So EU lawmakers should determine the amount member countries collect in tax?

This is basically a full-time job for many senior engineers. It may as well be the job description. Thing is, most of these 'leaders' are not capable hiring competent engineers - as if they're capable of identifying competence. You do not want to end up at one of those organizations - but they are everywhere.

It seems to me that it would be easy to support an argument that suggests more big problems could be solved if incentives were better aligned toward problem solving and if competent people, not professional politicians, were chosen to solve them.

A feeling of a community is not a contract. Complaining about losing that community changes nothing; and I believe that's the point GP is making.

A solid understanding of behavioral psychology may make it obvious, but like you mention, one could also just open a newspaper.

It looks more and more like we're headed toward a world where we'll regenerate extinct species in labs; and grow our steaks in meat factories. If we no longer need cattle farms, it's possible we'll vote to preserve more lands.

Many sapiens like to believe they are good people, but they don't like to to think about what that really means. It seems we are talking about a filter that identifies such people very quickly.

The underlying truth here is worse than 'majority of educated are illiterate'. Collectively, we've built these delusions into our culture. Perhaps there is less suffering this way.

Something like 50% of college graduates in the US are considered functionally illiterate, despite an enormous number of opportunities for intentional practice; and despite presumably knowing, at least somewhat, of the benefit of attaining more advanced literacy. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10928755

When I think of poor drivers, I think their incentives to become a good driver are much higher. After all, their own lives and the lives of their loved ones are at risk.

Similar to lower quality made-for-outlet products produced by major brands. With the bins it seems to approach gambling on some level. Like raffle tickets, except when you lose you also have to dispose of some trash.

I remember when software was supposed to remove pain points in my life, but now I'm not so sure. I often contemplate whether switching from Spotify to the CD player in my car will save me time, but I'm fairly certain it will save me aggravation.

I think the 70's gas rationing in the US was another example of where price controls absolutely stomped on consumers.

I'm not sure if there are any examples to the contrary, but there are surely people who benefit as, say, 'winning' a rent controlled apartment (but I wouldn't necessarily consider that those people were ever actually consumers in the market to begin with).

Do you know of anything that provides a strong rebuttal to the research found in documents like this? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228640/

I tend to think that cargo cult programming and resume-driven development are the intellectual path of least resistance. Perhaps it's analogous to, "I'd rather rewrite this than understand how it works", because that requires less intellectual effort. Quality engineering is not achieved by the intellectually lazy, from what I've seen.

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy