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"All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans," said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. "We will buy up all

by Eliezer 18y ago

"All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans," said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. "We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate..." Every now and then, you run into something that is such a brilliant and absolutely good idea, which has such an infinitesimal chance of being implemented, that it makes you feel like crying.

jerf 18y ago
Personally, I feel like our government is dead set on implementing only the stupidest possible ideas that have pretty much proven not to work. I've seen tons of ideas that at least ought to be considered before bailouts #5 and #6, considering how well 1-4 worked, but apparently haphazard bailouts are the Only Option.
alexandros 18y ago
The problem is that the subprime mortgages are just a symptom of the problem, which is the complexity of the economic system. You have written about this on overcomingbias as well! Even if such a band-aid solution were implemented, it would be like sitting around and waiting for the next economic shock to wipe the economy out.
jacoblyles 18y ago
Power and responsibility are divorced in our political system. The quality "is supported by concentrated and active interest groups" is far more important to a bill's success than "benefits society as a whole". This is an old problem. Democracy has always been non-rational.
- palish 18y ago
  Power and responsibility are divorced in our political system. This was not the case before the checks and balances were thrown out. The system used to work well, or at least better than previous systems.
  - jacoblyles 18y ago
    Checks and balances help, but I don't think they are a cure-all. Mancur Olson's observations about democracy's bias in favor of laws that serve a concentrated interest but have diffuse costs is valid even with more robust checks.
- homme 18y ago
  Democracy has always been non-rational Seeing the US House of Representatives in action recently seems to support this statement. What alternatives do you propose?
  - jacoblyles 18y ago
    It's obviously a hard problem and I don't have any good solutions. I am interested in Moldbug's Neocameralism and Friedman's Dynamic Geography at the moment. If you email me, I can send you links.
steveplace 18y ago
Huge flaw here: employment. Job supply is way too high, and bringing that many people in that soon would create wage depression, deflation, etc.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  Another huge flaw: balkanization. Bring in millions of indians and chinese in one shot and they will probably cluster and form their own communities. This doesn't usually work very well. 1 million skilled new americans (modulo an assimilation schedule)? Sounds good. Giving a small chunk of america to 1 million indians and 1 million chinese? Not sure I like this idea.
  - tokenadult 18y ago
    People living next to other people they like to live next to is called freedom. Throughout the history of the United States, immigrants have had some tendency to settle near other immigrants who speak the same language or who have other commonalities. (My maternal grandmother's parents apparently came over from newly reunified Germany as part of a "colony" of a large part of one Bavarian town who moved to Colorado together. She was born in the United States, but her entire formal school was conducted in the German language.) But people in the United States live in one place or another for many reasons of convenience that tend to mix together people of different ethnic backgrounds. It is an unusual American who doesn't have ancestors from more than one country of origin, and each new local cluster of immigrants finds plenty of sons and daughters forming families with people who don't share the same ethnic heritage. Moreover, the worry about monoethnic communities isn't really responsive to the fine submitted article, in which the proposal was to have immigration from multiple countries (three were named) dotted among all the places where there are houses in default.
    - yummyfajitas 18y ago
      People have the right to live where they want, it's true. I don't advocate changing this. Taking into account their probable choices and the social results of those choices is just good policy. As for history, you should read up on it. We made concerted efforts to assimilate new immigrants. Assimilation happened because we pushed it. We don't do this any more. As for monoethnic communities, it's my understanding that the defaulted houses tend to be strongly clustered together. Combine this with the natural desire to cluster, and we get insular communities with strong foreign allegiances. I'm just not sure that that's a good thing.
utnick 18y ago
this doesn't sound like a brilliant idea to me we have been losing jobs for the last several months, unemployment is higher than it has been in recent history, how will adding 2 million job seekers to the pot help things?

by Eliezer 18y ago

jerf 18y ago

Personally, I feel like our government is dead set on implementing only the stupidest possible ideas that have pretty much proven not to work. I've seen tons of ideas that at least ought to be considered before bailouts #5 and #6, considering how well 1-4 worked, but apparently haphazard bailouts are the Only Option.

alexandros 18y ago

The problem is that the subprime mortgages are just a symptom of the problem, which is the complexity of the economic system. You have written about this on overcomingbias as well! Even if such a band-aid solution were implemented, it would be like sitting around and waiting for the next economic shock to wipe the economy out.

jacoblyles 18y ago

Power and responsibility are divorced in our political system. The quality "is supported by concentrated and active interest groups" is far more important to a bill's success than "benefits society as a whole". This is an old problem. Democracy has always been non-rational.

palish 18y ago
Power and responsibility are divorced in our political system. This was not the case before the checks and balances were thrown out. The system used to work well, or at least better than previous systems.
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  Checks and balances help, but I don't think they are a cure-all. Mancur Olson's observations about democracy's bias in favor of laws that serve a concentrated interest but have diffuse costs is valid even with more robust checks.
homme 18y ago
Democracy has always been non-rational Seeing the US House of Representatives in action recently seems to support this statement. What alternatives do you propose?
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  It's obviously a hard problem and I don't have any good solutions. I am interested in Moldbug's Neocameralism and Friedman's Dynamic Geography at the moment. If you email me, I can send you links.

steveplace 18y ago

Huge flaw here: employment. Job supply is way too high, and bringing that many people in that soon would create wage depression, deflation, etc.

yummyfajitas 18y ago
Another huge flaw: balkanization. Bring in millions of indians and chinese in one shot and they will probably cluster and form their own communities. This doesn't usually work very well. 1 million skilled new americans (modulo an assimilation schedule)? Sounds good. Giving a small chunk of america to 1 million indians and 1 million chinese? Not sure I like this idea.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  People living next to other people they like to live next to is called freedom. Throughout the history of the United States, immigrants have had some tendency to settle near other immigrants who speak the same language or who have other commonalities. (My maternal grandmother's parents apparently came over from newly reunified Germany as part of a "colony" of a large part of one Bavarian town who moved to Colorado together. She was born in the United States, but her entire formal school was conducted in the German language.) But people in the United States live in one place or another for many reasons of convenience that tend to mix together people of different ethnic backgrounds. It is an unusual American who doesn't have ancestors from more than one country of origin, and each new local cluster of immigrants finds plenty of sons and daughters forming families with people who don't share the same ethnic heritage. Moreover, the worry about monoethnic communities isn't really responsive to the fine submitted article, in which the proposal was to have immigration from multiple countries (three were named) dotted among all the places where there are houses in default.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    People have the right to live where they want, it's true. I don't advocate changing this. Taking into account their probable choices and the social results of those choices is just good policy. As for history, you should read up on it. We made concerted efforts to assimilate new immigrants. Assimilation happened because we pushed it. We don't do this any more. As for monoethnic communities, it's my understanding that the defaulted houses tend to be strongly clustered together. Combine this with the natural desire to cluster, and we get insular communities with strong foreign allegiances. I'm just not sure that that's a good thing.

utnick 18y ago

this doesn't sound like a brilliant idea to me we have been losing jobs for the last several months, unemployment is higher than it has been in recent history, how will adding 2 million job seekers to the pot help things?