[aleph_minus_one]

> tons of funding and institutional resources go into STEM research with no real reason or motivation or material for this research.

I do believe that there exists an insane amount of (STEM) questions where there exist very good reasons to do research on - much, much more than is currently done.

---

And by the way:

> This is what happens when Silicon Valley execs, trying to make their employees more replaceable, call for more STEM education

More STEM education does not make the employees more replaceable. The reason why the Silicon Valley execs call for more STEM education is rather that

- they want to save money training the employees,

- they want to save money doing research (let rather the taxpayer pay for the research).

[DiscourseFan]

repeating what user u/randomdata said already,

> - they want to save money training the employees,

> - they want to save money doing research (let rather the taxpayer pay for the research).

means they want to offload costs to the public in order to increase profits, which is what I said above.

[aleph_minus_one]

Offloading costs is a different thing than making employees more replaceable.

[DiscourseFan]

Employees are more expensive because they are less replaceable. A company must invest a certain amount of money into labor to make a profit; however, if that company learns it can invest less money into endeavours to make the same profit, then it can decrease the amount invested into labor. The only way to do so is to create some sort of technology, or social relation, that makes the price of individual workers cheaper. Thus, any reduction of cost of labor that increases profit is something that makes employees more replaceable.

[randomdata]

> - they want to save money training the employees,

So what you're saying is that they push for STEM education to make their employees more replaceable...?

[aleph_minus_one]

> So what you're saying is that they push for STEM education to make their employees more replaceable...?

A general rule of thumb is rather that better education and/or specialized knowledge makes employees nore productive, but also less replaceable.

[DiscourseFan]

>less replaceable

Only when they are the only ones that have that knowledge, not when teaching it becomes rote.

[randomdata]

A decent rule if considered in a vacuum, but perhaps you missed some necessary context related to this particular discussion?

> - they want to save money training the employees,