Chris Zell wrote:
Is China an experiment in governance that no one has noticed? Specifically, Rulership by Engineers! It seems that the majority of Chinese leaders have degrees in various engineering disciplines rather than the sort of background found elsewhere in the world amidst political leadership ( as in the US - where former movie actors, community organizers, inept cronies, minority extortionists, ex beauty queens, and outright thieves are preferred to lead the nation).
We had an engineer as president. We had one of the most distinguished, best engineers of the early 20th century: Herbert Hoover. Not only was he a brilliant engineer, he also organized the largest and most effective famine relief in history, in Europe after First World War. His name literally entered some languages as a term for helping people, "to hoover." (No kidding.) As Secretary of Commerce he went on to re-organize and standardized U.S. industry from top to bottom, in the biggest and most activist government intervention in industry up to that time. He is still considered the most effective and activist Secretary of Commerce in history.
However, he wasn't very good at politics, and when the U.S. economy collapsed, he did a lousy job trying to rescue it. In the U.S. his name became infamous with the opposite meaning: "hooverville"; a place where society dumps and then ignores starving, desperate citizens. It is also ironic that he refused to intervene in industry when the problem was people and unemployment, rather than screw pitches and mattress sizes (two of the things he standardized).
During the Great Depression many people advocated governance by engineers, in the "technocracy" movement. Based on my experience with engineers and scientists I think it would be terrible idea. I'll take movie actors and community organizers any day, because they tend to know more about human nature. They also know how to win elections and rally support for their policies, which is crucial to success. Hoover was clueless about society, people, and economics. He made many comments bearing this out, perhaps most famously in in his memoirs when he wrote that during the Depression many people "left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples" on the street.
I do not think the present government of China is doing a good job, and I would not wish that government on any nation. China is thriving because of its people, despite the government and the political system.
- Jed
