I like the idea of the auction because it is essentially where the company says "We are importing the best talent and we are willing to pay extra for it" and it also says "Local candidates are so inadequate that it would cost more to train one." in a way that's simply useless to lie about.

The current system encourages my boss to buy extra lottery tickets at the lowest price so he can be surprised later when productivity, morale of local employees, and quality ratio to labor cost is at rock bottom.

Now about being unfair to startups... If the auction somehow doesn't account for offering ownership/equity (which seems like an obscure rare situation anyways), that's clearly a better problem to have than a market flooded with cheap labor that still needs regular training, in addition to language training and cultural training.