A premium would be placed on doing things smarter, through better engineering applied to all aspects of production. Products would be designed to minimize the consumption of scarce natural resources and to maximize resource recovery at the end of their useful life.
The use of hydrocarbons for fuel would be dramatically curtailed. Energy efficiency in manufacturing, homes, and transportation would be vigorously pursued. (I’m not trying to sound like John Lennon here, really!)įactories the world over would be non-polluting. Imagine how world industry would be transformed if this principle were widely put into practice. The Japanese statistician and engineer, Genichi Taguchi, formulated a principal that products and processes should be designed to minimize their cost to society. In the best of worlds, humanity will have learned a lesson from this recent experience and will rethink that motivation driving this past bubble that led people to pursue their immediate and narrow self-interest. One of the outcomes of the recent US presidential election is the widely shared perception that the time of easy money is over and we must work collaboratively and intelligently toward the common good. It seems to me that, by and large, their career choice has been driven more by the intrinsic satisfaction of doing engineering than by seeing it as a means to an end. In final analysis, they delight from the pursuit of the greater good rather than the greater fool, unlike our finance industry. They share a joy from making things more efficient. It’s been my observation that engineers are people who revel in the process of creating things of lasting value and improving them. So what does all this have to do with engineering? Without a doubt the easy access to wealth, power, and prestige was an important attraction for this career choice.įine. This investment banking industry, awash with money, has attracted many of the brightest graduates of the top universities in the US for some time. The recent asset bubble involved financial instruments promoted by firms with some of the most hallowed names on Wall Street and were assured to be of high quality by the credit rating agencies, that were supposed to represent the pinnacle of financial prudence.
This editor cannot but notice the stark contrast between the motivations of the folks in the investment banking industry, whose machinations have contributed mightily to the situation we are now in, and that of most of the engineers I have met in my career.Īt their best, the investment bankers of the world have moved capital across borders to fund worthy enterprises that have competent managers, a good business plan, and a market for their goods or services.Īt their worst, and we have had many examples of that in recent months, they have fueled a speculative bubble that has led to the mass destruction of wealth. Even after the world economy picks up again, the world will certainly face an era of greater scarcity. Unfortunately, it is now clear that, no matter how the credit markets fare, there will be a recession. At the time of this writing (mid-November), it appears that significant progress has been made toward avoiding a global financial collapse and that we now have a good chance of avoiding that fate.
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