As a former STEM lord who quit Aero eng in their third year because I didn’t wanna make weapons for capitalists, they’re 100000000% a symptom of our society (but one we will still have to eliminate in a socialist one, but not nearly the same way/magnitude) rather than a something endemic to all societies.

STEM lords as we have them are a result of the same shit that makes incels, that makes reply guys, that makes debate bros, that makes twitter wine moms, etc.

There’s a reason most of those things have huge overlaps with each other, and it’s the crossroads of what America enshrines as it’s values. Ignorance coupled with arrogance. These are problems every society faces but America in particular goes out of it’s way to nourish them in it’s population in order to fuel it’s culture war and consumerism, and as a result it’s uniquely effective at educating those traits into it’s population, especially in unison.

It’s also why even the most educated of them feels confident enough to “share it’s expertise” on shit it has absolutely no education or involvement with, etc etc. It’s not just the ignorance, it’s not just the arrogance, it’s the combination and the fact that we naturally select FOR it. It’s even celebrated when it fits in the current cultural product, like twitch “celebs” and blue check marks opinions somehow being relevant, conducting interviews, the existence of youtubers, etc etc. The audacity to think that anyone even should hear their take let alone anyone actually wanting to.

It’s a uniquely individualist mindset fostered by generations of imperial core cultural reform, as you alluded to in the education/general literacy points.

If you keep those things in mind and look back at scientists like Carl Sagan(a socialist) and listen to the way speak about our society, or look at how soviet scientists and astronauts etc were treated and treated their accomplishments (as done by and for the people, etc) even when they were being celebrated they always fostered the view that it was an accomplishment struggled for by all, that it was shared by them all, and that they were all responsible for it’s risks and rewards. That a rich society had to be rich in huge and varying fields and specialties and that the same was true of people to understand each other, even (perhaps even especially) when they hyper-specialized in the thing they did best or enjoyed or did the most good for “the team”.

As someone who works in a cushy office occasionally writing code for a living, what you’re describing is fundamentally the result of labor aristocracy. The STEMlords are the ‘good ones’ of the working class that capital dangles like a carrot in front of a donkey to convince the rest of the workers that if they just put their noses to the grindstone a little bit harder they too can play foosball with free beer in an air conditioned office, and they are indoctrinated to play the part and bribed with treats to convince themselves that they deserve it.

I am fully aware that the companies I’ve worked for are completely fucking worthless in the real world and deliver absolutely nothing of value, and I’m surrounded by people who are thoroughly convinced that whatever widget they’re working on is revolutionary and going to transform the world. But they think that way because admitting that you’re a lucky bastard who gets paid an obscene wage to refactor an API thirty times in a row instead of doing anything that actually benefits anyone in any material way in complete opposition to everything you’ve ever been told is a wall of cognitive dissonance to work through and they’re bribed heavily not to, so they don’t and double down on bazinga-brain shit instead. Their material conditions encourage them to just sit back and enjoy the gravy train, and that along with the propaganda they’re exposed to for every second of every day breeds reactionary thought.

I started coming up with some spiel about how to break this down under a less toxic system, but Porkroll already knocked it out of the park so I’ll just throw a +1 to his “make engineers dogfood what they make” idea.

As a humble CNC machinist, here’s my rambling vulgar producerist take. As much as it is a problem that STEM is glorified and humanities are sidelined or deemed unnecessary, there is a stark class divide within STEM mindset as well. Science, technology, engineering, mathematics - that’s all theoretical cubicle work. Sure, it is labor, but it accomplishes nothing on its own. An army of engineers in an architecture firm does not produce a building. No number of scientists is capable of arresting climate change. We’ve got app stores filled with millions of apps, but all they are capable of doing are reifying the present social relations, and mathematics makes no attempt at mystifying the fact that it is a purely academic pursuit.

In the context of mechanical engineering and production, my proposition is you force people to operate the machines before you allow them to build/set up the machines. Then you force them to build/set up the machines before you allow them to program them. Then you force them to program the machines before you allow them to do the glorified engineering work of processes development and industrial design. Under the present regime of production, there is a deep dichotomy between the technical labor of people who keep the factories churning, and the “enlightened” engineers and designers who go to school, sit in a comfortable office, draw a bunch of lines and arcs on a computer and, in doing so, unwittingly wield tremendous power over the conditions of potentially hundreds of thousands of hours of labor. This is not to equivocate the discipline of engineering with the social status of being a member of the bourgeoisie, but to highlight the consequences of decisions made at this level.

Engineers one way or another must be forced to pull their heads of out of their perfectly spherical, frictionless asses and think about the social and political implications of their designs, and one way to do that is to make them start from the fundamentals. Not just do some 3 month internship along the way to getting an engineering stamp, but actually engaging seriously with the production process, such that they learn how to spot the kind of engineering decisions which result from inexperience, expedience, or penny pinching and develop a genuine disdain for it. A solid education in history, politics, and philosophy can only serve to enrich this disdain.

Edit/addendum: When it comes to “tech work” A.K.A. information technology and software development, the situation is even worse. If it is an engineer’s job to methodically weigh the pros and cons of various design decisions in a LIMITED social scope (e.g. will this building collapse on its inhabitants, or will this intersection get pedestrians killed. In short: “will our firm be held liable”), this methodology is almost entirely lacking in the field of computing. Yes, “software engineers” are a thing, but it is a much more vaguely defined dicipline than other engineering fields like mechanical, architectural, and civil engineering. The majority of computer technicians take pride in the notion of being a “code monkey,” who moves fast and breaks stuff. For the most part, even the limited social concerns of more mature engineering diciplines are entirely abscent.