What % of your classmates changed majors away from engineering?

Mr_Payne
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:12:45 +0000

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.

The point was that engineering employment can grow. Additional government coaxing might be needed. Simply put, the average citizen in our country depends on staying competitive at the highest level of value creation.



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.

Fair enough. I believe engineers create far more value to the US economy than lawyers do. That is all my point was trying to convey.



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.

I’m just using patent production as a proxy for technical innovation. Your treatise on patents is a good explanation, but says nothing about my argument. More engineers lead to more patents. More patents is a good proxy for the amount of technical innovation occurring in an economy. Certainly countries with no patent production are generally in very bad shape.

Technical innovation is the quickest way to gain wealth on a countrywide scale (other than using natural resources, but that is a game of luck). It’s a virtual prerequisiste for becoming an OECD nation.