Economies aren't that simple.
Success makes more success. If you're a billion dollar company, you can afford to pay more for employees. This lets you hire better developers, which lets you be even more successful. If you're in a poor country and you're trying to start a company... you're still poor. The fact that you need developers doesn't suddenly make you rich enough to afford the same wages a billion dollar company can afford to pay.
These lower wages mean that good developers in such regions are often swayed to move elsewhere to get paid better, leaving that original area even worse off than it was to begin with.
JetBrains has managed to build a globally successful company in the Czech Republic, where engineering wages are usually about a third of what the US pays. Call it luck, elbow grease, whatever. They did it. From a quick google search, JetBrains pays wages that are competitive with Silicon Valley. They can only afford to do that because they have been so successful. This success is making them even more successful, since they can afford to pay competitive wages, and it probably doesn't hurt (now that they're successful) that the cost of living in Prague is super low compared to much of Europe. But it's not like anyone starting a company in Prague can suddenly afford to pay $120k+ per developer.
This cycle of brain drain is very hard to counteract. Banks aren't usually excited about freely giving out large sums of money to try out this whole "paying people more" thing and seeing if that yields better results than the other tech startups they tried to fund, but failed due to a lack of talent, random chance, or mismanagement.
If a company becomes successful, but they're only successful locally, then they're tied to the low economic success of their area. They don't have any more money than other employers, so they can't pay wages competitive with other places.
I'm no professional economist or anything, so I'm sure I'm missing some of the nuances of the situation, but a shortage in one thing (developers) doesn't somehow imply an abundance in another thing (funding), it just means that there aren't enough developers available within the funding that these companies have available.
It takes a certain amount of dish soap to clean dishes, but an absence of dishes doesn't mean your home suddenly has an excess of dish soap... you might not have any dishes or dish soap!
If the companies had a bunch of money, they probably wouldn't have too much trouble getting developers to work for them... but without those developers, how can they get the money?
Banks don't write blank checks, especially not to people who have no track record of success. If someone has a track record of success starting companies, they probably don't need the banks to give them a loan nearly as much.
The whole thing is a catch-22. There are solutions, they're just not obvious or every smaller economy in the world would already be employing those solutions. Stuff like this might help: https://tulsaremote.com/ It's hard to know.
You could've just looked up the economic definition of "shortage". What you're describing is not an economic shortage, it's market equilibrium. Of course there's always more demand than supply for something at a cheaper price than what the actual market price is.
Google definition of shortage: "a state or situation in which something needed cannot be obtained in sufficient amounts." Huh, that's exactly what I said.
In this case, the resource is being consumed by higher paying consumers outside of the local market. The whole market isn't necessarily suffering a shortage, but there are absolutely local shortages within a global market. Everything is in equilibrium if you look at a large enough picture.
It's not an economic shortage when you're in a store full of goods that you can't afford. It's a shortage when the shelves are empty.
By your self-contradictory definition, the term "shortage" loses its meaning and ceases to exist. Because with enough money, you can always buy what you need.
If you need a few tons of platinum to do something and discover that (hypothetically) there isn't actually that much here on Earth, you could build spaceships to go mine it from the asteroids with enough money. Bam! No shortage.
In the absence of sufficient money to go mine the asteroids, though, there would be a shortage of platinum on Earth. Except, your definition doesn't allow for shortages, because someone just needs to come up with the money. Maybe no human can afford to access it, but it's out there in the universe somewhere, so there can't be a shortage, right? I don't think that's a useful definition.
It doesn't really matter if you take me seriously, though, so I'm not going to keep expending effort trying to convince you to change your mind when you're not willing to consider my ideas.
No we haven't. I can assure you, the "shelves" of developers that companies in Europe have access to are far from empty. It's a matter of price. Developers from all over the world would flock to Europe if the pay was outstanding.
Having said that, let's imagine the scenario where some country allows zero immigration, all its developers are employed and would not switch jobs at any price (which is the crucial part), then you'll have a shortage. I'm not aware that such a country exists.
> If you need a few tons of platinum to do something and discover that (hypothetically) there isn't actually that much here on Earth, you could build spaceships to go mine it from the asteroids with enough money. Bam! No shortage.
If there's nobody that can meet demand of the platinum at any price, then there indeed is a shortage. Platinum that is in the ground or in outer space is not part of the supply.
> It doesn't really matter if you take me seriously, though, so I'm not going to keep expending effort trying to convince you to change your mind when you're not willing to consider my ideas.
Nobody who has basic literacy in economics will take you seriously if you can't get your terminology straight. Seriously, just look it up. Your "ideas" are besides the point. Yes, I get it, there are companies that can't afford developers. That is not a shortage in the economic sense of the word.
see this reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18508361
If you think they're that simple, why don't you move somewhere dirt cheap, then call up some developers elsewhere and offer them competitive wages to move to that area?
Show us all how it's done! You have that kind of money, right?
In reality, needing developers doesn't suddenly mean you have lots of money with which to pay those developers.
You're right that banks aren't going to be excited about that, but if you have no local billionaires looking to take a risk, what are you supposed to do? Move to an area with lots of investors? That just reinforces the cycle of low wages in the area you moved from, it doesn't break it.