Ask HN: Writing DSL in Python - <AUTHOR> Hey Hackers,
I was reading this blog article http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2006/4/20/writing-domain-specific-languages
and I've no idea how can one go about writing a DSL in Python. I've rudimentary knowledge of Python and I'm interesting in writing a DSL just for fun and knowledge. Can anyone please point out what do I need to learn to be able to write a DSL in Python? Any help is appreciated. <comment><USER3> Study up on context managers, decorators, and meta-classes, which will assist in creating DSLs. However, you don't really need to use these features to build DSLs.

The use of method chaining (think jQuery) can lead to interesting languages.

Or, take Django's chaining for making queries. User.objects.filter(first_name='Andrew').order_by('last_name')

Or, you can get more complicated and do something like described at: <http://code.activestate.com/recipes/534150/>

EDIT: s/be vital/assist/ on line 1.

<comment><USER4> > _Study up on context managers, decorators, and meta-classes, which will be > vital to creating DSLs. However, you don't really need to use these features > to build DSLs._

Make your mind up. Either they're vital or they're not. You can't have both.

<comment><USER3> No. I won't make my mind up. I'm not providing a recipe for DSLs in Python. I'm simply stating ingredients and saying "now go create."

<comment><USER5> I think he/she was more criticizing that you effectively said "X, Y and Z are vital" and then "But X, Y and Z are not vital."

If you'd said "useful" instead of "vital" it'd have been fine logically, but "vital" implies necessity.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I ended up editing the original post when I realized it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would recommend taking a quick look at how SCons and Conary use python. You may also want to consider implementing your DSL using a python parser generator such as Ply.

SCons - <http://www.scons.org/doc/HTML/scons-man.html#lbBB>

Conary - <http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary:Recipe_Structure>

Ply - [http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/NBN/parsing_with_ply...](http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/NBN/parsing_with_ply.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I still haven't quite grasped the concept behind what a DSL really is, and what makes your code a DSL versus any other program or API. Any insight that can be offered, especially in the context of something other than Ruby and Lisp? I just want to know what all the hubbub is about, and why it matters to me?

<comment><USER8> There's multiple definitions, so what follows is not authoritative, but IMHO it will help you understand the field better, as well as why so many people seem to be talking past each other as they silently adopt one definition while arguing with someone based on another.

A strong DSL is a specialized language designed for a specific task, with its own parser and syntax not directly based on another language. Ideally, it is not Turing complete, because that opens a huge can of worms, and much of the point of a strong DSL is to avoid this can of worms. The DSL should be carefully designed in conjunction with the eventual users, who most likely will not be programmers. I've heard of impressive results with this approach, but I've never witnessed them firsthand. This definition is favored by Martin Fowler, and much less importantly/impressively, me.

Weak DSLs are basically APIs written such that in their target containing language, the calls into the API read conversationally and with minimal boilerplate not directly related to the domain of the problem. In general (and I emphasize that I am generalizing), they can't be used to their full power without understanding the containing language, so you still need to be a programmer, albeit perhaps with less experience. You may see demos on the home page for the DSL about how it is possible to use without knowing the containing language, but it tends to be demoware; much of the gain is intrinsically that you still have a full Turing-complete language backing you up.

People will bikeshed about punctuation and claim that Ruby can build better weak DSLs, but in my experience, like I said, you still have to understand the containing language to really use the language, so the virtue of dropping off punctuation marks is oversold; the syntactic constructs are still there and you still need to understand them, so whether you actually see them in source is much more a matter of taste than a matter of "goodness".

Mixing people who use different definitions of DSL is a recipe for much heat and no light. It should also be pointed out that the strong DSL people make certain claims about why DSLs are good, along with the reasons why these things are true, and these claims should not be carelessly translated to weak DSLs.

While I use the terms "strong" and "weak", they should be understood as descriptive, not a claim of goodness, much like "strong AI" and "weak AI".

If you look at a weak DSL and wonder what the deal is, it is because rather than a magical technology, it is merely a style of API... there really _isn't_ much "there" there, but it can be useful in some cases. I would never write a weak DSL for a DSL's sake, though; just evolve the API and see what happens.

Personally, I think it is a continuum between "API" and "weak DSL", not a binary distinction, but for "strong DSL", I would say that if you're backing to a full Turing complete language like Ruby, you do not have a strong DSL and should not expect to reap the benefits. (Which is good, since you're not paying the price, either. Nothing is free.)

<comment><USER9> Examples of successful Strong DSL (ie. standalone) are James Gosling's project for satellite control (I think it was), which he did so that users could make their own changes without bothering him (I doubt details are online - <USER2> mentioned it in an interview as a virtual machine that was a precursor to Java).

Our own pg also had a DSL for the Yahoo Store (was viaweb), so users could customize it. From the docs, it looks like it is implemented as Lisp with isomorphic friendlier syntactic sugar.

On weak DSLs (ie within a host language), I still think it's a virtue to _try_ to make it as self-contained as possible. Mini-languages are surprisingly common: regular expressions; printf format syntax; XPath within XSLT. I saw a great comment recently [1] suggesting having DS _error messages_. I think this is an oft-overlooked aspect of the abstraction (it's not just syntax!), and to make the abstraction as non-leaky as possible helps everyone (programmer and non-programmer alike).

[1] [http://debasishg.blogspot.com/2008/04/external-dsls-made- eas...](http://debasishg.blogspot.com/2008/04/external-dsls-made-easy-with- scala.html?showComment=1208530020000#c8620585676360683177)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it just means writing a programming language but a little one. So use pyparsing as your parser. The May 2008 Python magazine has a good article on making an interpreter/compiler for brainf*ck using PyParsing.

<comment><USER11> I've really enjoyed using PyParsing. O'Reilly has a ShortCut book on it that is worthwhile. <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514235/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have implemented two languages in Python, one a DSL, the other a general- purpose language. Both times I used the SPARK parsing framework <http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/spark/> which I recommend.

</comment><comment><USER12> I ran into this a while back:

<http://blog.brianbeck.com/post/53538107/python-dsl-i>

</comment><comment><USER13> I used yapps2 for the DSL parts of GameClay. It's probably not the best Python parser generator out there, but it was installable via apt, simple to use, and familiar to people who have used Antlr. Had a simple DSL written in 2 days.

Also, if it's just a quick-n-dirty hack, don't underestimate the power of regexp/split() parsing. Yeah, everyone says you shouldn't do it, and you probably shouldn't if you're planning on maintaining things for a while, but you can get going _really_ fast without learning any additional tools. And for maybe 80-90% of the things you'd use a DSL for, it's perfectly adequate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Although I got excited about it at first, I've come to the conclusion that this DSL stuff is seriously overrated. I've seen few successful examples and many silly ones.

There are certainly good little specialized languages -- Common Lisp's LOOP is an example, as are regular expressions -- but these are for programmers, not domain experts.

</comment><comment><USER15> You could look at SQLAlchemy, Storm, Schevo, or Nevow Stan. Or even BeautifulSoup's element-finding.

</comment><comment><USER16> No joke: take a look at the LOLpython source for an example of creating a variant language that can compile to Python bytecode. It's one of many methods to create a DSL, though you often don't need access to all of Python in the DSL itself.

</comment><comment><USER17> You can customize the behaviour of Python objects in ways which may allow you to implement DSLs (for example, by responding to arbitrary messages, or by constructing callables).

A good example to look at might be <https://storm.canonical.com/> which utilizes every trick in the book to allows you to write SQL-like queries in Python.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://github.com/galvez/gae-rest/tree/master/xmlbuilder.py></comment>


IOS7 Missing Api: Mouse support - <AUTHOR> http://rouge41.com/ios8/2013/09/29/ios7-missing-api.html

<comment><USER2> This, to me, seems to be thinking completely backward.

1) Everything Apple does is "wireless". This guy is talking about docks and cables? Never heard of Airplay? Bluetooth? iCloud/Dropbox/Box.net/Azure? Just reading this makes me think the author lives in the 20th century, and not in the 21st.

2) for a lot of people, an iPad already is a desktop replacement. Email? Check. Skype? Check. Games? Check. Basic word processing? Check. Printing? Check.

3) a mouse? Seriously? Why would you need that? For things like 3D modelling, advanced image editing (photoshop etc) - yes, there they are a perfect match. But other uses? Smartphones and tablets are personal devices, they mostly serve the person that carries the device. It's functionality is pointed at making things convenient for the user. This is not a device that will replace a workstation. Nothing will, it has become damn good in what it does, but not everybody needs all that functionality. Fewer and fewer end-users will get their own personal computer in the future, and do everything on their phone (a situation like this already exists in Japan) or tablet. They don't need a mouse for that.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to Robert Cringley iOS 7 includes Bluetooth mouse support: [http://www.cringely.com/2013/09/19/the-secret-of- ios-7/](http://www.cringely.com/2013/09/19/the-secret-of-ios-7/). However, I haven't seen this confirmed anywhere. I would like to know where he heard this and hear more about how it works. Any links on this would be great!

<comment><AUTHOR> you can check the macrumors tread [http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1642770](http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1642770) . I've read the ios7 doc and even if the device pair, there is no api to access it.</comment></comment>


The Misanthrope Society: A Taipei bar for people who dislike humankind - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/taipei-bar-the-misanthrope-society/index.html <comment><USER2> I hate people too but especially misanthropes.</comment>


Polygon goes to Poland (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/7/16/5885167/poland-game-industry <comment><USER2> A really well done take on the country's history, though in a completely different tone: [http://warsawrising.eu/](http://warsawrising.eu/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Semi-related anecdote: I just visited Poland for my first time, and what shocked me the most (aside from how cheap beer is compared to Canada) is the cost of cellular data:

5 złoty for a SIM card with 1GB of data (approx. $1.36 USD / $1.79 CAD). 10 złoty for 3GB. Incredible!

<comment><USER4> I'm Polish and seeing the prices in Germany was my first small culture shock. :) 20 euro for a mere 1GB that doesn't work more often than it does, ridiculous.

Also, what's worse is that you have to give the cell company all your personal information before they let you use your sim card! How is that not scandalous to people here is beyond me.

<comment><USER5> > seeing the prices in Germany was my first small culture shock.

It's like being in a third world country. Hey Germans, my _babcia_ in Poland has better mobile internet than you!

> How is that not scandalous to people here is beyond me.

And yet they love to brag how important the privacy is and how they do protect it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > When Hitler ordered that Poland's capital be razed to the ground, the German > military took him literally. After the war, less than 10 percent of Warsaw > was left standing.

Here you can see how bad it really was: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3aGiurRbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3aGiurRbQ)

It's a 3D reconstruction created by leading Polish computer animation studio based on aerial views taken in 1945.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Wroclaw was one of the few Polish cities that survived the war relatively > unscathed.

Wrocław was destroyed in 70%. The current Wrocław is basically a Polish interpretation of how a former German city looked like. Still beautiful though.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmm... I get a redirect loop when I try to click the link.

</comment><comment><USER8> If it seems like tl;dr a summary of the report is here: [http://culture.pl/en/article/what-we-can-learn-from- polygons...](http://culture.pl/en/article/what-we-can-learn-from-polygons- trip-to-poland)

</comment><comment><USER9> Might want to add a "(2014)" to the title.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, added. Interesting that this article didn't appear on HN at the time.

<comment><USER8> It was posted a few times before: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=polygon%20poland&sort=byPopula...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=polygon%20poland&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) Just, getting on the front page is some sort of quality x interest x luck.</comment></comment></comment>


The Hobbit Comes With an FAQ Explaining Why It'll Look So Weird - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5958487/the-hobbit-comes-with-an-faq-explaining-why-itll-look-so-weird?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow <comment><USER2> The problem with the 48fps solution that Peter Jackson went with is that it is using a 48fps 360° shutter. Let me quickly explain.

Traditional film production uses 24fps with a 180° shutter: a film frame gets exposed for half of 1/24th of a second, and then during the other half of that 1/24th of a second, nothing is exposed. We learned to associate the motion artifacts produced that way as looking "film-like".

With digital camera, you can easily crank that up to a 360° shutter: each frame gets exposed for a full 1/24th of a second. Some films used 24fps 360° for selected scenes, and people immediately said that it looked "like TV". A fair response, since TV always had similar motion artifacts.

Now when PJ moved to a higher frame rate, he could have said "let's make sure we get a 180° degree shutter look for both 24fps and 48fps by filming at 96fps, then for every 4 frames, combining frames 1+2 to get traditional 24fps 180° footage, and using frames 1+3 to get a comfortable 24fps 180° (frame 4 would get thrown away in the process). PJ mainly uses Red Epic cameras that go up to 120fps, so this would have been no problem.

Instead, PJ went with filming at 48fps and a 360° shutter. This resulted in normal looking 24fps 180° footage, and very TV-like looking 48fps 360° footage for those cinemas that support 48fps. For me, this whole mess is just an unfortunate lack of good testing in pre-production.

Let's hope that James Cameron recognizes these issues and shows everybody how it's done properly by using the 96fps solution while filming Avatar 2.</comment>


Show HN: JIRA plugin to crowdfund Free Software projects issues - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/freedomsponsors/freedomsponsors-jira-plugin

<comment> why-el Good work Tony!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :-) The plugin has been around for some time now. So far it has been installed on the Jenkins JIRA (ex: <https://issues.jenkins- ci.org/browse/JENKINS-12345>). Now I think it's time to get it known by other projects!</comment></comment>


In this case, the police are the software pirates. - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-24/nsw-police-in-legal-battle-with-software-giant/3970388

<comment><AUTHOR> "But it is about to get even uglier. Micro Focus plans to launch yet another lawsuit, this time accusing the police of trying to replace the first batch of pirated software with another batch of pirated software which also belongs to Micro Focus." Awesome...</comment>


Why Chewing People Out For Mistakes is a Bad Idea - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonshen.com/2011/why-chewing-people-out-for-mistakes-is-a-bad-idea/

<comment><USER2> Wow. You can't see why a surgeon would get mad at a nurse's sloppiness? What is wrong with this world?!

Jason, just cowboy up and admit you blew it! I'm sick of this kissy-ass liberal mentality!!

Heh, I was joking of course. Couldn't help myself.

Let the downvoting begin.</comment>


So, Google did aquire their presentation software. - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/were-expecting.html <comment><USER2> I think that this purchase was about the server technology to create and edit PowerPoint presentations as well to convert them to plaintext or PDF. Finally, they have their own stand-alone PowerPoint viewer that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

From their web site circa 2004 via archive.org \---- Tonic's unique and patent pending PowerPoint® library provides an enterprise-ready API for you to programatically work with PowerPoint® documents, taking slide presentations to the next level of sophistication.

The library provides a 100% Java API to read, create and manipulate PowerPoint® presentations. Use the library to generate new slides, populate presentation templates or extract data from existing presentations. The library supports the standard PowerPoint file format that is used by PowerPoint 97, 98, 2000, XP, etc.

The library works directly with PowerPoint® files. This means you don't need the PowerPoint® application to use the library, only to view generated presentations.

Turn Slide Presentations into Powerful Business Tools Here are just some of the ways to use Tonic's PowerPoint® library:

Convert PowerPoint® presentation into other formats e.g. PDF, HTML Extract data from PowerPoint® templates Auto-generate entire presentations from existing data sources e.g. a database or spreadsheet Manage collections of presentations Extract slides or data from existing presentations to create new ones For examples of what Tonic Systems' PowerPoint® library can do for your business, see our Case Studies.

Availability and Pricing The library is currently shipping. A license to use the library is priced at US $5000, where the envisaged usage is a single instance running inside a web application, serving unlimited users. For other usage models or inclusion in a product, we are happy to discuss different pricing options. Site and global licenses are also available.

<comment><USER3> Compatibility with MS Office is a big deal for business users - at least in the beginning. But the staying power will come from how well the app works on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From what I understand the google presentation software has been in development for quite some time and Tonic was aquired to help fill gaps in their software.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder why they didn't buy Slide or Zenter

<comment><USER5> From what I've read about Tonic, they have a lot of tech for Powerpoint compatibility--in particular, reading Powerpoint files, writing powerpoint files, and converting them into file formats which do not require powerpoint.

Slide.com doesn't do anything with PowerPoint. If you go yo Slide.com, you can see that they are not a presentation software company; they are a social networking widget company. Slide.com is not about technology--in fact, their tech looks downright trivial. They are all about branding. Slide.com has no technology to buy; they only (maybe will sometime) have customers to buy.

<comment><USER6> He means slideshare.com

<comment><USER7> slideshare.net

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Another reason why one should never go for the .net</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


If landlords get wiped out, Wall Street wins, not renters - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/if-landlords-get-wiped-out-wall-street-wins-not-renters <comment><USER3> I've got to hand it to Bloomberg for finding 3 of the most extreme cases of the, "think of the poor rentseekers" they could find. I know a few landlords. After meeting them I know I could never seriously become one. We were having drinks while one was on the phone working on evicting someone. Apparently, he didn't have a choice, dems the rules.

1\. The woman sitting on 27 units and only making $24k, is seriously over leveraged. Sounds like she took on more debt than she could reasonably manage and expect her tenants to be the safe bet even though she isn't.

2\. Family owned Mott St apartments. Something is wrong with this story as well. If they owned the properties for a century (1st wave Taosinese immigrants I bet) they should be printing money. Chinatown rents are high for old, low amenities buildings. There is a whole lot more to this story because someone is lying.

3\. Something tells me they refinanced one too many times and pumped the equity out of their property. Property bought in the 90s is worth 3x as much today so where is the renters money going exactly?

<comment><USER4> When my parents were renting houses we spent a lot of time on them. Most of the money from rent goes to the mortgage, property tax, insurance, and maintenance. You can get some back on maintenance if you put in some sweat equity. This was how they were going to afford retirement, by working their asses off.

There is very little left over as positive income. Maybe 10% if you are lucky, which makes up a little for the huge headaches. It can be really bad if you get bad renters. You get some back as equity over time and that is nice, unless the housing market crashes.

As for evicting people, it sucks. Once you start eviction you are stuck paying someone else's mortgage. In fact you are also paying to evict them too. Some renters go from house to house just paying a deposit and first month's rent then sitting on the house for as long as possible. If you try to be nice to them and give them more time they will bankrupt you.

In the meantime they are actively trashing the house, peeing on walls, keeping dogs in the fireplace like it's a kennel without cleaning it for months, putting holes in walls, flooding bathrooms, and spreading feces inside wall spaces. Then when you finally get them out by offering to give them back their deposit (Cheaper than eviction) they move in next door and trash the next poor landlord's place.

If you are doing background checks and credit checks you can keep the above from happening for 95% of cases. However the moment you start being nice and renting to that poor family on section 8 funding because "Someone has to" you are back cleaning poop out of your walls after paying their mortgage for 6 months and being called a "Slum Lord" because the people you rented to have trashed the pristine house you put hundreds of hours into.

<comment><USER5> > _Once you start eviction you are stuck paying someone else 's mortgage._

This is actually the _your_ (the landlord's) mortgage, not someone else's. That is one part of the risk of an investment vehicle that allows more tax write downs than most other investments.

Just like other investments, the pain is much less dramatic if you aren't over levered. If you are, profits are good until they aren't. Higher risk comes with that higher reward.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly it. The notion that they easily shift that ownership of the mortgage onto their renters saying "stuck paying someone else's mortgage" feels like mental gymnastics as it 100% is your name on that debt and not your renters.

<comment><USER7> A lot of landlords don't seem to really understand that their rental properties are a business and an investment, and thus inherently have risk. Fewer still really comprehend that the little landlords generally are carrying a lot more risk than the bigger property management companies. They just keep being shocked and offended when they seemingly discover this risk for the first time all over again.

<comment><USER4> I think you're right, a lot of people underestimate just how risky the real estate market is. Back in the 90s it was seen as a low-risk endeavor. Pretty much guaranteed money and tons of cheap leverage to max out returns. After all, everyone needs houses and the population just keeps going up faster than houses could be built. Especially with immigration.

However the cheap leverage and massive influx of foreign investment kinda fell off which made prices drop like a rock in 2008. I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen again in late 2020 and 2021 when a bunch of people see balloon payments from deferred mortgages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know about the US but speaking for the UK, landlords have had a ridiculously easy ride in recent decades. As a result, people with spare money customarily invest it in buy-to-let properties, the cost of housing has rocketed, and vast amounts of cash are continuously siphoned from poorer people to richer people. We don't have to vindictively celebrate these people getting wiped out, but anything that discourages customary amateur landlordism has to be a good thing.

<comment><USER9> The answer to this is to increase the housing supply. Housing costs increase when demand increases and supply doesn't. Increase supply at the same time and rents don't increase faster than inflation.

Buying property and renting it out is expected to yield returns. There's nothing wrong with that. It actually increases access to housing by allowing people who can't afford to buy property to still live somewhere in the meantime. The problem is when you're not just buying a $200,000 house whose value tracks inflation and renting it out, but buying a $200,000 house as the value quintuples and all of that money goes to the landlord while the tenant's rent quintuples as well.

<comment><USER10> _The answer to this is to increase the housing supply._

People have been saying that for decades but we seem unable to achieve it. Meanwhile the proportion of people in rented accommodation has been increasing and the proportion of home owners has been falling.

Perviously landlords in the UK were getting a tax advantage that home owners didn't have access to. This seems to be slowly shifting.

 _Buying property and renting it out is expected to yield returns. There 's nothing wrong with that._

Actually I think there is something wrong with that. Personally I won't use my easy access to capital to deny the younger generation the ability to buy a house in the way I was able to.

<comment><USER11> Lots and lots of people are better off renting than buying and those people need to have a supply of housing.

If no one can make money renting properties, where will this supply of rental properties come from?

<comment><USER10> Some people are better off renting but right now we have a lot of people in middle age with families who are stuck with insecure housing. It's bad enough now but it's going to become a nightmare when they get to retirement age.

The UK had a pretty good housing situation that was developed after the end of the second world war. It was disassembled by Thatcher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Henry George's single tax[1] is criminally excluded from the Overton window. Tax rent-seeking, not productivity.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)

<comment><USER13> Georgism is not socially efficient, but LVT (which is similar, in that it's a single tax on land) is. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax)

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, what do you perceive as the difference here?

Progress & Poverty, George's own book, proposes the LVT.

In any case, not to let the narcissism of small differences derail this too much: LVT is the right thing.

<comment><USER13> Georgism proposes to tax _the value derived from_ land, whereas LVT proposes to tax the market value of the land itself.

The primary problem with the Georgist proposal is that it involves a lot of arbitrary determinations of value. The goal is the same, but the much simpler mechanism of LVT can actually be implemented with reasonable accuracy and efficiency. It's not totally trivial - it's kind of hard to figure out the value of land if you were to counterfactually remove all the improvements, but it's simpler than determining something as abstract as the value derived from it.

<comment><USER12> The single tax, LVT, and Georgism are synonymous.

> Georgism proposes to tax the value derived from land

Incorrect, it's almost completely the opposite. The Georgist proposal is rather to tax the economic rent on land, not the value derived from it. Recall the classic example of the landlord leaving his lot in downtown Manhattan undeveloped. No value is derived from the land, the upside for the owner is purely in speculation (benefitting only from improvements to neighboring land).

<comment><USER13> > The Georgist proposal is rather to tax the economic rent on land

How do you determine that? Also, here's the wiki description, which matches what I said very closely:

" economic value derived from land (often including natural resources and natural opportunities) should belong equally to all members of society.[3][4][5]"

This is not the same as LVT. LVT doesn't try to determine the source or type of value, and Georgism does.

<comment><USER15> Every single LVT proposal includes an extremely important stipulation: deducting improvements from the total value, and only taxing the resulting amount. The core thesis is that you don't want to dis-incentivize productive economic activity, and simply holding onto land is unproductive.

LVT (and Georgism writ large) propose to tax the _unimproved_ value of land. This is a form of discriminating the source/type of value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The gist of this seems to be "small-time landlords aren't rich; they have thin margins" while ignoring the fact that they do in fact have a lot of _wealth_ especially relative to their tenants.

I've recently been listening to the audio version of Piketty's more recent book, Capital and Ideology. I think noting the difference between wealth and income, and the wage-share vs capital-share (more his 2013 book) is helpful framing for the question of "how badly should we feel for small landlords?" But the rest of this lobbying piece is echoing the more recent book much more clearly. It participates in creating and perpetuating a set of beliefs and values.

The concept pitched here is that "most landlords are small-time, having only a handful of units". But if the big ones are big, e.g. if there's a power-law or similar distribution, don't forget that most tenants (or most units) might have much larger landlords, which don't look like the people discussed here. Their own copy implies it: "Over 43% of rental units ... are owned by small businesses" -> "A majority of rental units are not owned by small businesses".

The largest landlord in my city, with over 5K units and a value of over $3B, received PPP funds, b/c its number of "real" employees is relatively modest.

And even the small ones are too used to having the law or policies bent to their needs. I live in a multi-unit building in a popular neighborhood, which should probably be worth >$3M, but is taxed at an assessment of ~$135K. And my landlord is probably by most standards not bad.

I walk by some buildings near me that were quite likely torched by their owners to get out old, low-paying tenants. Arson is pretty hard to prove, but it can work out quite well for the owners.

Whatever I feel for landlords, it's not sympathy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Investment properties are like stocks, except that retail investors are much more likely to be leveraged and much less likely to be diversified.

It sucks to lose your savings but this is just how the free market is. If you dump your life savings into a penny stock, you might get screwed over there too. That's the free market, if you don't like it then invest in bonds or atleast diversify.

I suspect in some number of months, stock values are going to begin taking real hits, and when that happens I suspect we will start seeing the lost-my- retirement-to-SPXL sob stories

<comment><USER18> "It sucks to lose your savings but this is just how the free market is"

There is no free market. It gets constantly manipulated to the benefit of favored groups. 2008 made this very blatant and we see the same thing now again. And the little guy is certainly not part of the favored groups.

<comment><USER17> Well, that's true. Maybe I should have said, "that's just how the free* market is"

If you're a retail investor, nobody's coming to bail you out. Diversify or face the consequences of your leveraged risk assets collapsing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The first lady cited in the story is overextended and if I am supposed to feel bad for her, I don't. She took a risk in taking out 1.2 million in mortgages and should reap the profits or losses from said risk.

Then there's these people- "The townhouse they bought 24 years ago was at the center of their plans to fund retirement. Now they may have to dip into their retirement savings to cover the mortgage." Why isn't that mortgage paid off yet? Sounds like they made some bad decisions. And any place bought in Boulder 24 years ago could be sold for at least 3x what was paid.

Edit: these are 2 separate people discussed in the story.

<comment><USER20> It's tricky. One person takes out a loan to start a small business and it fails due the virus. Another takes out a loan to purchase properties and be a landlord who also gets wiped out. Economic rent is a societal problem. But landlords aren't actually reaping in the profits most of the time, and it might be argued that they're providing useful services to people. On the other hand, most go into it with the hope of just sitting on stuff and making passive income for low amounts of work. If landlords are doing societal good, it's mostly accidental, and at best a local maxima of a well function system.

I'd say in the scheme of suffering going on right now this doesn't feel like the most deserving of sympathy. Taking out huge loans is a risk. As a society, this is not a good way for members to build wealth. But they're not villains by any means.

<comment><USER14> What's tricky? The small business owner employs people. The landlord merely purchases the right to keep productivity off of valuable land.

Agreed that they are not villains, but nor should we act like they're doing some service. _No one_ pays their rent because they believe their landlord is adding value. They pay it for access to the jobs, amenities, services that the community (not the landlord) provides.

<comment><USER20> Land lords handle maintenance, property ownership work, snow shoveling, some utilities appliances, some degree of social policy enforcement, etc.

Not all small businesses employ other people.

<comment><USER21> In countries I lived in, it is the tenants' responsibility to maintain the property and its surroundings. Tenants need to move the lawn, cut the trees back, shovel snow, get out the weeds, remove algae off the patio, etc.

For flats, concierge service and maintenance is built in the monthly payment, usually included of the lease fee that the landlord pays (about £3/sqft/mo in the UK).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The pain has to be shared, and particularly, lenders should be making accommodations, waiving (not simply deferring) interest payments, etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> Landlords have at least one asset. The vast majority (all?) of their tenants have zero assets.

This is a measure of wealth, but Bloomberg makes the same mistake that all of these borderline propaganda rags make which is to compare incomes.

<comment><USER24> It's not wealth if you are still paying off a mortgage on the rental unit. Even if you owed the rental unit outright the "it's wealth" argument is foolish. What's the point? Sell your only source of income and live off the money until you become homeless or die?

It's like saying a farmer is wealthy because he owns a tractor and a plot of land. Absolutely asinine.

<comment><USER23> > It's not wealth if you are still paying off a mortgage on the rental unit. > Even if you owed the rental unit outright the "it's wealth" argument is > foolish. What's the point? Sell your only source of income and live off the > money until you become homeless or die?

> It's like saying a farmer is wealthy because he owns a tractor and a plot of > land. Absolutely asinine.

These are all assets that can be liquidated for something. The renters have no such assets.

The landlords are just as capable of going and getting a job as anyone. Most landlords are not employed full time simply because there isn't enough work to be done as a landlord to justify 40 hours of labor every week, at least until a substantial number of units are being rented out. The income the landlord receives is typically declared after all costs of ownership, which include any mortgages. So, the work of the landlord results in a greater share of their asset ("equity").

The jobs their tenants have likely do nothing to increase the value or share in an asset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I read little about rent price depreciation, but it seems to me this is already happening. People will move to cheaper housing, and the existing mortgages will be untenable.

</comment><comment><USER26> Time to bring back penny auctions. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction_(foreclosure)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction_\(foreclosure\))

<comment><USER27> This is somewhat unrelated, but when I see "penny" I now think of zinc. After 1982, American pennies were minted as >95% zinc.

I normally perform brick and mortar store purchases with plastic, but during the recent furlough I would make small local purchases at random cash registers and calculate my subtotal such that I could absorb as many pennies from the register that I could (not sure of price per pound of zinc currently, but perhaps there will be a convergence point where the weight of the penny is worth more for its zinc than its Federal Reserve declared value).

The reason for this is that I want to build a small backyard sheds worth of zinc bromide batteries. HDPE is a common plastic (milk jugs, oil containers, etc) and I've found lots of it scattered around my city (lazy, disenchanted citizens dumping illegally, but you and I know that no one is going to catch them - which is advantageous to me since I need this easily recyclable material).

HDPE does not react with a bromine solution. I need this material to house my electrodes suspended in a bromine based electrolyte (zinc electroplating gravity battery lasts "indefinately"). Even beyond that - HDPE is useful to mold into whatever sturdy shape you need (for some reason Youtubers are making slingshot hilt molds).

The reason your comment prompted my tangent is because I'm listening to the audio of "Capitalism: A Love Story" and simultaneously parsing HN output and I am so bored with all of these beat-around-the-bush definitions of wealth, money, equity, derivatives, etc when the people peddling these terms are going into your grocery stores to spend your labor on individually packaged (not HDPE, probably PETE) baked and seasoned treats, or worse fast food prepped by bored&athletic young people who have sentenced themselves to spending months or years of their capable lives slapping together cheaply sourced ingredients using probably natural gas heating elements.

In the 2030s, the people coming to power will have spent thousands of hours on the internet and playing video games where they learned how to operate (regardless of parental lethargy and ignorance).

They will be annoyed with the inefficient world they were bred into.

<comment><USER28> Hopefully. Another unrelated thought is that History is really waking up. It's crazy seeing things finally happening, hundred year old books becoming relevant again, and true unpredictability come back. As one said a bit over a hundred years ago, there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >But Washington stopped short of offering renters comparable relief on the assumption that those in distress would likely qualify for the $1,200 checks the Treasury began mailing out in April, as well as beefed-up unemployment benefits.

I have to laugh at this because Americans were told a) you're getting a stimulus check and b) you can't be evicted.

I am almost positive that many people used the stimulus check as found money and blew it rather than using it for rent. The mindset being that if they can't be evicted now, they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.

</comment><comment><USER30> The pain needs to propagate up the debt ladder now that it has overflowed the first layer of rent payers. When landlords aren't getting their incoming payments, there should be growing political will to do this - <USER2> mortgage payments, interest, and a large part of real estate taxes.

It's either now, or a future crisis when the black hole of debt has grown even larger.

<comment><USER31> Why freeze taxes? You're proposing that land owners are allowed to capture all of the upside of a booming economy, and then should be protected in falling economies? Why? They are demonstrably to better-off among us. If a jurisdiction had the ability to forego that revenue, I'm sure they can find a better place to cut it (like suspending sales taxes on food, or payroll taxes).

<comment><USER30> Because that's the debt chain. Real estate taxes are a recurring payment levied by a city on a fictitious asset valuation, the same as a mortgage. And I did say a "large part", chiefly the part that goes to paying municipal bonds (the next link in the debt chain).

I understand we all want to see landlords reap the full rewards of their bad decisions, but the article is correct that this will just allow the administrators of the next higher level to mop up, with nothing fundamentally changing. When the eviction freeze is over, tenants will be right back on the debt treadmill, with an even more distant and less empathetic landlord.

<comment><USER31> Honestly could not parse your argument. We should suspend taxes because we do not intend to pay bond holders?

<comment><USER30> Taxes and bonds, along with landlords, are steps in the long path of economic rent payments that start with tenants paying rent. Many tenants are not paying rent. Therefore, rather than trying to turn the screws harder on the tenants (as resuming evictions would do), or making some unlucky middlemen go bankrupt today (just to be replaced with increasingly centralized middlemen as the article points out), we should examine and aim to pause the entire chain of economic rent payments that starts with the tenants.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Nodejitsu and CouchOne partnership - <AUTHOR> http://blog.couchone.com/post/2314470878/nodejitsu-couchone-couchdb

<comment><USER2> They mention a rap video in the post, but there is no link.

I think I found the video based on a basic google search:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-JFoRjhXJw></comment>


Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists? - <AUTHOR> http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/why-dont-americans-elect-scientists/?hp&gwh=5A17EC6C64B96B318FFDF420BAB9B87D <comment><USER3> Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few Americans want to think.

<comment><USER4> Anti-intellectuality aside. Understanding science is important, but a good scientist ≠ good manager. A scientist is usually someone with narrow, but deep knowledge/experience, as a politician I want someone with a broader set of experiences & knowledge.

I mean, MSc president - sure. PhD president - probably no, thank you :)

<comment><USER5> There's also the fallacy that scientists will only make pure objective decisions but scientists are in the end only humans and have their own believes, failings and political agendas. The whole system of peer reviewing and the acknowledgement that every scientific theory can be falsified is a testament to this realization. Unfortunately I have the impression that in politics too often individual experts are only heard and thus the whole system of checks and balances in science is circumvented and particular scientific opinions might get more weight than justified.

Still, I believe that the scientific methodology (not necessarily individual scientists) is still our best hope to actually achieve improvements as shown by our rapidly expanding knowledge since it was more formally defined. It just has to be tempered with clear political goals.

<comment><USER6> Not sure if that's the falsifiability you meant, but a scientific theory _must_ be falsifiable by definition. As in -- there must be a way to setup an experiment with a possible outcome that would prove this theory to be wrong. It is impossible to disprove a theory that "invisible pink unicorns exist" -- because for every suggested experiment you can just say "well, they are invisible, so we can't see them". Of course falsifiability is not the worst problem with this particular theory (how can something be pink and invisible bothers me more for example), but it is a necessary condition any scientific theory must meet.

<comment><USER5> I brought up falsifiability casually because it is an important corner stone for my understanding of the scientific methodology and keeps scientists from proclaiming dogmas (or at least it should). It is also an acknowledgement that our current theories mostly reflect our current understanding and may be prone to change in the feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who is a scientist? If you scope this to PhDs who have done serious research in academia, you pretty much just said "no ex-university career before the age of 40." That is going to make it very hard to develop the networks you'll need to advance up the ranks of either party. You'll also likely require substantial external support for initial campaigns because relative to the lawyers, doctors, businessmen, undertakers, and pilots in your cohort you are, ahem, kinda poor. This would be easier if you had married well, and indeed having the right kind of spouse is a huge asset to your political career, but the academic lifestyle is notorious for inducing prolonged singleness.

For a broader definition of scientist which e.g. includes engineers or doctors, Americans elect them quite regularly.

<comment><USER8> _Among the 435 members of the House, for example, there are one physicist, one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nearly two dozen representatives with medical training....This showing is sparse even with the inclusion of the doctors, but it shouldn't be too surprising._

The article clearly considers engineers and doctors to be scientists. As it should - they are all well-versed in the scientific method by education and should know how to apply it.

<comment><USER9> My wife is a medical doctor doing a Phd right now. By her own admission, doctors are _not_ well-versed in the scientific method _by education_. The others in her lab are all biologists, and she spent the first year playing catch-up in terms of being able to do science, and says she still feels like she'll always be behind compared to the biologists in the lab who got a regular scientist training in their 5 years at the University. She's certainly being pessimistic though, her lab is headed by a medical doctor...

Anyways, my point is, doctors are not trained to be scientists.

Disclaimer: This is Hungary. I have four doctors in my close family. I'm a physicist.

<comment><USER8> Well-versed may be a very relative term. I've been exposed to physics, engineering and computer science. The physicists had the scientific method drilled in deep. The engineers a bit. The computer scientists had vaguely heard about it. We still call them computer scientists. Your wife may suffer from a similar "relative difference". (Coincidentally, I could repeat your story with my wife, who's a computer scientist working for doctors who work with biologists in a lab.)

Does a law degree or an MBA cover the "characterize, hypothesize, predict, experiment" cycle?

<comment><USER9> One thing that comes up again and again is understanding significances, errors and such. This stuff is second nature to a good (and honest) physicist coming out of University, even before he becomes a "pro".

In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances. (LOL.)

I would argue that this type of sensitivity to understanding data should be important if you're running a country. You can't even say that there are underlings for this, because this data is so important, and the possibility of underlings skewing it for whatever reason so sizable, that I certainly would want to have some understanding and feeling for the data before doing a press conference about it or using it to guide my lawmaking.

<comment><USER8> You have my vote.

Lots of policy decisions are made based on statistics. Yet they are easy to fool someone with if he or she does not understand them properly enough.

 _In my experience, to a doctor, even a good one, _at first_ it's just an annoying thing they have to do to get published and they don't really understand the significance of significances._

Slightly disappointing. I'd have expected doctors to have an understanding of placebo effects, and the field of medicine is one where you regularly hear (even outside medicine) about studies being discredited afterwards for wrong/improper controls, positive results being unreproducible etc.

I don't remember the last time I heard a comp sci paper being withdrawn for bad statistics. (They tend to have none, even when they should)

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying doctors doing research never learn this stuff, just that they come out of University without this knowledge. (I certainly don't know enough about medical research literature to make a statement like this.)

Curiously, at one biomed lab (can't remember if it's the wife's) they have a dedicated person (shared by several labs) to do the statistics for the presentations and the papers. Kind of weird if you ask me, you'd think understanding whether your results are meaningful is not something you calculate at the end!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its not who you elect that matters. Its how decentralized the system is and how limited the power of the government is that matters.

When the amount of power is great and concentrated, those lusting after power work very hard to get it. And they will do what they need to get it. And then use the power to keep it.

But when the government is limited and very decentralized, its not going to attract sociopaths as much.

In Switzerland, each member of a 7 person council takes a one-year turn presiding.

There's a joke about it actually. A tourist is discussing this with a Swiss man he bumped into.

After asking many other questions, the tourist finally asks "So who is president this year?" The Swiss man replied "Oh, this year its me."

<comment><USER11> I have a theory that part of Europe's success was due to the fragmented nature of States. Within a small area you have independent nations with their own laws, currency, elections, etc. This represents less single points of failure IMO.

I think the early U.S also had a similar model. State's had their own currencies and regulations, with the right to over-rule federal regulations. Now, the US is essentially one state, one currency, and a giant single point of failure. Now the EU and the US are metastasizing in size/power and crushing anything that poses a threat to their authority.

<comment><USER10> Yes. And many of the most successful countries are tiny. And leaders accountable. Singapore and Switzerland spring to mind. Singapore isn't even a democracy, but it is very easy to leave, making it accountable, at least economically.

Back when we all lived in tribes, if a leader failed, people simply left the tribe. We need to be able to do virtually the same thing.

If we could remove our property from a city when corruption becomes more than membership is worth. That would impose some discipline. And cities should be able to leave.

And, predictably, Switzerland already has that. People can leave a canton to join a neighboring one or start their own. And it rarely happens. The possibility is a deterrent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the really big factor here is that scientists don't want to go into politics! Maybe I'm painting the world with an overly broad brush here, but politics and science approach the truth in exactly opposite ways.

I'm not going to say that politics is a game of lies, because it's not, but politicians essentially invent the truth as they go along. It's similar in some ways to law or the humanities, where the truth is very much a matter of interpretation, there's a case to be made for each side, and no one is ever objectively "wrong". Right and wrong are entirely a matter of personal opinion.

On the other hand, science is, in the limit, entirely objective. A physical theory can be objectively shown to be incorrect. Scientists can defend their theories, but fundamentally have to accept it if their theory is disproved, or else they become irrelevant. There was a great link earlier today on HN that talked about how the smartest people are the ones who are most skeptical of their own ideas. That's great in science, but if you don't believe yourself totally in politics, no one else will.

This means that scientists, who presumably study under and work with other scientists for decades, think in this scientific mindset. This makes them totally unsuited for the world of politics (and of course, vice versa). Politicians can't admit they were wrong, because that means that they'll probably be wrong again, and no one will vote for someone who's wrong. Case in point: Mitt Romney and universal healthcare.

I'll also make another point that a lot of people miss: Being a politician is roughly as difficult as being a scientist. If we expect our best politicians to get an advanced degree in something like business or law (things related to the process of running a nation) or to spend a long time working in politics or on social issues, why do we think that scientists with no such training will make good politicians? We certainly don't expect most law school grads to do much more than wash bottles in the lab.

<comment><USER13> Why don't they want to enter politics though? If we drew up a hypothetical list of attributes for a scientist, how many could cross over into politics?

Significant intellect and a desire to exercise that in significant work? Yes.

Deep interest in a field and a wish to explore that further? Yes. (In the sense that many such people seem capable of maintaining multiple such interests.)

Interest in complex work and ability to hold large datasets in mind? Yes.

Drive to rise above others and push for achievement? Yes.

The more I look, the more it seems that a major factor working against scientist partiicpation in public debate generally and politics more specifically is a strong pervading trend of anti-intellectuallism. In science they can know that, by and large, if they back up their assertions with rigorous testing and data, their viewpoint will at the very least be taken seriously and very likely accepted. Whereas, by current trends at least, in politics their assertion would be rubbished as elitist and talked down with an incoherent anecdote.

Where, in that system, is the motivation for the genuinely capable and informed to use their abilities for the public good?

<comment><USER14> One of the most failed "experiments" of science and politics was Robert McNamara as U.S. Secretary of Defense under JFK. He used a lot of scientific methods to evaluate his political decisions with war and intervention. All of his evaluations pointed out that the U.S. should intervene in Vietnam and look how that turned out. In politics there are too many variables at play. Perhaps politics is good for the "intellectual" but not for the scientist.

As an aside I think its a little bit dangerous to put intellectual and scientist in the same category.

<comment><USER15> How many tests did he run? What confidence interval did he establish? What factors did he control for and how?

<comment><USER14> Good questions of which I do not know the specifics. McNamara's background was with helping turn Ford around by using his statistical and analytical expertise. Later he got involved using those same techniques with the Defense Dept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One aspect I've never thought about before is the selection of representatives for parliament/legislature. In the U.S., they're pre-selected in primary elections per party, but the national elections are single-winner per seat, so the candidates are out pandering to the voters constantly. I don't know percentages, but many other countries use multi-winner to select their national multi-seat bodies, and my understanding is that those would-be candidates aren't out campaigning, or at least not anywhere close to as visible as they are in the U.S. or the U.K. where there are direct single- winner elections for seats. As ideologically-driven as political parties are, maybe the parties still tend to select more rational, scientific-minded representatives when the would-be reps do not have a requirement to pander directly to the population prior to the election.

India (from wikipedia) also appears to have direct election of its parliament. India is fairly well known for its stifling bureaucracy. Is that coincidence, or the start of a pattern?

Maybe it's also in part due to other countries (those which aren't degenerate and corrupt enough that the government can fraudulently influence elections) knowing they're not the world's largest superpower, and knowing they can't afford to screw around as much.

I'd love to see the voting system changed to Range Voting (best overall?) or Condorcet (best ordering-based voting system?). For its discrimination against third parties, plurality voting is simply horrible, and IRV is nearly as bad[1]. I'll note that I don't think a voting system change alone will fix the American political system.

<http://rangevoting.org>, despite its nominal bias, is the best voting system resource anywhere.

[1] for instance: <http://bolson.org/voting/irv/> IRV fails monotonicity, which IMO is a huge deal. <http://rangevoting.org/Monotone.html>

<comment><USER17> What do you see as the problem with IRV?

<comment><USER18> It's still single seat. It has most of the same problems as straight plurality single seat elections.

<comment><USER13> Exactly; so many of the problems of under-representation are due to minority groups having disparate, rather than concentrated, power bases and so failing to achieve the threshold for election in any single seat in spite of having more than enough supporters more widely.

STV (IRV with multi-member constituencies) or regional top-up lists can both mitigate this. Neither is perfect, but they certainly help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What is the article arguing? Is there even an argument made? Why should Americans elect more scientists? Will it lead to a higher quality of living or more wealth or what?

It mentions China as a pro-scientists country, but why? It's riddled with human rights violations, corruption and environmental pollution. While American politicians decry climate change openly, China just seems to ignore it.

Singapore is a city-state with 5mio citizens, and a high cost of living. Finland also has 5mio citizens, is known for its wealth and the president Tarja Halonen has a degree in law - in fact, the other politicians mentioned on Finlands wikipedia page are missing a scientific degree as well.

I'm not buying it. Just staffing your government with scientists seems pretty irrelevant for the success of a nation.

<comment><USER20> China is socially repressive and an environmental catastrophe in progress, but it's also one of the fastest-advancing nations in the world. Chinese citizens were starving to death en masse as recently as the 70's. The fact that they've pulled themselves out of that kind of industrial slump is amazing.

Wikipedia says that Singapore is the best trade center in Asia and one of the best in the world. It also has the best credit and the best markets. Socially, it's a bit repressive, but it is apparently doing very well economically.

Of course, without much data the argument is useless. It would be interesting to see a pile of charts comparing scientists and engineers in politics to economic success; with only three or four data points it's a a toss-up.

<comment><USER21> One thing to consider here is that it may be fast advancing because it is advancing from such a low positions. With more than a billion people, Chinese economic potential is enormous, far exceeding any other country. The fact that the have almost the same GDP as Japan while having more than 10 times more population and huge natural resources can be explained only by broken political and economic system. It is slowly moving out towards being somewhat less broken, but one would be deeply mistaken taking this as a sign that one should take it as an example to follow in its current state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Americans don't elect scientists for a simple reason: scientists by their nature lack the skills necessary to succeed as a popular politician.

Singapore isn't a democracy in the same sense as the US or Britain. China is a not a democracy at all. So comparing the education levels of elected officials isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison.

In the US, a person's charisma, ability to relate to and attract the attention of voters, ability to build a political organization and ability to get things done within the political system define your success as a politician. Politicians start local, and build tight social networks as city councilmen, mayors, state legislators, etc. They then use those networks to get into Federal offices.

The great exception are candidates that skip the political process and reach high office by spending prestige capital (ie. President/General US Grant) or by spending lots of financial capital (ie. New York City Mayor Bloomberg). Even in these cases, these folks are actually buying access to someone else's political infrastructure.

None of this means that the US government does not have scientists working on policy. Scientists do work for the government as political appointees (ie. Secretary Chu of the US Department of Energy), as civil servants (ie. employees of NOAA), as contractors to government (ie. the RAND Corporation), or indirectly via unaffiliated think-tanks (ie. Federation of American Scientists).

<comment><USER23> >In the US, a person's charisma, ability to relate to and attract the attention of voters, ability to build a political organization .... define your success as a politician.

Exactly. In the US, being a successful Politician is a popularity game, much like Hollywood. Unfortunately, it has little to do with intelligence or if that person will actually do anything good for anyone.

<comment><USER21> Elections can not be anything but the "popularity game" by the very definition - one that is most popular, i.e. appeals to the most people - wins the election. The only way to avoid it is to abolish the elections and the democracy. Now what constitutes the basis of this popularity - is it good looks, smooth talk, shiny awards or ability to promise most appealing bribes to the least moral populace - can differ. It would be nice if everybody would be so educated as to use only the "right" criteria to choose the most appealing candidate - the only wrinkle is nobody has any idea what those right criteria are and what makes one a successful manager on the scale of millions of people. We do know that many of the criteria in popular use - like spousal fidelity 30 years ago, formal education degree, or ability to successfully fake sincerity - are pretty bad predictors, but since we have very short supply of good ones, people have to do with what we have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why _do_ Americans elect lawyers?

Laws and contracts are the operands of government. Money and a convincing demeanor are the operators of elections.

Government is not really an experimental enterprise. Science is about constructing interesting subsets of general-purpose reality to eliminate variables, then testing other variables and seeing what happens. The history of Legislative attempts to eliminate real-world variables is the history of horrific side-effects: wars, market crashes, value destruction, and freedom- trampling.

The chief complaint about current US reps isn't that they're not scientific, but that they're not _aware of facts_ and that they're only aware of _some_ people. Scientists make no claims on being aware of people, and are deeply aware of _some_ facts.

What we need in Government are intelligent yet _humble_ people who have personally experienced some tragedy brought about by ill-conceived legislation, tensioned by CFOs who in their personal lives give a shitload of money to the poor.

Good luck on that talent search, America.

<comment><USER25> >Why _do_ Americans elect lawyers?

I think you're overthinking it. Lawyers make good politicians because they're good debaters. A good debater and charismatic individual garners votes. So long as you're not 110% bat-shit insane you'll win votes and the better you are at making the opponent look bad the better on you.

Too much of American politics isn't so much about making realistic promises and outlooks on the future that are obtainable as it is about extremism and making the others look bad. To me it seems like that style of politics wins because "it makes good TV".

<comment><USER24> Perhaps we're both overthinking it. _Lots_ of people are good debaters.

Lawyers are good debaters and more of them _want the job_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As Isaac Asimov complained years ago, "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" There was a brief period, roughly coincident with the Apollo space program, when rockets were cool and so were rocket scientists. Since then, the public image of science and scientists in America has been in decline.

I believe that religion plays a strong role here. Religious dogma is threatened by scientific knowledge, and nowhere in the developed Western world has the backlash been as strong as in the US, which also happens to be the most religious of Western prosperous democracies. What's worse, the anti- science campaign of the religious is smashingly successful: only 40% of Americans give credence to biology's strongest and most useful theory, that of Evolution. Among the countries sampled in this study: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-evolu...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-evolution.html) that's almost at rock bottom, undercut only by Turkey.

</comment><comment><USER27> The article points this out at the end, but the reason is clear: because scientists are supposed to be pragmatic, not ideology-driven. Therefore, in a bi-party political world like the US, it would be difficult for them to fit in, in terms of policies. Most of the policies (on either side) are not evidence-based and actually have counter-productive effects in the long run (Charles Murray explained this through several cases, for example, in his book "Losing Ground").

However I am not sure about how relevant it is for the Singaporean examples to have had "scientific background". If you do not work in the actual science field and never used it, your background is worthless. If your everyday occupation is to gather support to get elected, I question the validity of the term "Scientist" in this case.

<comment><USER28> Nobody who has worked in academia would claim that scientists are somehow "more pragmatic". Capricious, scheming, vindictive... just like the rest of the population :)

Plus the fact that scientists are typically paid by tax payers', in a stable governmental position (at least in Europe), and many never held any real job in their whole lives, only adds to my doubts.

<comment><USER27> Not all scientists are government-employed. It may be a majority in some countries, but I would not disregard the amount of scientists employed in the private industries as well. They may not be involved in fundamental research, rather "applied sciences", but they are scientists nonetheless. Anyone who produces data through experimentation, analyses it, uses critical judgment and appropriate tools to make evidence-based decisions is basically, in my eyes, a "scientist", no matter the exact field of work.

Regarding your first point, the scientists who are not pragmatic will take severe hits to their reputations down the road. Data and methodology is what matters, not personal opinion.

<comment><USER29> 'Anyone who [...] uses critical judgment and appropriate tools to make evidence-based decisions'

Except for the experimentation part, that could describe a lawyer. Which begs the question,

Where does it go wrong?

Why do people from an evidence-based career become embroiled in the kind of back[stabbing/scratching] politics that seems to be the norm today? And how can it be fixed?

<comment><USER27> Experimentation is mandatory to conduct Science. You need to be able to form theories or hypotheses from data or observation, and then conduct a controlled experiment to validate your point. There can be no science without validation and repeatability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why would a scientist _want_ to be a politician? So they can spend their days fighting over paperwork instead of solving problems they're passionate about?

The kind of people that want to be scientists would have no interest in politics, beyond what it takes to get them funding.

<comment><USER31> My impression is that being a scientist involves a whole lot of fighting over paperwork instead of solving problems (at least in America, when it's time to apply for grants!).

<comment><USER32> Depending on how much money you need to raise and how good you are at it, fundraising can take from 10% - 80% of your time. Note that even at the high end, you still get 20% of your time to work on scientific problems, which is better than 0% -- what you get in most administrative/political jobs.

[All numbers very approximate.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here's what's missing from that article ... how many 'scientists' ran and lost compared to 'non-scientists'?

I do think that Americans have this weird 'anti-nerd', culture where being brainy without being rich (ever notice how having money makes it okay to be nerdy in the States?) is something to be mocked or made fun of, but I also think that the way the American political system is set up discourages scientists/engineers from running.

Just take a look at Ron Paul (whom I disagree with on a lot btw) in some of the debates, trying to tell Americans the hard, very obvious truths about their country and getting roundly booed and you can understand why ... say ... a software developer would never even want to go near the process.

</comment><comment><USER34> It isn't that Americans _don't_ elect a particular type of person, it's that Americans _do_ elect a particular type of person. Americans by and large voluntarily limit themselves to candidates showcased by the two prominent marketing wings of American politics. This minimizes the amount of effort required to make a decision, the hallmark of not just the American masses, but humanity in general.

From there, you need only look at the type of person those two marketing organizations are likely to champion. I'll refrain from stating what I think they are but they decidedly are NOT celebrated academians.

</comment><comment><USER35> While I'd definitely want to see more people with science/engineering background managing countries, I keep wondering, whether this wouldn't be solving a wrong problem. How much problems are there because western politicians supposedly are morons who can't handle the complexities of this world, and how much problems are caused by Upton Sinclair's _"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"_? The latter case would probably affect scientist- politicians as well.

</comment><comment><USER36> That is an easy one. Scientists are good at objective truth, facts, etc.

Most political decisions are however highly subjective, and based on values, principles and opinions.

Scientists are great for advising politicians on things that are obviously and provably correct or false, but once it gets beyond that, their biases tends to get in the way.

Asking a scientist if NASA should get more or less funding is about as useful as asking the chief bishop if the church should get state funding as a silly example.

<comment><USER37> And non-scientists take a more rational, balanced view that is more free from bias?

I think bias is intrinsic to being human, and unavoidable (all we can do is mitigate its damage). But someone who can admit they are wrong when faced with evidence (aka a scientist) is probably better equipped than one who is adamant that if they keep saying "no", eventually the universe will shut up and behave (most politicians).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you take the view that government is needed to protect people's rights (you know, "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men") as opposed to providing people with solutions for their problems - then the question becomes easy. Why should we? Who said scientists are better in protecting one's rights than, say, cops or doctors or lawyers or plumbers? I do not see anything in scientific training that makes scientists uniquely suitable for that. I would prefer, naturally, to have smart people protecting my rights, as this way they will be more effective in it, but one can be smart without being a scientist.

Of course, the government would always have a lot of purely technical questions where scientific training would allow one to decide them efficiently - but these always would be secondary roles and rarely need to be elected, but rather properly hired, which can be done by any decent manager. So why should we elect more scientists?

<comment><USER8> _If you take the view that government is needed to protect people's rights (you know, "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men") as opposed to providing people with solutions for their problems - then the question becomes easy._

False dichotomy.

 _Of course, the government would always have a lot of purely technical questions where scientific training would allow one to decide them efficiently - but these always would be secondary roles and rarely need to be elected, but rather properly hired, which can be done by any decent manager._

If politicians were people who give difficult problems to a team of scientists to allow them to come up with the best solutions, and then choose from the equally good ones based on the underlying philosophical principles they stand for, then no, we wouldn't need scientists in the government.

Failing that, I'll take the group who at least in principle deals with new problems through a better method than guesswork or trial and error.

<comment><USER21> How do you think science is made? Guesswork, trial and error are inherent instruments of the science - it's called "hypothesis" and "experiment". Only in the case of politics and economics an experiment may cost lives and wrong hypothesis may lead to millions losing their livelihoods and their very lives. I'd rather prefer them doing it with the lab mice than myself.

And the dichotomy is very real - governmental redistribution and social engineering is very different thing from defending people's rights. You can claim the government could do both - though practice suggests it is often contradictory as redistribution and social engineering involves coercion - <USER2> it is still very different things and very different approaches. If one subscribes to the "rights" approach, than asking to elect more scientists is the same as asking to elect more plumbers - one would recognize plumbers are extremely helpful in their area of expertise, but what it has to do with the elections?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The reason is fairly straightforward. Power moves in social circles.

It is the same reason why there aren't many lawyers who make it politically in China.

Secondly, support has to be nurtured, and potential candidates groomed by power brokers or king makers. These people act like VCs and are generally very conservative when it comes to investing their scarce political resources.

</comment><comment><USER39> Do we have the stats for how many scientists/engineers run for office to begin with?

The central qualification to successfully run for office - straight faced insincerity - might be counter to the training of most scientists/engineers.

The second qualification - enormous personal wealth - is not such a common possession of most scientists, either.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's not just the United States that has this problem:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/only- scientist...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/only-scientist-in- commons-alarmed-at-mps-ignorance-2041677.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> In India we the Indians have elected DrManmohan Singh as our prime minister. He was very known internationally as a good economists. He was also governor of Reserve bank of India before coming to politics. Because of his reputation of a good economist he was offered the post of finance minister in the late nineties. He supported very much to the policies of globalization,liberalization and India became a member of this draconian policy. The poor people of India thought that by this change in economic policy their standard of life will change. But it is very unfortunate that after two decades of its implementation the poor people are ruined now. The marginal farmers are ending their life by taking pesticides and insecticides due to debt. More and more people are coming under below poverty line. Every night some million Indians are going to the bed in empty stomach. Inflation level is increasing day by day. Industrial workers are losing their job on daily basis. On every part of this universe Indians are working as daily wage laborers. Employment is a very big problem. Day by day the crime graph in India is increasing. Transparency International in its annual survey report termed as a most corrupt country. So leadership is not measured by some sort of degrees or phd.

</comment><comment><USER27> A short comment on why scientists are usually not interested in politics. Scientists are in pursuit of the Truth, not power. Politics is too narrow field to play on. Carl Sagan used the picture of the Earth from Space to show that great leaders are basically men whose reach is limited to borders and time, while astronomers were above all those considerations. That was a powerful way to describe this.

</comment><comment><USER42> For one, i'd like to say:

It doesn't matter for Angela Merkel to have studied. What far more important is to have knowledgable persons in the groups that make decisions and evaluate new laws and for the ministers.

For what i can see in germany, most of those politicians and decision makers are lawyers. It's terrible if you actually see what is said in a committee, just a bunch of old people not knowing what they talk about.

</comment><comment><USER43> There's a far more fundamental problem in the US: The system and methods of government have degenerated to the point of not producing anything of value. A visitor from another planet would probably laugh hysterically at how ridiculous the whole thing looks like from the outside.

Is this what the Roman Empire looked like?

<comment><USER44> I don't think you need to find a visitor from another planet, just another country.

<comment><USER43> My attempt to be culturally neutral. You can always blame Martians and nobody will get upset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > _"China has even more scientists in key positions in the government."_

Party elections are a bit of a stretch.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think part of the problem is that American's don't read enough. They don't seek knowledge and understanding outside their own field. I mean it doesn't take a lot to read a book about the scientific method, or a book about statistics and try and learn it. Sure you won't be as good as someone who studied it, but you can at least try and be well versed in the concepts. I frequently read text books and do the exercises in them on my spare time. However, American's are so enthralled in media culture that you can probably make a good guess that most American's don't read on a regular basis, or read those $2.00 novels you get at the gas station. In other words, what they read doesn't have much substance.

</comment><comment><USER47> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDX9dyjqimA>

</comment><comment><USER48> I guess this is why China is in such great shape socially and environmentally. The engineers and scientists have created a utopia.

"One needn't endorse the politics of these people or countries to feel that given the complexities of an ever more technologically sophisticated world, the United States could benefit from the participation and example of more scientists in government. "

You can't make a claim "scientists make better leaders" then in the very next paragraph, state the outcome of this leadership doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER49> I believe one of the main points the article is highlighting is that science would have better representation in U.S. law if more elected representative were scientists, but this is not really true. Most laws aren't derived from regulatory law, but rather from common law set through court cases. In my opinion scientists are most useful as scientists, expert witnesses, and lobbyists in that order.

</comment><comment><USER50> I hugely respect science per se -- but scientists and most other types of intellectuals are typically people stuck working in a bureaucracy.

Working in a bureaucracy induces a particular type of thinking on an individual -- I call it statist thinking -- that bureaucracy is not evil (note: it is), that difficult decisions should be made through careful deliberation and possibly collaboration with others instead of on your own (a precondition for groupthink and a bad quality in an executive position which by definition requires a degree of mental toughness). People who got rich and successful outside of the bureaucratic system often become an object of envy by people inside the system, even if they will consciously deny it, which then leads to the perverted notion that the only way to make the world a fair place is to increase the reach of the bureaucracy.

Now, America was founded by intellectuals (though not of bureaucratic kind). The thing that distinguishes America from most other countries in the world is that in America one specific type of freedom is respected: "freedom to rise". In the old Europe people at the top were often members of aristocracy and it was obvious to everyone that they didn't have to work as hard as everyone else to get where they are. In America, people at the top were often (though I admit not always -- just more often than in Europe) the hardest-working, smartest, and toughest-minded individuals, and it was obvious to everyone that they got there on their own. Bureaucracy, in a way, is a lot like aristocracy (actually it is more like a medieval guild system), since it has its own system of ranks, and you can't easily get from one to the other just through working hard -- it has to be "bestowed" on you. Hence why Americans tend to disrespect bureaucracy, and, by the way, that is a very good thing.

EDIT: downvoted: time to leave Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER51> Charismatic people with great oratory skills get elected, its as simple as that!

In the south indian state (Tamilnadu) where i grew up most of the chief ministers (governors) are former actors with no college degree. Yet that state is relatively wealthy, what do you say about that?

</comment><comment><USER52> The economist wrote a similar piece a few years back: <http://www.economist.com/node/13496638>

I remember seeing a good discussion here on HN about the article, though it seems to have disappeared.

</comment><comment><USER53> Because we're not qualified. We barely elect officials let alone scientists.

</comment><comment><USER54> Because they wouldn't pander to the dumbed-down majority.

</comment><comment><USER48> This "article" belongs on Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER55> What's with the China bashing? We all believe in what we are used to. That simple.

The author, as many commenters stated, does not define his article correctly? To say America does not elect scientists assumes that the US has many scientists who are rejected at the polls. A better question...Why don't more scientists run for office.

First, an engineer or scientist in Germany is not the same as an engineer/scientist in the US. The Bachelors degree (4 years of college), from what I hear, is almost non-existent in Germany where a Diploma is standard.

Science is not Enough to Affect Change

The author does not state what problems scientists could solve. And science is not everything. No policy can be implemented without the people's support. Example, South African scientist Ivor van Heerden being told "Americans don't live in tents" by US Army Corps of Engineers when discussing ways to house citizens after a Hurricane, pre-Hurricane Katrina.

transcript [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9178501/ns/nightly_news- nbc_news...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9178501/ns/nightly_news- nbc_news_investigates/t/was-fema-ready-disaster-katrina/)

Many engineers and scientists in the US are immigrants. Herbert Hoover's, the only engineer/scientist president, parents or grandparents came from Germany. Their original name was Huber. Hoover's technocrats were discredited after the 1929 stock market crash.

From my knowledge and little experience in advocacy, politics is ahem ...politics. Your successes are more about knowing and coercing the right people, not really if the numbers add up. For instance, defunding a program to balance the budget, might cost you and your party their hold on power.

Look how many scientists and doctors were researching HIV/AIDS. Their effect was miniscule. The major investments did not come from scientist advocates. The investments into HIV/AIDS came largely because Gay and Lesbian activists (e.g. ACT-UP) pressured and coerced the pharmaceutical industry. The most infamous act being the _real_ 1987 occupation and shutdown of Wall-Street which resulted in real concessions.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power>

This is how politics changes, by dedicated action.

As for Singapore, Singapore was ruled by Lee Kuan Yew (sp?) for about 36 years (1970-1990s) so it should not be compared to democratically elected governments,

Science has to be Accepted by the Population

As for climate change due to pollution. Politicians can't single handedly change the climate, only a curtailing of the excessive consumption patterns of the public can do that. I think it's silly to point at "anti-intellectuals" as the source of climate change when 50% of the nation turns the air condition to 20C/68F when it is 30C/88F in the summer time. The air-condition being the most energy expensive item in the household.

[http://220.127.116.11/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electric...](http://22.214.171.124/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_use)

Electricity use and hence pollution is more affected by climate and price in the US as opposed to politics.

US Electricity Use vs. price and climate (grouped by color)

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/60012884@N00/4921667405/in/phot...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/60012884@N00/4921667405/in/photostream/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Until the meme or whatever of people smugly laughing under their coats at people for trying to sound smart or understand difficult concepts (and sometimes getting it wrong) changes, which exists for whatever large number of various mostly individualistic reasons, this will not change.

Rather the politician (silver tongues) who can convince both the aforementioned types as well as those truly caring for reason will be elected. The reason is large and without making too many blanket statements, I think they are merely trickier to defeat when the game is all about making someone look more wrong. The game is sadly enough, victorious for those who care more about merely looking intelligent by a definition more widely accepted (by being less wrong) than actually being intelligent (read:scientific, by postulation and diligence even in regards to self) -- and largely the same game is scrimmaged in courtrooms all day every day.

</comment><comment><USER57> To be honest, many people that have PHDs that I have met have horrendous people skills. Yes, I want an intelligent person to run our country, but serial killers also many times have very high IQs.

I want someone that is good with people and has intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER58> And bush is the only president so far with an MBA. Is the USA becoming socialist? [/sarcasm].

<http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/02/gwb_hbs_mba.html>

</comment><comment><USER59>
      I've visited Singapore a few times in recent years and been impressed with its
      wealth and modernity. I was also quite aware of its world-leading programs in
      mathematics education and naturally noted that one of the candidates for
      president was Tony Tan, who has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. Tan won the
      very close election and joined the government of Prime Minister Lee Hsien
      Loong, who also has a degree in mathematics.

Whoa ho, hold _on_ there nigga. _Is you_ seriously holding up Singapore, of all countries, as a shining example of flawless governance, to be emulated by other nations?

The same Singapore that Amnesty International says has the highest per capita capital punishment rate in the world? The same place that hangs people for drug possession? 133rd out of 175 in Reporters Without Borders "press freedom" index? The country where a quarter of the population is migrant workers, for whom, conviently, labor laws don't apply?

Man, you're right! Sign me _up_ for some Singapore-style government! Sounds great!

<comment><USER60> Sbierwagen, as a white male living in Seattle, whats with the offensive faux- ebonics?

<comment><USER59> I felt like burning some karma.

<comment><USER60> point taken.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


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<comment><USER2> Does anyone else find it funny that they don't mention microbes being the cause of methane production?</comment>


Machines that suck CO₂ from the air might be cheaper than we thought - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/06/machines-that-suck-co%E2%82%82-from-the-air-might-be-cheaper-than-we-thought/ <comment><USER2> How do these machines compare to trees? I understand those are good at removing CO2 from the atmosphere as well.

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