Texas may do a lot of crazy things when it comes to state government, but one thing I think we definitely got right is the Texas Sunset Commission ( https://www.sunset.texas.gov/ ). Basically, all boards set up by the state government are automatically abolished every 10 years I believe unless the state legislature passes a law to continue the board. So every 10 years the Sunset Commission evaluates agencies/boards a…
Brilliant. I wish they had this in the UK. Seems like a great way to keep government size in check.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/thomas-jefferson-on-whethe... > The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is t…
Thomas Jefferson’s opinion on this issue doesn’t mean “The US was founded on this principle”. If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution.
> If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution.
If that were true, we wouldn't have had the first block of amendments. There's plenty of stuff that didn't make it into the original constitution because the founders thought it was obvious.
You do make a good point. It makes me think of the occasional video of a registered nurse standing in front of a City Council saying things like vaccines cause Autism, or the COVID-19 vaccine has tracking chips in it. Seeing that makes me think that they should lose their license, which goes against the feeling I feel in this engineers case. That makes me worry that I'm making my decision based on if I think what the…
I think the key is what you get to say while claiming "I am an X, therefore (implicitly) trust what I say" Whether it's a medical professional, architect, engineer, etc., I don't have a problem with the speech and actions of a person being regulated by a professional organization while they are claiming to be of that profession. i.e. legally protecting the term doctor/nurse/engineer/lawyer/etc. is just fine. If you a…
The difference is that one of those is not like the others. There really is no such thing as an unlicensed (medical) doctor, nurse, or lawyer. While most engineers are not licensed as such--and PEs don't even exist for many branches of engineering. Of course, they can't say they're PEs if they're not but there really isn't a default assumption, aside from perhaps in civil engineering, that an engineer asserting expertise in something is licensed.
The worst example of this is Oregon has their own version of the FAA. It’s grandfathered in because it was established before the FAA. You pay $12 a year for an Oregon pilot’s registration. And in return for this bureaucracy, society gets... nothing.
Does it not create jobs? Not saying it's good nor bad.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/thomas-jefferson-on-whethe... > The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is t…
To some extent this famous quote is just sour grapes: Jefferson wasn't much involved in the drafting or passing of the US Constitution, so naturally he was not as attached to it as the other founders. Note that this was a letter written from France.
Thanks. I was confused what website I was using. I'm pretty sure there's an HN rule about not telling people this isn't reddit: "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills."
It has become more political in the past year I've noticed. Oh well. And the same arguments over and over and over and over.
ERCOT has been all in the news for the wrong reason this year. Most obvious was the snowpocalypse back in February. During the fall out of that, the ERCOT board went through personnel changes for various reasons. Now, we're being told by ERCOT that we have to once again limit our electricity use because of their mismanagement of resources. It's Texas. It gets hot during the summer causing people to use their AC units. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or even an HN level hacker to understand that a basic management decision would be to ensure your electricity production would be up to the task. If this isn't worth of discussion, then what is?
There is a point to enforcing it, but sometimes it is way overdone. It is a license to speak truth about a profession and perform it. Making bullshit illegal. It works for certain professions where the individual can be a commodity and the customer can't reliably determine the trust themselves. When you're designing bridges or homes or public infrastructure, a lot of times it can be very difficult to pick a good expe…
You do make a good point. It makes me think of the occasional video of a registered nurse standing in front of a City Council saying things like vaccines cause Autism, or the COVID-19 vaccine has tracking chips in it. Seeing that makes me think that they should lose their license, which goes against the feeling I feel in this engineers case. That makes me worry that I'm making my decision based on if I think what the…
Why should they lose their license? They don't need to understand the mechanics of vaccines or immunity to be a proficient nurse, as long as the standard of care they provide follows recommendations and they listen to the doctors around them regarding patient care.
What benefit is there? One fewer person in a critical role due to an incredibly punitive decision is obvious downside. It's like sending someone to jail for a speeding ticket. Absolute fucking madness.
I first read this and immediately thought it was ridiculous. After a second read, I'm wondering if there is some deception going on. The idea that a license should be required to make advisement on designs impacting the public is reasonable. While nothing is guaranteed, it allows for a simple verification of skills. I find it hard to believe that any engineer would not know this because I was told companies and the g…
You can read the letter linked in the article: https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NC_Engineering_051... It looks to me more the latter: he "helping his son" by "speaking about engineering" is a written report in a court case. Quite a bit of framing
Yeah. The report referenced in that letter seems like the sort of thing that would normally be created or at least signed off by a civil engineering PE. Now, one can stipulate that he was very upfront in the report that he's not a PE and the judge is welcome to judge credibility. But I sort of see where this letter is coming from.
The framing of the title is a bit disingenuous. He is not “talking” about engineering to a bunch of college students. He is providing expert opinion in a court case. This is a whole different deal and I think there is nuance here. Honestly, I don’t like the manipulation with the title and how they are framing the whole thing. Makes me cautious about emitting an opinion.
In the article it says he declared that he wasn’t a licensed engineer. At most, you could argue that his expert testimony is not valid, saying that it is illegal it is a whole different deal. It smells like corruption of the NC government to me.