentally to perform these positions". And it's often not even "mental agility" that is the problem with people in power, it's corruption, greed, and just plain old hate that is the problem. Those things don't have any age limits except maybe below 6 years old, and even then I've met some pretty nasty, spoiled toddlers.
    - frmersdog 1y ago
      >But I also could introduce you to plenty of 25 year old's that aren't "agile and flexible enough, mentally to perform these positions" There are vanishingly-few 25-year-olds in national office, certainly not in proportion to their chunk of the overall population. But bringing them up at all is beside the point. The contention at hand is that there are too many elderly people, who are beyond their ability to perform adequately, in positions of power. If you would like to address that, feel free. But please stay on topic.
      - leptons 1y ago
        >There are vanishingly-few 25-year-olds in national office Well thank [deity] for that, because many of them aren't fit for it. Neither are 75 year olds, but age doesn't really play that much of a factor - it's the people voting to put shitheads in positions of power no matter their age that are causing this damage in the first place. >> "Muh ageism" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for these kinds of conversations. >There are vanishingly-few 25-year-olds in national office, certainly not in proportion to their chunk of the overall population. But bringing them up at all is beside the point. Yes, it is the point - you made it the point with your "muh ageism" quip. I simply pointed out that age doesn't make a difference, but greed, corruption, and hate do. >The contention at hand is that there are too many elderly people, who are beyond their ability to perform adequately, in positions of power. There are also old people in power that are not "beyond their ability to perform adequately", and that's also a very subjective goalpost you're setting. Some of those shitty old politicians are doing exactly what their shitty constituents want them to, even if they are just holding the pen while someone younger moves their hand. >But please stay on topic. You made this about "muh ageism" not me, so all ages are fair to comment about. Shitty 25 year olds are actually worse than shitty 75 year olds, because shitty 25 year olds will be around much longer doing much more harm than a shitty 75 year old politician could. And again, it has nothing to do with age, and everything to do about corruption, greed, and hate. Those things are ageless.
- bearjaws 1y ago
  Totally fair to call out blanket “anyone 75+ isn’t all there” as ageist. But the governance point still stands: even sharp octogenarians are often out of sync with modern life (platforms, tech norms, digital risks). Only 8% of adults 65+ say they’re online “almost constantly,” vs 48% of 18–29 a proxy for how different the information environment is that shapes decisions.
  - daveguy 1y ago
    The word would be a better place if everyone was offline more often. They wouldn't be as subject to the propaganda oligopolies.
- serf 1y ago
  >Yeesh, ageism, plain and simple. we take it for granted that someone below the age of 15-ish in the United States shouldn't be behind the wheel of an automobile, but that's not universally true. We try 18 year olds as adults, and that's not universally true, either. It isn't a far leap to presume that people past a certain age meets the same psychological and mental/cognitive decline as the average person that age without testing. You wouldn't expect a 95 year old to be eagle-eyed and athletic, to presume that their age isn't a deficit whatsoever is ageist from another perspective. If I saw a person using a wheelchair I wouldn't wait for them to tell me that they needed a ramp for the staircase at the restaurant -- this too is -ist, but I see no real problem with it as a wheelchair user myself. Somewhat similarly : the amount of 'with-it' and sober 95 year olds that I have met in real life makes me really question their fitness as an important member of a government group. Just like the presidency, these roles should probably be qualified into by participants with more than just votes. If you're a 95 year old that passes the mental health and physical health examinations, more power to you , welcome to <government group>.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  If you're too old to staff an airport control tower, you're too old for Congress and especially the Oval Office. Not just because your faculties aren't what they once were, but because you have no stake in the outcome of your decisionmaking.
- linhns 1y ago
  How can you expect them to legislate for the nation when they know they won’t be around when the policies come to fruition?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bdangubic 1y ago
60 should be HARD limit for any politician (including scotus)
- delusional 1y ago
  Why would there need to be a hard limit on something the electorate is already directly voting on? You might say every election is an election on if people above X age should be in congress.
  - bushbaba 1y ago
    Aging population means that many democracies will have more old than young voters. Couple that with the American culture of f you I’ve got mine, leads to a prioritization not on the future generations.
  - nomadygnt 1y ago
    Which really makes you wonder how well the system is really working. Of course I don’t know this but I feel like if you asked everyone, the majority of people would say that 95, or 90, or 85 is too old to be in congress. But somehow they keep getting reelected…
    - metabagel 1y ago
      Incumbents have an enormous advantage. We would need publicly funded elections in order to change this.
    - bearjaws 1y ago
      Almost like people vote in people of similar age. Baby boomers was the largest generation far larger than the preceding and later generation.
  - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
    Because people vote for the party and not the individual in most cases.
  - 1y ago
jordanb 1y ago
One thing I've realized it that the Democratic party is a machine. It rewards loyalty and waiting your turn. It punishes getting out of line and challenging incumbents. Parts of the Republican party are too of course (hence Grassley) but it's been the target of several successful insurgencies. First the tea party and then Trump. Now it's turning into something completely different.. a cult of personalty for a dictator. But the intact machine is the reason why the Democrats can not rise to the occasion. Their whole system is one designed to produce dour grey apparatchiks.
- regularization 1y ago
  DP is corporate funded and exists to squash movements from the left. Most people have to see this up close to see it though.
regularization 1y ago
I remember in the 1970s when the Soviet Union was called a gerontocracy. Gorbachev becoming general Secretary at the age of 54 was seen as a breath of fresh air. As your chart shows, one third of the US Senate is over the age of 70. We have people like Biden and Trump as president. Sign of the times (who are respectively 10 and 7 years older than Xi). Incidentally, Xi is the oldest member of the Politburo Standing Committee.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Only one third? I'm highly surprised that it's that low.
master_crab 1y ago
There is another sort of old age the US suffers from. The government is now amongst the oldest nation-state organizations on the planet with probably the oldest written national laws (the constitution) still in use. The cruft that has built up (from the 2nd amendment, to the electoral college) over 250ish years is a serious problem.
- shakna 1y ago
  > with probably the oldest written national laws (the constitution) still in use. The UK would easily disagree, with their founding codification in 1215.
  - jrflowers 1y ago
    The Magna Carta was a list of stipulations relating to a monarch as the absolute head of state. The UK does not have that anymore.
    - defrost 1y ago
      The Magna Carta was a second, more forceful, iteration of the Charter of Liberties introduced a century earlier in 1100 by Henry I of England. Clauses of both are still part of the basis of English Common Law (the Common Law cited in the US Constitution) and the Magna Carta is still being cited in recent times by politicians and lawyers in support of (UK) constitutional positions, and still, albeit rarely, cited in UK courts in 2012 the Occupy London protestors attempted to use Magna Carta in resisting their eviction from St. Paul's Churchyard by the City of London. In his judgment the Master of the Rolls gave this short shrift, noting somewhat drily that although clause 29 was considered by many the foundation of the rule of law in England, he did not consider it directly relevant to the case, and that the two other surviving clauses ironically concerned the rights of the Church and the City of London and could not help the defendants. It's firmly a part of the continuously evolving history of UK law: Magna Carta carries little legal weight in modern Britain, as most of its clauses have been repealed and relevant rights ensured by other statutes, but the historian James Holt remarks that the survival of the 1215 charter in national life is a "reflexion of the continuous development of English law and administration" suggesting that what the UK lacks is the stagnation of US law which hasn't yet evolved past the errors of scale that have crept in since its foundation; the US electoral could also do with a revamp to better serve the people. * two quotes above sourced from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
teddy-smith 1y ago
My grandma is 80 and speaks 7 languages and is a professor and teaches classes. She's smarter than me. What you just said is agist.
- rileymat2 1y ago
  There are incredibly smart and talented 12 year olds that are not allowed to vote due to age. Agism is pervasive in our culture, old and young, so we should ask if the discrimination is pragmatic or not. Moral or not. Legal or not.
  - general1465 1y ago
    While young people can be considered immature until certain age, old people have big taboo about senility and dementia. As you are not allowed to vote and drive until certain age, you should not be allowed to vote and drive since certain age, because your brain could be considered immature again through degeneration.
  - teddy-smith 1y ago
    There's dumb black people and smart black people therefore black people are dumb. Its PRAGMATIC TO THINK THIS. You see how stupid you sound?
    - rileymat2 1y ago
      That is a complete mischaracterization of what I was saying. There are multiple considerations, both legal and moral. But pragmatism plays a role in the pervasive ageism in our culture, as we have decided it is largely legal.
      - teddy-smith 1y ago
        If you're capable of abstraction I'm reframing your point EXACTLY. Also, Discriminating based on age is largely legal. Are you sure about that?
- 1y ago
g42gregory 1y ago
There is a saying that, in China, the top political career starts at 70. I don't think the age is the problem. It's corruption.
- AndroTux 1y ago
  Luckily there’s no corruption in China
  - t-3 1y ago
    At least corruption is sometimes punished in China. The agriculture minister was just given what's essentially a life sentence for corruption.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      Sometimes isn't good enough. That's just selective enforcement, which is arguably worse than no enforcement at all.
      - t-3 1y ago
        No law is enforced absolutely on every offender. That's impossible. Selective enforcement is a problem, but I would never say it's worse than no enforcement unless the law is bad in the first place.
        jacquesm 1y ago
        It is when it is mostly used as a weapon rather than as a law. And China, unfortunately, has quite a lot of that.
        hermitcrab 1y ago
        “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
    - 1y ago
horns4lyfe 1y ago
Ya they’re all old lawyers
johnisgood 1y ago
We have an age limit in so many fields. Being in congress should have one, too. Aging affects many parts of our brain (negatively) responsible for cognition.
jasonsb 1y ago
It's lawyers. Definitely lawyers and copyright laws. You could also add corruption and age, but these are problems that can be found in China as well.
FpUser 1y ago
>"anyone above 75 is not all there" - this is pure BS But yeah allowing Chuck Grassley to run at this young </s> age is pure insanity.
micromacrofoot 1y ago
if we have a federal retirement age we should just use that
atmavatar 1y ago
It's about more than just whether a congressperson is all there or not. A bigger concern to me is that many of them are old enough that any long-term impacts resulting from bills they pass simply won't happen until they're gone. And, I would expand that to include more than just Congress - I think major executive offices (e.g., President, VP, cabinet members, etc.) and the Supreme Court should have an age limit for the very same reason. Anyone in government office whose decisions can have long-lasting effects should be young enough they need to keep that in mind. Anyone who (statistically) has only a few years left to live and especially anyone past the average life expectancy are welcome to hang around in advisory roles, but they should have limited (if any) power to directly affect future policy because they simply don't have any real skin in the game any longer.
- xyzzy123 1y ago
  Isn't family "skin in the game", in a fairly literal sense? People don't come from nowhere, they have families, affiliations, communities etc. Politicians in particular are selected for this.
  - jackstraw42 1y ago
    > Isn't family "skin in the game", in a fairly literal sense? It is as long as the person really cares about their family. You sure they all do?
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    Their families are very well insulated from any negative consequences of their actions.
ugh123 1y ago
Both can be true. Old lawyers are probably the worst
general1465 1y ago
Old people are voting for old people, because they are not going to vote for kids. Does not matter that the "kid" is 45 year old who is much more attached to everyday reality than old people.
Gibbon1 1y ago
Up until 40 years ago the US was run by lawyers. Now the US is run by MBA's and financial capitalists.
fathermarz 1y ago
It’s less about them being “not all there” and more like the level of disconnected they are from modern society. The last time they had the average job (if ever) was before credit cards existed and it was $0.50 for a loaf of bread.
mcphage 1y ago
Many above 75 aren’t all there, but that doesn’t say anything about a specific person.
ajross 1y ago
> I learned today Chuck Grassley plans to run again and would be 95 years old in congress. This is insane. The age of the senior senator from Iowa is like 537th on the list of major problems this country is facing. I mean, let's be real. Would a bunch of spry 30-somethings in the senate have prevented the Assault on Tylenol or the coming invasion of Portland? Seems beyond dubious.
smsm42 1y ago
There are 13 Senators, out of 120, who are over 75, as far as I can see. I don't think we can attribute all the problems to them - there's not enough of them. I mean, some of the elders in Congress - like Pelosi, Waters, Nadler, Durbin, etc. - would do well to retire, but not every single one of them is "not all there". By a coincidence, I've met one of those 13 about a month ago (not personally, on an event, but it was a small event and I could see and hear him very well) and he certainly wasn't a youngster but I didn't see any obvious degradation of mental facilities. That said, I don't think term limits and mandatory retirement age is such a bad idea for top politicians, just don't expect it to fix much.

elteto 1y ago

Nope, China is run by the Chinese Communist Party, which itself is run by Xi. That's it. Just look at Jack Ma for a clear example that China is not run by engineers or tech people.

tern 1y ago
As far as I know, this isn't true. Many members of the CCP have engineering degrees. A relevant podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1TeeIG6Uaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1TeeIG6Uaw
- elteto 1y ago
  What exactly isn't true? That Xi doesn't control the CCP? And presumably they also have doctors and even lawyers in the CCP! Come to think of it, I wonder if China is not actually run by lawyers as well...
  - canadiantim 1y ago
    My understanding is that Xi’s control actually slipping and it isn’t complete control like a standard dictator
    - hermitcrab 1y ago
      I thought he had purged his opposition under the cover of anti-corruption drives?
      - canadiantim 1y ago
        He did yes but more recently seems like there’s been a coup behind the scenes and Xi is more of a figurehead. See: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/all-eyes-beijings-annual-reshuffle-military-chiefs-amid-signs-xis-waning-power https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/all-eyes-beijings-ann...
        1y ago

gwbas1c 1y ago

I listened to this podcast earlier this week, and yesterday listened to another in the series exploring the difference between corruption in the US and China. It's always good to learn how other cultures govern themselves. China learned a lot from the US and other countries, adapted, and then benefitted immensely. In the US, we can learn a lot too.

sigfubar 1y ago
> In the US, we can learn a lot too. Alas, American exceptionality as part of its premise precludes any act of learning from anywhere other than itself. Culturally, this is what inbreeding looks like.

Animats 1y ago

That's well known. On the other hand, DOGE didn't go a great job running America.

bearjaws 1y ago
DOGE was an attack on every agency that MAGA didn't like. The goal was never to save money. The deficit is the largest its ever been.
kklisura 1y ago
IMHO, DOGE's result wasn't an engineering strategy to run a country, it was a businessperson's approach to running country.
- atemerev 1y ago
  "Data grab" is easier to write.
SilverElfin 1y ago
Well DOGE also ran into a lot of obstructionism, and had to also move quickly due to the short political cycles America has. That doesn’t mean the concept itself is fundamentally bad.
- NegativeK 1y ago
  I suspect, strongly, that we disagree on the fundamentals of what DOGE's aim was.
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  If DOGE was actually trying to make things more efficient, it would have made very different choices. Firing thousands of workers that you still have to pay for half a year is not efficiency, it's massive waste. Not only did DOGE not actually save money, it burnt a ton of money breaking things our government now has to fix. Even if they had taken an extra month to learn the systems they were cutting into, would've saved many months of wasted employee-hours with what happened.

mwkaufma 1y ago

Freakonomics: laundering conservative talking-points into "the npr set" for 20 years and still going.

tacitusarc 1y ago
The conservatives I know think it’s another mainstream democratic mouthpiece. So I guess they’re doing something right.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mwkaufma 1y ago
  No, just sounds like you know some dense conservatives.
asdff 1y ago
A broken clock is right twice a day. America has some of the highest numbers of lawyers per capita by far out of developed nations. These lawyers do not work for us, most middle and low income people do not get legal representation that they need at all. You learn where these lawyers actually work when you work in corporate, and you see quickly how this single department has complete unilateral control over all operations of the organization. Everything goes through them and they can shut down anything. Even directives by the chief executive officer who is supposedly at the helm are crafted by legal. And when you understand that the american government is controlled by corporations, given the above logic that really means it is controlled by their lawyers. Most politicians in representative government come from law backgrounds as well.
- metabagel 1y ago
  Law is central to government. It makes sense for most politicians to have a background in law as opposed to, for an extreme example, real estate.
  - 1y ago

bbor 1y ago

America is run by entertainers, at the moment…

herval 1y ago
as it was repeatedly in the past (Reagan, Schwarzenegger and a bunch of others local officials). Circus sells.
- bbor 1y ago
  True, though having unelected entertainers running e.g. the DoD, FBI, and Medicare is something new, I'd think!

ummonk 1y ago

Not any more it isn't. America is run by influencers now.

hinkley 1y ago
And failed reality TV stars.
- metabagel 1y ago
  He’s a successful reality TV star, and he has turned our whole political system into a reality TV show. I like to think that the job of the president is to take care of the nation’s business so most of the rest of us can get on with our lives, but Trump demands constant attention, and he continually invents emergencies which prevent us from being able to just go about our existence in peace. The never-ending narcissistic distraction is exhausting.

hermitcrab 1y ago

Lawyers and accountants. Just look at the way that once great engineering companies like Boeing and Intel have been run into the ground by bean counters ('financialization').

fluidcruft 1y ago
I generally just have this growing opinion that capitalism is fundamentally about lawyers and accountants. Capital is ultimately nothing more than paper or numbers and worthless in the real world without lawyers and accountants.
terribleperson 1y ago
It's neither the accountants nor the lawyers, in my opinion. In my experience, both accountants and lawyers tend to be non-prescriptive - they tell you how things are, options, and likely outcomes. The people responsible for taking those options and making the choices they do... business and finance.
- criticalfault 1y ago
  Aka mba
  - raxxorraxor 1y ago
    Having an MBA for strategic business decisions probably is more relevant than having an engineer aside from some highly technical niche sector. You need an open culture to discuss strategy and involve different perspectives (No, it doesn't matter if your MBA of choice is black or not). Most MBAs know too that wanking to quarterlies doesn't make a good long term strategy. Most companies just forget to do any long term strategy as long as such basic controlling data points look decent.
    - lomase 1y ago
      Unless you have built hundreds of tools you are not an experience engenieer. Most MBA don't know shit because they have not built hundreds of companies.

hn_throw_250926 1y ago

Old but good.

pessimizer 1y ago

It's the difference between people who understand that the physical world is real, and a bunch of innumerate conmen. Both of them might rob you, but the latter will often end up killing you both in the attempt.

baron816 1y ago

> Engineers, he explains, are driven to build while lawyers are driven to argue, and obstruct. This is kind of the criticism that’s provided in Abundance. American Progressives intentionally made it extremely difficult to build anything by giving everyone a veto to block anything they don’t like. There’s a lot of people on the Left (Center Left, at least) who want to revisit this approach and make it easier to build things again. I also want to note that they point out that the current administration has a policy of scarcity. Even if we get rid of a lot of regulation, tariffs, deportations, and high government deficits make it hard to buy materials, hire labor, and finance projects.

fooker 1y ago
> There’s a lot of people on the Left Great, I guess then it won’t be too difficult to name ..say.. five prominent politicians who have made this stance clear?
- davidw 1y ago
  The governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, has been very pro-housing. She liked my 'legalize housing' hoodie so much she wanted a photo with it: https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k64c26 https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k...
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- majormajor 1y ago
  In California Gavin Newsome has talked it and signed some stuff loosening CEQA, we'll see what happens with SB79. As for four more - just grab some of the authors/supporters of SB79.
  - lkey 1y ago
    Gavin Newsom is not a 'Leftist'. He destroyed a homeless encampment on camera. He would be mad you implied this. His first guest on his podcast was the late Charlie Kirk. Leftists I know have already sworn to never vote for him under any circumstance. Sincerely, how did you ever come to believe this?

4ndrewl 1y ago

Is the answer "you only need lawyers if you don't live in a totalitarian state?"

DangitBobby 1y ago
How is not being run by lawyers the same thing as not needing lawyers? You think it's impossible for the US to be run by non-lawyers?
- 4ndrewl 1y ago
  No, I think it's impossible for China to be run by lawyers.

syntaxing 1y ago

Odd lot has a good episode on him too!

NegativeK 1y ago

How do we have political topics in this forum without the discussions devolving into quick quips and rhetoric?

jopsen 1y ago

This is a tech forum, and we like to think engineers make the world. But it's quite possible that the rule of law, capitalism, freedom, democracy, western institutions, etc. is what allows engineers to build stuff. Technology advances when it is financed.

NoboruWataya 1y ago
Yes - full disclosure, I am a lawyer, so I am biased and perhaps sensitive about this stuff. But I see a lot of this kind of tribalism on HN. Engineers can do no wrong, lawyers and accountants can do no good.
- tokioyoyo 1y ago
  By the way, the main point of the book is “China needs more lawyerism, America needs less of it” if that makes you feel better. A lot of people seem like didn’t read it before discussing it, but a good chunk of it discusses problems in Chinese structure as well.

majormajor 1y ago

It's the same thing you see in companies. Once you have something built that is making you comfortable, you get complacent and protective. And there's nothing sexy about maintenance. (For instance, China wants to build best-in-world industry and infra, which they didn't have before, but they are not running their government in a growth- or building- engineering-driven sense. Not a lot of move-fast-and-break-things iteration there! Lots of people comfortable and protective of that system.)

intalentive 1y ago

China is run by the state, which employs the engineers. The West is run by finance capital, which employs the lawyers (and buys the politicians). There was a post here a while back about engineering grads in the UK who couldn't get engineering jobs. So they ended up working for quant firms and banks instead. Under neoliberalism the economy ends up oriented away from productive activity and toward rent-seeking and wealth transfers. Hence the growing gambling "industry", the pump and dump crypto scams (run by heads of state, no less), the legally protected private cartels like banking and medicine. We get people like Vivek Ramaswamy who became a billionaire while producing nothing of value. Pinning these massive systemic issues on lawyers is frankly stupid. They are just one piece of the puzzle.

treis 1y ago

I don't think this is really true about either country. America builds plenty. When people talk about it not being able to build they really mean mass transit and to some extent certain types of housing in some areas. Everything else gets built just fine.

hollerith 1y ago
I agree. Also the US seems to be smarter about what to build: the US has not built cities the size of Manhattan that stand empty year after year like China has.
pengaru 1y ago
> When people talk about it not being able to build they really mean mass transit and to some extent certain types of housing in some areas. Everything else gets built just fine. https://www.npr.org/2011/09/16/140515737/california-turns-to-china-for-new-bay-bridge https://www.npr.org/2011/09/16/140515737/california-turns-to... immediately comes to mind
tokioyoyo 1y ago
Theoretically you’re right. But having read the book, I agree with the general thesis. Things just move so much faster in China when it comes to making or building anything. Like I know firsthand people whose towns were converted from run-of-the-mill village to a T2 city in the span of a couple of decades. When hundreds of millions of people experience major change in their lives in front of their eyes, it’s a nit different than waiting for 5 years to start a new bridge across the river. I’m not even talking about factories, or policy course-corrections, or long-term goal settings either. You can make a lot of arguments in this debate, but in terms of speed and execution, there’s a clear winner.
- AuthAuth 1y ago
  Its easier to upgrade a city when you can just move people out of their house. In the west its a nightmare to get anything changed because people own their spot and dont want to leave.

tayo42 1y ago

Its a long podcast, I'll respond to the title lol But I would probably say America is run by mbas, not lawyers.

FergusArgyll 1y ago

That would be an indictment of engineers! luckily it's a silly caricature

canjobear 1y ago

This is less because of any special attitude toward governance, and more because the only university degrees you could get during the Cultural Revolution were in engineering.

tnt128 1y ago

A lot of people here focus on the political side of this topic, so I want to share an engineering perspective instead. At the core, solving any problem really follows the same pattern: first you figure out what the problem is, then you set up a way to measure it, come up with a possible solution, and test it against your measurement. If it works, keep going. If it doesn’t, try something else. The key is just running this loop quickly enough. This process applies no matter what kind of problem you’re tackling—engineering, politics, or social issues. The U.S. has this loop at the company level. China has this loop at the local government level. In China, the central government decides what the goals are and how they are measured, and then the local governments carry out the implementation. Local officials who perform well against those measures get promoted; those who don’t are demoted. If the U.S. really wants to build this kind of feedback loop at the government level, voters need to judge election candidates based on their track record, not just campaign rhetoric. And for that to happen, the country needs a well-educated population with strong critical thinking skills. I should also add that China has been operating this way for thousands of years. It’s not without problems, though—like the old saying goes: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. For example, GDP used to be the main measure of success. That pushed local governments to chase higher GDP numbers at all costs—regardless of whether the projects were actually practical or useful. This led to overbuilding, unnecessary construction, and even ghost towns.

orwin 1y ago
> I should also add that China has been operating this way for thousands of years. It’s not without problems, though—like the old saying goes: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Yeah, that's a really good point. Chinese "democracy" is not one from our viewpoint, but from their, an oligarchy this large (10% of the population vote) is the perfect balance between democracy and their old imperial system. When they coined "Communism with Chinese characteristics", in the west most people focused on "Communism", on all side of the political spectrum, but what's really important was "with Chinese characteristics".
- prewett 1y ago
  Having lived in China, the whole control part that's part of Communism (and Chinese dynasties) drove me nuts. The market economy part, though, that was great. In the late Hu years China seemed like a place where you could get anything you wanted (special order? no problem), and every Chinese person seemed optimistic. I gather that feeling has changed (by increased government control, it seems), which is sad, because it was a great time. I share the article's interviewee's opinion that Americans and Chinese are similar, I came to the same conclusion. I think China has so much to offer the world, and Americans could easily think of it sort of how we see the UK. The reactions I get from Americans when I mention I lived in China makes me think that Americans want to love China. Kind of the way that the "otherness" between men and women acts to attract. (And also to make relating difficult.) Unfortunately, the Communist engineering the human soul is completely at odds both with flourishing humanity and American's rampantly individualistic culture.

more_corn 1y ago

No, bullshit artists.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

thisislife2 1y ago

I wish people who write such stuff would first work in a political system and understand what politicians actually do, and the constraints of their political systems they work in. No, America's problem isn't because of lawyers in power or lack of engineers in power. It's simply about the political system - the US is a federal democracy and the Chinese an authoritarian one-party State. An authoritarian state that isn't answerable to the people can do a lot of things that a democratic one simply cannot (at the same pace) because a democratic country first has to reach a consensus with all the stake holders involved. Chinese leaders can allocate whatever money they want to a project. They can order their citizens, in mass, to move away from an area. They can ignore labour rights and force workers to work in hostile conditions. They can ignore their own laws, or quickly change it when they want, if it impedes some project they have deemed important. They can ignore any ecological concerns. And so on ... India and the USA cannot do all this, because of the constraints their democratic system places on their governing leaders. This is why Rahul Gandhi (India's current opposition leader) says that the biggest challenge that both the US and India face today is to figure out how to revive domestic manufacturing without sacrificing our democratic values.

bigyabai 1y ago
Nothing you just said is really about the political system, though. America has plenty of politicians willing to cross the red tape, but they only do it for personal gain. The economy is always what it boils down to. Americans see factory work as hazard duty, and you can't exactly take untrained vagrants and put them on the construction site. If you want Americans to build you things, you have to pay them an American wage. Otherwise the market economy doesn't work. China isn't burdened by any of this, not because they're authoritarian but because their economy is planned. If they want to make cars domestically, it doesn't matter what Mexico charges for labor - whatever the state says, goes.
curious_riddler 1y ago
I don’t think either Trump or Modi is known for waiting to reach a consensus with all the stakeholders involved.
- 1y ago

constantcrying 1y ago

China is run by people with a long term plan of becoming a world superpower through industrialization on a gigantic scale. The US is alternating between two rival factions, who's number one goal is reversing the effects of whatever the other faction did. My home country, Germany, is a total clown show which still hasn't decided if it wants to keep being an industrial nation. It really is very easy to figure out who is going to come out on top.

NalNezumi 1y ago

I listened to Dan Wang on this podcast [1] and found his talking points around industrial policies interesting. His take around how China managed to do capitalism better than US when it comes to EV & Solar panels (if he's not wrong): massively fund the industry as a political / social objective, set (artificial) demand and create a local market by restricting import / competition for a while, then cut funding gradually when there's a sprawling eco system of startups, letting them brutally cannibalize each other leading to consolidation (such as BYD) to create global leaders. Is not uniquely Chinese but are just tactics out of Japan, Korea and even Germany (historically). I can kinda understand the point that this process works better when there are some technical people in power, such as engineers. They can probably reason timing and industry a little better: Solar was pioneered by US but industrialized by Germany but then out competed by China. Yesterday at a conference I came to know the history of bipedal/quadrupedal robot development by a MIT professor, claiming most of the Chinese robots are just descendant of that technological choices made by MIT research. Humanoid robotics seems to just be in that process of "massively fund the industry" in industrial policies (I saw so many humanoid robot companies at the conference, Chinese, that I haven't even heard of). To me I guess the "why now?" is the question, and I guess some technical person must've been in the process of making that decision. We can't really emulate the political system of China, but that mindset of having technical/expertise close to power is probably something we shouldn't forget. Especially in a era where political positions seems to be handed out based on loyalty than merit [1] https://youtu.be/ZNK3vNg13XA?feature=shared https://youtu.be/ZNK3vNg13XA?feature=shared

karmakaze 1y ago
I watched the same podcast/interview. Dan Wang expresses his views in a very neutral tone, only on the things he knows. There are some subjective statements, but they seem balanced to me and didn't find anything that was hard to believe.

rchaud 1y ago

Does it matter if American elected officials are often lawyers if they don't read the bills they vote on? [0][1]. Or if the bills in questions often contain language copy-pasted from lobbyists' memos? This topic runs the risk of being reduced to the same "Humanities v STEM" binary that so much of US public discourse has been reduced to. The real point of discussion should be that an engineering background may instill a political culture more focused on risk aversion, efficiency and longevity. A lawyer-heavy political culture may end up in the arena of "let's see what we can get away with". Do these highly simplified stereoptypes apply to contemporary America? I'm not sure if an America led by the likes of Zuck, Ellison, Andreessen etc would end up differently from the one we see today. Whatever particularly genius they were able to leverage into massive wealth, they are all ultimately subservient to the same national culture of short-term gains, popularity contests and superficial macho posturing that afflict the political class. What goes unsaid in this podcast is that a large number of CCP officials have a military background as well which inherently instills a a long-term view of governance, whereas the most successful American politicians with a pro-military stance (GWB, DT) have routinely denigrated rival politicians who served their country (John Kerry, Tammy Duckworth) while maintaining, not coincidentally, a low profile while in public office. [0]:https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/penn-statim/dont-be-silly-lawmakers-rarely-read-legislation-and-oftentimes-dont-understand-it-but-thats-okay/ https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/penn-statim/dont-be-silly... [1]: https://www.heritage.org/commentary/congress-read-it-voting https://www.heritage.org/commentary/congress-read-it-voting

dylanzhangdev 1y ago

我是一个一直居住在中国的中国人，今年快40岁了。个人观点，我觉得这篇文章的最核心的观点已经错了，中国自古以来没有由工程师管理过，一直是官员，在古代是读书人，是士，工匠是贱籍。即使现代，工厂里是官员说了算还是工程师说了算？如果是后者，就没有那么多国企倒闭，没有下岗潮了。你可以去街头随便调查100个人，你问问他们觉得国家是谁在管理？ ---------- I'm a Chinese who has lived in China my entire life and am almost 40. Personally, I think the core point of this article is wrong. China has never been run by engineers, but by officials. In ancient times, it was scholars, or literati, while craftsmen were considered lowly. Even in modern times, do officials or engineers have the final say in factories? If it were the latter, there wouldn't be so many state-owned enterprise closures and layoffs. Just go out and survey 100 people on the street and ask them who they think is running the country.

anal_reactor 1y ago
There are people who think that China is about to replace America as world's obviously dominant superpower, and there are people who think that China is about to collapse, nothing in-between.
- tuatoru 1y ago
  China;s history has been one of repeated 300-year to 500-year cycles. But this time is looking more like slow decay everywhere, true. Collapse? People need to know and understand Adam Smith's remark that "there is a lot of ruin in a nation".
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  I think it will probably do neither, though as an American we're making a good faith effort to ensure the first.
fancl20 1y ago
As a Chinese who have a lot of live/working experience in both systems just provide some clarifications for this comment: most Chinese people don't understand the difference between politicians and bureaucrats because as the country invented the bureaucracy thousands years ago there is never a clear difference between them. The parent comment is talking about the country is running by bureaucrats which IMO is irrelevant to this topic.

dylanzhangdev 1y ago

我觉得在HN上面，很多黑客过于天真，对威权国家抱有梦幻滤镜，因为他们离得足够远。所以，此类文章，隔三差五在首页出现。而对于一直生活在这里的人们，这是两回事。有句笑话说，我可以捐款100万，因为我没有，但是我不能捐一头牛，因为我真的有。 ---- I think many hackers on HN are overly naive, holding a dreamlike view of authoritarian states because they're so far away from them. Therefore, articles like these appear on the front page regularly. But for people who have lived here their entire lives, it's a different story. There's a joke that goes, "I can donate 1 million yuan because I don't have it, but I can't donate a cow because I actually do have it."

bithead 1y ago

America was founded by lawyers

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

One factor is how much agreement is needed to get going. It’s a lot easier to agree what should get built when a) you can point to wealthy nations and say “lets try to have what they have” and b) you’ve seen projects go fast and deliver big in your own country done by people just like you. By contrast in the US it’s often a debate over which incremental improvement to make and why; without unilateral clarity on outcomes or value. This “run by lawyers” / “run by engineers” claim is a symptom of that difference - it’s a byproduct, it’s not the core problem needing solving.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

Hu and Jiang were engineers, but Xi isn’t. After the schools re-opened, he was rushed through an accelerated program at Tsinghua and given a degree in chemical engineering, and then went off to be an official full time never actually doing any engineering work. He is a pure official like his father, and unlike his predecessors, never even bothered learning a foreign language. As much as I think of his background and his authoritarianism (getting rid of the two term rubber stamp for the presidency), he has actually delivered for China. This is the most dangerous part: imagine if Trump was actually smart, if he actually delivered, we would be really confused about democracy.

smsm42 1y ago

If that is true - which I don't think it is - then I am happy I live in a country run by lawyers. I am not a huge fan of lawyers, but at least lawyers do not put millions of people into concentration camps and don't disassemble them into organs. Maybe it's appropriate to call those people "social engineers" but I wouldn't like to be a subject to that kind of engineering.

eesmith 1y ago

The Soviet Union Politburo also had a lot of engineers. "43 percent of Politburo members attained higher education credentials during their life, while in a close second place, 32 percent of members earned an education in technical engineering." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Par... FWIW, Brezhnev was a metallurgical engineer. While I think the Soviet Union comparison would be relevant to the article, the only connections I could find are: > At various points in China’s recent past, the entirety of the senior leadership, all nine members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, had degrees in engineering, and this was engineering of a very Soviet sort. and > ... what the Chinese are interested in is being an engineer of the soul, which is a phrase from Joseph Stalin that Xi Jinping has recently repeated. Note that Stalin's phrase is, more fully, "As comrade Olesha aptly expressed himself, writers are engineers of human souls" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_of_the_human_soul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineers_of_the_human_soul and Xi Jinping's is: "In 2018, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, stated that “Teachers are the engineers of the human soul and the inheritors of human civilization. They carry the important task of spreading knowledge, spreading ideas, spreading truth, shaping soul, shaping life, and shaping newcomers. The fundamental task of education must be nurturing capable young people well-prepared to join the socialist cause. Better education and guidance are needed to build the noble ideal of Communism and the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics among the students.”" That comes across as less top-down or state-controlled than implied in the text, and more metaphorical.

psadauskas 1y ago

In the US, around the turn of the last century, it used to be that if you had an idea for a new invention, you could wander into any mid-sized city and have your pick of a dozen different a machine shops that could make you a prototype. It was an incredible time for innovation in this country, and a big part of the boom that led to the US ramping up from zero to the largest producer of war materiel in WW2. That's how China is now. Any decent city will have machine shops and plastic injection molders and electronics makers, everything you need to get a new idea off the ground. They spent the last few decades stealing every good idea from the West, just like the US stole every good idea from Britain and Europe 120 years ago, and now they're well into the transition of being the innovation hub of the world.

fragmede 1y ago
I'd go a bit further and say it's not just access to a machine shop than makes it. I don't think I'm belong pedantic, but manufacturing has evolved since the 80's. If it were just access to a team of people with a couple of machines for metal, those aren't that difficult and those still exist, albeit far fewer of them. What China does have is one stop prototype to full stack mass manufacturing places. For even the simplist device, a machine shop won't do. You'll need (powder coating) painting, packaging design and manufacturing, and shipping. The attitude of the US machine shop is that it's your problem. "We're just a machine shop, you gotta deal with the rest yourself. Which, I mean, fine, but I don't want to become an expert in manufacturing products. My specialty is writing code for my product. Meanwhile, China's got a one stop shop to take my prototype that I ghetto rigged with cardboard and duct tape with a breadboard, and make iterate on a professional protoype with me, and then take it to a mass manufactured product I can sell to consumers, with a smile on their face. The Americans are going to make fun of me to my face for not knowing the difference between 316L vs A500 structural tube. Now, one could argue that I need to develop thicker skin, but fuck that. China's gonna do what I want without being a bag of dicks and help make me a pile of money. So tell me which one you'd choose.

tsoukase 1y ago

How can we conclude anything about China without knowing its political internals, business culture, detailed proceedings and anything else we might need right away?

waltercool 1y ago

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myroon5 1y ago

He also wrote this recently: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/china-america-tariffs-trump-economy/683895/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/china-amer...