4 ms·

The thing is that with India - for example - it is a relatively cheap market and those can afford expensive stuff, but western stuff anyway. Also regarding vis

by chucke1992 2y ago

The thing is that with India - for example - it is a relatively cheap market and those can afford expensive stuff, but western stuff anyway. Also regarding visa - well there are more indians in the visa queue than probably multiple countries combined. If they make it as fast as other countries - indians will just move in millions and millions simply due to sheer amount of people they have.

alephnerd 2y ago
> those can afford expensive stuff, but western stuff anyway Western, sure. American, not really. There's a reason American brands like Harley-Davidson and Ford quit India, but Western (NATO+) brands like Toyota and Hyundai thrive in India, and Indian conglomerates like Tata acquired prestige western brands like Jaguar Land Rover. Same thing with China and the acquisition of MG, Volvo, Lotus, etc. > Also regarding visa - well there are more indians in the visa queue than probably multiple countries combined. If they make it as fast as other countries - indians will just move in millions and millions simply due to sheer amount of people they have. True, but there needs to be a middle path between being selective but also attracting the cream of the crop. Take a look at the placement statistics of IIT graduates nowadays (2017 onwards) - barely 5-10% choose to immigrate abroad now, ad it's a similar trend in mid-tier Indian programs as well. America's innovation ecosystem only worked because we were able to attract the best and the brightest from Russia, India, China, etc. Without that level of openness, we fall to the same pit of stagnation that Mainland Europe, the UK, and Japan fell into. ------ Both these points are examples of the insular mindset that is going to doom the US. There is this assumption that we have always been the best and always will be the best. It was immigrants or the children of immigrants like Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, von Neumann, etc that ushered the Atomic and Information Age, and it was immigrants like Hinton, le Cunn, Bengio, etc that ushered in the current ML revolution. Already, a lot of my Chinese and Indian friends who did their PhDs in EE or CS at programs like Stanford or MIT have started returning to China and India because they find the visa process demeaning and very backlogged.
- chucke1992 2y ago
  > Western, sure. American, not really. The thing is that I am not sure what american - that is not software services and some PC hardware - is even sold outside of USA. Coca Cola and McDonalds? But aside that I haven't see much american stuff even in Europe. It is usually german home appliances, local food, nestle (swiss) etc. > True, but there needs to be a middle path between being selective but also attracting the cream of the crop. Take a look at the placement statistics of IIT graduates nowadays (2017 onwards) - barely 5-10% choose to immigrate abroad now, ad it's a similar trend in mid-tier Indian programs as well. The problem is that even 5% is a lot. Like Indian's population is probably 2-3 times bigger than the whole europe. My own country has less than 9m people and my friend got his USA passport after 5 years only... > America's innovation ecosystem only worked because we were able to attract the best and the brightest from Russia, India, China, etc. Without that level of openness, we fall to the same pit of stagnation that Mainland Europe, the UK, and Japan fell into. One of the reason for western stagnation is just the amount of regulations. That's why heavily regulated industries are usually quite successful in Europe (like pharmaceutical companies), but garage startups? Not really. Sweden is basically the only exception. And UK (every 10 years lol). > Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, von Neumann People like this are exceptions really. Though there are always trends over the years when some countries produce more talents than the other. It is like there is a beacon shining at one point and a lot of talents are born close to each other.
- everforward 2y ago
  > It was immigrants or the children of immigrants like Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, von Neumann, etc that ushered the Atomic and Information Age, and it was immigrants like Hinton, le Cunn, Bengio, etc that ushered in the current ML revolution. You’re not wrong, but America won’t accept it. The middle class has been gutted, and everyone is scrambling over the ruins of it to try to land in the upper class instead of the lower. People perceive those immigrants as “taking a spot” in the upper class, as if there were a deity determining how many rich people we can have at some inflexible level. I think people pervasively underestimate the value of education, in literal dollar terms. The US spends a crazy amount just getting someone through high school, much less college and a PhD. I would be pretty okay with a visa process for anyone that has a PhD from a reputable institution (where reputable only means “not a degree farm”). Having someone with a PhD immigrate here is like their government donating a half million dollars to the US in the form of paying for the immigrants education instead of us. Their home country bears the costs, we reap the benefits. I don’t even really care if they speak English; they’ll learn, or use a translate app, or marry someone that can translate or whatever. They got a PhD, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. The only real risk is crashing wages, but in a globalized labor market I don’t know if immigration is even relevant. Even if wages did crash, that might be a good thing if the crash wasn’t permanent. Cheap research sounds like the kind of thing that might drive us into new technologies.
Fogest 2y ago
> Also regarding visa - well there are more indians in the visa queue than probably multiple countries combined. If they make it as fast as other countries - indians will just move in millions and millions simply due to sheer amount of people they have. This is already happening in Canada and it is destroying many governmental services like healthcare, education, and of course housing. There definitely need to be reasonable caps in place otherwise services cannot scale up quickly enough to accommodate. I'm sure USA is like Canada in this respect; many services are already woefully underfunded or backlogged without even increasing immigration rates. I'm also surprised someone who is more well-off would want to leave their country to come to North America. I would think their money would go much further in their own country. But maybe there is more to it than I realize.
- chucke1992 2y ago
  > I'm also surprised someone who is more well-off would want to leave their country to come to North America. I would think their money would go much further in their own country. But maybe there is more to it than I realize. It really depends on how well off you are and the reasons for that. Let's take my home country as an example. We have IT people earning like 3-5x times more than the regular people (like you get salary 2000$ while the rent will be 200$ at worst, with average salary being below 500$. New apartments cost 100k in the capital but outside the capital even 40k is considered an expensive apartment). And we have police and military earning similar (and more money. Not to mention corruption). Both IT and police can afford buying expensive goods and stuff, can afford apartments, good food and so on. Both can live like kings, but at the same time people are limited to what they can get and find in their country. It is like to be a king of the village - you are the king, sure, but in the city you have more opportunities, more advancements, more access to resources. When I was leaving the country we did not even have Spotify, for example. And I was earning like 5x times of the average. But there was no point in that. And that's just a software service - there are issues with medication, education etc. So even if you earn more, it might not be worth it. However in case of IT, it is not a problem for me to get a relatively decent salary in a foreign country while as a military person or a police officer it will become close to impossible to reach the same level without a lot of things attached to that. So for people like this, being a king of a village is worth more than being an average in some foreign country. But, each and every time, they are trying to send their children to a foreign country to live or to study. And that's without people who have no opportunities or cannot learn foreign language and thus cannot leave. In India you have extremely rich and extremely poor, coming from various developed and underdeveloped countries and all know English most of the time and often has IT education - with their much bigger population just sheer amount of people leaving will be a lot. A lot.

alephnerd 2y ago

> those can afford expensive stuff, but western stuff anyway Western, sure. American, not really. There's a reason American brands like Harley-Davidson and Ford quit India, but Western (NATO+) brands like Toyota and Hyundai thrive in India, and Indian conglomerates like Tata acquired prestige western brands like Jaguar Land Rover. Same thing with China and the acquisition of MG, Volvo, Lotus, etc. > Also regarding visa - well there are more indians in the visa queue than probably multiple countries combined. If they make it as fast as other countries - indians will just move in millions and millions simply due to sheer amount of people they have. True, but there needs to be a middle path between being selective but also attracting the cream of the crop. Take a look at the placement statistics of IIT graduates nowadays (2017 onwards) - barely 5-10% choose to immigrate abroad now, ad it's a similar trend in mid-tier Indian programs as well. America's innovation ecosystem only worked because we were able to attract the best and the brightest from Russia, India, China, etc. Without that level of openness, we fall to the same pit of stagnation that Mainland Europe, the UK, and Japan fell into. ------ Both these points are examples of the insular mindset that is going to doom the US. There is this assumption that we have always been the best and always will be the best. It was immigrants or the children of immigrants like Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, von Neumann, etc that ushered the Atomic and Information Age, and it was immigrants like Hinton, le Cunn, Bengio, etc that ushered in the current ML revolution. Already, a lot of my Chinese and Indian friends who did their PhDs in EE or CS at programs like Stanford or MIT have started returning to China and India because they find the visa process demeaning and very backlogged.

chucke1992 2y ago
> Western, sure. American, not really. The thing is that I am not sure what american - that is not software services and some PC hardware - is even sold outside of USA. Coca Cola and McDonalds? But aside that I haven't see much american stuff even in Europe. It is usually german home appliances, local food, nestle (swiss) etc. > True, but there needs to be a middle path between being selective but also attracting the cream of the crop. Take a look at the placement statistics of IIT graduates nowadays (2017 onwards) - barely 5-10% choose to immigrate abroad now, ad it's a similar trend in mid-tier Indian programs as well. The problem is that even 5% is a lot. Like Indian's population is probably 2-3 times bigger than the whole europe. My own country has less than 9m people and my friend got his USA passport after 5 years only... > America's innovation ecosystem only worked because we were able to attract the best and the brightest from Russia, India, China, etc. Without that level of openness, we fall to the same pit of stagnation that Mainland Europe, the UK, and Japan fell into. One of the reason for western stagnation is just the amount of regulations. That's why heavily regulated industries are usually quite successful in Europe (like pharmaceutical companies), but garage startups? Not really. Sweden is basically the only exception. And UK (every 10 years lol). > Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, von Neumann People like this are exceptions really. Though there are always trends over the years when some countries produce more talents than the other. It is like there is a beacon shining at one point and a lot of talents are born close to each other.
everforward 2y ago
> It was immigrants or the children of immigrants like Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, von Neumann, etc that ushered the Atomic and Information Age, and it was immigrants like Hinton, le Cunn, Bengio, etc that ushered in the current ML revolution. You’re not wrong, but America won’t accept it. The middle class has been gutted, and everyone is scrambling over the ruins of it to try to land in the upper class instead of the lower. People perceive those immigrants as “taking a spot” in the upper class, as if there were a deity determining how many rich people we can have at some inflexible level. I think people pervasively underestimate the value of education, in literal dollar terms. The US spends a crazy amount just getting someone through high school, much less college and a PhD. I would be pretty okay with a visa process for anyone that has a PhD from a reputable institution (where reputable only means “not a degree farm”). Having someone with a PhD immigrate here is like their government donating a half million dollars to the US in the form of paying for the immigrants education instead of us. Their home country bears the costs, we reap the benefits. I don’t even really care if they speak English; they’ll learn, or use a translate app, or marry someone that can translate or whatever. They got a PhD, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. The only real risk is crashing wages, but in a globalized labor market I don’t know if immigration is even relevant. Even if wages did crash, that might be a good thing if the crash wasn’t permanent. Cheap research sounds like the kind of thing that might drive us into new technologies.

Fogest 2y ago

> Also regarding visa - well there are more indians in the visa queue than probably multiple countries combined. If they make it as fast as other countries - indians will just move in millions and millions simply due to sheer amount of people they have. This is already happening in Canada and it is destroying many governmental services like healthcare, education, and of course housing. There definitely need to be reasonable caps in place otherwise services cannot scale up quickly enough to accommodate. I'm sure USA is like Canada in this respect; many services are already woefully underfunded or backlogged without even increasing immigration rates. I'm also surprised someone who is more well-off would want to leave their country to come to North America. I would think their money would go much further in their own country. But maybe there is more to it than I realize.

chucke1992 2y ago
> I'm also surprised someone who is more well-off would want to leave their country to come to North America. I would think their money would go much further in their own country. But maybe there is more to it than I realize. It really depends on how well off you are and the reasons for that. Let's take my home country as an example. We have IT people earning like 3-5x times more than the regular people (like you get salary 2000$ while the rent will be 200$ at worst, with average salary being below 500$. New apartments cost 100k in the capital but outside the capital even 40k is considered an expensive apartment). And we have police and military earning similar (and more money. Not to mention corruption). Both IT and police can afford buying expensive goods and stuff, can afford apartments, good food and so on. Both can live like kings, but at the same time people are limited to what they can get and find in their country. It is like to be a king of the village - you are the king, sure, but in the city you have more opportunities, more advancements, more access to resources. When I was leaving the country we did not even have Spotify, for example. And I was earning like 5x times of the average. But there was no point in that. And that's just a software service - there are issues with medication, education etc. So even if you earn more, it might not be worth it. However in case of IT, it is not a problem for me to get a relatively decent salary in a foreign country while as a military person or a police officer it will become close to impossible to reach the same level without a lot of things attached to that. So for people like this, being a king of a village is worth more than being an average in some foreign country. But, each and every time, they are trying to send their children to a foreign country to live or to study. And that's without people who have no opportunities or cannot learn foreign language and thus cannot leave. In India you have extremely rich and extremely poor, coming from various developed and underdeveloped countries and all know English most of the time and often has IT education - with their much bigger population just sheer amount of people leaving will be a lot. A lot.