Let me also add that, to the point about measuring undefinable things like "opportunity" or "good fortune", my experience is that social 'scientists' are nowhere near science and are among the dumbest, rock-stupid people at the university (and I've been at a couple of the universities with the very top rated social 'sciences' departments - rated at the top for many decades.
Those people are buffoons and straight-up dolts. One very esteemed professor of sociology actually believed that a graph in the book of census results (the highly detailed survey sent to a very small sample of households) showed than smoking was a factor in the divorce rate. He used this graph that showed that as the number of smokers in a household and how many cigarettes they smoked on average per day increased, so did the divorce rate. He could nott distinguish correlation from causation - a very, very basic concept. He argued that since the graph showed this relationship it was perforce proof, or at worst strong evidence, that smoking was a causative factor in the divorce rate. He really believed this.
These are the chuckleheads who are at the top of the pyramid of social engineering - he had been an extensive advisor to the Johnson administration is justifying his Great Society proposals.
These are the kind of chuckleheads you'd apparently like to define, measure, and provide a designed 'remedy' to push society in some direction you deem preferable.
My atheist lord, you want the government to design social engineering frameworks when they cannot even run the Post Office, Amtrak, or the Obamacare website design?
Even if you somehow believe government SHOULD be doing social engineering, do you realize the buffoons who implement that plan? Will you like it when Jerry Falwell Jr. is President and he wants to mandate that every school teach 2 hours a day of Bible study and drop sciences?
Do you see the problems with having government being an intentional social engineer?
Do you nott realize that is exactly why the income tax code is so bloody ridiculous? Because 'equal under the law' was tossed aside and tax policy became used as a tool to force people to do certain things - and those are always determined by political strength - so lobbying is now more important in determining a business's success than conducting the actual business itself?
When you throw away "equal under the law" you gett the heavy, lumbering, mistake-prone hand of government guided by political lobbyists and ultimately corruption. Do you know why all centrally-planned economies ultimately fail? Do you think these governments are more competent to be a social engineer than they are economists or business planners?
Oh my.
AI
