Are Engineers Natural Libertarians Or Technocrats?

uctpjac writes "This openDemocracy article uses Scott Adams' presidential bid to argue that however much engineers — especially Silicon Valley types — like to think that they're libertarians, they are in fact much more likely to be control-freak technocrats. Quoting: 'Sensibly if uncharismatically, Adams has pledged if elected to delegate most of his decisions to people who know more than him, and flip-flop on any issue where new evidence causes him to modify his position. His worldview has its limitations – he underestimates the value of ways of thinking other than the engineer's, and it's naïve of him to claim his approach to policy is purely pragmatic and non-ideological.' Is this a fair account? Has the author wrongly read Dilbert, or wrongly interpreted the relationship between the engineering mindset and Adams' representation of it in the cartoon strip?"

Comments

We'll be whatever you want...

[Anonymous Coward]

... for a fee.

Re:We'll be whatever you want...

[gorzek]

I agree there. I will tend toward writing more verbose code for the sake of making it very clear and easy to follow. Unfortunately, I have worked with a lot of people who try to cram as much logic into as little space as possible, with worthless variable names and no comments, so while you can figure out what the code is doing, you have no idea why it's doing it.

For me, that's the real value of comments: they tell you what the developer intended, and from there it's much easier to determine whether it's doing what it should. I've seen plenty of cases where a comment says the code should be doing x, but it's actually doing y. Without any comments, I'm forced to go back to original requirements, and sometimes I don't even have those available (legacy systems suck sometimes.)

Re:We'll be whatever you want...

[inviolet]

While I generally understand what you two are trying to say, you don't provide a downside to leaving comments on your ever-so-clearly written code. Probably because there isn't one.

Omitting code comments is plain lazy, period, and there's no excuse not to.

Depends on your definition of 'omit'. At this point in my career, I find that I have finite energy for any given task / bug / refactoring crusade, and it is far better to spend that energy renaming things (for clarity), and preening the whitespace, than on writing comments that nobody reads because everyone knows that code comments are misleadingly outdated.

That said, I think we both agree with the GP post that comments are needed when the reader will need information about why the code does what it does. I presently do a lot of work bugfixing code that was cranked out by our company's low-priced Indian counterparts, and sometimes I would kill for even one sentence of explanation, with which I can proceed to fix up all the variable and function names.

Libertarians?

[bonch]

Since when do Silicon Valley types "like to think that they're libertarians?" Going by the posters here, they are not libertarians at all as they vehemently hate corporations. Silicon Valley is known to lean left--Google's Marissa Mayer had Obama as an invited guest at her home for a fundraiser, for crying out loud. So on what is the article basing that claim?

Re:Libertarians?

[sanman2]

Since when is Silicon Valley the heart of engineering?? Maybe if you're an electrical or computer engineer. Engineering has been around a lot longer than Silicon Valley or the 1980s. Why not also pretend San Francisco is the heart of engineering?

Libertarians are more likely to be self-starters and doers, which is more consistent with the engineering mentality.

Scientists, on the other hand, are more likely to be welfare-staters, because their science funding and grantsmanship culture is ever more dependent on the state.

Re:Libertarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama is right of center and only mildly more authoritarian than libertarian.

Re:Libertarians?

[el3mentary]

Obama is right of center

Only if center is the Communist party.

By most of the worlds standards Obama is indeed right of centre, there are few if any American politicians who aren't. Ask anyone with a basic knowledge of Politics, from Europe, South America or Asia, hell even Canada and they'll give you the same answer. A lot of us also think your medical system is a complete disgrace.

Re:Libertarians?

[joss]

> Many libertarians believe individuals retain their rights when they join groups

Weasel words alert. Nobody is claiming you should loose your individual rights when you join a corporation, its just that you shouldn't gain additional rights by virtue of controlling an organisation.

Re:Libertarians?

[selven]

> Since corporations only exist due to special protections granted to them by the government, many (most?) libertarians (myself included) do not consider them to be actors in, nor an accurate representation of, a true free market.

I don't think it's quite that simple. In an unhampered free market it is possible that people will voluntarily choose to organize themselves into groups that function according to similar rules as those that what we now call "corporations" do now. There will be no limited liability (with regard to lawsuits; limited liability with regard to debts can still exist as part of the loan contract, so conservatives' fears that without limited liability there will be no business at all are quite unfounded), so people will be punished for fraud and environmental damage more, and things will be better in that regard, but the format of the large business as a whole could still exist. And there's nothing wrong with that - it's never as simple as "rich people are evil"; look at the so-called "robber baron" era of the 19th century - some rich people got their way through powerful friends and corruption and government-assisted cartelization, while others played fairly on the market and used their fortunes to set up institutions that continue to serve the public good even now (see: Nobel prizes, American non-profit universities, etc). It's exactly the same way even now.

Re:Libertarians?

[gstoddart]

Well said. Libertarians would be the first to end corporate welfare, as well as corporate "personhood".

And then the unicorns and fairies come in and make the world a perfect place?

I'm afraid I simply don't believe that any more than I believe that tax cuts for the rich makes all of our lives better. All it does is give tax cuts to the rich.

Libertarians have a fantasy model of how economics works, which has absolutely no bearing on reality. The free market doesn't solve problems, human nature means it basically devolves to brute force. There is no spoon.

Not suggesting Communism works either ... but having two polar opposite views doesn't make either of them right. The Libertarian Utopia is a falsehood, just like the Communist Utopia.

Re:Libertarians?

[PCM2]

Scientists, on the other hand, are more likely to be welfare-staters, because their science funding and grantsmanship culture is ever more dependent on the state.

This doesn't follow at all. You might as well say prison inmates will always vote for big government, for the same reason.

In my own experience, political thought in all professions runs the gamut, depending more upon an individual's upbringing, values, and experience than anything else. The idea that engineers or scientists went into a certain field because of some hard-wired biological characteristic that also controls their emotions, morals, and values just sounds like a modern-day spin on phrenology to me.

But since I might as well use this comment to throw out an inflammatory opinion of my own, scientists are more likely to be left-leaning because they're intelligent.

Re:Libertarians?

[SaroDarksbane]

Who tells you that the FDA isn't a fraud?

Re:Libertarians?

[tmosley]

Interesting, so you claim that the only model that has ever worked doesn't work. Note the every economy that has ever industrialized did so under a libertarian economic policy. That same economic policy is what turned the serfs and rural farmers of each nation into middle class citizens. Too bad we abandoned that policy, for a mixed market, which has proved to be a very slippery slope heading straight for fascism. Now, as we approach the terminal descent into that economic system, we see that the middle class is disappearing, along with all of our freedoms in ALL spheres, not just economic.

Re:Libertarians?

[postbigbang]

And a lot of that tape prevents fraud, tax cheats, skirting labor laws, and your screwy idea from polluting the environment, excluding people by race color creed and national origin (and perhaps a few more characteristics, depending on juridiction).

Fie on the weasel words of "red tape" as an impediment to business. If you wanna be a scofflaw, head to the third world, where it's wild and wooly and quite profitable-- but with vasts amount of bribery, decay, pollution, and exclusion.

Re:Libertarians?

[tmosley]

Assault and attempted murder aren't allowed under a free market, moron.

Re:Libertarians?

[bill_mcgonigle]

A lot of us also think your medical system is a complete disgrace.

Feel free not to use any of the advances we develop, on principle.

Re:Libertarians?

[MrHanky]

Libertarians are more likely to be intellectually immature internet addicts with far too high an opinion of themselves.

Re:Libertarians?

[hipp5]

It's not our fault you've allowed pharm companies to rape you up the ass.

Re:Libertarians?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Nobody is claiming you should loose your individual rights when you join a corporation, its just that you shouldn't gain additional rights by virtue of controlling an organisation.

He's talking about responsibility, not gaining extra rights.

People who go to work for a corporation shouldn't become immune to the bad acts they commit there. In theory they do retain some responsibility, but in practice they really don't.

Show me the Wall Street tycoons who went to prison for the 2008 crash or the people at Sony who went to jail for their little rootkit adventure. Maybe the corporation pays some big fine, but the individuals usually get off scot-free.

So they have incentive to misbehave.

Re:Libertarians?

[gstoddart]

Interesting, so you claim that the only model that has ever worked doesn't work.

No, I assert that as it's defined today Libertarianism is a complete farce, and simply doesn't take modern realities into account.

From wiki:

According to the U.S. Libertarian Party, libertarianism is the advocacy of a government that is funded voluntarily and limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.

If funding the government was voluntary, nobody would do it. But, then pretty much every Libertarian goes on to more or less equate having laws in a society is a repressive form of violence. Help, help, I'm being repressed ... I'm not allowed to speed, zomg, my rights are being taken away.

I've read the books, and for a while I drank the kool-aid ... scrapping all forms of government regulation and expecting the unicorns and fairies of the free market to come up with optimal solutions is utter horseshit.

As most people describe it, Libertarianism is anarchism with an expectation that people will cooperate because it serves their "enlightened self interest" ... in reality, it will just devolve to the rule of might, and pretty much the assumption that everyone else should be left to fend for themselves as long as there's a minimal government around to keep them from taking your stuff.

It works out well for the privileged, and those in power ... the rest can pretty much go fuck themselves.

But, you'll say something lame like "people would still be free to help out others, they'd just be relieved of the burden of being forced (at gun point from the state violence that enforces the rules) to contribute to society overall; they'd do it if they wanted". Yeah, right.

I lost faith in the notion that the free-market "solves" anything other than profit a long time ago. It doesn't educate people, it doesn't offer to lift them up, and it sure as hell doesn't give them a better lot in life ... it just opens you up for a different kind of serfdom. One in which your employer is free to cut your wages, and you're free to go elsewhere.

It's a system of government designed to enforce property rights for some people, while leaving the rest to figure out how to get property and the other essentials of life on their own.

A quote from Ebenezer Scrooge pretty much sums it up ...

'Are there no prisons?"

'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

'And the Union workhouses.' demanded Scrooge.

'Are they still in operation?'

'Both very busy, sir.'

'Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very glad to hear it.'

Re:Libertarians?

[NeutronCowboy]

Yes, but how do you enforce the lack of fraud? Who defines fraud? Who polices it? Prosecutes it? Carries out the sentence? Verifies that the sentence is being carried out? Who informs others that said sentence has been carried out correctly?

And now you're right back in big government mode. And if you say free market, I've got some nice land to sell you in Somalia.

Libertarianism is to reality as Communism is to reality.

Re:Libertarians?

[PCM2]

Prison inmates are held agains their will and demonstrably do not come out being welfare-statst.

Say instead that anyone in the military will obviously be welfare-statist, then, because all of the military's funding also comes from the government.

My point is that I highly doubt that anyone who's had to write a grant has done so while thinking, "glory, glory to the blessed state, praise that your scraps may fall unto my unworthy plate." If they could get funded another way without compromising the integrity of their research, they would.

Also, the claim that government funding for scientific research evidence of a "welfare state" is facile. Just for starters, who would you rather have split the atom first? Nazi Germany? There are valid purposes for government, and just as military defense is one of them, so is scientific research with the aim of the betterment of society. Being in favor of science in no way predisposes you to socialism.

Re:Libertarians?

[Anonymous Coward]

scientists are more likely to be liberal because they work at ivory tower universities and government, which are wholly liberal institutions. They can spend other people's money without guilt because they feel they are working for the greater good.

engineers are more likely to be conservative because they work for private corporations with bottom lines that require real and correct results. they know that good intentions don't hold bridges up or make generators turn.

Re:Libertarians?

[gstoddart]

Familiar with both, don't put faith in either. One claims it has a better way of describing what is happening than the other, they're both ideologies, but not facts.

Nice false dichotomy there, though. You're giving me two options of your own choice (both of which support your position), and asserting that either I must believe in one wrong one or another. My point is that I don't.

I believe the government are idiots, that the system is corrupt, and most things which claim to describe how it all works is, by definition, woefully incomplete and likely to be filled with its own biases about how it all works. In some cases, those can be very dangerous as people blindly believe their system is infallible. You know, beliefs like the notion that everyone is acting with full and complete information, that people aren't gaming the system, that an unregulated economy will end up with results any different than melamine in baby formula.

If my choice comes down to this:

These are the Free Banking and anarcho-capitalist movements. Although they have competing views of monetary policy, they share a fundamental view of most economic philosophy.

then my answer is "neither". As a matter of fact, I'll go one step further and say that if the choice is free banking or anarcho capitalism, well, that's what got us into the recent financial mess, and that neither works. I think the whole thing is flawed.

And, really, all you're saying is that by disagreeing with Ron Paul I'm disagreeing with the principles of Libertarian economics ... which I've already quite explicitly said. I think in general economists know far less than they're willing to admit. They just think they've wrapped it up in some grand unifying theory that appeals to them, and then they wrap themselves up in it like it's religion. And then it's all dogma from there.

Hell, Alan Greenspan used to suggest that people should borrow all of the equity they have in their home, because it was basically free money. That alone forces me to conclude he was an advocate of something which didn't work. Hell, he eventually even admitted that "something" was wrong about his view of economics, he's just not sure of what.

I'm simply no longer willing to believe the people who claim to know how to run the economy ... they're clearly unqualified. And, for the record, I don't claim to have a better solution ... but I can tell the ones that are failing horribly.

Re:Libertarians?

[PCM2]

scientists are more likely to be liberal because they work at ivory tower universities and government, which are wholly liberal institutions. They can spend other people's money without guilt because they feel they are working for the greater good.

engineers are more likely to be conservative because they work for private corporations with bottom lines that require real and correct results. they know that good intentions don't hold bridges up or make generators turn.

So do private corporations build bridges, now? Or hydroelectric dams? Or nuclear reactors? Does Boeing build new fighter planes at the whim of private investors? Would the electrification of the United States have happened without public investment? Are any of these things done without the approval (and funding) of the government? The claim that engineers are somehow lily-white when compared to the black-hearted, thieving scientists is at best self-serving, at worst laughable.

Re:Libertarians?

[JesseMcDonald]

Wait wait wait - we're talking about a libertarian economy here, right? By what mechanism will this "punishment" be allocated? Will that be the sole responsibility of the government?

No, you don't need a government to punish someone who harms you. You have the right to do that yourself. Practically speaking, most would choose to establish their claim through arbitration before turning to direct action, and would probably hire out the actual enforcement rather than doing it themselves, but so long as you're truly in the right, and willing to accept the full responsibility for your actions, there is nothing wrong with seeking restitution and even retribution on your own. The courts don't grant you the right to respond; they just help to publicly establish your grievance and spread out the responsibility for the decision.

Most cases would probably be resolved peaceably. For one thing, many disputes are already handled via private arbitration, as it's more cost-effective than turning to the government courts, so the system has plenty of precedent. Unless they're showing plain partiality to your opponent, bypassing or ignoring the arbiters is a great way to ensure that no one will feel safe doing business with you, even if there was no further enforcement. However, the right to pursue restitution and retribution privately remains should someone actually choose to flaunt the ruling.

Re:Libertarians?

[trout007]

I think engineers know how hard it is to build any complicated system. Whether it's code, circuit, or machine. I think they know how foolish it would be to try to centrally plan a country of 300 million people.

Why does everything have to fit a nice label?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that most people have a hard time when life isn't left down to 2 choices. No wonder we have such a hard time coming together on a common ground and working out our problems.

Aspergers Cases who Lack Empathy

[Anonymous Coward]

The typical libertarian engineer think everyone else should just study computers like they did and get a job doing that. Then they wouldn't be poor.

They don't have the empathy to understand that some people are simply baffled by computers, or are poor for some other reason.

They also don't understand why I put on my headphones every time they go on some poorly thought out rant that proves nothing other than their complete lack of empathy and social skills.

Re:Aspergers Cases who Lack Empathy

[jedidiah]

No. We think they should have applied themselves while in school and gotten themselves a half decent trade or profession. Also we think that they would do well to escape from the general anti-intellectual attitude in the US especially when it comes to math.

Not understanding numbers is as harmful as not being able to read.

Pragmatism can be dangerous

[XxtraLarGe]

Decisions based merely on results, divorced from ethics and morality can bring disastrous results. Think how quickly we could advance medicine if we started experimenting on humans unchecked, or how "safe" we could be if we lived in a police state. I put safe in quotes because we might be safe from terrorists and other boogeymen, but we wouldn't be safe from the police state.

He's actually a comic strip writer...

[russotto]

...so taking what he says 100% seriously is probably a mistake. Even if Dilbert does often appear to be a thinly-veiled documentary.

Pick Two

[Relic of the Future]

Engineers are the same in politics as they are elsewhere. They'll fix any well-defined problem, but the solution can only meet two of three criteria: fast, cheap, and high-quality. But voters (like customers) will want all three, and won't define the problem well.

Re:Pick Two

[MartinSchou]

As far as I can tell, voters do not know what they want, because they do not think things through. Or rather, they know what they want, but they are unwilling to pay for it.

If asked, voters would prefer not paying any taxes at all while being given everything they want.

Most people, no matter where they live and their tax percentage, will say that they pay too much tax. Need to cut back on spending.

Sure. Where? Reducing waste only goes so far, and at some point, you simply can't avoid it. No matter how much you want to, you can't run a pub and expect your glassware or furniture to last forever. Just because you pick a new pub owner, the patrons will still be clumsy and accidents happen.

Cutting one expenditure will almost always result in expenses elsewhere. Cut back on socialized medicine, and you'll pay for it elsewhere, either in an unhealthy workforce (lower taxable income due to sick days or sub-par performance), at the back door, when the people who can't pay for their own treatment take up much more expensive hospital beds - or at the ethics and morals door by simply letting people without money die.

Education is often mentioned. Too expensive. Alright. Cut education and you end up with a less educated workforce. Great short term solution, horrible long term, as that will reduce the number of high paid jobs and thus your taxable income.

Military, surely. Depends on the country. It'd be difficult for Puerto Rico to cut back on their military spending, as it's entirely dependent on the US for that. And cutting back on military spending will result in job losses elsewhere, as you will either move soldiers from the military to the general work populace (aka unemployment), lose jobs at military contractors (as they no longer get as many orders) or both. Plus, if your military is too small, your geopolitical region too unstable, this could result in losing your country and thus your taxable income. Belgium could probably remove its military entirely without military risk - South Korea, not so much.

Roads? Needed for transporting goods. Cut down on road maintenance and you end up with bad conditions not only for goods transport, but also for your workforce to get to and from work. Similar issues with railroads and public transport.

Electrical infrastructure? Critical for the economy.

Internet infrastructure? Critical for the economy, but rarely regulated in the same way.

Water and sanitation? See socialized medicine.

Elder care? Moral and ethical issues with simply letting poor people suffer and die.

One of the reasons politics, everywhere, is so messed up, is that voters have been spoonfed and accepted this notion, that everything can be cooked down to a 20-second sound-bite. It cannot.

Let me give you an example:

This is the Danish budget for 2012: http://www.oes-cs.dk/bevillingslove/ffl12t0.pdf. It's 562 pages. That's for a country with just under 6 million people, a nominal GDP of about 300 billion dollars and a 2012 budget of about 120 billion dollars.

562 pages. Not that bad. Except that there are three additional documents to add to these 562 pages. First one is 1,024 pages. Second one is 929 pages. Third one is a meager 678 pages. That's a total of 3,193 pages.

All to be summed up in a 20-second sound-bite.

So we end up with these ludicrous discussions about minutia. Minutia that very often only covers 1% of 1% of anything. Sure, the numbers may sound big, but in the whole, they're tiny.

All designed to make us think that we and our opinions matter.

If cars were designed the way we run politics, they'd be pretty much guaranteed to explode and kill the occupants the moment they were turned on.

When did an open mind become political death?

[SoTerrified]

" and flip-flop on any issue where new evidence causes him to modify his position"

If there's one aspect of the political system that mystifies me, it's this. One of the very definitions of intelligence is the ability to take information and make conclusions. Obviously new information can lead to new conclusions. Yet in politics, even a hint of a politician displaying intelligence by changing his stance after new information and it's the political kiss of death. So instead we get politicians who will stick to their beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So why are we pushing so hard to support political figures who don't demonstrate intelligence and tossing aside the ones that do?

Dictators

[roman_mir]

We are all dictators inside and that's the exact reason why government power must be limited in a way that satisfies libertarian principles - no one person or a group of people can be trusted when given power over others, that's why individual liberties and private property are paramount and government power must immediately be considered intrinsically evil by the very design and it must be treated as such. Only with the understanding that government is evil by design and will destroy everything it touches, we will come to a balance (if we want to), of keeping the government at its smallest and individual liberties at maximum.

Any time that the balance of power shifts from individual liberties towards growth of government power, it must immediately be suspect, be considered evil and be opposed by all.

Re:Dictators

[NeutronCowboy]

We are all dictators inside and that's the exact reason why government power must be limited in a way that satisfies libertarian principles

I'm endlessly amused by this sentence, as it so beautifully sums up everything that's wrong with libertarians. On the one hand, they understand that people are the problem with government: anyone at the top of a power pyramid will be sorely tempted to abuse that power for personal reasons. Many more will actually abuse that power, even if it is well-intentioned. At the same time, they utterly fail to see that when the government is removed from society, the government power structure will be replaced with any of the other power structures that predate the invention of any formal government: personal connections, money, raw strength, military might, etc. Remove government, and you'll find your life governed by those other power structures.

Just like Karl Marx, they correctly identify today's issue with society. Just like Karl Marx, they utterly fail at incorporating human nature into their solution.

Re:Dictators

[roman_mir]

Your misleading comparisons are just false equivalences.

A weak government is NOT a "non-functional" government. A weak government is a government that cannot go above the law that is set for it to follow.

A strong government does not create a good society and a functioning economy. North Korea and USSR and Cuba have/had "strong" governments. So what?

You are confusing the 2 issues: strong government and a strong nation.

Nation is NOT a government.

Government is NOT a nation.

Strong nation is a nation of laws, nation that protects individual liberties, maximizes individual freedoms and does so without stealing the power from people to give to a small minority of politicians/dictators/power brokers.

Strong nation is a nation that allows free people to make choices with regard to their economics, money, food, sex, marriage, drugs, whatever.

Strong nation is not a nation that uses huge military to bully the world.

Strong government can bully the world by subjugating the individual liberties and freedoms of its people. It also can put people into concentration camps. It can start wars without asking the people either to pay for them or whether the people even want to start the wars.

Somalia today is a product of a long history of difficult situations, including a communist government that was eventually disposed of. The government was disposed of because of how 'strong' it was with its people.

USSR eventually fell apart and North Korea will eventually too, because 'strong' governments make for weak nations as 'strong' government destroys individual liberties and eventually people stop being scared of their 'strong' government, especially when the strength of government obliterates the economy so bad, that people go hungry.

Strong government is not a synonym with a 'good' system.

I'd like to point out option C

[squidflakes]

It could be that Scott Adams is just a dickhead who's coasting along on the singular achievement of pointing out what everyone already knows, but doing it with a dog wearing glasses.