I remember reading something like this but in relation to elite overproduction, how if you have engineers sitting with their thumbs up their asses instead of working, they will disrupt society in a bad way
Overproduction theory, whether you believe it or not isn't really about engineers.
The idea is that you get a lot of elites which are highly educated and expect high positions in society, but end up bitter because reality falls short. Engineers break with this because in general they are actually quite well compensated.
The targets of the theory are essentially people with non-stem post-secondary degrees
Im not saying it is impossible, so I dont see that as some sort of gotcha.
From Wikipedia:
>Elite overproduction is a concept developed by Peter Turchin that describes the condition of a society that is producing too many potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure.[1][2][3] This, he hypothesizes, is a cause for social instability, as those left out of power feel aggrieved by their relatively low socioeconomic status.
Im focusing on the USA, where engineers, STEM, and the like have high social standing, and do relatively well economically. Your "scholarship on the subject" is from 2007 and is from before the term elite overproduction was even coined.
You hadn't mentioned that your focus was on the USA, but rather a general "The targets of the theory are essentially people with non-stem post-secondary degrees" which is why I provided a paper that directly contradicts your statement. Elite Overproduction is not a US-specific topic, and the paper being from 2007 does nothing to invalidate its findings or lessen its relevance to Elite Overproduction.
Funnily enough, I hadn't checked astrange's reference that prompted this discussion, which is Gambetta and Hertog.
Engineers are technicians/craftspeople, not elites. They are compensated well much of the time, and respected, which means that many of them have more opportunities to become elites, especially when considering the intelligence that engineering degrees tend to filter/correlate with.
Probably fairly peaceful, intelligence or weirdness aren't at play here. The dangerous ones are those who deal in the practical realities of the world in ways that can effect change - they are more likely to have the means to do something. Engineers and chemists are ones to watch (whoever did the script for Breaking Bad knew his chemist stereotypes).
In my mind, the common threads with organize terrorism is utilitarianism and consequentialism. This way of thinking has a big overlap with stem fields based in logic and physics.
The perhaps concerning thread socially is the rise of utilitarian and consequentialist morality.
