We’ve just finished our Projects for Alcoa, and they were all presented a day ago. Interestingly enough, there was one comment made by one of the teams that has stayed in my mind and I’ve decided to write a blog about it. While the team was describing their reasoning for choosing the idea for their project, one of the team-members mentioned that they could either have designed for the environment, or to make money, and they chose money. Now, this may seem like an insignificant statement, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more remarkable and unsettling it is in its implications. The comment was stated in a slightly sad, realist tone which I’ve become very familiar with. This is the same tone that people use when they talk about failed gun control measures or a beloved politician failing to achieve the office of presidency. This is a tone of giving up, of accepting failure and making the most of it.

As engineers, is it our duty to design for the betterment of the world or our duty to make money? (which, as some would argue, serves the world best in itself). The former being more of a progressive, idealistic standpoint, and the latter being Ayn Rand’s likely point of view. I find it fascinating that in an age where there is so much information available about the environment and what we are doing to it, there are still those who insist that an economics argument is infallible, even in this case, where the economics of it were pure speculation. Engineers and scientists are very well educated. In my opinion, those who have had the money and time to educate themselves have a duty to the grand majority of the world who do not share the same advantages. Their duty is simple: Don’t work for your own personal gain. Work for others, work for the good of mankind. Money is man’s crystallization of the idea that everything should be owned and all should be bought and sold.

The main point to consider here is that engineering design comes with responsibility to that which cannot stand up for itself. If we are teaching our peers and our children that the only thing worth working for is money, then why on Earth would anyone help anyone else? Why would anyone care for the environment? A design for the betterment of man may fail if it’s not economically soluble. But products that worsen our world while being successful have already fail us and continue to.