Michael Barnes
I went in expecting this book to be a series of examples of how having engineers in positions of Authority contrasted to having lawyers in positions of authority which seems to be the centre and repeated thesis of the book, but the book took a more generalist view. Its focus seemed to be how engineers in charge lead to China being engaged in social engineering and lawyers in the US block everything. It's argument obviously more descriptive than that and interesting it was the descriptions of how the US functioned that sounded so simplistic that meant I had doubts about how reflective of China were its descriptions. An interesting highlight was how much of China's success the author attributes to a community of process knowledge which I found intriguing. The book concludes with a plea for each of the superpowers to adopt some of each other's pathologies. Interesting read.
I went in expecting this book to be a series of examples of how having engineers in positions of Authority contrasted to having lawyers in positions of authority which seems to be the centre and repeated thesis of the book, but the book took a more generalist view. Its focus seemed to be how engineers in charge lead to China being engaged in social engineering and lawyers in the US block everything. It's argument obviously more descriptive than that and interesting it was the descriptions of how the US functioned that sounded so simplistic that meant I had doubts about how reflective of China were its descriptions. An interesting highlight was how much of China's success the author attributes to a community of process knowledge which I found intriguing. The book concludes with a plea for each of the superpowers to adopt some of each other's pathologies. Interesting read.