12 ms·

Nah, the issue is the one that many developing countries suffer from: brain drain. The best people leave the country because the can earn orders of magnitude m

Nah, the issue is the one that many developing countries suffer from: brain drain. The best people leave the country because the can earn orders of magnitude more money in the developed world. This is why countries like the US keep being so successful while developing countries stay poor. It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism? There is nothing wrong with striving for a better life, it is what moves humanity forward. Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations. The solution is to either keep the population ignorant, hamstringing their education so they are less useful abroad and implementing a strict censorship regime so they don't get "corrupted" by the West or well force them to stay. We saw that all play out in the Soviet Block. There is a good reason there was a wall. I think the fairest solution is to NOT make education free but instant offer a deal of having to stay in the country and work for X-years in the profession one has been trained in by the state. Once they get older and settle down they are less likely to leave anyway. Being a developing country just sucks. There is a reason most never break the cycle of poverty.

ta988 2y ago
Brain drain is not just about money. it is also simply about beeing able to get a life doing what we like with people alike and know how to do while beeing recognized doing it. I left my country for this exact reason, there was a culture of doing the minimum and making sure others can't organize to do great things. And trying to go back you get a lot of opposition, bureaucratic, social (jealousy and resentment is more than palpable in interviews), cultural... It is more like a one-way brain valve.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> striving for a better life the problem here is that you're directly equating earning more money with a "better life" once you have enough to have your needs met, then earning multiples times that doesn't make your life better; at that point, "better life" is much more impacted by other factors than money
- FredPret 2y ago
  The marginal utility of an extra dollar goes down as you get more of them, but it never reaches zero, especially if you have big dreams. Just look at Musk and his startups - I bet he's very glad to have that 200 billionth dollar, because now he can have the space program he always wanted. This wouldn't have been possible in the third-world country where he grew up.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    First, HN consistently misuses the term "third world". In 2024, this term is now very out of date to describe developing economies (and below). Also, the original meaning was not at all what most people think -- it was about Soviet vs US alignment. And, no, South Africa was definitely middle income when he grew up there -- and it still is (sadly). For a long time (maybe still true?), the GDP per capita in SA nearly the highest amoung all African countries. (I think Seychelles is the richest African country now.)
    - FredPret 2y ago
      "Third world" was a geopolitical term but now it's economic and cultural. I assure you South Africa is third world by any measure. The GDP of SA (a large country with tons of resources and a population of 60m) is roughly on par with that of the Toronto metro area (population 7m) or the Phoenix metro (population 5m). It's middle income... and it probably will ~always be. None of this really matters though - what Musk has done in the US (like it - or him - or not) was only possible in the US.
      - kjkjadksj 2y ago
        GDP is a kind of screwed up measure because the buying power of the dollar in the US is so much worse than most other countries. Case in point you can find a little san jose neighborhood where the gdp is an order of magnitude higher than a little mexico city neighborhood with more or less the exact same sorts of homes on the same sort of street. Now you might argue the sj homes are that much more valuable because of what they offer beyond the home via location proximity to opportunities, but its not like everyone benefits from such things or even that these opportunities are equally available to everyone. Yet everyone shoulders the costs of others success and position.
derektank 2y ago
>Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations. This isn't necessarily the case, even with brain drain. Remittances (financial transfers from migrants to family and friends at home) can actually represent a large percent of GDP for developing nations, upwards of 10 or 20 percent.
FredPret 2y ago
I'm part of the brain drain from my developing country-of-birth. It's more than just money. To me, the money is a symptom of the real issue. The real issue for me was the culture that exists in my birthplace. It just isn't welcoming to nerds or rich people. It doesn't lend itself to ever becoming developed. When I compare and contrast to the New World: I find a much more welcoming culture that encourages personal progress. And not only are nerds welcome, but all sorts of productive folk. It's absolutely no surprise to me that the US is outperforming the rest of the world economically to a comical degree.
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  Culture aspect is way underrated. It's not only fact that in Western Europe I could earn a lot more. But also that I don't have to deal with massive corruption. I don't have to deal with feeling I have to be constantly on guard. I don't have to deal with failing education. I don't have to hide who I am in fear of being ostracized by society. (even if for that point we made a lot of progress - but still, why wait endlessly while I can get it right away somewhere else?)
  - namaria 2y ago
    Culture is not the cause of development. It's the result. The complex human system always has a central area of development and an extended periphery. You can't have homogeneous development because development is the concentration of resources. Wherever these resources concentrate will have a privileged economy, and culture (because it can afford it) and it will develop a superiority complex. And it will keep moving. In 2100 when the center of the world economy has moved on from the US, the new center will have beautifully constructed narratives about how their culture is superior and their rise inevitable.
    - StefanBatory 2y ago
      I live in a country where I am called rainbow disease by the prominent priests for being bi, and the previous de facto leader said that I'm only "Polish-speaking person" and not a Pole because I do not believe in God. Thing is, that while what you're saying could be true, from a perspective of a person living in it - I don't care.
Mistletoe 2y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if the brain drain goes the opposite way from America the next four years. I’m looking to live in Europe and so are lots of people I know that are fatFIREd with their American bucks.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  The tax situation isn’t nearly as favorable for americans doing it elsewhere as it is for anyone to do it here in america. Unless you rip up your american citizenship.
- D-Coder 2y ago
  "Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement is followed by those who want to quit working before reaching traditional retirement age. "FatFIRE promotes abundance. The goal is to have enough funds to enjoy freedom and flexibility when you retire early."
jimbohn 2y ago
I thought about the "work for X-years" solution a few times. While it looks attractive, it also removes some pressure from the country (or local employers) to get better. Some countries need a kick in the head, like the one I emigrated from. Perhaps a couple of "developed" countries failing due to brain drain will be a wake-up call for the rest about the value of the younger generation.
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  Absolutely! Since you're forced to stay here, why shouldn't we abuse you? What are you going to do, run away? I remember in secondary school, my deeply patriotic teacher asked us who wants to emigrate. And she deeply condemned us for it, calling us leeches that stole from the country. It was obligatory education! We didn't even had an option to choose by then. And also, my parents also could say that yes, they paid for it in their taxes.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    I recall running into similar attitudes in my country of origin, including, yes, teachers. Ironically, this ends up being one of those things that contribute towards the desire to leave.
paganel 2y ago
> Idealism? From some point on, yes, because the modern world was born on many past such idealists. Fetishising material goods and materialism as a whole are a very big explanation for the mess we're now all in at the civilisational level.
slibhb 2y ago
Brain drain is a real thing, but there are other issues preventing poor countries from being rich. Most of all political dysfunction. As far as brain drain goes, I don't think there's much point in fighting it. Cities like Singapore and Dubai demonstrate that you can quickly build a city/country people want to live. Why shouldn't Bhutan have to compete with the rest of the world to attract young, talented people? They should! And they can do fine at it, they just have to prioritize it. And from the article, that's exactly what they're doing.
abecedarius 2y ago
Catch-up growth being easier than growth in a "developed" country implies that the less-developed country "should" be easier to get rich in -- a better opportunity, not worse. In principle. Yes, we don't live in the in-principle world, but the logic "they're richer over there, so here is inherently stuck unable to compete for talent" is wrong. You need to address whatever the actual structural problem is.
- cardanome 2y ago
  It is easier to have higher relative economic growth, yes, as seen with China in the last decades but that doesn't translate to better opportunities for the individual. A working class US American probably has a higher standard of living then an upper-class entrepreneur in Bhutan.
  - abecedarius 2y ago
    China over 1980s-2000s was an example I had in mind, yes. A poor country and a relatively great place to get rich. There's always emigrating after you make your pile.
FLT8 2y ago
This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or you can choose not to invest in your people and run the risk that they stay". It seems to me that the smartest people would be far more motivated to leave a country where they are unable to find other people like themselves to collaborate with. And they'd be far more likely to come back in future and reinvest their overseas earnings in a country that they felt warmth towards than one that had forced them to play life in hard mode and was actively hostile towards them.
- fuzztester 2y ago
  >This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or you can choose not to invest in your people and run the risk that they stay". Yes. I've seen it like this in a LinkedIn post: CFO to CEO: What if we train our people, and they leave? CEO to CFO: What if we don't train them, and they stay?
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    There’s another option, spend huge amounts to hire the very best and don’t provide any training. That’s what the top end hedge funds do with seven figure starting compensation.
    - snapplebobapple 2y ago
      That comp uaually iant gauranteed. Itsusually some decent base salary and a bonus based on some foemula around performance
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        It is practically guaranteed for all the prospective super geniuses working there for the first year, because the bar is set to be intentionally easy relative to their potential. Sometimes it is even literally guaranteed in writing for the most desirable hires.
throwaways_ind 2y ago
> It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism? Money is only second or third factor that pushes people abroad. People leave countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh to escape rampant and total corruption, hooliganism, lack of safety and security. Then come better roads, better infra, less traffic, etc. When you call 911, the police actually come. An ambulance actually arrive. In India, police first find if the perpetrator is from the local ruling party or under a local crime lord. They come only if the answer is negative. Then they push the perpetrator for hefty bribes. If they pay, again, no case. If they don't pay, you are at the mercy of local courts, which will give you justice in, say, 25 years. In India, there is no basic human decency allotted for you. Only government officials of very high rank, hooligans, political leaders enjoy treatment with respect (like the Mafia). Nothing to say about horrific roads, horrible hospitals, poor hygiene, and everything else. And things are worse in Bangladesh, Pakistan. When we think about going abroad, we are trying to escape these. Money comes later. Income in the same economic strata in India will give you maid, cook, driver, car, nanny, all- not accessible to you in Europe or the USA. If someone is not going abroad from India, it's either because they can't or they don't want to leave their aging parents behind.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  I should probably tell this to the Indian student I met in New Orleans who went to the community college here and he’s now going back to India because he finds it easier to run his small businesses and hire there.
yoyohello13 2y ago
What about making education free only if you stay in the country. If you leave then you owe the cost of school.
- Viliam1234 2y ago
  That sounds fair only if you imagine that getting education is something like buying a product: if you like it, you take it and agree to pay the cost; and if you don't like, you don't take it. But sometimes the education is mandatory, inefficient, and it sucks. Then the people who want to leave the country would be required to pay a lot of money for something they didn't want and that wasn't worth it. Basically, any country that wants to prevent their people from leaving could just assign an absurdly high cost to its mandatory education, and say: "hey, anyone is free to leave, they just need to pay us more than they will ever make".
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations. nonsense; this is how developing nations become developed nations. peolpe seem to forget that Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, HK were all "developing" nations not too long ago
salomonk_mur 2y ago
Only the most rational concerning income. There are many other factors at stake such as staying close to family, keeping your contact network, 0 or low discrimination towards you in your home country, among others. Source: I am one of those people that could leave but decided to stay.
closeparen 2y ago
Are developing countries bottlenecked technical aptitude? Or are they bound by social, economic, and political structures that would prevent capable people from generating wealth anyway? Maybe some of both, but to the extent it's the latter, someone being stuck in their country of origin to languish in some undifferentiated low-productivity job is a travesty.
slt2021 2y ago
immigrating is very hard, smart people would love to stay where they were born. unfortunately developing countries make it impossible for smart people to stay due to corruption and small market/economy
skeeter2020 2y ago
Well it's a least starting to change, as countries like Canada, and to an extent the US, see the people several generations after their immigrants look back or outside their countries of birth. There are lots of opportunities outside the US for someone who doesn't feel super-comfortable because of the culture or ethnicity, but is educated and ready to move around the globe.
brailsafe 2y ago
Well, it's a more complex economic thing from what I'm learning. It's a systems issue rather than a discrete resource/physical capital/human capital thing, ultimately it comes down to incentives. If you have an extremely educated workforce but broadly no incentive to invest in the future, no way to capitalize on those hypothetical investments through access to market, for whichever reasons, then trying to tweak one variable like education will just overflow your shallow tub and the water will spill into countries that do have incentives and where the feedback loop works. If that system breaks down, even for developing countries, it's worrying. For example Canada has a highly educated workforce with mobility, and has hamstrung itself by disincentivising productive investments, instead overvaluing real estate to the point where people entering the workforce now might not see a path to owning even a small condo by their 40s, unless you have a particularly rare and valuable skill, luck, or money from parents, which isn't a high prospect for the circulation of financial prosperity. So we're just subsidizing U.S growth at this point, and so are many other countries, even though we and many immigrants would (often but not always) rather live here, either because this is where our lives are or this is where the vibes are, which is tough to reconcile if there's next to no economic opportunity inside the country. This happens on a micro level as well, my home city's highest prospect is basically moving to a different city; people can be highly educated there, but unless you're going back into the academic system and your highest goal is basically getting a mcmansion (but probably not an actual mansion) you're gunna have to go elsewhere. Electricians probably do just fine though, nothing against that, but it's not really a force for innovation.
Wolfenstein98k 2y ago
Brain drain isn't what keeps poor countries poor - if only it was so simple. India would ban out migration in an instant if that was the key to US levels of GDP.
Tabular-Iceberg 2y ago
Could it be argued that we in the west have some degree of moral responsibility to prevent brain drain from developing countries? I don’t see the point of giving out tons of foreign aid when we’re just going to pull the rug out from underneath of them anyway.
- vivekd 2y ago
  I mean it's not like developing countries are doing much to steward their best and brightest. Counties with brain drains also have serious issues with nepotism and cronyism limiting the ability of talent to rise up. My parents are from Sri Lanka the former leaders family filled up the cabinet and ministry positions. They put forward wonderful plans like banning fertilizer imports. I think we need to accept that they're their own worst enemy here
  - Tabular-Iceberg 2y ago
    That must be what foreign aid is for. They can’t steward their own resources, and they don’t like it when we go there in person and do it for them, so we have to give them a portion of our own. But then we hoover up all the people who could conceivably do the stewardship, perpetuating the cycle.
dmafreezone 2y ago
> nothing wrong with striving for a better life Yes, but there are many things wrong with equating "better" with "more money" without sparing half a thought to introspection.
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> The best people leave the country because the can earn orders of magnitude more money in the developed world. This is why countries like the US keep being so successful while developing countries stay poor. > It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism? There is nothing wrong with striving for a better life, it is what moves humanity forward. I rather believe that the central reason why they leave is not because of the possibility of earning much more money, but because the existing country keeps such people on a short leash with respect to implementing their ambitions. In other words: if you want idealistic people (who stay in their country), better ensure that the country has a culture in which such idealism does not backfire and make such people's life harder.

ta988 2y ago

Brain drain is not just about money. it is also simply about beeing able to get a life doing what we like with people alike and know how to do while beeing recognized doing it. I left my country for this exact reason, there was a culture of doing the minimum and making sure others can't organize to do great things. And trying to go back you get a lot of opposition, bureaucratic, social (jealousy and resentment is more than palpable in interviews), cultural... It is more like a one-way brain valve.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> striving for a better life the problem here is that you're directly equating earning more money with a "better life" once you have enough to have your needs met, then earning multiples times that doesn't make your life better; at that point, "better life" is much more impacted by other factors than money

FredPret 2y ago
The marginal utility of an extra dollar goes down as you get more of them, but it never reaches zero, especially if you have big dreams. Just look at Musk and his startups - I bet he's very glad to have that 200 billionth dollar, because now he can have the space program he always wanted. This wouldn't have been possible in the third-world country where he grew up.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  First, HN consistently misuses the term "third world". In 2024, this term is now very out of date to describe developing economies (and below). Also, the original meaning was not at all what most people think -- it was about Soviet vs US alignment. And, no, South Africa was definitely middle income when he grew up there -- and it still is (sadly). For a long time (maybe still true?), the GDP per capita in SA nearly the highest amoung all African countries. (I think Seychelles is the richest African country now.)
  - FredPret 2y ago
    "Third world" was a geopolitical term but now it's economic and cultural. I assure you South Africa is third world by any measure. The GDP of SA (a large country with tons of resources and a population of 60m) is roughly on par with that of the Toronto metro area (population 7m) or the Phoenix metro (population 5m). It's middle income... and it probably will ~always be. None of this really matters though - what Musk has done in the US (like it - or him - or not) was only possible in the US.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      GDP is a kind of screwed up measure because the buying power of the dollar in the US is so much worse than most other countries. Case in point you can find a little san jose neighborhood where the gdp is an order of magnitude higher than a little mexico city neighborhood with more or less the exact same sorts of homes on the same sort of street. Now you might argue the sj homes are that much more valuable because of what they offer beyond the home via location proximity to opportunities, but its not like everyone benefits from such things or even that these opportunities are equally available to everyone. Yet everyone shoulders the costs of others success and position.

derektank 2y ago

>Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations. This isn't necessarily the case, even with brain drain. Remittances (financial transfers from migrants to family and friends at home) can actually represent a large percent of GDP for developing nations, upwards of 10 or 20 percent.

FredPret 2y ago

I'm part of the brain drain from my developing country-of-birth. It's more than just money. To me, the money is a symptom of the real issue. The real issue for me was the culture that exists in my birthplace. It just isn't welcoming to nerds or rich people. It doesn't lend itself to ever becoming developed. When I compare and contrast to the New World: I find a much more welcoming culture that encourages personal progress. And not only are nerds welcome, but all sorts of productive folk. It's absolutely no surprise to me that the US is outperforming the rest of the world economically to a comical degree.

StefanBatory 2y ago
Culture aspect is way underrated. It's not only fact that in Western Europe I could earn a lot more. But also that I don't have to deal with massive corruption. I don't have to deal with feeling I have to be constantly on guard. I don't have to deal with failing education. I don't have to hide who I am in fear of being ostracized by society. (even if for that point we made a lot of progress - but still, why wait endlessly while I can get it right away somewhere else?)
- namaria 2y ago
  Culture is not the cause of development. It's the result. The complex human system always has a central area of development and an extended periphery. You can't have homogeneous development because development is the concentration of resources. Wherever these resources concentrate will have a privileged economy, and culture (because it can afford it) and it will develop a superiority complex. And it will keep moving. In 2100 when the center of the world economy has moved on from the US, the new center will have beautifully constructed narratives about how their culture is superior and their rise inevitable.
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
    I live in a country where I am called rainbow disease by the prominent priests for being bi, and the previous de facto leader said that I'm only "Polish-speaking person" and not a Pole because I do not believe in God. Thing is, that while what you're saying could be true, from a perspective of a person living in it - I don't care.

Mistletoe 2y ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if the brain drain goes the opposite way from America the next four years. I’m looking to live in Europe and so are lots of people I know that are fatFIREd with their American bucks.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
The tax situation isn’t nearly as favorable for americans doing it elsewhere as it is for anyone to do it here in america. Unless you rip up your american citizenship.
D-Coder 2y ago
"Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement is followed by those who want to quit working before reaching traditional retirement age. "FatFIRE promotes abundance. The goal is to have enough funds to enjoy freedom and flexibility when you retire early."

jimbohn 2y ago

I thought about the "work for X-years" solution a few times. While it looks attractive, it also removes some pressure from the country (or local employers) to get better. Some countries need a kick in the head, like the one I emigrated from. Perhaps a couple of "developed" countries failing due to brain drain will be a wake-up call for the rest about the value of the younger generation.

StefanBatory 2y ago
Absolutely! Since you're forced to stay here, why shouldn't we abuse you? What are you going to do, run away? I remember in secondary school, my deeply patriotic teacher asked us who wants to emigrate. And she deeply condemned us for it, calling us leeches that stole from the country. It was obligatory education! We didn't even had an option to choose by then. And also, my parents also could say that yes, they paid for it in their taxes.
- int_19h 2y ago
  I recall running into similar attitudes in my country of origin, including, yes, teachers. Ironically, this ends up being one of those things that contribute towards the desire to leave.

paganel 2y ago

> Idealism? From some point on, yes, because the modern world was born on many past such idealists. Fetishising material goods and materialism as a whole are a very big explanation for the mess we're now all in at the civilisational level.

slibhb 2y ago

Brain drain is a real thing, but there are other issues preventing poor countries from being rich. Most of all political dysfunction. As far as brain drain goes, I don't think there's much point in fighting it. Cities like Singapore and Dubai demonstrate that you can quickly build a city/country people want to live. Why shouldn't Bhutan have to compete with the rest of the world to attract young, talented people? They should! And they can do fine at it, they just have to prioritize it. And from the article, that's exactly what they're doing.

abecedarius 2y ago

Catch-up growth being easier than growth in a "developed" country implies that the less-developed country "should" be easier to get rich in -- a better opportunity, not worse. In principle. Yes, we don't live in the in-principle world, but the logic "they're richer over there, so here is inherently stuck unable to compete for talent" is wrong. You need to address whatever the actual structural problem is.

cardanome 2y ago
It is easier to have higher relative economic growth, yes, as seen with China in the last decades but that doesn't translate to better opportunities for the individual. A working class US American probably has a higher standard of living then an upper-class entrepreneur in Bhutan.
- abecedarius 2y ago
  China over 1980s-2000s was an example I had in mind, yes. A poor country and a relatively great place to get rich. There's always emigrating after you make your pile.

FLT8 2y ago

This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or you can choose not to invest in your people and run the risk that they stay". It seems to me that the smartest people would be far more motivated to leave a country where they are unable to find other people like themselves to collaborate with. And they'd be far more likely to come back in future and reinvest their overseas earnings in a country that they felt warmth towards than one that had forced them to play life in hard mode and was actively hostile towards them.

fuzztester 2y ago
>This reminds of the corporate adage: "You can choose to invest in your people and run the risk that they leave, or you can choose not to invest in your people and run the risk that they stay". Yes. I've seen it like this in a LinkedIn post: CFO to CEO: What if we train our people, and they leave? CEO to CFO: What if we don't train them, and they stay?
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  There’s another option, spend huge amounts to hire the very best and don’t provide any training. That’s what the top end hedge funds do with seven figure starting compensation.
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    That comp uaually iant gauranteed. Itsusually some decent base salary and a bonus based on some foemula around performance
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      It is practically guaranteed for all the prospective super geniuses working there for the first year, because the bar is set to be intentionally easy relative to their potential. Sometimes it is even literally guaranteed in writing for the most desirable hires.

throwaways_ind 2y ago

> It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism? Money is only second or third factor that pushes people abroad. People leave countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh to escape rampant and total corruption, hooliganism, lack of safety and security. Then come better roads, better infra, less traffic, etc. When you call 911, the police actually come. An ambulance actually arrive. In India, police first find if the perpetrator is from the local ruling party or under a local crime lord. They come only if the answer is negative. Then they push the perpetrator for hefty bribes. If they pay, again, no case. If they don't pay, you are at the mercy of local courts, which will give you justice in, say, 25 years. In India, there is no basic human decency allotted for you. Only government officials of very high rank, hooligans, political leaders enjoy treatment with respect (like the Mafia). Nothing to say about horrific roads, horrible hospitals, poor hygiene, and everything else. And things are worse in Bangladesh, Pakistan. When we think about going abroad, we are trying to escape these. Money comes later. Income in the same economic strata in India will give you maid, cook, driver, car, nanny, all- not accessible to you in Europe or the USA. If someone is not going abroad from India, it's either because they can't or they don't want to leave their aging parents behind.

selimthegrim 2y ago
I should probably tell this to the Indian student I met in New Orleans who went to the community college here and he’s now going back to India because he finds it easier to run his small businesses and hire there.

yoyohello13 2y ago

What about making education free only if you stay in the country. If you leave then you owe the cost of school.

Viliam1234 2y ago
That sounds fair only if you imagine that getting education is something like buying a product: if you like it, you take it and agree to pay the cost; and if you don't like, you don't take it. But sometimes the education is mandatory, inefficient, and it sucks. Then the people who want to leave the country would be required to pay a lot of money for something they didn't want and that wasn't worth it. Basically, any country that wants to prevent their people from leaving could just assign an absurdly high cost to its mandatory education, and say: "hey, anyone is free to leave, they just need to pay us more than they will ever make".

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> Offering great and free education will always backfire for developing nations. nonsense; this is how developing nations become developed nations. peolpe seem to forget that Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, HK were all "developing" nations not too long ago

salomonk_mur 2y ago

Only the most rational concerning income. There are many other factors at stake such as staying close to family, keeping your contact network, 0 or low discrimination towards you in your home country, among others. Source: I am one of those people that could leave but decided to stay.

closeparen 2y ago

Are developing countries bottlenecked technical aptitude? Or are they bound by social, economic, and political structures that would prevent capable people from generating wealth anyway? Maybe some of both, but to the extent it's the latter, someone being stuck in their country of origin to languish in some undifferentiated low-productivity job is a travesty.

slt2021 2y ago

immigrating is very hard, smart people would love to stay where they were born. unfortunately developing countries make it impossible for smart people to stay due to corruption and small market/economy

skeeter2020 2y ago

Well it's a least starting to change, as countries like Canada, and to an extent the US, see the people several generations after their immigrants look back or outside their countries of birth. There are lots of opportunities outside the US for someone who doesn't feel super-comfortable because of the culture or ethnicity, but is educated and ready to move around the globe.

brailsafe 2y ago

Well, it's a more complex economic thing from what I'm learning. It's a systems issue rather than a discrete resource/physical capital/human capital thing, ultimately it comes down to incentives. If you have an extremely educated workforce but broadly no incentive to invest in the future, no way to capitalize on those hypothetical investments through access to market, for whichever reasons, then trying to tweak one variable like education will just overflow your shallow tub and the water will spill into countries that do have incentives and where the feedback loop works. If that system breaks down, even for developing countries, it's worrying. For example Canada has a highly educated workforce with mobility, and has hamstrung itself by disincentivising productive investments, instead overvaluing real estate to the point where people entering the workforce now might not see a path to owning even a small condo by their 40s, unless you have a particularly rare and valuable skill, luck, or money from parents, which isn't a high prospect for the circulation of financial prosperity. So we're just subsidizing U.S growth at this point, and so are many other countries, even though we and many immigrants would (often but not always) rather live here, either because this is where our lives are or this is where the vibes are, which is tough to reconcile if there's next to no economic opportunity inside the country. This happens on a micro level as well, my home city's highest prospect is basically moving to a different city; people can be highly educated there, but unless you're going back into the academic system and your highest goal is basically getting a mcmansion (but probably not an actual mansion) you're gunna have to go elsewhere. Electricians probably do just fine though, nothing against that, but it's not really a force for innovation.

Wolfenstein98k 2y ago

Brain drain isn't what keeps poor countries poor - if only it was so simple. India would ban out migration in an instant if that was the key to US levels of GDP.

Tabular-Iceberg 2y ago

Could it be argued that we in the west have some degree of moral responsibility to prevent brain drain from developing countries? I don’t see the point of giving out tons of foreign aid when we’re just going to pull the rug out from underneath of them anyway.

vivekd 2y ago
I mean it's not like developing countries are doing much to steward their best and brightest. Counties with brain drains also have serious issues with nepotism and cronyism limiting the ability of talent to rise up. My parents are from Sri Lanka the former leaders family filled up the cabinet and ministry positions. They put forward wonderful plans like banning fertilizer imports. I think we need to accept that they're their own worst enemy here
- Tabular-Iceberg 2y ago
  That must be what foreign aid is for. They can’t steward their own resources, and they don’t like it when we go there in person and do it for them, so we have to give them a portion of our own. But then we hoover up all the people who could conceivably do the stewardship, perpetuating the cycle.

dmafreezone 2y ago

> nothing wrong with striving for a better life Yes, but there are many things wrong with equating "better" with "more money" without sparing half a thought to introspection.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> The best people leave the country because the can earn orders of magnitude more money in the developed world. This is why countries like the US keep being so successful while developing countries stay poor. > It is just the rational best decision for a young people to try their luck abroad and earn more money that they could ever dream of in their home country. Why shouldn't they? Idealism? There is nothing wrong with striving for a better life, it is what moves humanity forward. I rather believe that the central reason why they leave is not because of the possibility of earning much more money, but because the existing country keeps such people on a short leash with respect to implementing their ambitions. In other words: if you want idealistic people (who stay in their country), better ensure that the country has a culture in which such idealism does not backfire and make such people's life harder.