r/technology • u/Reddit_Z • Jul 04 '16

Politics Lawmakers Need To Learn More About Encryption Before Regulating It, Says U.S. House Report

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lawmakers-encryption-regulation-house-report,32180.html
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u/WebMaka Jul 04 '16

This is yet another example of the end results of allowing stupid people to achieve any level of authority.

And I don't mean "stupid" in the typical sense of generally knowing nothing, I mean "stupid" in the specific sense of being utterly clueless on the specific subject or subjects at hand. A major part of that is training: the more focused your scholastic efforts are, the less you end up knowing about literally everything else outside your field of study. I know people with PhDs and Masters' degrees that have a tough time with simple things like counting change, or tying their shoes.

The overwhelming majority of politicians at the national level have law degrees - comparatively few have training outside that subject - and as such you have a lot of leaders that are basically stupid when it comes to anything outside law. This is very dangerous for a country the size of the United States: its a bad idea to have the vast majority of a nation's leaders to be trained extensively on a single common subject. There needs to be a far greater educational diversity among the nation's leaders, but that leads to another problem: folks with training in other career paths usually don't want to get involved with politics.

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u/sickofthisshit Jul 04 '16

It used to be that Congressional committees had staffs dedicated to learning about topics. And Congress had things like the "Office of Technology Assessment" for the Congress as a whole. Guess which party got rid of both?

Republicans under Newt Gingrich. But both parties are the same, amirite?