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This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers. https://freakonomics.com/podca

This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-america-is-run-by-lawyers/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

Avicebron 7mo ago
Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.
- mlsu 7mo ago
  Have you met an engineer? I'd say "being an engineer" is probably the single most predictive trait for authoritarianism in my experience.
  - lkbm 7mo ago
    Possibly, but it's just as much a predictive trait of being libertarian, which for all its faults, is extremely anti-authoritarian.
    - bb88 7mo ago
      Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. --Lord Acton. It's not really so much one's belief system as it is what happens when one gets power -- and that's hard to predict regardless of the ideology.
      - galangalalgol 7mo ago
        Not really. Seeing what people do when they get power is as predictable as what they do when given meth.
        nerdsniper 7mo ago
        Eh. Maybe. But I do see people who are pretty consistent when they have power. It may be somewhat unpredictable before they get power, but somewhat more predictable once you’ve seen how they act with it. This principle of relative consistency is baked into how I test employees for management and friends for trust, and in the past, roommates as well. Though I do acknowledge potential for growth as well, but in my older age I generally also need to see evidence of motivation to give strong benefit of the doubt wrt possible trajectory.
    - SlightlyLeftPad 7mo ago
      Except in 21st Century America, where libertarian is really just masked authoritarian. Essentially, that means “free to do whatever you want as long as it’s our way.”
      - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
        "i hate the gub'ment esp. the way evil mega-corporations tell me to"
    - eli_gottlieb 7mo ago
      Libertarianism is just privatized authoritarianism.
      - cherrycherry98 7mo ago
        Libertarian principles encourage relationships built on mutual consenting parties rather than coercion. This implies that both parties have the freedom to choose. Imagine being stuck with a small dating pool of undesirable partners, the choices may not be good but that doesn't make it authoritarian.
    - jfengel 7mo ago
      When libertarian means liberty for everyone, it's anti-authoritarian. Too often libertarian means liberty for me and not for you. That's authoritarian.
  - nerdsniper 7mo ago
    As an engineer, I do think there’s some mild but noticeable correlation in bulk. But there are other categories which would be much more predictive. And most of the correlation with engineers are actually a confounder effect from things like multigenerational socioeconomic status, or religion. If you were to control for other variables I doubt there’d be much correlation. After filtering out engineers who belong to other categories with stronger associations to authoritarianism, you’re more likely to be left with the hyper-individual-freedom types than the hyper-authoritarian types.
  - lnsru 7mo ago
    I am electrical engineer and electrician working in regulated areas. In both areas the frameworks limits my choices and obviously I am very authoritarian. There is no room for discussion. If I need a DC DC converter for 2 amps I will pick one rated for 4 amps. No discussions! If I need to install a heat pump 60 feet away I will pick 5x6 square millimeter cable and all the circuit breakers from installation manual. There are no options or opinions. I communicate this in polite way to the clients. And this flows in other areas. If I need a functional vehicle with cheap upkeep I optimize for it. I invest in low risk products since the income is limited. I know that people with plan and confidence are scary, you don’t meet them every day.
  - throw0101a 7mo ago
    There's a decent amount of research that finds a correlation between engineering degrees and terrorists: > According to two European social scientists working in Britain, Italian Diego Gambetta and German Steffen Hertog, who present their case in Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education, the presence of engineers among known Islamist extremists is 14 times greater than can be explained by random distribution. It was a finding the authors reached with caution and even a certain resistance. “We are social scientists,” Hertog explains in an interview, “so we are always seeking socio-economic explanations. We accepted this idea that there might be personality traits, expressed first in choice of profession and then in political ideology, very reluctantly.” * https://macleans.ca/news/world/why-do-so-many-jihadis-have-engineering-degrees/ https://macleans.ca/news/world/why-do-so-many-jihadis-have-e... > This article demonstrates that individuals with an engineering education are three to four times more frequent among violent Islamists worldwide than other degree holders. We then test a number of hypotheses to account for this phenomenon. We argue that a combination of two factors – engineers’ relative deprivation in the Islamic world and mindset – is the most plausible explanation. * https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29836/1/Why_are_there_so_many_Engineers_among_Islamic_radicals_%28publisher%29.pdf https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29836/1/Why_are_t... * https://spectrum.ieee.org/extremist-engineers https://spectrum.ieee.org/extremist-engineers
- mikestorrent 7mo ago
  You don't need to brand efficiency and structure-at-scale as "authoritarian"; how painfully American of you. I know it's a completely foreign concept for anyone that has grown up in America, but it's actually within the realm of human possibility for the government and the individual to be aligned and want the same thing. Typically this is evidenced by tremendous social progress, which we see in evidence with the rapidly rising standard of living in China over the last few decades. It's easier when your government is proposing "hey, let's build all the factories the best way we can" and not "hey, let's impose illogical and continually-changing tariffs on everything and let Howard Lutnick's kids steal all the proceeds". You're right as an American to be skeptical of the government - it's not operating in your best interests unless you're one of the elite insiders. That doesn't mean it has to be that way.
  - superxpro12 7mo ago
    For all the progress, you lose me immediately with the "social credit" system. If there was really true 'progress', then you wouldn't need a one-party system that suppresses all dissent. Only need to look to the recent changes in Hong-Kong and the obviously hostile takeover of a democratic government to see how "pure" these changes really are.
    - xtn 7mo ago
      There are bad things in China, but there is no "social credit" system being used.
      - Saline9515 7mo ago
        Yes there is. Why deny it? It's pretty public. In this french documentary, which was later aired on the parliamentary tv channel, the author films his daily life with his chinese wife, who has a social credit account, and interviews officials speaking openly about it. It's 4 years old. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma6txLM_LLs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma6txLM_LLs
        7mo ago
- BurningFrog 7mo ago
  China hasn't done much central planning for many decades.
  - Synaesthesia 7mo ago
    They do, the state permits a free market but they also coordinate strategically to make decisions which benefit the country.
  - tw1984 7mo ago
    No, central planning is key to the state capitalism employed by China, it is done on ALL strategic industries. They just no longer do any central planning on nonsense matters like how much ice cream need to be produced for the summer and how much coffee shops are required for Shanghai.
- jmknoll 7mo ago
  I think what the person you're replying to is referring to is the fact that, in contrast to the US, many senior politicians in China literally have engineering backgrounds, or at least engineering degrees. Although this has actually been less true in the past 10-15 years. This article gives a bit of an overview - https://www.chinausfocus.com/2022-CPC-congress/chinese-technocrats-20-how-technocrats-differ-between-the-xi-era-and-jiang-hu-eras https://www.chinausfocus.com/2022-CPC-congress/chinese-techn...
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- _bent 7mo ago
  Every single privately run company is authoritarian.
- callmeal 7mo ago
  >Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be. I would say that for long-term engineering projects (building bridges etc) authoritarian central planning is a required trait.
- mullingitover 7mo ago
  It’s funny because the foundation of neoliberal economies is the corporation: a strict authoritarian planned economy.
jonstewart 7mo ago
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-what-went-wrong https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-what-...
pear01 7mo ago
That guy is so annoying his subpar analysis has become such a trope. America used to build things too. Lawyers have been part of the founding and fabric of both societies. Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.
- wetpaws 7mo ago
  [dead]
- adamweld 7mo ago
  I've only listened to one interview with Dan Wang, but I understood him to be particularly talking about the politicians, not the country as a whole. I can't speak for China, I've only visited a few times, but in the US it's true that an overwhelming number of successful politicians were previously lawyers. Which is not a good thing IMO.
  - pear01 7mo ago
    And that was true when we built things too. So what point are you making? If only FDR was an engineer then maybe we would have ramped up production and taken on the Axis across two oceans. But oops he was educated as a lawyer I guess we're doomed now. Like I just don't get it. Sure Xi and some other senior leadership in China studied as an engineer. He also studied Marxism. As a part of a government delegation he studied agriculture, even bringing him to stay abroad in Iowa of all places. The world is too complicated for this type of analysis, sorry. I don't even think it is remotely the right data point to focus on or compare. Dan Wang does the same spiel on every podcast and it is always terrible and seems predicated on credulous hosts who know little about the history of either country and certainly not enough about both who just use his lame analysis to engage in this current fad of Western self-pity. Instead of reform and asking hard questions let's just throw soft balls at Dan Wang's cheap analysis that anyone with a Wikipedia level education would know is absurd so we can keep propping up the same impoverished China v America tropes. Why don't we demand better honestly we should be ashamed that one guy can just come up with such a dubious thesis suddenly appear everywhere and no credible debate or pushback once. The only thing Dan Wang convinces me of is the poverty of the modern intellectual environment.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
canjobear 7mo ago
That’s because engineering degrees were the only thing you could get from college during the Cultural Revolution.
jayseb 7mo ago
The books is amazing too, just finished reading it. Gives you peek into cultural dynamic of both countries: https://insightbooks.app/books/breakneck https://insightbooks.app/books/breakneck
titzer 7mo ago
Minor correction: America is run by pedophiles with a lot of money, who naturally hire lawyers.
- red-iron-pine 7mo ago
  funny how this is getting downvoted when we know now that it is objectively true, with emails and pictures

Avicebron 7mo ago

Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.

mlsu 7mo ago
Have you met an engineer? I'd say "being an engineer" is probably the single most predictive trait for authoritarianism in my experience.
- lkbm 7mo ago
  Possibly, but it's just as much a predictive trait of being libertarian, which for all its faults, is extremely anti-authoritarian.
  - bb88 7mo ago
    Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. --Lord Acton. It's not really so much one's belief system as it is what happens when one gets power -- and that's hard to predict regardless of the ideology.
    - galangalalgol 7mo ago
      Not really. Seeing what people do when they get power is as predictable as what they do when given meth.
      - nerdsniper 7mo ago
        Eh. Maybe. But I do see people who are pretty consistent when they have power. It may be somewhat unpredictable before they get power, but somewhat more predictable once you’ve seen how they act with it. This principle of relative consistency is baked into how I test employees for management and friends for trust, and in the past, roommates as well. Though I do acknowledge potential for growth as well, but in my older age I generally also need to see evidence of motivation to give strong benefit of the doubt wrt possible trajectory.
  - SlightlyLeftPad 7mo ago
    Except in 21st Century America, where libertarian is really just masked authoritarian. Essentially, that means “free to do whatever you want as long as it’s our way.”
    - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
      "i hate the gub'ment esp. the way evil mega-corporations tell me to"
  - eli_gottlieb 7mo ago
    Libertarianism is just privatized authoritarianism.
    - cherrycherry98 7mo ago
      Libertarian principles encourage relationships built on mutual consenting parties rather than coercion. This implies that both parties have the freedom to choose. Imagine being stuck with a small dating pool of undesirable partners, the choices may not be good but that doesn't make it authoritarian.
  - jfengel 7mo ago
    When libertarian means liberty for everyone, it's anti-authoritarian. Too often libertarian means liberty for me and not for you. That's authoritarian.
- nerdsniper 7mo ago
  As an engineer, I do think there’s some mild but noticeable correlation in bulk. But there are other categories which would be much more predictive. And most of the correlation with engineers are actually a confounder effect from things like multigenerational socioeconomic status, or religion. If you were to control for other variables I doubt there’d be much correlation. After filtering out engineers who belong to other categories with stronger associations to authoritarianism, you’re more likely to be left with the hyper-individual-freedom types than the hyper-authoritarian types.
- lnsru 7mo ago
  I am electrical engineer and electrician working in regulated areas. In both areas the frameworks limits my choices and obviously I am very authoritarian. There is no room for discussion. If I need a DC DC converter for 2 amps I will pick one rated for 4 amps. No discussions! If I need to install a heat pump 60 feet away I will pick 5x6 square millimeter cable and all the circuit breakers from installation manual. There are no options or opinions. I communicate this in polite way to the clients. And this flows in other areas. If I need a functional vehicle with cheap upkeep I optimize for it. I invest in low risk products since the income is limited. I know that people with plan and confidence are scary, you don’t meet them every day.
- throw0101a 7mo ago
  There's a decent amount of research that finds a correlation between engineering degrees and terrorists: > According to two European social scientists working in Britain, Italian Diego Gambetta and German Steffen Hertog, who present their case in Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education, the presence of engineers among known Islamist extremists is 14 times greater than can be explained by random distribution. It was a finding the authors reached with caution and even a certain resistance. “We are social scientists,” Hertog explains in an interview, “so we are always seeking socio-economic explanations. We accepted this idea that there might be personality traits, expressed first in choice of profession and then in political ideology, very reluctantly.” * https://macleans.ca/news/world/why-do-so-many-jihadis-have-engineering-degrees/ https://macleans.ca/news/world/why-do-so-many-jihadis-have-e... > This article demonstrates that individuals with an engineering education are three to four times more frequent among violent Islamists worldwide than other degree holders. We then test a number of hypotheses to account for this phenomenon. We argue that a combination of two factors – engineers’ relative deprivation in the Islamic world and mindset – is the most plausible explanation. * https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29836/1/Why_are_there_so_many_Engineers_among_Islamic_radicals_%28publisher%29.pdf https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29836/1/Why_are_t... * https://spectrum.ieee.org/extremist-engineers https://spectrum.ieee.org/extremist-engineers
mikestorrent 7mo ago
You don't need to brand efficiency and structure-at-scale as "authoritarian"; how painfully American of you. I know it's a completely foreign concept for anyone that has grown up in America, but it's actually within the realm of human possibility for the government and the individual to be aligned and want the same thing. Typically this is evidenced by tremendous social progress, which we see in evidence with the rapidly rising standard of living in China over the last few decades. It's easier when your government is proposing "hey, let's build all the factories the best way we can" and not "hey, let's impose illogical and continually-changing tariffs on everything and let Howard Lutnick's kids steal all the proceeds". You're right as an American to be skeptical of the government - it's not operating in your best interests unless you're one of the elite insiders. That doesn't mean it has to be that way.
- superxpro12 7mo ago
  For all the progress, you lose me immediately with the "social credit" system. If there was really true 'progress', then you wouldn't need a one-party system that suppresses all dissent. Only need to look to the recent changes in Hong-Kong and the obviously hostile takeover of a democratic government to see how "pure" these changes really are.
  - xtn 7mo ago
    There are bad things in China, but there is no "social credit" system being used.
    - Saline9515 7mo ago
      Yes there is. Why deny it? It's pretty public. In this french documentary, which was later aired on the parliamentary tv channel, the author films his daily life with his chinese wife, who has a social credit account, and interviews officials speaking openly about it. It's 4 years old. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma6txLM_LLs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma6txLM_LLs
      - 7mo ago
BurningFrog 7mo ago
China hasn't done much central planning for many decades.
- Synaesthesia 7mo ago
  They do, the state permits a free market but they also coordinate strategically to make decisions which benefit the country.
- tw1984 7mo ago
  No, central planning is key to the state capitalism employed by China, it is done on ALL strategic industries. They just no longer do any central planning on nonsense matters like how much ice cream need to be produced for the summer and how much coffee shops are required for Shanghai.
jmknoll 7mo ago
I think what the person you're replying to is referring to is the fact that, in contrast to the US, many senior politicians in China literally have engineering backgrounds, or at least engineering degrees. Although this has actually been less true in the past 10-15 years. This article gives a bit of an overview - https://www.chinausfocus.com/2022-CPC-congress/chinese-technocrats-20-how-technocrats-differ-between-the-xi-era-and-jiang-hu-eras https://www.chinausfocus.com/2022-CPC-congress/chinese-techn...
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
_bent 7mo ago
Every single privately run company is authoritarian.
callmeal 7mo ago
>Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be. I would say that for long-term engineering projects (building bridges etc) authoritarian central planning is a required trait.
mullingitover 7mo ago
It’s funny because the foundation of neoliberal economies is the corporation: a strict authoritarian planned economy.

jonstewart 7mo ago

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-what-went-wrong https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-what-...

pear01 7mo ago

That guy is so annoying his subpar analysis has become such a trope. America used to build things too. Lawyers have been part of the founding and fabric of both societies. Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.

wetpaws 7mo ago
[dead]
adamweld 7mo ago
I've only listened to one interview with Dan Wang, but I understood him to be particularly talking about the politicians, not the country as a whole. I can't speak for China, I've only visited a few times, but in the US it's true that an overwhelming number of successful politicians were previously lawyers. Which is not a good thing IMO.
- pear01 7mo ago
  And that was true when we built things too. So what point are you making? If only FDR was an engineer then maybe we would have ramped up production and taken on the Axis across two oceans. But oops he was educated as a lawyer I guess we're doomed now. Like I just don't get it. Sure Xi and some other senior leadership in China studied as an engineer. He also studied Marxism. As a part of a government delegation he studied agriculture, even bringing him to stay abroad in Iowa of all places. The world is too complicated for this type of analysis, sorry. I don't even think it is remotely the right data point to focus on or compare. Dan Wang does the same spiel on every podcast and it is always terrible and seems predicated on credulous hosts who know little about the history of either country and certainly not enough about both who just use his lame analysis to engage in this current fad of Western self-pity. Instead of reform and asking hard questions let's just throw soft balls at Dan Wang's cheap analysis that anyone with a Wikipedia level education would know is absurd so we can keep propping up the same impoverished China v America tropes. Why don't we demand better honestly we should be ashamed that one guy can just come up with such a dubious thesis suddenly appear everywhere and no credible debate or pushback once. The only thing Dan Wang convinces me of is the poverty of the modern intellectual environment.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

canjobear 7mo ago

That’s because engineering degrees were the only thing you could get from college during the Cultural Revolution.

jayseb 7mo ago

The books is amazing too, just finished reading it. Gives you peek into cultural dynamic of both countries: https://insightbooks.app/books/breakneck https://insightbooks.app/books/breakneck

titzer 7mo ago

Minor correction: America is run by pedophiles with a lot of money, who naturally hire lawyers.

red-iron-pine 7mo ago
funny how this is getting downvoted when we know now that it is objectively true, with emails and pictures