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

Re:Libertarians?

[roman_mir]

Scientists may believe that their funding comes from the state, but in reality their funding comes out of economic activity that is provided by the businesses, and all of the science as well as all of the education is a response to the conditions set by the market.

Government funding of science is secondary to the market, and it always has other real purposes that the politicians are actually interested in, namely spending, stealing money, war spending, some large pork project spending, etc.

Government sponsored science is not an issue in itself, because it's a tiny fraction of what government spends otherwise, but eventually with the government growing, it destroys the real economy and then the funding really stops, because government only has what it can take away from the producers in the economy. Government doesn't have anything, it only has what it steals from people.