Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers | Hacker News Reader

Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers

theguardian.com

67 pointsfuzztester109 comments

I used to travel for work, and one year covered companies in St Louis. St Louis is approximately 50% white and 50% black, and yet whenever I went into these companies, the demographics were 50% white and 50% Indian, with blacks only being found as security guards at the front desk. It felt like the H1B were used to fill the low level positions that could have been taken by aspiring black Americans. Steve Bannon made this point recently, and I was shocked to agree with anything he said, much less find myself forwarding his videos to my friends.

There are clearly abuses, and the abuses should be addressed; it will also be good for the valid H1-B applicants. One simple solution is to raise the salary threshold. H1-B for store managers is obviously not justified.

On the other hand, there's no question that H1-B or similar programmes help the American economy enormously. Especially for talented graduates from top American universities. Why not hire them if you don't have to pay for their education? They even contribute significantly to the coffers of American universities, indirectly allowing Americans to study at a much cheaper price.

H1-B and other visas outside exceptional talent (Einstein level) shouldn't exist. Repeal them.

H-1B is also not the only issue.

Who are these companies that the F500 use for setting "pay bands" for positions, and are they an antitrust threat like that RealPage real-estate firm everyone uses? Inquiring minds want to know...

There is legit use of H-1B, which helps make America the leader in tech. Top tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon would not be top tech companies without this immigration.

Then there are abusers... for example back in 2016 Disney hired a bunch of H-1B workers and immediately laid off American workers, and then required those American workers to train their H-1B replacements.

The abuse must be stopped, it hurts everyone. The legit use must be encouraged, and expanded -- it makes America strong, and creates jobs.

there is very little legit use of H1B, the tech companies are abusing it by not hiring US employees in lieu of getting underpaid H1B’s who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize) - modern day white collar “slavery”

Here are the folks who contributed to the "Attention is all you need" paper [1] which changed the world as we know it, and the countries they came from. I rest my case.

Ashish Vaswani: India

Noam Shazeer: USA

Niki Parmar: India

Jakob Uszkoreit: Germany

Llion Jones: USA

Aidan Gomez: British Canadian

Lukasz Kaiser: Poland

Illia Polosukhin: Ukraine

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762

I'm dumbfounded that some people think high-skilled immigration is negative sum. It is so glaringly positive sum.

Another country invested 20 years to train a 130 IQ person from birth to tertiary educated.

And then the US gets to skim the top 0.1% off that expensive process without paying a dime.

These immigrants then generate consumption, scientific discoveries and found companies in their prime working years, which boosts the local country's power, economy, job opportunities and prosperity. They take 1 job but create 2, but the 2 is hidden behind layers of indirection (scientific discoveries, consumption, etc) so dumb people can't see the positive sum reality for what it is.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is a profound misunderstanding of the global value that these immigrants create, even if they locally compete for a specific job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

There's a reason Eastern Europe and East Asia are struggling. There's a reason China and South Korea have probably peaked. There's a reason Hungary will continue to be a shit place to live. It isn't because of too much immigration. It's because of too little.

The US, since its founding, has been a country of immigrants. It's a necessary condition behind its prosperity and strength.

Nobody here is anti-immigration.

The reality is that the H1B program is being used not to bring in individuals with 130+ IQ, but essentially anyone with a bachelor's degree, which can be easily obtained from diploma mills. In some third-world countries, you can even buy your degree outright.

For the top 0.1%, there are O1 visas, as well as EB1 and EB2-NIW visas — the latter two don't even require an employer and can be self-sponsored. Plus, they grant you a green card, unlike the H1B, which ties you to an employer.

However, to qualify for these visas, you need to demonstrate that you're genuinely valuable to the U.S. They are designed for top-tier entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and artists with a verifiable track record. These visas can also be gamed, but it's much harder than with the H1B program.

I know two people who got the o1 visa, without any top skills. Professionally, their work was very poor and their track record exaggerated, if not fake. During the time they got theirs accepted (which showed up on my Twitter timeline), noticed that plenty of other random people were celebrating getting theirs too. All approved around the same period. I’m pretty sure that it was the o1 visa because I clicked to try to understand what that meant. And was also curious how someone so untalented got it and why so many people were mentioning it on Twitter (I understand the algorithm was curating these for me as I showed interest).

In the last few days I've seen hundreds of pure anti-immigration posts across various tech focused communities.

O1 has an incredibly high bar and not something that "this person has a PhD from a top institution and a strong publication record" can guarantee.

I was responding to the comment regarding "how about the top 0.1%". H-1B isn't designed for bringing the 0.1%, there are other visas that already do exactly that. Also, it is not so high bar, I know people even without a degree who got O1, it isn't even a requirement. But you need to have a public track record of various kinds.

Also, I am not against visas intended to fill labor shortages. But it needs to be done in a way that incentivizes hiring local talent over foreign. Currently the H-1B works the other way around. This has to be dealt with. Like raising the minimum salary, making it significantly more expensive to hire an H-1B worker than a local one, and removing the exploitative leverage employers have over visa holders — people shouldn't have to fear negotiating for better terms due to the threat of deportation. That would likely fix it.

I seriously doubt anyone in the above list got in through the O1 visa.

The average IQ of Indian Americans is 112. That being the average I can see a large percentage being 130+.

https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/bobby-jindal-indian-americ...

If H1B immigrants generates more tax revenue and contribute more on average than locals, largely because of gems like Sundar Pichai that couldn't make the bureaucratic credentialist hurdle of the O1, then what's the problem? It should be expanded and reformed, not contracted and reformed. If you're concerned about degree mills then reform that aspect while expanding the net intake.

Sundar Pichai a gem? What? Are we using the same Google?

He might be referring to his work on Google Chrome

I’d be fine if a third of the total compensation was diverted to a fund that all but takes a minimum of 50k per person per job /gives 100k minimum tax-free per affected citizen in the lowest LCOL, both adjusted upward for locality. To make people whole, that fund would cover citizens in the job market from 2003 onwards that specialized in anything with exposure to the various programs that disincentivized citizens. Then have it apply irrespective of job status.

If you want the best and brightest, pay for the damages created by badly formed policy.

The problem is that a lot of the H1B people being brought in to fill jobs Americans could do aren’t the top 0.1%. Far from it. No one is against bringing the top 0.1% here.

there is a huge difference between being “anti-immigration” and critiquing H1B program which is what we are doing here… a very very huge difference :)

I am an immigrant so 1,000,000% not anti-immigration, everyone around me besides native americans is also an immigrant. I am also former H1B-er. the program is deeply flawed and is used for exploitation more than anything else

There is not such a big difference in the median critique. There are scarce voices -- perhaps yours -- saying we should reform H1B to make it easier for immigrants to change jobs or obtain passports or acquire the visa in the first place, which Vivek has been very clear on from the beginning that this is his intention.

But the large majority of voices on social media are using this as an opportunity to sling broadly anti-immigration and nativist catchphrases, framing the H1B as a zero sum contest between the immigrant and the local. It's factually the opposite of the truth. Even if H1B doesn't get any reforms, it's better than nothing for both the immigrant and the US, but that would not be the impression you would get from the avalanche of people committed to the Lump of Labor fallacy.

> a 130 IQ person

I’m not so sure this is the average H1-B.

I don’t think a rational person can deny the value of skilled immigration, but the context in which immigration exists in the US is not a simple dichotomy between net benefit/loss.

Wealth inequality has followed a trend of concentrating towards the top over many decades. (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...), exacerbated by events such as 2008 recession and Covid. Even with increased productivity, salaries have not always kept pace with inflation or cost of living in many US cities (https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...).

Not only do US workers already have to compete with offshoring (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/10/15/the-global...) which is now impacting formerly safe white collar jobs like accounting and engineering, education costs in the US are also some of the highest in the world, raising the barrier to entry and putting domestic workers at a competitive disadvantage against global markets (https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-ed... ).

HN obviously tends to skew towards tech and Silicon Valley; an industry and location that has been somewhat insulated from these effects, but its a very real struggle for many people throughout the US across varied fields from finance and accounting, to medicine and engineering.

It is in this environment in which the current H1B debate exists. While there may be a net benefit to the US economy overall from skilled immigration, much of that benefit (similar to higher productivity) tends to increasingly be enjoyed at the top socioeconomic level. The “layers of indirection” are in many cases owned and controlled by corporations through IP law, patents, copyright, non-compete and NDAs, and other legal mechanisms, which can delay their benefit to society at large, and create further perverse incentives if not regulated fairly.

And while globalization as a root cause might be inevitable, it can certainly be managed through regulation in a way that more equitably distributes the benefits. It can also be manipulated by regulatory capture to enable corporations to lower costs and increase profits at the expense of US labor. There are many examples of this occurring before now. Any sound policy change regarding the H1B visa program needs to take all benefits/risks into account, and I personally would like to see a little more nuance from the incoming executive administration in this regard. Folks like Musk and Ramaswamy have a lot of profit to gain from importing cheaper skilled labor, with a higher degree of control over domestic employees vs those located overseas. I also have a hard time believing any corporate executives would have predominately altruistic intentions, and there is an obvious conflict of interest in them being involved in any policy decisions that impact their balance sheets. I realize this doesn’t negate a net positive benefit, but when that benefit is largely realized by a select few through regulatory capture, and is easily abused, it’s not anti-immigrant to criticize policy implementation.

“rest your case” is too funny… this is 8 people, what about 63,992 other yearly recipients of this visa? what an compeling argument you are making (and this is former H1B-er writing here…)

The point is that major contributions to American tech supremacy come from foreigners. Scrapping the H1B program would jeopardize us tech leadership.

Those other 64k people contribute as well. If you want to argue the other side (I don’t know why you would) feel free.

how would you know whether or not american tech supremacy would not be the same without foreigners? of course you wouldn’t so this is silly line of argument :)

the main reason for american tech supremacy is american military budget. and also that is next 876 reasons. H1B program won’t crack top-1000

> how would you know whether or not american tech supremacy would not be the same without foreigners?

We don't know, but we can't afford losing the supremacy.

as long as the “defense” budget is 89.76 trillion dollars we cool, H1B or not…

They are all able to get O-1 visas for having extraordinary merit. (It may be true some get them via lying as with anything.) Elon came in on an F visa, Trump hired maids via H-2. If the conversation is about H-1B, a list of names is not enough for an argument.

There probably should be some level of difficulty between H-1B and O-1 in my view.

"Some foreigners are smarter than you, therefore you don't get to have a country, just an economic zone." - interesting case, let's see how many go along with it.

H1B is not about smarter foreigners it’s about “I can’t find enough locals with the particular skills I need so I need to widen the pool” Though I think Musk likes it because the current program is tied to the company so workers are effectively indentured to the sponsoring company and not free to leave to go work for another.

The customer (companies) don’t think the price for US employees is a good deal and prefer to find a cheaper option that can’t quit as easily.

In market terms, H1B workers are simply a better product - slightly cheaper (because companies can game the system) and more predictable (because they can’t show the employer the middle finger).

As stated up thread, treat that as an externality that the business ends up paying to the citizens. Offer them an opportunity to fully uncap their favorite programs on the condition that a large chunk of total compensation (with minimums and locality adjustments) will be paid to citizens that essentially doubles or triples most citizen salaries.

This is correct and yet kinda misses the point. The market exists specifically because of one of the most fundamental and basic of government functions: who is allowed to enter the country and work. Those market economics revolves around whatever the government decides to do: firstly when it created the H1B system and now when all the politicians are arguing over how to handle the abuse of the program.

I’d call it something more along the lines of “regulatory capture” than a freely operating market.

> regulatory capture

It's been like that for quite some time. A lot of political power coming from economic power is a sure way for a democracy to transition into a kleptocracy.

No, you missed the point of the GP. The companies don't want them because they are cheaper, they want them because they have less rights.

> who have no option to leave for a better opportunity or higher pay (or to unionize)

The companies don't want cheaper labor. They want slave labor.

You are missing the point: if they have fewer rights, they are cheaper in the long run.

Perhaps we're getting into semantics. Sure, fewer rights necessarily implies cheaper, but not the other way around. "Cheaper" alone fails to get to the heart of the matter.

^^ what he said ^^

H1Bs I've seen were treated worse than American workers or seemed to work at a roughly 60% of American jobs. No American would take a job posted for a 40% paycut, regardless of the title. The system is being gamed.

funniest thing is that there are still people who do not recognize this. it is a simple supply and demand. if there is no “supply” (no US workers can do job X and we need someone from Cameroon) this would mean that this is cream-of-crop position and you’d expect to see 20-30-40-50% premium on the salary to get the right person. I am US citizen and I may not apply for $140k/year job. But if you jack that up to $395k/year I just might. Instead, we’ll do H1B and not only underpay but also have employee by the balls for X mumber of years to do with as we please…

Why on earth are you giving Big Tech a pass here? Are you effing kidding?

I'd argue, that just like with inventions, software has at least 100 people working on the same thing at the same time, who gets their first is what matters. Google et al would still be the same behemoths with or without H1Bs.

Companies such as Google and Apple say they need immigrants because there aren't enough qualified workers in the US. Opponents say immigrants are depressing wages; these companies are only importing these workers in order to depress wages!

Let's see who is telling the truth. Back in 1990s, a decent salary for a fresh graduate, at a top company like Sun Microsystems was $40,000. RSUs were unknown back then, and certainly fresh graduates didn't get any! If you adjust for inflation $40K in 1990 translates to $99K in 2024. Today a fresh graduate can get a $120K offer at a top company, and another $10K to $50K in RSUs. Do you see any evidence of wage depression?

It does look like these tech companies are NOT importing workers to depress wages!

This argument doesn't hold because you don't know how much an average American SWE would be making today if there were no H1Bs — it could be $200k.

> because there aren't enough qualified workers in the US

It's often not a shortage of skills but a shortage of pay.

Companies can also invest in growing local talent. There are tons of STEM graduates who cannot find jobs — because why hire a junior when there's a supply of Indian H-1B labor from shady consultancies, who won't complain or negotiate due to the constant threat of deportation?

What needs to be done is to end the exploitative aspect of H1B visas. Recipients should have a direct, unconditional pathway to residency, independent of their employer's goodwill. It shouldn't be a modern slavery.

Also, stop immigration fraud to prevent these visas from being used solely for cost-cutting and replacing local labor. Raise the minimum wage for H1B, introduce additional taxes — or just auction visas off, granting them to the highest bidder. So only the top talent would get them.

If the wages are rising that means demand is greater than supply. Tech companies are telling the truth when they say there is a shortage of workers.

Yes, and you can fulfill this growing demand by raising wages, which is essentially the market mechanism to bring in additional supply. Another way to address this is by importing cheaper labor from abroad.

For American workers, it is better to let wages rise than to import foreign labor (which would ultimately suppress wage growth).

Therefore, importing labor does suppress wages — as you've essentially demonstrated yourself.

there is another option the companies can choose to use. Export the jobs.aka offshoring. Tons of companies do this now, not sure if its super productive, but it seems to be a viable alternative for companies to use/abuse. End result is the same. Lower job profiles/ lower salaries / lower job openings.

Raising wages is probably the last option on the checklist.

Indeed they raised the wages, and yet supply didn't keep up, and that's the reason for H-1B.

Looking at discussions about the current dire state of the white-collar job market — with thousands of applications per job posting and many months of job hunting, even for individuals with over 10 years of experience — it's hard to argue that we're not currently oversupplied.

Perhaps it's time to reconsider the "supply" side of the equation and do something with H1B.

I agree that there is currently a problem in the job market. It would make sense to temporarily pause the H-1B program for candidates with only a bachelor's degree. It should still be open for those with masters and PhD degrees.

No. Wages can rise without change in demand. You should let smarter people comment.

One problem is that the US Customs and Immigration Service is not legally permitted to blacklist blatant or persistent offending companies. It can only deny the problematic applications.

The abuse is real. Many "domestic" consulting companies dominate the H-1B visa application process, often resorting to significant fraud in the past. A large portion of these applicants have had no prior connections to the U.S. and are frequently underpaid. While cheating has decreased, there remains a need to elevate the standards in place.

It's important to note that these individuals are not directly competing with or displacing U.S. citizens from their jobs. They are primarily employed by the consulting firms themselves. The challenges in securing employment stem from the slowdown in the rapid expansion of the tech industry. As a hiring manager, when a job posting is made with a specified salary range, applicants are expected to accept that range. Given two equally qualified candidates, selecting a citizen is often the more cost-effective and less complicated choice.

New graduates often face difficulties because they largely don't possess the specific qualifications that many tech companies seek. These companies typically require individuals with practical experience. This can be gained through prior work experience (which is often unattainable for new graduates) or by demonstrating a genuine interest in technology through personal projects or contributions. Course project doesn't count.

That is the hard truth. Calling for government's protection is not the way to go.

Well, President Musk has spoken.

Isn’t lobbying integral part of the US democracy?

Lobbying is certainly integral to the US oligarchy.

This policy needs a refresh - there are many issues with the H1B program today - a good article if you're interested: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-staffing-firms-game-...

We should be wary billionaires are controlling these policies.

Bernie Sanders did this interview a decade ago and he was right, unchecked immigration is not in the economic interest of the working class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0

If only there was a party for Bernie and his supporters.

Bernie mostly bent the knee, and fell in line to his party's talking points. He dropped talking about immigration this way a while ago.

Wonder what people think about this on both or multiple sides of the equation.

Animal Farm, they'll round up the brown people unless they have H1B, those ones can stay, for now.

nice take.

"some people are more equal than others", from that book, unless it was from Orwell's other famous book, 1984.

I also read another one by him, Down and out in Paris and London.

I liked all three of the books.

IIRC, we had them in school in English literature class.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Lo...

People say this has upset Trump supporters who are supposedly "anti-immigration" but most of the Trump supporters I know are immigrants and nobody has a major problem with this.

I know a lot of Trump supporters who are nice people, but I also know a great many that are overt racists. It’s never against me (they make the point they aren’t against “people like me”) but there is always a group they don’t like - other Latin Americans (I’m from Brazil, but they also are usually surprised when they learn that), Middle-Eastern, Indians, and, lately, Chinese (and others, because they can’t tell the difference).

Many Trump supporters specifically, and USians more generally, don't know a lot of things that many people in other countries know; basic general knowledge about the world, including other countries, being a prime example.

For example, I've across some of them who think that the (sole) language of India is "Indian"! :)

There is no language called Indian, dudes. India is both very diverse (regionally and subregionally and fractally), and a melting pot, like the US, and has been that way, for centuries before the US became like that. In both cases, it is due to both being huge, geographically, and due to the invasions in both countries.

India has many languages and many more dialects.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India

JFC.

>huge

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

ha, you think they give a damn about that?

If you speak spanish, you're a "mexican", regardless of whether you're from el salvador, ecuador, cuba, whatever.

nevermind what they think about "indians"..... JFC indeed

ha, good point, hermano :) [1]

I bet they don't know, either, that cuba is pronounced koobaa, or that [1] hermano (brother) is pronounced ermaano, or that jesus is pronounced haysoos, or even that george (jorje) is pronounced horhay :)

I learned that about koobaa from a kooban :) friend in high school, and about horhay from my aunt who went to the US, did her PhD there, and became a univ prof and a US citizen, and about ermaano from google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=brother+in+Spanish

¡feliz año nuevo!

to all :)

wow, that upside down exclamation mark is cool! I wonder whether it has any particular significance, compared to the upside up one ;)

of course that is from an English speaker standpoint, Spanish speakers may well say that it is normal, and they would be right, of course. there are no rules that prescribe what is right or wrong when it comes to language or even culture.

which is part of my overall point.

I think I first saw it long back when I used to read western cowboy novels and comics as a kid.

I voted for Trump and an immigrant and I'm mixed on immigration.

I've been in the US for 29 years now and I'm a US citizen. I'm more American in attitude than most Americans I know.

I consider myself a nationalist. Immigration has been both good and bad for America and both sides in this debate are being super dishonest.

First and foremost, I strongly believe that elected representatives should represent the best interests of their citizens and ONLY their citizens. The best interest of potential future citizens is not something they should even give a thought to.

Some immigration is in the best interest of the citizens of a country. Skimming the top 0.1% or maybe even just the top 0.01% of the best and the brightest abroad absolutely is in the best interests of Americans. That's the question that should be asked when admitting an immigrant: "Is this person a net benefit to the citizens of this country I was elected to represent?"

If the answer to that question is "Yes", then the next question should be "How should we admit this person to come work in the US so that Americans get the benefits and we mitigate any downside from allowing them in?"

Neither of these questions are being asked.

A country is basically a team like Elon said and we are in competition with other teams like Europe, China, India, etc. It is worth building out the best team, but that can't be done in a way where you hurt the citizens you were elected to represent.

Before I continue, one big point about American citizens. They aren't all white as has been misrepresented in this debate. A lot of them are first and second generation non-whites. American-born folks of Indian, Chinese, Hispanic, etc, descent are all American citizens currently being hurt by the H1-B program.

Couple of major issues with the current H1-B program:

First, it absolutely must cost more to bring in an immigrant to do a job than to hire an American. Under no situation should it be allowed to depress wages. If a citizen costs X, it should cost like 1.5x or some value like that to import the talent you need if you genuinely can't find the talent you need domestically.

Second, the visa should belong the the person being brought to the US. A company can sponsor them and maybe get exclusive access for some short period of time like the first year or so, but after that, the person should not have their visa tied to the employer that sponsored them. If they get a good perf review after their first year on the job, they absolutely should get an extension to stay another N years like 3 to 5, but at this point they are totally free to work for any other company with zero risk of losing their visa status if they choose not to continue working for the employer that sponsored them. If that employer wants to keep them, they'll have to pay the premium to keep them and treat them well. No immigrant should ever feel like an indentured servant.

Third, scrutiny should be applied to all companies involved in using the H1-B program as a visa mill and to co-ethnic nepotism.

You absolutely need to make sure that companies aren't "selling" the visas. For example, someone in country X should not be able to pay or perform a favor for a company in the US to get a visa. A genuine need needs to be demonstrated and we need to make sure there is no quid pro quo.

Co-ethnic nepotism is another big one. Executives and managers should not be able to sponsor H1-Bs from their country of origin or from their religious group. If the CEO of a company is from country X and manager of the team is from country Y, then the H1-B visa cannot be filled by someone from either country X or Y. There are 195 countries in the world. Removing the United States, country X and country Y, still leaves 192 other countries from which to find talent.

Lastly, we need to focus on assimilation. I have citizenship from three countries myself and I choose to live in the US because I value US culture (or at least what it was 10 to 15 years ago).

If I wanted to live and work in the other countries in which I could legally work, I'd move to those countries. I don't want that. I want to live and work in the US because I value US culture. If you disproportionately bring in immigrants from particular countries, you turn the US into those other countries for better and for worse. This happens both at the national level and at the local level. I don't want it at either.

In fact, when you disproportionately bring in people from country X into a specific locality, you make it harder for those folks to assimilate. This allows the formation of ethnic/cultural enclaves. This should not happen. You should have a mix of folks from multiple countries in a place so they actually co-mingle and assimilate to become Americans. Not hyphenated Americans, but bonafide Americans that adopt America as the home and the country in which they pride themselves.

Completely disregarding assimilation is going to kill the Golden Goose that Elon Musk values. He can build SpaceX here in American but not in country X or country Y. However, if we culturally turn the US into country X or country Y or just kill the current culture we have now with an indiscriminate immigration policy, then he won't be able to keep building SpaceX in the US in the way he has in the past. He may be able to fix the regulatory hurdles to getting to Mars with DOGE, but he won't be able to fix the culture of the country if we don't prevent the negative aspects of the change in culture. America today is already a much lower trust culture than when I moved here 29 years ago and the continued loss of trust threatens being able to get anything done together as Americans. Coethnic nepotism within a firm, for example, absolutely hurts the ability for that firm to fulfill on its mission as different enclaves within the firm fight with one another for a bigger piece of the pie instead of working together to grow the size of the pie.

America isn't just an idea and it isn't just an economic zone. It is a nation of people and the makeup of those people can evolve over time, but it should remain a nation of people.

Basically, I want to Make American a High Trust Culture Again. This has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It's culture and it requires assimilation and a common identity.

Our motto is e pluribus unum, not e pluribus pluribus.

I want to live and work in the US because I value US culture

you mean you value US salary, right? there is no such thing as “US culture…”

your plan for fixing H1B is SPOT ON but of course it will 1,000,000% never happen as the programs main purpose is labor exploitation and wage depression - nothing else (I am immigrant, former H1B-er and eternally grateful the program existed…)

Bullshit that there is no such thing as American culture. I don't even understand how someone can say that with a straight face unless they've only ever lived in the bubble of a major US city that has a lot of immigrants.

29 years here and I've lived in four major US cities, one minor suburban US city, one tiny suburban town and my wife and I are planning on retiring to an extremely rural red-blooded American community hours from any major city. There absolutely is American culture. To say it doesn't exist means you either don't see it out of virtue of where you live or you don't see it just like a fish doesn't know it's wet. I've also lived in two wildly different countries from the US. There absolutely is American culture.

I could actually live much much better in one of the other countries for which I have citizenship than in the US.

How long have you lived in the US and where have you lived since moving here?

How long have you lived in the US ans where have you lived since moving here

Since 1992 - in order: - Springfield IL

- Chicago IL

- Fayetteville AR

- St Louis MO

- Washington DC

- Denver CO

- Chicago IL

- Washington DC

what is US culture? parents in retirement homes, kids cannot walk alone by themselves anywhere without someone calling Cops, everyone at home buying shit on amazon and watching netflix, psychiatrists everywhere cause everyone is lonely, 50% of population obese … which part is best part of the culture?!

Everyone of the things you've described are afflictions that are happening in the other two countries I have citizenship from (one of which is where I was born in and lived as a child). One is in South America and the other is in Europe. It's also happening in many other countries in the world, not just the ones I know.

That's a cancer that is ruining all developed or developing countries. America is just further along.

None of that negates what is still there in much of America that hasn't succumbed to these modern afflictions. I know plenty of folks that live and work near their parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters and see their family often. I know folks who care for their parents without sending them to a home.

> kids cannot walk alone by themselves anywhere without someone calling Cops This is a city problem. In rural and somewhat suburban places, kids still live like this. In cities in Latin America and Europe kids don't go out walking by themselves either. This isn't an American issue. This is a rural/suburban vs urban thing.

That said, this problem is worst in places with less social trust and social trust is lowest in places without common culture.

> everyone at home buying shit on amazon and watching netflix

So much of this is because of the erosion of disposable income as cost of living has increased and wages have not kept up. No country in the world has had as strong a hobby/extracurricular activity culture like America has. In my younger years in America I knew tons of folks with tons of hobbies that simply weren't even options in other countries. You had magazines for every imaginable hobby. You had specialist mail order catalogs for everything. When I go visit friends in Latin America, some of them with hobbies ask me for help buying and bringing stuff that they can't buy domestically.

There's tons of nature and outdoor culture in America. Much more than other countries. We have amazing national forests and national parks. You have hiking, hunting, camping, rafting, kayaking, powerboating, sailing, etc.

The only hobby I partake in where the locus of the hobby isn't America is sailing. For everything else, most of the communities and manufacturers that make anything decent are all American.

Take something like the X-Games. Pretty much every one of those sports is primarily American in origin.

Besides that, you have things like American barbecues, tailgating at sporting events, roadtripping, Thanksgiving feasts, Fourth of July celebrations, Memorial Day and Labor Day festivities.

There's so much really. It just isn't apparent if you've only ever experienced life in major cities.

I feel like I've had a front row seat witnessing the decline of something amazing, but had the good fortune of experiencing many of the things that make America a great place to live. November 8th this year was a referendum rejecting many of the forces contributing to that decline and an attempt to reverse it.

> psychiatrists everywhere cause everyone is lonely

This is largely a liberal problem. Seriously go look at graphs of mental health diagnoses over time by political affiliation. Amongst those that identify as conservative or very conservative, you don't see the same mental health issues. A lot of the mental health issues are very different by gender. It's mostly an issue for women and it largely started in the seventies. Why that decline in happiness occurred for women, I will leave as an exercise for you to speculate on.

> 50% of population obese Happening in every country. America is just in the lead. There's nothing particularly American about this problem. Both the other countries from which I am a citizen are well on there way to the same obesity problems. I have my thoughts on why this has happened here and is happening in other countries too, but it's off topic.

Culturally, America up until about 30 years ago was much higher trust when it was much more European culturally. Stuff that we didn't have nearly as much of when I first arrived were things like jeitinho (Brazil), combina/protekzia (Israel), wasta (Middle East), guanxi (China), viveza criolla (Hispanic Latin American countries), blat (former Soviet bloc), etc. With immigration without assimilation and the formation of co-ethnic enclaves both in geographic communities and within companies, the US now has far far more nepotism and much lower trust today when I first arrived 30 years ago.

Honestly, this isn't even the first time the US has experienced issues and reversed course if you know your US history. A lot of these issues would be familiar to someone familiar with US history in the late 1800s to early 1900s. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, which put an end to the mass immigration happening at the time and that gave those immigrants that were in America already at the time to form a new American identity going into WWII and in the post-war period. It's basically a process of simulated annealing.

This was reversed when LBJ signed the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act into law.

Immigration is neither an unassailable good nor is it an irredeemable evil. There are good ways and bad ways to do it. New blood and vitality has been amazing for America, but too much change too quickly without time healthy mixing to happen comes with it its own problems. Right now we need to course correct and go back to forming a single American identity with high trust irrespective of ethnicity, national origin, race or religion, and all nepotism in all forms (again ethnic, national origin, race or religion) needs to be condemned and rooted out.

you wrote a whole bunch of words that I can sum up

- yea america sucks but so does everyone else (false)

- yea america is obese but so is everyone else (false)

- being lonely is a function of your political affiliation (this was absolutely amazing to see - wow)

- things are great cause I have few friends who barbeque

- kids cannot walk alone because of urban vs. rural (wild wild wild stuff, one of the most urban places on the planet - Tokio Japan - has kids riding metro by themselves, you should look it up. this summer in belgrade I did not know where my 11-year old daughter was 80% of the day… this is america’s sickness, not rural vs urban

Geez …

Strawman much?

I don't understand how you can get "America sucks" from from my comments. I love this place. All the stuff you said sucks are things that suck in lots of other countries too. Why am I going to get upset about phenomena that's happening everywhere? The things I like about America are those things that are unique to America.

> being lonely is a function of your political affiliation (this was absolutely amazing to see - wow)

I was pointing out correlation. I didn't imply causation. You're reading causation into what I wrote. Loneliness or just general unhappiness is far less prevalent amongst those that lean conservative and very conservative. It's probably something worth investigating to figure out why this correlation exists.

> Tokio Japan - has kids riding metro by themselves, you should look it up.

Glad you brought this up. It was something I was thinking about when I wrote my comment. Japan has exactly that which the US has lost a LOT of in the past 30+ years. It's a highly cohesive, high trust culture.

You should go and look up the research of Robert Putnam, who has done the largest, most comprehensive longitudinal studies of the decline of civic engagement.

If you're so unhappy in the US, why are you here? Why not move back to wherever you're happier that has culture when you think the US has no culture? Reading between the lines, it sounds like you haven't made an effort to assimilate into the culture and that has colored your experience and negative view of America.

I'm not going to disagree that America is sick, but it has the potential to get healthy again and that starts with changes that prioritize increasing the quality of life for those already here, whether they were born here or became naturalized citizens. And the prioritization of finding commonality between those that are Americans by birth or chose to become America because they believe in its potential as a nation.

If you're so unhappy in the US, why are you here? Why not move back to wherever you're happier that has culture when you think the US has no culture?

my wife likes money. she said 2 more years and then we are out to retire. I have been begging my wife to move for the last 11 years since my kid has been born as I consider the worst thing I ever did as a father was to subject her childhood to this environment. she is old enough now and has traveled all over the world that now she is doing more begging than I am. america is perfect place to make a boatload of money if you put in hard hard work but all else is really bad and we make excuses because money is sooooo great

Got it. Wish you the best. Wish you had had a better experience here like I have. Only thing I can surmise is that you ended up in some cities in your list that left a lot to be desired. Denver is the only place on that list I'd ever consider living in. I'm unfamiliar with Fayetteville, AR, so no thoughts there, but I'd never want to live in DC, Chicago or St Louis.

What was your favorite city out of all those and what was your least favorite?

Are you and your wife from the same country? Did you meet in the US or came here together?

I must admit; you actually try to convey why the US is great besides making money (or, as many maga idiots cite; gun ownership and 'freedom'. Kudos for that; you cited 0 things I would personally be interested in; we have bbqs and national holidays; both are nice the first time and then, well, not so much. The rest shows that you over sampled the koolaid and actually believe trump is going to make things 'even better' and believe that all systemic issues are wokeness and weakness. I hope you are really very rich as hard times coming, but then again, you did want those; president musk said; things will become much worse and people will need to tighten their belts before it becomes better. Which is code for my mate trump and our other mates will rob everything (mostly in terms of removing all regulatory oversight, rich/company taxes etc) in the coming 4 years and someone else can take over that turd while we go make more money after that. And smart people like you who got a chance actually think that they mean this is for the country and the people.

I digress; there is no culture except maybe the idiotic focus on sports (watching that is; everyone still obese!), although that's no different in AUS and for a large extent the UK, so actually, nope.

Disclaimer; lived and worked in the US; left the first time trump got the presidency.

> you cited 0 things I would personally be interested in

what things are you interested in that are cultural?

> as hard times coming

This wouldn't surprise me, but unless it happens in 2nd to 4th year of his presidency, it's almost certainly going to be the bipartisan drunken sailor spending of Congress since the pandemic our country likely had a hand in causing.

Between accelerating national debt and our disastrous Ukraine war banking policies and international asset seizures that have undermined dollar supremacy, I'm expecting hard times unless we get a Milei-style intervention to course correct.

> Disclaimer; lived and worked in the US; left the first time trump got the presidency.

Hope that's working out for you. It's working out here for me.

> Hope that's working out for you. It's working out here for me.

Well, that is all that matters. We both will be dead soon anyway, so picking where to sit it out is important.

What was your favorite city out of all those and what was your least favorite?

Washington DC - by far. I have been everywhere in the US as well except for Alaska, for business and pleasure. Washington DC is the only place that has some form of a soul :)

Are you and your wife from the same country? Did you meet in the US or came here together?

I am from Serbia, my wife is from Croatia. We met in Washington DC. We came under different circumstances, I came to play basketball and my wife came as a refugee.

First of all, I want to say, I'm sorry for what our government did to your countries. Absolutely shameful. (This goes for pretty all the wars the US has been involved with in the 20th century, but especially those since Kennedy was assassinated).

I've always been curious about Washington DC. I've visited twice. Seems like it attracts a lot of the best people from all over the globe but the worst people from within the United States.

One of my biggest wishes for the US is to decentralize pretty much all the functions that Washington DC does today. In its current form, it doesn't exist to further the best interests of the United States. It only functions to further the best interest of itself. Classic case of the Shirky Principle applied to a city.

Curious to hear more about the soul you're talking about? My guess is it has more to do with the foreign presence in that city than the domestic presence.

> I was pointing out correlation. I didn't imply causation. You're reading causation into what I wrote. Loneliness or just general unhappiness is far less prevalent amongst those that lean conservative and very conservative. It's probably something worth investigating to figure out why this correlation exists.

I think this is disingenuous. You also heavily implied that feminism is at the root of many women's issues. You can't then pull it back and say "Oh, I didn't mean that, you just assumed that". So what -did- you mean?

You also blatantly ignore that conservative and very conservative community have a stigma against mental health issues. While someone "investigates" this, they should probably also investigate whether it is actually the case or whether conservatives with mental health issues are more likely to leave them untreated or deny their existence.

appreciate the effort but it is no use arguing with a self-loathing liberal.

One more thing I would add is if we don't address the training and skill issue of Americans, that isn't a racial issue that impacts only those of European descent. Every immigrant that comes here and has children will have to deal with that for their kids. Folks from country X and country Y are going to find that their kids are in the same unfortunate situation as American kids of European or mostly European descent. They too are already find themselves displaced by immigrants (even from the country from which their parents hailed) for jobs and housing if we don't fix immigration ASAP.

+1 It seem glaring that american as a tough time developping the potentional of people already here

Best post I've read on the subject. As Teddy Roosevelt said, there should be no such thing as a fifty-fifty American - and thank you for holding this view and for defending American culture, it means a lot. I'm not a fan of straight up multiculturalism (I don't think it works, but some elements can be absorbed), but multiracial nationalism can absolutely work and that's what is missing IMO.

Glad to know other people feel this way. My experience has been that there are a lot more of us out there than it feels, but you only find that our when you start speaking up about it.

One of my biggest observations in life is that many discussions that seem dichotomous are not. Most everything exists on a spectrum.

One of the biggest one is pro-choice vs pro-life. My experience has been that there is a very very very tiny minority that is absolutely pro-life and an even tinier minority that is pro-choice. The vast majority are in the it depends on time and gestation. If you ask the right questions of someone, you find out that they are pro-choice but feel that abortion in the 8th month is wrong. Likewise, when you ask the right questions, may pro-life people are okay with abortion like the morning after pill to like up to a month or two. What I've learned is that we've been conditioned to think we all fall into one camp or another, but the truth is most are in the same camp but just disagree on when is okay within that very wide 9-month span.

Likewise, the same goes for the debate about immigration. There's this push to force everyone to fall into the camp of 100% for immigration no matter what or no immigration whatsoever.

The truth is that most folks are actually simultaneously pro-immigration and anti-immigration. Almost everyone feels like there is some common culture. You need to have it if you want any semblance of cooperation, but even the most ardent anti-immigration person agrees that there are folks work bringing into the tribe.

There is no magic dirt. Demographics are destiny and you really can't reverse the damage from an immigration policy that makes no attempt to discern between folks you should and should not allow in. It's possible to take a cautious approach and increase it later if proven to be too conservative. The reverse however is very very messy.

If you haven't seen it yet, you should check out Sam Hyde's ~45 minute video message to Elon Musk. Absolutely amazing summary of the state of things.

Not commenting on any other part but a slight correction:

The morning after pill is not an abortifacient. While there are different types most (like Levonorgestrel) are antiovulatarory or anti fertilisation.

Thanks for the correction.

> I'm more American in attitude than most Americans I know.

I am not sure what's this "American attitude" you mention here nor which scale you are using to say that you are somewhat higher on that scale vs "most" American.

Been here for about 8 years, live in a bunch of places in the world. For me the most striking thing about the US as always been the sheer diversity of thoughts and perspectives. That and also the fact that somehow most American think they have the magical ability to know what is american and what is not.

> I consider myself a nationalist.

And a lot of american are not.

> First and foremost, I strongly believe that elected representatives should represent the best interests of their citizens and ONLY their citizens.

To a degree and with some limitation. Should we allow american companies to do morally/ecologically dubious things overseas just because we get some tax revenue ?

> The best interest of potential future citizens is not something they should even give a thought to.

So... the interest of children of american's shouldn't matter ?

> That's the question that should be asked when admitting an immigrant: "Is this person a net benefit to the citizens of this country I was elected to represent?"

The issue is of course in defining what is a "net" benefit. For some, the cultural exchange, the moral obligation to asylum seekers or relative to people already here does count like a net benefit.

It is also important to note that this view of immigration as something that should be provably beneficial is pretty recent. The wave of european (italian, irish etc...) did migrate in mass to the US without any obvious/forseeable benefit... But all in all it turned out well.

> First, it absolutely must cost more to bring in an immigrant to do a job than to hire an American. Under no situation should it be allowed to depress wages. If a citizen costs X, it should cost like 1.5x or some value like that to import the talent you need if you genuinely can't find the talent you need domestically.

Agree.

> Second, the visa should belong the the person being brought to the US. A company can sponsor them and maybe get exclusive access for some short period of time like the first year or so, but after that, the person should not have their visa tied to the employer that sponsored them. If they get a good perf review after their first year on the job, they absolutely should get an extension to stay another N years like 3 to 5, but at this point they are totally free to work for any other company with zero risk of losing their visa status if they choose not to continue working for the employer that sponsored them. If that employer wants to keep them, they'll have to pay the premium to keep them and treat them well. No immigrant should ever feel like an indentured servant.

Agree

> Third, scrutiny should be applied to all companies involved in using the H1-B program as a visa mill and to co-ethnic nepotism.

The h1-b should be merit based. However people tend to know other people from the same general background, so it might be hard to distinguish between nepotism and that. I do agree with the general sentiment, any system will be abused by bad actors, we need checks to make sure those don't happen.

> Lastly, we need to focus on assimilation. I have citizenship from three countries myself and I choose to live in the US because I value US culture (or at least what it was 10 to 15 years ago).

> If I wanted to live and work in the other countries in which I could legally work, I'd move to those countries. I don't want that. I want to live and work in the US because I value US culture. If you disproportionately bring in immigrants from particular countries, you turn the US into those other countries for better and for worse. This happens both at the national level and at the local level. I don't want it at either.

> In fact, when you disproportionately bring in people from country X into a specific locality, you make it harder for those folks to assimilate. This allows the formation of ethnic/cultural enclaves. This should not happen. You should have a mix of folks from multiple countries in a place so they actually co-mingle and assimilate to become Americans. Not hyphenated Americans, but bonafide Americans that adopt America as the home and the country in which they pride themselves.

> Completely disregarding assimilation is going to kill the Golden Goose that Elon Musk values. He can build SpaceX here in American but not in country X or country Y. However, if we culturally turn the US into country X or country Y or just kill the current culture we have now with an indiscriminate immigration policy, then he won't be able to keep building SpaceX in the US in the way he has in the past. He may be able to fix the regulatory hurdles to getting to Mars with DOGE, but he won't be able to fix the culture of the country if we don't prevent the negative aspects of the change in culture. America today is already a much lower trust culture than when I moved here 29 years ago and the continued loss of trust threatens being able to get anything done together as Americans. Coethnic nepotism within a firm, for example, absolutely hurts the ability for that firm to fulfill on its mission as different enclaves within the firm fight with one another for a bigger piece of the pie instead of working together to grow the size of the pie.

Well you did warn us that you were a nationalist. So we can't be too surprise. I strongly suspect that alot people disagree what most of whhat you are saying here. But more importantly we do not need to solve/agree on those cultural problem to address the issue with H1-B

> Basically, I want to Make American a High Trust Culture Again. This has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It's culture and it requires assimilation and a common identity.

America was never a "high trust culture".

> Our motto is e pluribus unum, not e pluribus pluribus.

It's interesting that you seem to read the exact opposite of what "e pluribus unum". It's a celebration of differences... The belief that unity doesn't require uniformity or common identity. That hyphenated Americans can live together without having to drop the hyphen. In fact, that's another thing that very "american" and different from European. The concept that out of the many can emerge the one and that both can coexist...

I strongly suspect that you are mixing culture and values...

I'm not surprised by your interpretation of a lot of my comment. Coastal/Urban America hasn't had anything resembling a common culture for a lot longer than 8 years now. I'd say that it's been a wholly different place pre- and post- 9/11.

Your view of America is limited by your experience of it in the past 8 years. I assure you, it was very very different even just 20 years ago. America pre-social media was a very very different place. We now have at least one (Gen Z), if not two full generations (younger Millenials) of Americans that have grown up with all of their experiences mediated in some form or another in a relatively international post social media landscape.

> And a lot of american are not.

Believe it or not, this is a pretty recent phenomena. It's only been since the late 90s as best. Hyphenated Americans is about 36 years old. It started with African-American" in about 1989 and didn't spread to others until at least another decade. Go check Google's ngram viewer for "African-American" and see for yourself.

Even much of the divisive language we have now is like 15 years old: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08944393211031452

A lot of this language coincided with Occupy Wall Street because the powers that be had a vested interest in diverting attention away from a discussion of class in America.

I'm a nationalist because I remember back when America largely had a singular identity and it was highly socially unusual to split up into all these sub identities. It still isn't the case for much of small town America and what coastal elites consider flyover country.

> But all in all it turned out well.

Only because of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act that allowed a single cohesive identity to form over like 40 years. The history of America is actually pretty messy.

> America was never a "high trust culture".

Absolutely not true. It was much much higher trust when I first moved here in 1986 (which is 39 years ago, not 29 years ago. I did my math wrong in my comment and just now realized it).

> It's interesting that you seem to read the exact opposite of what "e pluribus unum". It's a celebration of differences...

This is not at all what it was three decades ago and further back until the origin of the country's founding. It was a celebration of finding commonality despite differences. What you're describing is a complete retcon of what it historically has meant since it was first used on the great seal in 1776.

Go watch American classic movies and TV shows from the founding of Hollywood until about 1990. Much of it was highly representative of American culture I experienced in the earlier years when I first moved here. Much much much higher trust than today.

>> America was never a "high trust culture".

> Absolutely not true. It was much much higher trust when I first moved here in 1986

I don't believe it, especially given that you're saying this is due to immigration. What do you mean specifically when you say this? Do you mean there was less violent crime? Because that isn't true. Do you mean that there's more ethnic conflict now? That also isn't really true.

America has been characterized largely by the racial conflicts it's had since the 19th century, with there being ethnic violence between whites, Chinese, Irish, blacks, Italians, and others. Though not to the same extent as the 19th century, riots were still happening, e.g. the 1992 LA riots.

For the most part, my observations is that we now just put up with rampant property crime and very little of it gets reported. This isn't surprising because getting cops to respond to property crime reports when you call 911 now takes so long that it isn't even worth it.

I've personally experienced more property crime and other issues in the past 5 to 10 years than my entire family experienced in the 29 to 34 years prior.

About a month and a half a go, I had some kids damage my car in the supermarket parking lot. Called 911. Waiting on hold for like 20 minutes because it wasn't an emergency. Cops didn't show for an hour. Called back, changed the address of the incident to my home. Cops ended up showing up 13 hours after the incident between 1 and 2 am. Growing up, I don't recall ever waiting more than 30 minutes for anything when 911 was called. I wouldn't have even called 911 for this issue if I had a choice. Supermarket wouldn't provide surveillance footage without a police report filed.

The statistics simply aren't telling the whole story. People have largely given up on reporting things because they've become so commonplace and folks don't expect anything to be done. Crime clearance rates for all crimes are down all over the country as we lose faith that anything will be done.

I wish I had the study I read one time handy, but it was comparing crime stats between the US and Japan over time and it basically showed that you can get to a point where crime has gotten so bad that it's no longer reported because folks no longer expect any resolution from reporting crime. This closely matches my personal experience with property crime that has impacted me and others I know.

Even the arsonist who tried to set my home on fire two years ago while on a meth bender is getting out in 5 years from now. The charges were two separate cases. One was 5 counts of arson 1 and the other was 1 count of arson 1 and violating a restraining order IIRC. Pled everything down to 6 counts of arson 2. 7 years total, with two years already served. In the end, one entire house burned down. One was severely damage and the other had minor damage because the fires were put out promptly.

We wouldn't bother to lock our doors growing up. Today, I probably record someone checking to see if my car is unlocked (crime of opportunity) about once every one to two months.

I really appreciate the tenor of the discussion you've had with your primary interlocutor(s) above. It's been substantive and civil, and I wish every sociopolitical disagreement online could be approached in the same manner. Because of the respect I've gained for you throughout this thread I'm going to do what I seldom do online, and express something about my political point of view.

I agree with your diagnosis of the problems with American society, particularly the 'high trust' vs 'low trust' line of thought. I'd add the nuance that in the past trust was not (largely) extended across racial lines, but there was progress made, up until it began falling apart altogether.

Coming from a left-liberal point of view, I think the root cause has been economic, rather than cultural, because (developing along the same timeline as your tenure in the United States) we've arrived at an extractive rather generative form of capitalism. I think that explains the H1b abuses we both deplore, the social balkanization, and also the very similar cultural, economic, and governance breakdowns simultaneously appearing in other countries across the "western/liberal" world.

I'm not saying that to spark further argument, just as prelude to: I hope you're right. If the way to re-forming a high-trust society and curing what we agree ails us is as simple as the American right posits then I will happily eat crow over the next four or eight or whatever years. That is, of course, the opposite of what I expect to happen with (as I see them) the extractive capitalists fully in charge, but I am prepared to be proved wrong.

I will ask you, as I've recently been asking all of my right-wing friends, to judge what happens in the near future against the expectations that you have now. If things go badly, and those solutions fail, will you be willing to try "my side's" ideas - think TR +FDR reduce corporate power, : wealth transfers and massive infrastructure investments - next? I believe that's what created the mid-twentieth century cultural foundations which we'd both like to reconstruct.

Thanks for the kind words.

> I'd add the nuance that in the past trust was not (largely) extended across racial lines, but there was progress made, up until it began falling apart altogether.

Yeah, I'm not going to deny this at all, but I must say that in the 1990s and 2000s at least among the older Millennials and younger GenX, there was a very real sense of judging people mostly by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. What has happened in the last 15 years in race and gender relationships is a massive step backwards. Even I can't help having prejudiced thoughts today as a response to these changes that me 20 years ago would have been repulsed by. I say this as a third culture kid, who is mixed race whose "plurality" leans European, but who who identifies with Europe, Latin American and a tiny smidge of Indigenous South America.

It's actually been sad to see some of the comments here where folks have expressed that "America doesn't have a culture". I know it's largely attenuated from when I was younger, but it's still palpable to me. It's sad to see that it's now so weak that many express that they don't even think it exists.

> Coming from a left-liberal point of view, I think the root cause has been economic, rather than cultural, because (developing along the same timeline as your tenure in the United States) we've arrived at an extractive rather generative form of capitalism.

Couldn't agree more. I was left leaning most of my life. I remember back when Zappa testified in Congress about overzealous right leaning conservative school marms. Today, it largely feels the same but the longhouse school marms are left leaning. I'm always conflicted about self describing myself as conservative these days because while policy-wise that's where I'm out, it's mostly out of the complete failures of the left-leaning policies of those in control of every major American institution. In 20-30 years, I would not surprise if I end up back expressing support for the equivalent of left leaning policies in 2050 or so in the event the right successfully takes back these institutions. Ultimately, I just want to be left alone and want to see everyone else left alone as well.

I'm also in complete agreement that its the blind pursuit of economic policy that serves those in power that's been most contributory to the destruction of American culture. If I read correctly a full 1 in 5 working adults in America are immigrants. That's wildly high and it's insane to me than anyone can argue that hasn't depressed wages, increased pressure on housing costs (which increases the cost of living across the board).

That said, this all falls under the research of George Borjas, who has done an amazing job documenting the impact of immigration workers on the American workers. But it isn't the whole story. He has a colleague at Harvard, whose work is equally important in this discussion and that is the work of Robert Putnam, who has done the largest and most comprehensive studies documenting the decline of civic engagement in America. His work is summarized in his book "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community", but his larger body of work merits attention.

The disintegration of homogenous communities and replacement with heterogenous communities has creation circumstances where groups are fighting with one another.

One of the seminal lessons I've learn in my life personally is that politics rises when things balkanize. Instead of a single culture rowing together in the same direction to grow the size of the pie, they instead fight against one another to grow the size of their piece of the pie. I've seen this happen in America broadly in the time I've lived here, but I've also seen it up close and personally while working at one of Silicon Valley's best known unicorns.

I feel like I joined the company relatively late at around employee ~2000 and engineer ~200, but by the time I left about 10 years later, I was among the 25 most tenured employees at the company and had seen probably 10000 engineers pass through the company and who knows how many total employees. My guess is 50k or more.

The last 4 years or so were painful. The company went from one where everyone had shared economic incentives (stock options) and a shared mission, to one with fiefdoms everywhere and everyone just trying to further their career and the career of their manager or skip level. By the time I left, my guess is that I could count those folks that I worked with that still truly believed in the mission of the company on two hands. Which is nothing in a company of 25k+ active employees.

I sincerely believe we can get back to a unified culture, but it's going to require something drastic like the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 to stop the bleeding and then one to two generations to pass to allow for those here to figure out how to form one new common American identity. That's not to say we shouldn't allow anyone in, but it should only be allowing those in that truly benefit all Americans and not just the American oligarchy.

> That is, of course, the opposite of what I expect to happen with (as I see them) the extractive capitalists fully in charge, but I am prepared to be proved wrong.

I too am skeptical, but I'd put the emphasis more specifically on globalists and the deep state. Between all that's happened with Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Thomas Massive, Jeffrey Epstein, P Diddy, Twitter Files, revelations from Mike Benz, Hunter Biden laptop, etc. etc. etc., I have very little confidence that corruption from those in economic and political control will actually be held to account.

> I will ask you, as I've recently been asking all of my right-wing friends, to judge what happens in the near future against the expectations that you have now. If things go badly, and those solutions fail, will you be willing to try "my side's" ideas - think TR +FDR reduce corporate power, : wealth transfers and massive infrastructure investments - next?

Yes and no. I'm absolutely willing to condemn what you're describing as "my side's ideas", but I have no confidence in the ideas you're talking about as well. I've seen them fail both in this country and the country I'm from.

The ideas I want to see tried out are neither Republican or Democrat ideas. I want to take a wrecking ball to power structures in America. Everything deep state related needs to go.

The analogy I use as a sailor (which should also be familiar to anyone who has kitesurfed), is the idea of "depowering" the sails. Right now, we have instutitions with way too much power and all that power is a massive magnet for the most corruptible people. Orwell said "Absolute power corrupts absolutely", but their is more to it than that. Absolute power also absolutely attracts the absolutely corrupted. I'd love to see far more decentralization and power back at the state and local level. I'd love to see every major institution under the Executive branch either dismantled or spread across medium-sized cities all across the country.

Back before we had the Department of Education, we relied on 50 department of educations in each of 50 states trying things out. Some had good ideas, but some had bad ideas, but those with bad ideas had the option of copyingt those experiencing success with their policies.

I've seen this exact same situation at the big company I left. For the first 5-6 years anyone with an idea had to first implement that idea, prove it out and then scale it up. Eventually, everything became command and controls and now every idea could no longer be experimented with and scaled up. Instead they had to be implemented by or get the blessing of the annointed ones with power and if considered acceptable could only be implemented company-wide or not at all. With that approach, I saw so many "ideas" that were ram-rodded through as multi-year efforts, many of which failed, but failed only after their original "sponsor" was promoted and had moved on, leaving a wake of destruction for others to clean up.

The closest equivalent to this is what's happened with Milei in Argentina. I'm still skeptical of him as an individual, but what he's achieved has been nothing short of remarkable.

If I could have one wish for America, it would be that the bulk of my taxes went to my local jurisdiction first, then state and only pennies were left over for federal only for those things that can only be handled at the federal level like national defense (but only acted upon with the blessing of 50 states).

One of the biggest failures I think with our Constitution are that representation wasn't designed to scale. When the first Congress was established the US had 3.9 million people. Today, it's 346 million. In 1789, with the first Congress, we had 26 senators and approximately 65 representatives by the end. The ratio in 1789 was 43k people to each member of Congress. Today it is 643k.

This is a failure to scale because each citizen has a far smaller voice and it's much cheaper for those in power to corrupt 538 members of Congress today. Had we scaled proportionately (43k to 1), Congress would have just over 8000 members. IMHO, that would be far healthier because it would be far more expensive for special interests to buy their way into getting a majority of votes of 8000+ members of Congress.

Anyways, that's enough for now. I could go on forever on this. Again, I appreciate your comment.

TBF, I'm not against wealth transfers and infrastructure investments. I just think they should be handled as close to the local level as possible.

Wealth transfers for example worked better when Churches and other local community institutions were involved. They'd collect directly from their parishioners and provide support directly to those that need help. This is a system that is highly accountable to the people providing help and keeps those receiving help accountable for "helping themselves" and not just mooching.

Same with infrastructures. With infrastructure, there are times, that some big may have value, but very rarely does it require the scale of the state or the federal government. The biggest of infrastructure projects are rarely larger than an economic region (e.g. SF Bay Area. Seattle Metro area. etc.).

The interstate highway system is like the only infrastructure project that benefits from Federal involvement.

Right now, doing through the Federal government provides far too little accountability for results and spending money wisely.

Beyond elements of nuance and emphasis I don't disagree with anything you've said. For instance, I completely agree with the philosophy of localism and federalism and "de-powering the sails" that you lay out. (And yes, the House of Representatives should be scaled!) At the present moment I just... Prioritize de-powering corporations over government, because if we do it the other way around there will be nothing restraining the further concentration of power in, and the further corruption of government / society at, their hands.

Where I think we part company is in our assessments of the current American "left" and "right" parties. I see more energy towards de-centralization (both corporate and governmental) in some younger politicians within the Democratic party, and a firm intent to increase corporate power within the GOP.

But, it gives me hope to see so much substantive agreement with someone who's chosen to vote the other way, and I genuinely hope that I've misjudged the incoming administration. If it all works out as you believe it will, then I'll be happy to have been wrong. Thanks again.

The way I see it, the overly powerful government and corporate institutions are two sides of the same coin. There's been so much revolving door activity and corporate capture of government, that depowering either in either order yields a weakening of the other.

One person that I can't recommend enough is Mike Benz, if you've never checked out his videos. He's an absolute fountain of knowledge, it's just that there is such a vast spiderweb of "<foo> industrial complexes" out there (finance, military, media, tech, censorship, etc.) that it's impossible to convey in short media clips.

Best place to start is his pinned video: https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1838448979799085456

Shellenberger is another one to check out.

Once, you've seen enough of the links between government and corporations pointed out by him and others that are watchdogging, you start seeing it everywhere. You literally can't turn on a single MSM news show today and not see "expert" after "expert" that if you dig in are just cutouts for the vast web of "<foo> industrial complexes" out there and how there are so many innocuously named institutions, think tanks and NGOs that are quietly guiding so much of what is happening from behind the scenes and manufacturing narratives.

What I see in the new administration has less to do with policies and more to do with folks that are increasingly hard to manipulate and blackmail. Thiscertainly doesn't apply to Trump's first administration, which was a disaster, but it was a disaster because he really didn't expect to win, and completely underestimated the swamp. As a result, he hastily put together a first administration of folks that had ulterior motives or was compromised.

At this point, Trump is probably the most vetted president in modern times. They have literally done everything possible to try and take him down. Yes, he's had his fair share of indiscretions and he absolutely is a flawed human, but none of his legitimate indiscretions were enough to take him out that there have now been many unhinged efforts to manufacture scandal to take him out because he represents such a threat to the deep state.

One reason Trump has largely been able to avoid this stuff is because he learned first hand how the coercion and blackmail machine functioned very early in his career with his exposure to Roy Cohn and the Blue Suite scandal at the Plaza Hotel. His behavior certainly hasn't been beyond reproach (far from it), but at this point, it's safe to say that he's not nearly as compromised as the Clinton's, the Bush's and the Biden's have proven to be.

While I'm not keen on many of his cabinet picks, there are quite a few folks in there that have already had their dirty laundry aired, and while it wasn't always pretty, it also wasn't career ending. What you're left with are folks that have seen how the coercion and blackmail and scandal operating machine works and are on a mission to destroy it. This time around, more of the cabinet picks appear to be far less compromised than previous administrations including Trump's first administration.

Basically, my take is that this is the first administration in my lifetime that has some leeway to break from from the orbit of blackmail and coercion that has shaped policy since Kennedy was assassinated.

This is how collusion happens between the government (regulators, prosecutors, politicians, etc) and the corporate (media personalities, super wealthy, powerful attorneys, think tanks, etc). Revolving door, conflicts of interest, etc--these can't be solved in the modern form of government.

I'm not sure there is a modern form of government that can solve the problem we have. If a non-trivial quantity of your leaders (elected or appointed) are being coerced and blackmailed, there's not really a solution. Maybe in the past, a monarch could have their blackmailer and associates put to death, but there's not really a solution for a nation under blackmail. You certainly won't be able to have a form of government with a functional justice system with concepts like innocent until proven guilty and due process. I can't think of a way for a leader to remain beholden to the will of the people, if there is no mechanism to swiftly deal with blackmail, when the price is to go against the will of the people. Such a mechanism would be incompatible with the modern tenets of justice.

"Because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion, Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." — John Adams, October 11, 1798.

I don't remember the interview, but there was an interview in the second have of 2024 with Peter Thiel where he basically alludes to the fact that we're largely operating with institutions today that are basically a club where admittance is granted on the basis of being compromised. Basically, this reeks of the adage attributed to Lenin "Trust is good. Control is better".

As greed and avarice and numerous vices become more common, the pool of blackmailable people to sponsor to a position of power only grows. There was a reason, institutions like the FBI and CIA used to strongly prefer hiring Mormons, who did not drink and were very unlikely to partake in adultery or other frowned up sexual proclivities.

For the most part, I would not be surprised if getting the financial support to run for office in many parts of the country are largely predicated on the whether or not the financial backers underwriting your campaign feel confident they can control you. It's probably not enough to trust a politician for many financiers of politicians. They need to know they can control before they write a check.

This is why we have so few politicians of any integrity like Thomas Massie. Even he has a massive target on his back, with lots of money pouring in to support his opponents. I can imagine that someone like Thomas Massie could only ever win in a state that is still largely constituted of the types of people of which John Adams wrote. A politician with any integrity would be very unlikely to ever win in states like California, New York or Illinois.

The fact that the only people arrested in the Epstein scandal have been Epstein and Maxwell, pretty much speaks volumes about how out how our government is being run. There is little to no accountability (for government officials or executives in corporations) apart from a token person going to jail now and again. We have a system of government and institutions actively protecting criminals.

hard to say how much of this will actually translate into policy. The last revision to the policy helped close out loopholes, may be more to come? Unlikely that the H1B is going away any time soon. Domestic workers will need to adapt and grind, very hard indeed in this job market. Definitely need more bridges between domenstic and immigrant workers to avoid online vitriol spilling IRL.

Elon wants this for the same reason he will inevitably use his role in the Trump administration to dismantle union protections; he prefers a cheap, easily cowed workforce that he can use and then throw away as needed. Trump shares this mindset and so do his donors. It is true that we get some very qualified people through this program, but that is mostly a happy accident that serves to provide cover for supporting it. The vast majority of the time the visa holders are no more qualified than native applicants, and instead are simply cheaper and easier to exploit labor.

These visas are outdated mechanisms, since US companies can now hire senior developers working remotely, at discount prices, from anywhere in the world

On one side we want to disagree with Trump, on the other we support remote work, though one for HN

True, but there is a moderate amount of hard to beancounter-quantify working with people many time zones away for whom their mother tongue is not English.

Communication is an underappreciated valuable engineering skill.

We are getting better at measuring environmental externalities, but not yet those.

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