29 ms·

i'm sorry but this comment reads like a puff piece. the red flag for me was when you simultaneously claimed that economics is complicated and then almost immedi

i'm sorry but this comment reads like a puff piece. the red flag for me was when you simultaneously claimed that economics is complicated and then almost immediately... make an economic claim? look, i get that you want to signal positive sentiment towards immigrants. that's great. but it's not at all clear what you're saying is true - one would need to factor in inflation, minimum wage growth, purchasing power, and things of that nature. there's also the other (darker?) side of the coin, which indicates that in the US, there isn't nearly enough opportunity for US citizens to bridge the gap between where they are and to get prepared for these jobs. that's a black eye on our education system mostly, but it should be emphasized every time something like this is under discussion - given the incredible demand for these roles and the incredible amount of people not in the labor force who actually want a job, we really, really ought to be focusing on education here so as to fill these roles with US citizens.

devereaux 8y ago
Dude, just … no. It's not about signaling or positive sentiments. All human beings are equal. Being born in one place doesn't make you special or entitles you to a job. US citizen or whatever-country citizen, all that matters is what you can do. Meritocracy, you know. If someone else can do the job better than you or me, they should be hired. Being born in the US or gender or anything else you can think about shouldn't play a role. Only raw performance should matter, because anything else is discriminatory. Just saying, because that's how I see the world, and I hope more people will keep seeing the world that way instead of thinking they're special and worth some unique privilege because of circumstance of their birth.
- myegorov 8y ago
  By way of a thought experiment: If all human beings are equal, is this a necessary and sufficient condition to let a homeless person stay with you for a night? Assuming this is an option for a relative or friend. Why not willingly give up your job now? Surely someone can lay claim to your job on some merit basis. If you have children, do you distribute your time and affection in proportion to merit? I don't see why I should give up my hard won comfort -- won collectively by my ancestors, neighbors, compatriots, myself -- to strangers. It's natural to accord special status to yourself, then to some close kin, ..., then to fellow citizens, then to the rest of humanity.
  - lordnacho 8y ago
    > I don't see why I should give up my hard won comfort -- won collectively by my ancestors, neighbors, compatriots, myself -- to strangers. It's natural to accord special status to yourself, then to some close kin, ..., then to fellow citizens, then to the rest of humanity. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague once. Basically he was making the argument that people work hard to pass on something to their kids, and we shouldn't discourage that. Also that generations of people were working for their own nearest, why should that be wrecked in favour of a new regime? There probably is something natural about helping your closest first. But nature is not in itself a reason for thinking something is right. The problem for me is we are talking about excluding people from voluntary agreements. If some guy from a foreign country comes to my country and manages to agree a deal with some employer, why on earth do I have any right to stop that? Any consequences of that agreement on my wellbeing are indirect. The arguments always go via the market, speaking to the effect of changing supply and demand. It's like when the "wrong kind of people" move into a neighbourhood, lowering house prices. What reasonable complaint does one have, other than if those people in themselves do something unreasonable like littering? There's lots of things people can do voluntarily that might hurt me indirectly. Suppose everyone decided to speak Esperanto instead of the local language. Do I have a right to stop them? No. Would it have an enormous cost to me? Yes. Would it be convenient for me to use the law to force them? Sure. So while I can understand that people are worried about immigration, I've yet to hear a reasonable argument to restrict it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - metttalica 8y ago
    Here the cult of HN shows its true face ... As JWZ says :- A DDOS made of finance obsessed Man-children and brogrammers https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/02/an-annotated-digest-of-the-top-hacker-news-posts/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/02/an-annotated-digest-of-the-...
    - devereaux 8y ago
- masonic 8y ago
  Only raw performance should matter, because anything else is discriminatory. There go the disabled, English learners, and all others with an initial disadvantage. Go Team Darwin!
  - devereaux 8y ago
    If they genuinely have a lower performance, they will sell their services at a price matching their performance and have no problem finding clients. However, I dispute that premise. You are jumping to conclusions. The "disabled and English learners" I have met offer tremendous value, in different axes. Someone who is blind is used to processing audio at several time the speed a non blind person can. So if I need someone to summarize and extra data from audio, I want someone who's blind. Because they will be more efficient than you or I. I don't know about you, but I assume you are not blind. If you want to sell me your services, I'll pay you a fraction of what I'll pay a blind contractor because they will be more efficient than you. Someone for which English is not their first language often uses a lower number of words, and makes simpler sentences. This is a godsent for technical documentation. I fear you inner bias make you consider that as "intial disadvantage". It is extremely short sighted. Feel free to call me prejudiced when I prefer blind and ESL hires.
- chasil 8y ago
  Firstly, political systems must also compete. Marxism competes with free-market democracies, and in order for that competition to occur, movement must be restrained. Failing political systems explode with refugees that bring unworkable mindsets with them. Secondly, all people are equal before the law, which is an invention of the U.S. constitution. All people are certainly not equal. This is codified in religion in various forms ("As you did unto the least of these, you did unto me," karma/samsara, kafir, etc.). It is self-evident that equality is not reflected in wealth, social standing, influence, and power. It is also patently obvious that biology presents impediments to equality. You should not confuse a U.S. legal construct of equality with a generalization of equality.
- swebs 8y ago
  >Only raw performance should matter, because anything else is discriminatory. So you're in favor of removing the diversity visa lottery then?
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  > If someone else can do the job better than you or me, they should be hired... OK, but that's not what is happening. You're ignoring the fact that this is more about cheap labor than about some unreachable meritocratic ideal of finding "the best person" for the job. The end game of this will be that these "high-skill" jobs will go the way of manufacturing, and eventually the USA will end up with huge swathes of the population unable to compete in the global economy, poorer, less educated and with a diminishing social safety net.
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  > Being born in one place doesn't make you special or entitles you to a job. Um, in some continues it is. But then I have to ask why have countries at all if being born in a country gains you nothing? While I see your point I can't help to have a hard time with it. Mostly because you fail to see how detrimental to the country it is when its citizens can't get jobs because they are competing with the res of the world, who don't follow the same rules. We have countries for a reason. And if the vast majority of people in a country feel they should not have to compete on a world platform for a local job then that seems fair to me. Lets also talk about numbers. Given there is ~400 million in the US, And ~7 billion people in the rest of the world. It is almost statistically given that we could replace every American citizen worker with a better skilled worker with a non-citizen worker. So I ask again, is that what we want to do? What will that mean for the notion of the US as a country? Why have a country at all? Why have a country at all? Well right now because other countries will continue to be countries and want to be countries, and they don't all play by the same rules. It might be different if we all played by the same rules but right now it seems like the US is being gamed by everybody else. But anyways, it matters what country you are born in, and that does grant you some rights that others in other countries were born in don't have. Otherwise we would not even be having this discussion.
  - devereaux 8y ago
    You assume I may like countries. I'm not against the concept of people freely associating around political systems they like. However, I do not like the concept of imaginal lines drawn on a map to give advantage to some people who had a lucky birth. It is no better than a caste system or nobility in Europe. > Otherwise we would not even be having this discussion. I'm sad we have this discussion.
zjaffee 8y ago
Except it's not true that the US education system isn't producing enough educated prospective software engineers, the deficiency is entirely people at the higher levels. The predicted job growth by the BLS over the next ten years is very close if not equal to the number of people getting bachelor's degree in computer science. This doesn't include boot camp graduates or people who are returning to get a master's, nor does it count the many people in related fields who go on to become software developers. While certainly some of these graduates are immigrants themselves, it's rather unlikely that the 10s of thousands of H1Bs that come in every year are needed for anything but to reduce labor costs (although it's known that reducing labor costs does make American industry more competitive at large).
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  > Except it's not true that the US education system isn't producing enough educated prospective software engineers. Says who? The same people pushing for H1B? We all know how this works. They tailor a job description that only could be met by a H1B. Any native interviewed is either slotted not under qualified or over qualified. Even if you still want to argue that the solution is not more H1B, its less H1B. You force the companies to dump money into the local schooling systems to ensure they are producing the workers they need. Allowing them to game the system and hire H1B means they have no incentive to ensure our school systems are producing the workers they will need.
joshe 8y ago
My claim is "economics is complicated", so we should listen to economists. Then I put in a link to what some economists say to give the flavor. You can go adventuring for yourself. Look for papers from the federal reserve, university economics blogs, and academic journals. You can just read the abstracts. You will find a very clear consensus. I am also explicitly saying that the media and even high quality media like the Nytimes will leave you with very bad intuition about the effects of immigration.

devereaux 8y ago

Dude, just … no. It's not about signaling or positive sentiments. All human beings are equal. Being born in one place doesn't make you special or entitles you to a job. US citizen or whatever-country citizen, all that matters is what you can do. Meritocracy, you know. If someone else can do the job better than you or me, they should be hired. Being born in the US or gender or anything else you can think about shouldn't play a role. Only raw performance should matter, because anything else is discriminatory. Just saying, because that's how I see the world, and I hope more people will keep seeing the world that way instead of thinking they're special and worth some unique privilege because of circumstance of their birth.

myegorov 8y ago
By way of a thought experiment: If all human beings are equal, is this a necessary and sufficient condition to let a homeless person stay with you for a night? Assuming this is an option for a relative or friend. Why not willingly give up your job now? Surely someone can lay claim to your job on some merit basis. If you have children, do you distribute your time and affection in proportion to merit? I don't see why I should give up my hard won comfort -- won collectively by my ancestors, neighbors, compatriots, myself -- to strangers. It's natural to accord special status to yourself, then to some close kin, ..., then to fellow citizens, then to the rest of humanity.
- lordnacho 8y ago
  > I don't see why I should give up my hard won comfort -- won collectively by my ancestors, neighbors, compatriots, myself -- to strangers. It's natural to accord special status to yourself, then to some close kin, ..., then to fellow citizens, then to the rest of humanity. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague once. Basically he was making the argument that people work hard to pass on something to their kids, and we shouldn't discourage that. Also that generations of people were working for their own nearest, why should that be wrecked in favour of a new regime? There probably is something natural about helping your closest first. But nature is not in itself a reason for thinking something is right. The problem for me is we are talking about excluding people from voluntary agreements. If some guy from a foreign country comes to my country and manages to agree a deal with some employer, why on earth do I have any right to stop that? Any consequences of that agreement on my wellbeing are indirect. The arguments always go via the market, speaking to the effect of changing supply and demand. It's like when the "wrong kind of people" move into a neighbourhood, lowering house prices. What reasonable complaint does one have, other than if those people in themselves do something unreasonable like littering? There's lots of things people can do voluntarily that might hurt me indirectly. Suppose everyone decided to speak Esperanto instead of the local language. Do I have a right to stop them? No. Would it have an enormous cost to me? Yes. Would it be convenient for me to use the law to force them? Sure. So while I can understand that people are worried about immigration, I've yet to hear a reasonable argument to restrict it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- metttalica 8y ago
  Here the cult of HN shows its true face ... As JWZ says :- A DDOS made of finance obsessed Man-children and brogrammers https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/02/an-annotated-digest-of-the-top-hacker-news-posts/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2017/02/an-annotated-digest-of-the-...
  - devereaux 8y ago
masonic 8y ago
Only raw performance should matter, because anything else is discriminatory. There go the disabled, English learners, and all others with an initial disadvantage. Go Team Darwin!
- devereaux 8y ago
  If they genuinely have a lower performance, they will sell their services at a price matching their performance and have no problem finding clients. However, I dispute that premise. You are jumping to conclusions. The "disabled and English learners" I have met offer tremendous value, in different axes. Someone who is blind is used to processing audio at several time the speed a non blind person can. So if I need someone to summarize and extra data from audio, I want someone who's blind. Because they will be more efficient than you or I. I don't know about you, but I assume you are not blind. If you want to sell me your services, I'll pay you a fraction of what I'll pay a blind contractor because they will be more efficient than you. Someone for which English is not their first language often uses a lower number of words, and makes simpler sentences. This is a godsent for technical documentation. I fear you inner bias make you consider that as "intial disadvantage". It is extremely short sighted. Feel free to call me prejudiced when I prefer blind and ESL hires.
chasil 8y ago
Firstly, political systems must also compete. Marxism competes with free-market democracies, and in order for that competition to occur, movement must be restrained. Failing political systems explode with refugees that bring unworkable mindsets with them. Secondly, all people are equal before the law, which is an invention of the U.S. constitution. All people are certainly not equal. This is codified in religion in various forms ("As you did unto the least of these, you did unto me," karma/samsara, kafir, etc.). It is self-evident that equality is not reflected in wealth, social standing, influence, and power. It is also patently obvious that biology presents impediments to equality. You should not confuse a U.S. legal construct of equality with a generalization of equality.
swebs 8y ago
>Only raw performance should matter, because anything else is discriminatory. So you're in favor of removing the diversity visa lottery then?
crispyambulance 8y ago
> If someone else can do the job better than you or me, they should be hired... OK, but that's not what is happening. You're ignoring the fact that this is more about cheap labor than about some unreachable meritocratic ideal of finding "the best person" for the job. The end game of this will be that these "high-skill" jobs will go the way of manufacturing, and eventually the USA will end up with huge swathes of the population unable to compete in the global economy, poorer, less educated and with a diminishing social safety net.
mbrumlow 8y ago
> Being born in one place doesn't make you special or entitles you to a job. Um, in some continues it is. But then I have to ask why have countries at all if being born in a country gains you nothing? While I see your point I can't help to have a hard time with it. Mostly because you fail to see how detrimental to the country it is when its citizens can't get jobs because they are competing with the res of the world, who don't follow the same rules. We have countries for a reason. And if the vast majority of people in a country feel they should not have to compete on a world platform for a local job then that seems fair to me. Lets also talk about numbers. Given there is ~400 million in the US, And ~7 billion people in the rest of the world. It is almost statistically given that we could replace every American citizen worker with a better skilled worker with a non-citizen worker. So I ask again, is that what we want to do? What will that mean for the notion of the US as a country? Why have a country at all? Why have a country at all? Well right now because other countries will continue to be countries and want to be countries, and they don't all play by the same rules. It might be different if we all played by the same rules but right now it seems like the US is being gamed by everybody else. But anyways, it matters what country you are born in, and that does grant you some rights that others in other countries were born in don't have. Otherwise we would not even be having this discussion.
- devereaux 8y ago
  You assume I may like countries. I'm not against the concept of people freely associating around political systems they like. However, I do not like the concept of imaginal lines drawn on a map to give advantage to some people who had a lucky birth. It is no better than a caste system or nobility in Europe. > Otherwise we would not even be having this discussion. I'm sad we have this discussion.

zjaffee 8y ago

Except it's not true that the US education system isn't producing enough educated prospective software engineers, the deficiency is entirely people at the higher levels. The predicted job growth by the BLS over the next ten years is very close if not equal to the number of people getting bachelor's degree in computer science. This doesn't include boot camp graduates or people who are returning to get a master's, nor does it count the many people in related fields who go on to become software developers. While certainly some of these graduates are immigrants themselves, it's rather unlikely that the 10s of thousands of H1Bs that come in every year are needed for anything but to reduce labor costs (although it's known that reducing labor costs does make American industry more competitive at large).

mbrumlow 8y ago
> Except it's not true that the US education system isn't producing enough educated prospective software engineers. Says who? The same people pushing for H1B? We all know how this works. They tailor a job description that only could be met by a H1B. Any native interviewed is either slotted not under qualified or over qualified. Even if you still want to argue that the solution is not more H1B, its less H1B. You force the companies to dump money into the local schooling systems to ensure they are producing the workers they need. Allowing them to game the system and hire H1B means they have no incentive to ensure our school systems are producing the workers they will need.

joshe 8y ago

My claim is "economics is complicated", so we should listen to economists. Then I put in a link to what some economists say to give the flavor. You can go adventuring for yourself. Look for papers from the federal reserve, university economics blogs, and academic journals. You can just read the abstracts. You will find a very clear consensus. I am also explicitly saying that the media and even high quality media like the Nytimes will leave you with very bad intuition about the effects of immigration.