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

mikestorrent 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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superxpro12 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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hamandcheese 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> If there was really true 'progress', then you wouldn't need a one-party system that suppresses all dissent.

This makes no sense. It is possible for a totalitarian government which is threatened by dissent and concepts like "democracy" to also work in the interest of improving overall quality of life.

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resters an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Snowden's revelations showed that the same stuff exists in the US.

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xtn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are bad things in China, but there is no "social credit" system being used.

	▲	Saline9515 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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

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shimman 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Dude come on, the US already has a social credit system. Where do you think China got the idea of credit scores from? Try getting a good loan in the US if your credit score is under 400. You're barred from having certain jobs if you don't have a good credit score.

Get some new talking points, you're like 40 years out of date.

	▲	Saline9515 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The difference with China is that the US credit score is limited to your banking activities.

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typ 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

If that were the true secret sauce of the economic success in China, why had it not taken off before the 2000s? Like, they have been that "aligned" and "want the same thing" and "run by engineers" since the 50s, no?

	▲	wat10000 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It kind of did. GDP per capita grew at around 6% per year from 1952-1980. It was starting from such a low base that it was still pretty low in 1980, but it was much improved. And Mao was not an engineer.

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mlsu 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you met an engineer? I'd say "being an engineer" is probably the single most predictive trait for authoritarianism in my experience.

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nerdsniper an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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lkbm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Possibly, but it's just as much a predictive trait of being libertarian, which for all its faults, is extremely anti-authoritarian.

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jfengel 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

When libertarian means liberty for everyone, it's anti-authoritarian.

Too often libertarian means liberty for me and not for you. That's authoritarian.

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bb88 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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galangalalgol an hour ago | parent [-]

Not really. Seeing what people do when they get power is as predictable as what they do when given meth.

	▲	nerdsniper 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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eli_gottlieb 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Libertarianism is just privatized authoritarianism.

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SlightlyLeftPad 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.”

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jmknoll 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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-techn...

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BurningFrog an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

China hasn't done much central planning for many decades.