Has The World Gone Mad?

So a narrow majority of people voted for Brexit, and Trump won the US election. The filter bubble of Guardian readers such as myself is full of opinions on these issues based on an axiom that half of the US and UK population are therefore clearly hateful, stupid, misogynistic, islamophobic racists. Has the world gone mad? Has half of it?

Closer to professional interests, there are the activists/extremists of the American Engineering Association. They sound a bit Trumpist/ protectionist/anti-immigrant sometimes too, but their concerns are a mixed bag:

“Age Discrimination and lifelong career, loss of U.S. manufacturing and engineering jobs, Off-shoring of technical, engineering and manufacturing work , reduction in U.S. productivity, utilization of engineers, skill enhancement opportunities, U.S. Home Security, H-1B legislation, importation of foreign workers, college recruitment of foreign students, portable pensions, health care programs, salary compression & unpaid overtime, Engineer Shortage Propaganda, promote tax incentives for U.S. corporations, R & D, investment in technology”

What do all the AEA, Brexit and Trump have in common? To put it in terms which hopefully don't get me automatically lumped in with the "old Northern white van men with St George Cross flags outside their former council houses" who my fellow Guardian readers think voted for Brexit: they are against globalisation, and its inevitable consequence of loss of manufacturing jobs to low wage economies, and US employers having too strong a hand in labour relations.

They are also (less acceptably in polite circles) against its second equally obvious consequence- the pressure for a migration of workers from these low wage economies into high wage ones.

The link between these society wide problems and engineering seems clear. So much of engineering is linked to manufacturing industry, and so much of manufacturing in the West has moved East and South. Those in the UK and US who work in manufacturing industry at all levels are in fundamentally insecure employment in direct competition with workers in low-wage economies. The manufacturing jobs which have moved abroad have not been replaced by jobs as well paid or well suited to those who used to work in mines and steelworks or on production lines. 

I'm not for hate, stupidity, misogyny, islamophobia or racism. I voted to remain in the EU. I'm the child of an economic immigrant to the UK, and my own children are partly Algerian. I spent my youth as a left-wing political activist, and I still read the Guardian. I do not own a white van or a St. George Cross, and I do not live in a former council house with a Kentucky door and a wagon wheel outside. But I think that the AEA, Brexiteers, and Trumpists are right about something, and their being wrong about so many other things cannot blind me to the fact.

Firstly, they are right about how they feel. They feel that they have been ignored, that their reasonable concerns are dismissed by lumping them in with the most extreme proponents of those ideas. Identity politics and filter bubbles have killed society-wide political discourse. Many of those who voted for Trump and Brexit kept it a guilty secret, just as working-class Thatcher supporters did back in the 80s when the deindustrialisation project was started.

Secondly, they are right about the fact that the consequences of globalisation and the radical decline in manufacturing industry in the UK and US are felt most keenly at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. I don't just mean what is left of the traditional working class now that we have shut all of our mines, factories, and bulk chemical plants. I mean the descendants of those who thought that they had escaped from the working class, and now find that their positions are insecure, what has been referred to in the UK as the “squeezed middle”

It is an uncomfortable truth that people generally act as their emotions drive them to, and then rationalise the decision afterwards. I'm not just talking about Brexiters and Trumpists. Their generally-more-educated opponents were by and large no more logical. They were just more educated, so they could make a more-rational and less-self-interested sounding post-hoc argument. As far as I can see, it was all about Project Fear on both sides - the only difference was what it was that they were scared of.

But this is not the place to go too far into Politics, so I will return to the issue of the AEA. They are against age discrimination, and many other issues I agree with them on. They however want to keep foreign engineers out of US engineering practice. I'm not with them on this, but I do understand their fear of losing their jobs (even though I am not at risk of this myself, I was unemployed back in the 80s, and I wouldn't want to go back there).

I also understand their feeling of being ignored when your views conflict with the set of axioms which are more comfortable for the people in power. The AEA rail against the genuine myth of the STEM shortage, a myth which is promoted tirelessly by employers and academia for self-interested reasons. Even a broken clock is right once a day, and too-easy dismissal of unpopular or uncomfortable views like those of the AEA is what has brought us these political upheavals.

The world has not gone mad. The AEA’s concerns are those of many affected by globalisation and the loss of manufacturing industry. Half of our fellow citizens have voted against a system in which they see no hope for betterment for themselves or their kids. They have done so just as rationally and self-interestedly as those who voted the other way. Calling them all mad, bad and stupid won't help us to understand the genuine concerns of the majority who are none of these things.

If the engineering institutions wish to avoid similar upheaval, they need to start noticing their own uncomfortable truths.

These are:

There is no shortage of engineers, though there will always be a shortage of excellent engineers who will work for peanuts as far as engineering employers are concerned. There is a massive surplus of engineering grads, as the engineering institutions own data tells them.

There is no shortage of applicants for university engineering programmes, other than at the bottom of the perceived quality scale. There is a massive surplus of applicants, as the universites own data tells them.

The average member of an engineering institution has no interest in the institution beyond obtaining or maintaining professional registration. The institutions can see that their members are disengaged, but disparage the members for this.

Their lack of engagement does not however show that they agree with the activity of the institution, its subscription charges, or any erosion of the definition of "engineer". The staff and elected officers of our institutions however act as if they had a strong mandate to do as they see fit.

Many of those inside engineering institutions exist in a filter bubble from which these truths are excluded. This is not a sustainable situation.

Despite the popular will to do so, the desire to reverse globalisation in the UK and US does not seem very doable, (which is strange in the case of the AEA because engineers are all about doability).

Making globalisation work for engineers in particular, and a higher proportion of the citizens of the UK and US in general is clearly the challenge. What are we going to do about it?

Engineers might start by exposing the myth of the STEM shortage, and the consequent oversupply of engineering grads, and continue by keeping the letters "CEng" for real engineers.