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Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? These countri

by rayiner 6mo ago

Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? These countries absolutely suffer from the brain drain.

zaptheimpaler 6mo ago
Yes exactly. One country sucking up all the best talent is not good for the world, its a single point of failure.
- airstrike 6mo ago
  That's not really how it works. Immigrants also benefit from coming to the US. Skilled labor immigration is great for everyone involved, and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain. But it's not zero-sum. The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity.
  - rayiner 6mo ago
    > and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain. That's a pretty big qualifier! > The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people.
    - airstrike 6mo ago
      Except you can't create Google in India. Google isn't minted by divine inspiration hitting a couple of smart guys in a garage. It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India. It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum. No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way.
      - rayiner 6mo ago
        I doubt its better for India to have Indians making Google richer than to have them staying in India to make something even a fraction of the size of Google in India. How is India going to create that ecosystem if all the smart people leave?
        airstrike 6mo ago
        It's better to not frame this in terms of a specific country, lest it come across as if we're picking on India specifically. Developing countries have structural reasons for why they are underdeveloped. This is a very complicated topic, and one for which there is no shortage of academic interest. I suggest starting from William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest for Growth". I quote here from the book review MIT Press: > What is necessary for growth is that government incentives induce investment in collective goods like education, health, and the rule of law
        rayiner 6mo ago
        > This is a very complicated topic, and one for which there is no shortage of academic interest. I suggest starting from William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest for Growth What's Easterly's qualifications? Has he ever successfully improved the economy of a developing country? I'd rather learn what LKY or Park Chung Hee or heck even Deng Xiaoping or Pinochet had to say.
        airstrike 5mo ago
        At this point it's hard to take your opinion seriously if you think we should model economic policy after Pinochet. If you want to know Easterly's qualifications, just read his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly Being ignorant is a choice.
        rayiner 5mo ago
        > you think we should model economic policy after Pinochet. Pinochet is one of several autocratic rulers who put in place frameworks that resulted in economic miracles in their countries. Especially in Asia and Latin America, I don’t think there’s a single country that tried democracy before economic development that didn’t end up a failure. I’d rather be a Chinese living under effective authoritarian capitalism than an Indian living under dysfunctional social democracy. > If you want to know Easterly's qualifications, just read his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly So he’s never done anything? He’s never built an economy or part of an economy? > Being ignorant is a choice. Indeed. And confusing credentials for knowledge is a choice too.
    - digitaltrees 6mo ago
      The innovations immigrants created in the UK during the Industrial Revolution made everyone wealthier. The innovations made by Immigrants in in Silicon Valley have made the world more wealthy. And it was in part due to the concentrated talent pool that made it possible.
      - hollerith 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        TimorousBestie 5mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel, who constructed the first underwater tunnel (but had a productive career in England before that). I could probably find other French engineers fleeing the revolution, if need be.
        hollerith 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        TimorousBestie 5mo ago
        My goal here isn’t to argue any position. Don’t impute random motives to me. You made an improbable claim and now you’re sore about it.
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
        hollerith 5mo ago
        Often when a comment is made in response to your comment, the intended audience won't be you. For example, I am much more interested in whether the example of the industrial revolution in the UK is an evidence for the value of immigration or evidence against the value of immigration than in anything you wrote, so even though you did not commit to a position on it, it remained my main goal when writing my second comment to continue arguing my position on it -- to anyone that might be reading. The words beginning, "The French-born engineer Marc Isambard Brunel," in my previous (second) comment I already had waiting on my hard drive when I posted my first comment (the challenge). It would have made my first comment longer and harder to follow if I had included the fact that already knew about MI Brunel. It was more important for me to write in such a way that people would have the patience to keep on reading than to avoid any situation in which I might come out looking like I don't know everything. Really! It is OK with me that you came out of this exchange looking like you knew something I did not.
  - Longlius 5mo ago
    >bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain Except those countries continue to decline and eventually become a global issue. India is on the cusp of a water crisis which is going to turn into a massive refugee crisis - how different would the situation and institutions be if the top 10% of the population hadn't been siphoned off?
    - airstrike 5mo ago
      It likely wouldn't be meaningfully different, and we don't set immigration policy in the US to help countries abroad. Or would you rather condemn me to life in a corrupt, dangerous country even though I have everything it takes to build great things and make the lives of other humans better? That moral argument against immigration, especially coming from an American, is DOA. And from the perspective of the home countries, you're basically telling whoever happened to be born in a shithole that their only choice is to fix it themselves.
hibikir 6mo ago
The way it works is that the origin country is worse off when people leave, but in general immigrants are much better off for moving, and it's not even close. A big argument for letting people emigrate is that they owe no real debt to the county where they are born, or the city, or anything like that. They aren't selfs owned by a nobleman. If moving increases their personal lot, why should we stop them?
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
gyomu 6mo ago
In many cases a talented/smart person will bring little to zero value to a country with ossified institutions, but huge value to one with the right systems in place to build value.
- ViktorRay 5mo ago
  This is a really good way of stating it. Thank you.
cheinic6493 6mo ago
> Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? An Indian’s greatest accomplishment in life is leaving India.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
ViktorRay 5mo ago
The problem with this thinking is assuming that countries are equivalent in terms of opportunity and life. India does not have the same opportunities that America does to have a good and successful life. This isn’t just due to the country being relatively poor but due to structural issues along with corruption. Then there are other issues too. Environmental issues. Too many issues to list. It’s disingenuous to suggest that a families or individuals should stay behind to change this. Also isnt it a loss for everyone? If smart people come to America and take advantage of opportunities and accomplish things that help many people what good is it to say no to this. That they must stay in the home country and inevitably not accomplish as much due to all these issues. Even if Elon Musk and Jensen Huang had stayed in their home countries they certainly could not have accomplished the same amount they did in America. Both South Africa and Taiwan in that period lacked the opportunities. Also what is the rationale behind an American saying to people not to come to America and improve it but to stay back? Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations (aside from skin color). I really don’t understand why Americans wouldn’t want the brain gain from having smart people come here. Also if a surgeon is operating on you would you care what skin color or accent they had? Doesn’t make sense to me.
- rayiner 5mo ago
  > Also isnt it a loss for everyone? No, it’s a win for the people who remain in India. Imagine if the Samsung founder had moved to the U.S. instead of founding Samsung in Korea. > Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations Maybe some, but on average no. My family is Bangladeshi and my wife’s family is pre-Revolutionary War American and the cultural gap is vast. Basic attitudes towards justice, freedom, order, civic responsibilities, time, family relations, money, government, food, etc., are completely different. Concrete example: Bangladeshis places tremendous emphasis on formal education and credentials. Americans have a tradition of skepticism of those things. This difference persists even among American born Desis. There is evidence to back this up. Cultural differences persist for generations in immigrants: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-transplant https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

by rayiner 6mo ago

zaptheimpaler 6mo ago

Yes exactly. One country sucking up all the best talent is not good for the world, its a single point of failure.

airstrike 6mo ago
That's not really how it works. Immigrants also benefit from coming to the US. Skilled labor immigration is great for everyone involved, and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain. But it's not zero-sum. The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity.
- rayiner 6mo ago
  > and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain. That's a pretty big qualifier! > The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people.
  - airstrike 6mo ago
    Except you can't create Google in India. Google isn't minted by divine inspiration hitting a couple of smart guys in a garage. It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India. It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum. No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way.
    - rayiner 6mo ago
      I doubt its better for India to have Indians making Google richer than to have them staying in India to make something even a fraction of the size of Google in India. How is India going to create that ecosystem if all the smart people leave?
      - airstrike 6mo ago
        It's better to not frame this in terms of a specific country, lest it come across as if we're picking on India specifically. Developing countries have structural reasons for why they are underdeveloped. This is a very complicated topic, and one for which there is no shortage of academic interest. I suggest starting from William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest for Growth". I quote here from the book review MIT Press: > What is necessary for growth is that government incentives induce investment in collective goods like education, health, and the rule of law
        rayiner 6mo ago
        > This is a very complicated topic, and one for which there is no shortage of academic interest. I suggest starting from William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest for Growth What's Easterly's qualifications? Has he ever successfully improved the economy of a developing country? I'd rather learn what LKY or Park Chung Hee or heck even Deng Xiaoping or Pinochet had to say.
        airstrike 5mo ago
        At this point it's hard to take your opinion seriously if you think we should model economic policy after Pinochet. If you want to know Easterly's qualifications, just read his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly Being ignorant is a choice.
        rayiner 5mo ago
        > you think we should model economic policy after Pinochet. Pinochet is one of several autocratic rulers who put in place frameworks that resulted in economic miracles in their countries. Especially in Asia and Latin America, I don’t think there’s a single country that tried democracy before economic development that didn’t end up a failure. I’d rather be a Chinese living under effective authoritarian capitalism than an Indian living under dysfunctional social democracy. > If you want to know Easterly's qualifications, just read his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Easterly So he’s never done anything? He’s never built an economy or part of an economy? > Being ignorant is a choice. Indeed. And confusing credentials for knowledge is a choice too.
  - digitaltrees 6mo ago
    The innovations immigrants created in the UK during the Industrial Revolution made everyone wealthier. The innovations made by Immigrants in in Silicon Valley have made the world more wealthy. And it was in part due to the concentrated talent pool that made it possible.
    - hollerith 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - TimorousBestie 5mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel, who constructed the first underwater tunnel (but had a productive career in England before that). I could probably find other French engineers fleeing the revolution, if need be.
        hollerith 5mo ago
        [flagged]
        TimorousBestie 5mo ago
        My goal here isn’t to argue any position. Don’t impute random motives to me. You made an improbable claim and now you’re sore about it.
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
        hollerith 5mo ago
        Often when a comment is made in response to your comment, the intended audience won't be you. For example, I am much more interested in whether the example of the industrial revolution in the UK is an evidence for the value of immigration or evidence against the value of immigration than in anything you wrote, so even though you did not commit to a position on it, it remained my main goal when writing my second comment to continue arguing my position on it -- to anyone that might be reading. The words beginning, "The French-born engineer Marc Isambard Brunel," in my previous (second) comment I already had waiting on my hard drive when I posted my first comment (the challenge). It would have made my first comment longer and harder to follow if I had included the fact that already knew about MI Brunel. It was more important for me to write in such a way that people would have the patience to keep on reading than to avoid any situation in which I might come out looking like I don't know everything. Really! It is OK with me that you came out of this exchange looking like you knew something I did not.
- Longlius 5mo ago
  >bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain Except those countries continue to decline and eventually become a global issue. India is on the cusp of a water crisis which is going to turn into a massive refugee crisis - how different would the situation and institutions be if the top 10% of the population hadn't been siphoned off?
  - airstrike 5mo ago
    It likely wouldn't be meaningfully different, and we don't set immigration policy in the US to help countries abroad. Or would you rather condemn me to life in a corrupt, dangerous country even though I have everything it takes to build great things and make the lives of other humans better? That moral argument against immigration, especially coming from an American, is DOA. And from the perspective of the home countries, you're basically telling whoever happened to be born in a shithole that their only choice is to fix it themselves.

hibikir 6mo ago

The way it works is that the origin country is worse off when people leave, but in general immigrants are much better off for moving, and it's not even close. A big argument for letting people emigrate is that they owe no real debt to the county where they are born, or the city, or anything like that. They aren't selfs owned by a nobleman. If moving increases their personal lot, why should we stop them?

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

gyomu 6mo ago

In many cases a talented/smart person will bring little to zero value to a country with ossified institutions, but huge value to one with the right systems in place to build value.

ViktorRay 5mo ago
This is a really good way of stating it. Thank you.

cheinic6493 6mo ago

> Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? An Indian’s greatest accomplishment in life is leaving India.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

ViktorRay 5mo ago

The problem with this thinking is assuming that countries are equivalent in terms of opportunity and life. India does not have the same opportunities that America does to have a good and successful life. This isn’t just due to the country being relatively poor but due to structural issues along with corruption. Then there are other issues too. Environmental issues. Too many issues to list. It’s disingenuous to suggest that a families or individuals should stay behind to change this. Also isnt it a loss for everyone? If smart people come to America and take advantage of opportunities and accomplish things that help many people what good is it to say no to this. That they must stay in the home country and inevitably not accomplish as much due to all these issues. Even if Elon Musk and Jensen Huang had stayed in their home countries they certainly could not have accomplished the same amount they did in America. Both South Africa and Taiwan in that period lacked the opportunities. Also what is the rationale behind an American saying to people not to come to America and improve it but to stay back? Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations (aside from skin color). I really don’t understand why Americans wouldn’t want the brain gain from having smart people come here. Also if a surgeon is operating on you would you care what skin color or accent they had? Doesn’t make sense to me.

rayiner 5mo ago
> Also isnt it a loss for everyone? No, it’s a win for the people who remain in India. Imagine if the Samsung founder had moved to the U.S. instead of founding Samsung in Korea. > Individual Indians aren’t any different from individual Americans beyond their accent. The children of these immigrants are indistinguishable from Americans who have been here for generations Maybe some, but on average no. My family is Bangladeshi and my wife’s family is pre-Revolutionary War American and the cultural gap is vast. Basic attitudes towards justice, freedom, order, civic responsibilities, time, family relations, money, government, food, etc., are completely different. Concrete example: Bangladeshis places tremendous emphasis on formal education and credentials. Americans have a tradition of skepticism of those things. This difference persists even among American born Desis. There is evidence to back this up. Cultural differences persist for generations in immigrants: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-transplant https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]