China is run by engineers. America is run by lawyers

Age, Cognitive Decline, and “Gerontocracy”

• Large subthread argues America’s problem is age more than lawyers: proposals for hard age caps (often 60–75) for Congress, executive offices, and Supreme Court.
• Supporters say very old politicians lack “skin in the game,” won’t live to see long‑term consequences, and are often out of touch with modern life and tech.
• Opponents call absolute statements like “anyone above 75 isn’t all there” ageist, stressing wide individual variation and pointing out many unfit young people.
• Structural factors raised: incumbency advantage, party machines (especially Democrats), corporate money, aging electorate, and party‑over‑person voting keep very old leaders in office.
• Some see symmetric age discrimination (too young / too old) as pragmatically accepted in law; others draw analogies to racism to argue it’s morally suspect.

Old Institutions and Constitutional “Age”

• Some commenters argue the deeper U.S. problem is an aging constitutional framework with entrenched features (e.g., Electoral College, 2nd Amendment) that are hard to reform.
• Others counter that very old legal systems (e.g., UK tradition) show age alone isn’t the issue; rather, U.S. constitutional change is unusually difficult, producing stagnation.

Is China Actually Run by Engineers?

• Multiple comments dispute the premise: China is described as run by the Communist Party and ultimately by Xi, not by engineers as a professional class.
• Others note many senior CCP officials have engineering or technical degrees and operate an engineering‑style feedback loop: central targets, local experimentation, promotion by measured performance.
• Chinese commenters emphasize that historically the country is run by officials/bureaucrats, not craftsmen/engineers, and warn HN readers romanticize authoritarian “competence.”
• Discussion of perverse incentives: GDP and other metrics as targets produced overbuilding, waste, “ghost towns,” and selective anti‑corruption used as a political weapon.
• Comparison to Soviet engineer‑heavy leadership is raised; technocracy alone does not prevent dysfunction or repression.

Building Capacity: China vs. U.S.

• Many see China’s speed in infrastructure, EVs, solar, and robotics as linked to technocratic industrial policy: heavy subsidies, protected domestic markets, then brutal consolidation.
• U.S. is portrayed as legally and politically gridlocked: NIMBYism, environmental review, and litigation make it hard to build transit and housing, though critics say “America builds plenty” outside those areas.
• Some argue China’s speed relies on authoritarian powers (forced relocations, weaker labor and environmental protections); others stress China still faces local resistance and legal constraints, just fewer veto points.

Lawyers, Engineers, and Who Really Runs Things

• Several threads argue the U.S. is effectively run by corporate lawyers, MBAs, and finance, not elected officials per se; legal departments shape corporate (and thus political) decisions.
• Others defend lawyer‑politicians as natural in a system whose core product is law, warning that swapping in engineers wouldn’t fix capture, corruption, or polarization.
• Materialist takes: China as manufacturing‑oriented yields engineer‑heavy elites; U.S. as rent‑seeking and financialized yields lawyer‑ and finance‑dominated elites.

Meta: Freakonomics, Ideology, and Blame

• Freakonomics is criticized as smuggling conservative / Chicago‑school frames to liberal audiences; others see it as broadly centrist and data‑driven.
• Debate over whether “progressives” caused U.S. anti‑building regulations; several insist the true culprits are cross‑partisan NIMBYism and long‑running neoliberal policy, not a powerful left that barely exists in U.S. governance.