Do Engineering and Science Thrive Better on Political Left or Right?
A parody of rants now common on many South Dakota political blogs.
Western socialistic democracies have much in common with oil-rich Islamic countries. Personal wealth is the unstated dynamo that manages society from top to bottom, but the differences contrast sharply. As the future unfolds, however, will science and engineering flourish better in one environment or the other?
Wikipedia describes a proposed skyscraper (see video) in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai in which each floor will rotate separately to maximize views and exposure to the sun, allowing the shape of the building itself to morph constantly: “Each floor will rotate a maximum of one full rotation in 90 minutes. The entire tower will be powered by wind turbines and solar panels that will also provide electricity to five other buildings in the vicinity. The turbines will be located between each of the rotating floors and could generate up to 1,200,000 kilowatt-hours of energy.”
Sure, the Allies won World War II by breaking the military codes of the Axis powers. Both during and after the war, the US was smart enough to drain the brains of Nazi Germany to build technical infrastructure back home. Perhaps owing to Soviet strength, however, the West seems to have thrown its lot to descendants of the left wing of the French Revolution, resulting in socialistic welfare states.
The United Arab Emirates today has learned to buy technical talent wherever it’s available in the West. Their international students hand over millions to American and European technological universities, who welcome the temporary enrichment. While mainstream politicians here support the loading up of universities with disadvantaged students, the UAE has chosen a more future-likely path when it comes to investing in science and engineering.
After all, the UAE is an absolute monarchy with no elections (“other than the few thousand Dubai citizens participating in the electoral college”), as Wikipedia also reports. It’s a top-down, hierarchical world, free of the the endless squabbling and posturing of Western democracies, where being politically stalemated is the status quo. Does anybody really think that the new GOP-controlled Congress will accomplish anything of importance?
Who will deny that Vermont’s US Senator “Bernie Sanders is right to be outraged” when he says that “We are living in the United States right now at a time when the top one-tenth of 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent”: “One family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns by itself more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people.”
The GOP’s trickle down approach to stoking the economy at the top fits the latest multi-million dollar lottery winners from the lower stratum of society doesn’t it? “Give me the money, and I’ll buy, buy, buy for myself, and give away a lot as philanthropy” we can hear them say. “Jobs will be created, and the economy will grow as I squander freely.” Perfectly okay with careerist mainstream politicians from both parties.
Dubai isn’t about to undermine its own science and engineering establishment. While the West seeks an anything goes or libertarian moral order, places like China and the UAE have taken over the West’s Puritanical past to impose order and discipline on society. Wikipedia notes, for example, that in Dubai “Homosexuality is illegal and the death penalty is one of the punishments for homosexuality. Kissing in public is strictly illegal and can result in deportation. Expats in Dubai have been deported for kissing in public.”
Without the Judeo-Christian Mosaic Law checking moral libertinism, masquerading as freedom of expression in Europe today, is it any wonder that jihadist immigrants have turned to violence as their only means of expression in a one-sided Charlie Ebdo world. If right-wing monarchies can build state-of-the-art skyscrapers, what about military machines?
