While the engineering state propels its country towards growth in infrastructure and manufacturing, the desire to achieve set outcomes can often result in catastrophe.
Engineering an outcome requires control, and often, an application of force against the natural way of things. To function, in fact, this heavy hand of the engineer not only requires seeing the population as an undignified mass rather than a sovereign individual, but also results in inhuman consequences caused by neglect or miscalculation.
Examples of this are not hard to find:
- Poor resource allocation and crippling debt burdens on the poorest regions due to the incentive to build economically unviable projects.
- The one child policy resulting in the forced removal of children from their families, forced and even uninformed sterilization of women, long term demographic pressures
- Drone surveillance of individuals in their homes during the Covid-19 pandemic lock downs.
Sometimes, the only thing scarier than China’s problems are the government’s solutions. The government cannot allow its population to flourish for fear of losing control over them. This in turn holds the government from achieving its long term goals.
Connections
The Psychological Encouragement of The Engineering State
Link Explanation: Like anything else, the engineering state has pros and cons. This link highlights one of the benefits to counter oppose the issues discussed here.
Link Explanation: Framework forcing, discussed in the linked note, is the idea that we often try to fit the world into our preferred frameworks, rather than adapt our frameworks to reality, or select new frameworks to use for our understanding. The engineering state seems more prone to this than other states and seems to be a direct cause of many of China’s issues such as the one-child policy or debt caused by the “growth at all costs” mentality.
Reference
� Breakneck