Add to that a proof of receipt mechanism using a webbug.
(Edit: a webbug is a small image with a unique identifier that is downloaded by the client when the document is shown, assuming that image loading is enabled)
It's harder to be corrupt if you have to argue technically why your decisions will improve the economy.
Engineers and Scientists value the truth, whereas Lawyers value a convincing argument whether it is true or not. Think about their jobs: you can't convince reality you're right, but you can convince a jury.
I think you'd find it much harder to create feedback models of the economy which just happen to predict the best thing to do is to "Give Goldman Sachs a bonus to fix the economy", than it is to come up with some unprovable scare-mongering which terrifies the politicians into doing just that.
So yes, engineers or scientists would probably be more trustworthy running the economy as long as they stay true to the discipline.
There's another way of being "scientific" when it comes to policy. Instead of having a bunch of crooks in positions of power deciding for everyone, why not have the government designing markets and institutions that work, leaving the decision-making for the people?
The scientific approach to government should not be the USSR over-centralization. It should be intelligent design. Create the incentives, set the rules, and step back when the games begin.
Do you live in NYC or a similarly large city? I think you'd see that engineers (specifically, in the building & construction trades) can be just as corrupt as the next guy (and we're talking people's safety here, not the kind of corruption that doesn't harm others so much, like fake parking permits).
Yes, this is very good. A clear definition will help most developers not waste resources on executing a great idea only to see it rejected later. The light of day clears up many issues.
The US Savings Rate briefly fell into negative territory in Q2/Q3 of 2005. It has been positive in all other quarters. In 2008 it was well above 2%. People quote the low US savings rate like it's a doomsday scenario but in reality, it's a rational decision when your interest rates have been below 5% for a decade or more. Saving money when you make 1% on it is actually losing money due to inflation.
Why the Germans save as much as they do with such a low interest rate is a topic for another discussion.
Pruning trees helps them. Parasitic insects cannot enter through dead limbs. There's enough space for new shoots to grow. And they don't break in the snow or the wind.
Pruning back overgrown cities seems very sensible to me. If you don't want to move, you get to live in the countryside!
How many other things did you have that broke? Oh, you probably don't remember them because they weren't around very long and don't evoke strong happy memories.
You can't rebut an argument about lack of data and selective memory with anecdotes.
Nope. I have kept every computer I've owned ever since the ZX81. And none of them has broken. Perhaps I'm lucky... But chips used to be rated to last 25 years, and by the time I left the semiconductor industry it was down to 5. Why? Yield. But I'm sure you've worked on chip design and have more experience on this topic than I do...
You forgot Open Office which they bought and opened up and which has changed the competitive landscape in many ways. I'm struck by the number of non-geeks I know who use it daily.
SPARC was a great architecture, and the Sun workstations of yesteryear were where a lot of cutting edge research was done... It'll be interesting to see how many more OpenSolaris features Darwin picks up (ZFS?). It has dtrace already.
Darwin already pickup up ZFS. You can mount zfs volumes in OS X 10.5. You can patch the kernel module of OS X desktop to write to them (but don't, its really slow).
I use Open Office EVERY DAY. Let me say this.... succinctly:
OpenOffice the single worst piece of open source software available in any official repository. It is buggy, unfriendly, bloated, unreliable, and generally behaves in manners that do not make any sense. Crash and burn one boot, load fine the next.
Finding the simplest solution to a problem is hard, but because it seems simple in hindsight, only those competent in the art can recognize a brilliant solution.
This is just another example of "bullshit baffles brains" and that it takes competence to recognize competence.
The feelings will always come back. The question is whether they are overwhelming or rootless, and that is a question of view. The various forms of insight meditation help see through the solidity of experience.
(Edit: a webbug is a small image with a unique identifier that is downloaded by the client when the document is shown, assuming that image loading is enabled)