What % of your classmates changed majors away from engineering?

sakky
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:48:41 +0000

The real goal is to create a better situation for the median citizen. Not create a better situation for engineers. More engineers means more innovation. A simple look at patent production makes this exceedingly clear.





Higher engineering salaries is not the goal. More economic growth is the goal.



Fair enough, then we’re talking about different things. I was talking about how to make individual engineers better off. You don’t seem to be interested in that, and that’s fine.

However, getting back to the spirit of this thread, I don’t think the individual engineer really cares about making the world better off, at least, not primarily. He cares about making himself better off. He’s primarily interested in putting food on the table for his own family, not somebody else’s family.



In the short term yes. However, in the long term I would have to disagree. South Korea did not always have a lot of engineering jobs. Japan did not always have a lot of engineering jobs. Neither did Israel.



I would argue that what happened in those countries is that they enacted policies to greatly increase the demand for engineers. For example, it’s quite clear in the case of Israel that much of their engineering demand comes from their military-industrial complex. However, Israel also created policies that allowed military technologies to be successfully commercialized, hence increasing the private sector demand for engineers. Japan and S Korea also engaged in industrial policy to increase their export-oriented businesses, hence, also increasing their demand for engineers.



Producing more lawyers does not create more law jobs.



Well, actually, I think it does. After all, more lawyers generally means ever-more-complicated laws and regulations, as well as entities suing each other, which therefore necessitates even more lawyers to deal with the increasing complexity and to defend yourself from those lawsuits, etc.



More engineers means more innovation. A simple look at patent production makes this exceedingly clear.



Ha! There is actually a long-standing debate as to whether patents actually truly means greater innovation, or actually less innovation. Keep in mind that a patent doesn’t give you the ‘right’ to commercialize a particular technology. Not exactly. All it does is prevent others from commercializing a particular technology. Hence, it is a “negative” right. Hence, patents are often times used to actually impede innovation, as somebody may not be actively pursuing his patented technology, but will legally prevent anybody else from also pursuing that technology, hence hindering the overall rate of innovation. What makes the situation even worse are those ‘patent ■■■■■ houses’, who are nothing more than stockpiles of patents, who do nothing more than sue other companies who they deem to be violating their patents, but who do not pursue any technology commercialization themselves. It also forces inventors and tech firms to engage in costly and time-consuming patent searches to make sure that they are not inadvertently violating a patent that they didn’t even know existed.

Hence, it’s actually not clear whether more patents corresponds to greater innovation or not. *In theory *, the patent system is supposed to provide economic incentives via a temporary monopoly for inventors to develop and commercialize intellectual property. However, in reality, much of the current patent system has devolved into an arena for companies to sue/blackmail each other over alleged patent infringement, and the winner is often times simply whoever happens to be able to afford the best lawyers. It’s a fantastic system for the lawyers, but whether it helps the engineers, or society as a whole is questionable.