With all the news about the 60th celebration, everyone, including Scott Adams has China on his mind. His latest blog post is rather thought-provoking. An excerpt below:
The bad news for China is that their up-and-coming leaders have backgrounds in law, economics, and history. In time, the lawyers will start passing lots of laws that individually make sense while collectively strangling the business sector in red tape. The economists will all disagree with each other, and the historians will be planning for the past. So China is pretty much doomed. But they had a good run.
Reading beyond the cynicism, I believe there might be some truth to it. Engineering training focuses on problem solving and rational thinking and empirical experiments. There is one absolute truth and the mission is to find it. Liberal arts and social sciences emphasize critical thinking, historical evidence and idealogies. It is about making arguments to support a model or a theory. And of course, you got to pick your position first. You’re either Keynesian or monetarists or austrian.
So yes, it will be interesting to see whether China will continue to be ran on a formula going forward. I suppose either approach has its benefits and limitations (the engineer in me talking).
Whenever someone touts the idea of engineers running the world, I always respond with two words: Jimmy Carter.
Hmm… yes, jimmy carter. good point.