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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?"
... for a fee.
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.
China's government is probably the most engineer-dominated government in the world, in contrast to the lawyer-dominated Western governments, and it has definite technocratic tendencies. I'd say a lot of western engineers who otherwise dislike the government (e.g. its position on free speech) do admire some of its technocratic infrastructure achievements, like its rapid deployment of high-speed rail.
More generally it's kind of the natural outcome of a certain engineering mindset which looks for optimized supply chains, economies of scale, evidence/data-based decision making, etc. There's an alternate, more messy/decentralized engineering mindset though, perhaps better labeled "hacker mindset" than "engineering mindset", which is more about DIY, free-form experimentation, etc., and less technocratic in its orientation (though not necessarily libertarian in the American sense either; plenty are more lefty-anarchist leaning).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Once you understand the basics of politics, learning a new ideology is trivial really.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
You assume that libertarians do not also hate corporations. 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.
Some may consider that a small nitpick, but I personally find it to be an important one. When I engage people in discussions about free market principles, I make sure to let people know that I am just as disgusted with our corporately-owned government as the next guy.
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.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
...so taking what he says 100% seriously is probably a mistake. Even if Dilbert does often appear to be a thinly-veiled documentary.
I promise, that if elected, to suspend the Constitution and become a benevolent despot to straighten everything out.
I further promise to leave voluntarily after a 10 year term and restore the Constitution. I swear.
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.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I think there's some confusion between conservative, dogmatic, libertarian, and objectivist. And others...
Because conservatism (of the hysterical kind) is so dominant, anything non-conservative is deemed libertarian, even when it is something else.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I prefer "Rational."
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Its all in the perspective:
1) La de da, I'm building a bridge. My favorite welder on his days off likes to stick tab A into slot B of a member of the same sex. I understand the meaning of an independent variable and file this as such; don't much care. I guess that makes me an engineer-libertarian.
2) La de da, I'm a building a bridge. I sweat over a keyboard for 850 hours of computer simulation to prove that bolt #374904 must be a size 10-24 NC because if some idiot installs a 8-32 NC or smaller the bridge will collapse when loaded with precisely 17 pickup trucks plus one housefly. Cheap businessman wants to install a smaller 8-32 bolt because live and let live, man, my right to tell him what to do ends at the tip of his screwdriver, or some psuedo-libertarian stuff like that. No, F you businessman, I'm going full on technocrat control freak on you and 10-24 NC bolts are getting installed there or its off to the camps with you.
Want to run a country instead of building a bridge? Sounds to me like it don't much matter if tab A gets inserted into slot B no matter what sex A or B is, or what hole they're using, as long as they're both consenting adults blah blah. That's the libertarian answer. The control freak comes out when you say no, you are not F-ing setting up a concentration camp for brown people, because unlike two dudes in a closet, that does destroy a country.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
" 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?
Economics is not a science!
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Obama is right of center and only mildly more authoritarian than libertarian.
Well said. Libertarians would be the first to end corporate welfare, as well as corporate "personhood".
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Over the years of arguments, people have tried to pigeon hole and label me a Conservative, a Liberal, an NDP supporter, a Libertarian, a Socialist, a Communist, and pretty much every other label you can think of.
Anyone who tries to simplify my stance with a buzzword is trying to appease their own desire to label me so they can dismiss my arguments out of hand as "he's just a XXX". Labeling stances and assuming that support of a party means blind support of their theoretical ideologies is an insult to any citizen who actually THINKS about social issues and politics.
The idea of taking that a step further and assuming that my career choice pre-labels me as having some particular viewpoint is so far out to lunch it's unreal.
What the hell was the article writer smoking? I want some!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
they also have difficulty seeing when someone should be openly mocked for painting broad stereotypes.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Corporate welfare, yes. Corporate "personhood" no. Many libertarians believe individuals retain their rights when they join groups, but they also object to the lack of responsibility.
Adams is closer to the Pointy Haired Boss than he ever was to Dilbert, or Wally. Perhaps he's sympathetic to the engineering perspective, but his bachelors was in economics, and he has a MBA.
My grandfather was an aerospace engineer and a lifelong New Deal Democrat. He grew up poor in the depression, worked in the tobacco fields when he was about 13, put himself through college by selling blood, etc. He understood that government had helped him and a lot of people of his generation to become middle class.
On the other hand I know a lot of engineers who grew up under Soviet communism and are super right-wing. They had a very bad experience with government persecution and they tend to view all government activity through the lens of restricting their rights.
Ending limited liability, too? You just killed the next Apple or Google and every other small start-up that starts in someone's garage or home office. The potential pool of people willing to start a business gets reduced to only those who are already well-heeled financially.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
> 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.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
> 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.
The article is poorly thought out, as it is based on a false dichotomy between so called "libertarians" and "technocrats". While a libertarian advocates the idea that free will should be the founding rule of a society, which brings us concepts such as the state doing absolutely nothing to affect society, technocracy represents a system of government which is ruled by technical experts. This means that, unless this hypothetical state is a anarchist utopia, the state requires leadership, and if a state requires leadership then that leadership can very well be exerted by technical experts. Hence, you can have a libertarian technocrats, and libertarian states run by a technocratic government.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
You can't handle the truth.
An economic socialist and a social conservative? So you'll take all our money and refuse to let us have porn or drugs? Ugh.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
I'm assuming that the implication is that engineers can solve our problems with process. Lots of social problems might seem like the solutions can be obviously derived with logic, but we're human beings and we do a lot of things that aren't driven by logic. Having children isn't logical; it's expensive, a time drain, and ultimately a financial loss. Practically any form of entertainment we engage in isn't logical (besides intercourse), since we're probably wasting time and resources best spent elsewhere. Hell, even our diets aren't logical. We should all be eating nutrition bars carefully concocted to provide us with the optimal calories and nutrients to keep us functioning (regardless of taste).
I had the enlightening experience of dating a social worker who explained how often the layman's "logical" and simplistic solutions to all kinds of domestic issues were either ineffective or could be downright detrimental. When you understand that, you can start to envision how the "obvious" solution to social ailment X would fail in practice (otherwise it would have been tried already).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Engineers often like to think of themselves as libertarians.
But I've met enough that when you even begin to scratch the surface, they tend to be very technocratic... believing there must be a better way to organize something if only *they* could be trusted to run something.
This is more and more true in places with a higher emphasis on academia.
Academics suffer from what I like to call systems thinking. Having spent enough time there, they almost always try and solve every problem by modelling and then playing with it numerically.
This results in the idea that we should trust in such models above and beyond people's choices. To use an engineers mentality, they tend to like centralized big computers instead of distributed systems :P Kinda odd isn't it.
There is nothing 'scientific' about it. Science can't tell you what values or policies you should follow, but they tend to like to frame it that way.
I personally credit this kind of systems thinking for the recent financial collapse. At no point in history has there been so much sophistication and modelling in the financial system. Yet of course people are still in the system for their own self-interest, their own biases, still gaming it, models were incorrect or imperfect. And of course who gets to be in charge and make decisions based on the models...
When Greenspan made his point about the 'market failing' it was a classic systems thinking mistake.
The banks have a vested interest to enhance share holder value, so they would be in the best position to regulate themselves... as their institution's purpose is to enhance share holder value... which means keeping the bank in good shape.
It's like saying car drivers have a natural interest to prevent accidents. Therefore, they should be allowed to regular themselves.
I won't get into saying whether we need more/better/less regulation. But I will say this. We as a society have decided we like to have stable banking. The government backs and insures banks. It then has a duty to regulate them. Just like your car insurance company regulates you by charging you more for more risk, denying you coverage if you're too risky...
I see the same thing all the time on so many policies.
When it comes to education policy or health policy, many think we can generate expert panels on all of these to deliver excellent healthcare and education.
Meanwhile, the centralization of power that comes with unions and medical associations and payment and politics and facing parents with different beliefs and facing people who are facing death or illness... basically anything human is something they choose to ignore.
Which is very common for technocrats... and hence engineers. Just like the Euro. These big systems designed by technocrats and engineers and scientists will eventually fail because they're ignorant for anything related to humanity.
It's like they try and solve a complex equation... but they ignore the biggest variable... humanity.
So in a truly free market, the one makes the rules who is able to hire the most and the evilst thugs?
Philosophy is of little importance when the policies libertarians support would have the opposite effect. Libertarians are always pushing for smaller government and fewer regulations, which would have the effect of making large, wealthy businesses even more powerful.
This represents your 'true free market.
My definition of a "true free market" is one free of violence or the threat of violence. And while I'm sympathetic to the "voluntaryist" strain of libertarians, I'm personally not convinced that complete anarchy can give us the "most free" market under that definition, so I still consider myself a minarchist.
We need a a set of regulations in order to ensure fair competition and fair rights for workers.
The key here is the word "fair", and I'm sure we don't see eye to eye on what that word means.
While it's currently fashionable for Neo-cons to call themselves libertarians, the philosophy of Libertarianism actually covers everything from far-left anarchists to far-right objectivists.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
... said the man who has no clue what the communist ideology is.
Barack Obama is as communist as Rush Limbaugh is a faithful and honest christian.
Who tells you that the FDA isn't a fraud?
It's not a completely absurd concept. You'll have variation in any group, but it's not unreasonable to wonder if people in profession X tend to have a set of views described as Y. You'll never have 100% correlation, but if research suggests that, say, dog catchers tend to be pro-life, then it's silly to just ignore it. It doesn't mean that any given dog catcher has to hold that view, but when something trends like that there's usually a reason.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Libertarians such as myself argue that the regulations themselves are what makes large, wealthy businesses even larger and more wealthy.
If you know that corporations control the government, and the government controls you, then what good is it to give the government more power? You already know who's going to be wielding it, after all.
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Assault and attempted murder aren't allowed under a free market, moron.
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.
This is an important point. Implementing any single once of these "libertarian ideas" on its own may result in an even worse situation than what we get using the current patchwork. Changing everything at once would be very difficult and likely lead to a period of chaos. Changing things gradually means they never get done. So what can be done?
I'm convinced that the foundation for almost every problem facing the world today can be traced back to the one-two punch of central banking and intellectual property law. To the extent that we scale those back or eliminate them, I believe almost every sector of the economy can be improved.
Note that the organizational type you describe exists--it's called a partnership, and it is the second most common form of business in the US.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Libertarians are more likely to be intellectually immature internet addicts with far too high an opinion of themselves.
It's not our fault you've allowed pharm companies to rape you up the ass.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You'd then go to jail for assault and/or murder. At a minimum, you would be fined for making false claims. Of course, the free market would let you sell that food, you'd just have to face the consequences for doing so. The not-free market also lets you sell that food, the difference is that instead of those charges, you'd just get slapped with a small fine for "adulteration of a foodstuff". Murder (at least attempted murder) better describes the activity, but the non-free market doesn't seem to care much for that term.
Not all Libertarians (in fact, I'd say very few) are opposed to the idea of the government still existing to enforce a very basic set of laws.
Fantastic. I'm really happy with the idea of spending much of my life litigating a bunch of profit loving morons that are planning on getting away with as much as is humanly possible. You seem to have more faith in the legal system than I do.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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:
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 ...
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
Like Occupy Wall St. supporters, right?
The evil socialist countries of Germany, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom will happily take up the slack.
The USA isn't the only country in the world with world class pharmaceutical giants.
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.
This doesn't follow at all. You might as well say prison inmates will always vote for big government, for the same reason.
They do tend to vote for big government. They're statistically more likely to be Democrat. That's why the dems favor giving ex-cons voting rights while reps typically oppose it.
Technocracy means doing things that make sense, without attention to ideology (or necessarily, public opinion). This is certainly something the US is in serious need of. One only need to consider SOPA and the myriad of other failed bills intended to "fix" the country to see why engineers would want to include reason and proof in the process for once, over outcry and dollars.
However, I'd not say I lean libertarian at all. Corporations are currently the largest source of corruption and the largest threat to personal rights in the western world. Right now, there are a number of corporations with far more power over you than the government. So I am dismayed at the common libertarian diatribes that everything will be alright, if we just get rid of government. What fills the hole left by government?
I would say I lean much more towards European socialism. I don't believe in survival or the fittest or deep class structures. If inheritance and embezzlement are the two biggest sources of wealth in the country, then the country is in the wrong and needs to be repaired. Further, there are many times when something just does not belong in private hands. Corporations naturally are greedy and corrupting influences, and are nowhere near as efficient as the libertarian types like to think; government can be corrupted, but is not inherently anything negative.
My primary concern is that given my definition of Technocracy above, it has the potential to become all sorts of bad things. Which is why I think anyone who actually goes out to claim they are a Technocrat needs to ultimately follow a few rules:
1. The goal of society is to provide the greatest average good for its members.
2. Communication should always be free. Censorship is always wrong.
3. Nothing should be restricted on emotional or religious basis.
If even half of politicians followed those three rules, we'd be living in a far better world today. It is time we start forcing them to do so.
Great Intellect...
Disclaimer: I classify myself as a libertarian and I'm an engineer by training so take this with a (very large) grain of salt. Maybe engineers tend to be libertarian because when you apply a systems analysis approach to what is wrong with government/the system/the world it just turns out that the rational common sense "solutions" all end up falling under the libertarian umbrella. How probable (or improbable) can it be that so many (supposedly/hopefully) smart and rational people can all be wrong?
September 2008 proved to me that anarcho-Captialism not only doesn't work, but that when you remove all effective regulation from any given market people go ape-shit crazy.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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:
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And a lot of that tape prevents fraud, tax cheats, skirting labor laws, and your screwy idea from polluting the environment
You realize that you are replying to a strand which specifically mentioned the removal of limited liability, right?
I suspect that you didnt even consider it a possibility that the real problem with corporations is that their members are not generally treated on a legal level as individuals responsible for their corporate actions.
...excluding people by race color creed and national origin (and perhaps a few more characteristics, depending on juridiction).
Ah yes, the ol' legislate morality bullshit. If in one breath we complain about the dangers of corporate influences on the centralized government and thus the people, then how is it OK that in another we champion special-interest influences on the centralized government and thus the people?
The problem with both corporations and government is the centralization of the very things that shouldnt be centralized. We have corporate welfare on the grandest scale ever, while the government strips us of our rights at the fastest pace ever. You lost your 4th amendment rights just shy of a decade ago, and last month you just lost your 6th amendment rights.
"His name was James Damore."
It is. It's just a difficult science, with little ability to test. Similar to psychology, anthropology, or string physics.
No, you are subsidizing Big Pharma's profits. Their systems are quite functional, even the research aspects.
You miss the point. There are no more tax cheats BECAUSE THERE ARE NO MORE TAXES. There are no more labor laws, because we have unions to stand up for worker's rights. Courts still exist in a libertarian system to punish fraud, and fraud is much better brought to light by investigative journalism and consumer advocate organizations. Also, nice conflation of free market economic with the Jim Crow bullshit social policies. Go fuck yourself on that one. Libertarianism is individualism, which is the OPPOSITE of racism. Hell, the words themselves are opposites.
Also, hilarious that you are defending the current system, with all the damage, environmental and otherwise, that it has caused.
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.
So many things wrong with this idea.
1.) Academic findings benefit all humanity, since they are publicly available. (Read that a couple times.)
2.) I would venture that most scientists are employed outside of academia. (I.E. they're producers..) (Unless you're defining a scientist as someone in a science field that never applies science. That's a rather arbitrary distinction since all applied subjects rely on theoretical constructs, and rife for counter examples.)
3.) There's a fundamental question that your statement begs at. That fundamental question threatens the nature of our civilization. 'Pure' science subjects (theoretical physics, theoretical chemistry, pure math, and so on) are probably best funded by a government. Ideally, they would be conducted in a vacuum outside of the economy (maybe then all results would be trustable). But, short of that, broad reaching government funding probably works best. Even number theory has its applications, and I doubt any developments would be made in number theory without government funding.
4.) Contrast professor pay with industry pay sometime. Be careful to include years of experience, as professor positions require constant research into new areas. A tenured professor probably has dozens of published articles and roughly a decade worth of work experience. In short, they're experts at the top of their fields. In industry, they would be paid at the top end.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
who would you rather have split the atom first? Nazi Germany?
I would have preferred Bell Labs to patent the first nuclear weapon. Then we'd have one company for all countries to 'license' their nuclear weapons from.
What could possibly go wrong?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Well, that's because a number of the views that are qualified as libertarian here are indeed nothing but anarcho-capitalism. They're not even true anarchy, they actually manage to be worse than that.
The main problem with those views is that they start with the premise that government is bad by definition. It isn't - it's a tool we invented to organize our social tendencies. As a result, libertarians who claim that the government is bad by definition fall into the trap that there is never a level where there is too little government. You could always cut back more. Furthermore, they vastly underestimate how much even the basic services they are ok with would cost: DoD, DoJ and State Department.
I'd love to get on board the Libertarian bandwagon - in theory, it should be the ideal place for me: socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Unfortunately, Ayn Rand and her followers have managed to corrupt that term to a degree that it has nothing to do with its classical definition. The reason I bring up Somalia is because it is one of the few places that truly has a weak central government. Even Afghanistan has a stronger central government than they do.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Here is what currently happens in the US. By paying a small fee a corporation and all of its owners or shareholders are granted infinite liability insurance on their personal assets. That is at the crux of the problem with corporations as designed now.That is how many people can get rich while bankrupting a company. Imagine this. You start a company get business loans (usually with government backing) transfer that money to yourself in personal income. You can keep racking up debt while transferring wealth to your person assets. Then fold the business while protecting your "own" assets.
What's the solution? When I built a pool I bought an umbrella policy. The policy should cover my personal liability in case of accident by negligence if someone gets hurt by my fault. The same should apply with corporations. All owners and shareholders should either be personally liable for the company debts or they would have to buy liability insurance on the free market.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
an unregulated economy will end up with results any different than melamine in baby formula
Very few people argue for an unregulated economy. Some argue for government regulation, some argue for market regulation. I sure wouldn't buy baby formula that wasn't certified as safe by a reputable third-party - why would you?
if the choice is free banking [wikipedia.org] or anarcho capitalism [wikipedia.org], well, that's what got us into the recent financial mess
You've got to be kidding - hundreds of thousands of regulations that stifle competition and concentrate banking in the hands of lawyered mega-corporations, and you describe that as either a free market or anarchocapitalist?
The government regulatory cost in the US exceeds the total income tax cost by over 30%. It's perhaps the highest in the world, yet SARBOX was going to protect us from another Enron and all it probably did was contribute to the second Great Depression.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
They may think they are self-starters while not actually being so, just like some also seem to think that they can take the name of George Washington in vain while pushing the agenda of King Goerge III. The philosopy is a mass of naive contradictions - anarchists for aristocracy - and it's a bit of an insult to imply that most engineers think that way.
I don't know about you guys but the code of ethics I signed up for when I was registered as a professional engineer has as the first clause:
That sounds like the definition of the exact opposite of Libertarianism to me.
Austrian economics is not science, since it doesn't use scientific method to obtain its results (they pretty much admit it themselves). Given the unwavering belief in "invisible hand" and "self-regulating free markets" that is essentially dogma for Austrians, I dare say that it has all hallmarks of religion.
Keynesian economics is far from perfect, but at least it's science, and it's a solid basis for further improvement on our predictive ability.
However, there is definitely a trend that many libertarians are engineers (or, more broadly speaking, someone with formal or informal education in "hard" sciences and not humanities).
I think the reason why libertarianism is appealing to software engineers in particular is that we often tend to think in terms of "clean code" and "minimalism is beautiful" - simply put, use the simplest, clearest data structures and algorithms that will do the job. This mode of thinking generally produces good results, but occasionally goes beyond the minimum that's actually necessary for good results - it evolves into minimalism for minimalism's sake, justified at the heart purely by aesthetics, and superficially by mental gymnastics explaining how you "don't really need all that bloat". For a typical example, remember the usual discussion of the merits of IDEs on Slashdot - invariably, a bunch of people will come up and proudly proclaim that all you need to code is Vim. If you start inquiring further, you'll get told that any feature that is present in your-IDE-of-choice but not in Vim is not needed anyway, and that you're an incapable idiot for even thinking about it.
Libertarianism is similar, in that the crux of its argument is that things will be working just as well or better if we get rid of as many regulations as possible, since we "don't need them anyway". If you start pointing out specific examples of how things will be worse for many people if such deregulation is actually implemented in full, libertarians will explain to you that you're wrong to think of the differences as "worse", and they are actually "better" in some higher moral or philosophical way.
You're begging the question. Are these companies left-leaning?
In all three cases, I see an organisation out for profit for itself, at least sometimes, and in my opinion often, at the expense of others. For example, I could hardly call Apple's use of near-slave labour in China a left standpoint.
Google's willingness to let its technology be used by any authoritarian government to gather information on its citizens is hardly left-leaning either; and in case you want to point to the Stalinist regimes of the Cold War, these were run-of-the-mill authoritarian regimes, hardly what any sane Socialist would call 'left'.
So, I'd like to see some proofs that these companies actually promote left values, like increasing the control of the lowly workers over the actual production, instead of a strictly hierarchical structure where wealth and power flows up to the Gates, Ballmers, Jobs and Brins.
The hierarchy may be benevolent, and therefore not actively hostile to left-leaning employees. This, however, does not make them left-leaning themselves. As poisoned as the US political climate is, English is not unique to the United States, and English words like 'Socialism' and 'Left' still have meanings beyond 'Bad' and 'Evil'.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
That's why the dems favor giving ex-cons voting rights while reps typically oppose it.
Or could it just be that the "dems" are morally correct in this case? As a non-US citizen can I just ask why the fuck should ex-convicts not have the right to vote?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it