pull down to refresh
122 sats \ 31 replies \ @SimpleStacker OP 25 Jun \ parent \ on: Are software engineers more likely to be socialist? AskSN
So you think it comes from a place of thinking that society just needs to be engineered by smart people and then we'd all be happy
Yep, it’s just run of the mill technocracy, which they’re basically unaware has failed repeatedly already or they think it failed because the “right” people were never in charge.
reply
I think you are basically right....but as a Gen-Xer who has been in tech since the late 80s, it wasn't always like this.
The tech scene was decidedly libertarian borderline AnCap from 80s - mid-2000s.
I mean reddit was basically Ron Paul HQ Central at its founding.
reply
When/how did things start to change?
reply
reply
When did the economics sub Reddit purge all the Ron Paul libertarians?
2009? 2010?
reply
Yeh, I think it was around 2010.
Over the course of a few months most of the mod team was replaced. It went from a place that was about 60/40 austrian to keynesian content to >95% keynesian.
Haven't been back there in many years, so not sure what the current slant is (betting it hasn't changed that much)
I'm not sure. I didn't start using Reddit until much later. By then you had to go to more fringe subs like ancap, although libertarian was still ok.
I know that many young people see the events of 2008 as a failure of capitalism. Perhaps that's why?
reply
And they probably view 2016 and 2024 as a failure of democracy. Or voters failed democracy by voting for fascism.
- Bush
- Iraq
- Obama
- news. YCombinator. com asturfing
is what happened, imo
reply
reply
Operation Wall Street was coopted by the feds. Turned it into feminism, gay rights, trans rights. There's a meme that compares transsexualism with nerds to crack in the 80s
reply
That’s interesting. Maybe once it became a major profession the types of people pursuing it changed.
reply
that seems like a very plausible hypothesis
reply
Reddit is a good example of how echo chambers are created by purging dissent.
I made a comment on Reddit recently in north county San Diego subreddit. I quoted a passage from WSJ editorial. One reply was you demonstrated that you get your news from social media.
Where do kids get their news today? Please tell me it’s not corporate legacy media
reply
I assume they get their news from online influencers.
reply
YouTube
TikTok
Instagram
Snap chat
reply
No, the issue stems from the university system these engineers are coming out of. It’s part of a broader trend among graduates. They’re taught that capitalism and corporations are inherently evil, even as they draw six-figure salaries from those same companies.
reply
reply
He probably means from other humanities or social science courses.
It's rare for economics to be required specifically and, as bad as mainstream econ can be, econ courses are not likely to directly advocate communism.
reply
I'm not exactly unbiased, but I think at least one econ course should be required of every college graduate.
Since we justify public funding of education by saying it's required to have informed citizens, we should at least train them in the subject most useful for understanding how the world works.
reply
I've always suspected that's precisely why it's not required.
reply
Intro to microeconomics should be a requirement
reply
reply
Most intro courses, at least for micro, are largely free market oriented. In part that's just because it's easier to teach the principles that way, sort of like introductory physics being frictionless.
reply
Even beyond teaching free market principles, I just think it's useful for people to practice thinking through economic logic, like the effect of taxes and tariffs.
You don't have to agree with everything, but at least you should have some basic practice thinking through first and second order effects, and realizing that the world is dynamic and that people will behaviorally respond to policy.
Yes that engineers have central planning tendencies. I can write a program to optimize society whatever the hell that means
Definitely related to technocratic ambitions
Edit: I should have said technocratic hubris
reply
deleted by author
reply
At least one of the people I'm thinking of didn't go to college, so I'm not sure that's it.
reply