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Comment by throwaway85825 | Hacker News Reader

Some people live in a pressurized bubble for a month for saturation diving. If the price is right you can get someone to do almost anything.

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That is true but I think the salient observation here is that it's only realistic to pay so much for education. So either you can't have children in such a town, or you're forced to homeschool, or (I guess what's being suggested is) you import someone willing to work an undesirable job if it gets them into the country.

I think there's an important difference between importing labor to undercut qualified americans in a populated area versus importing labor to do a job that the vast majority of qualified americans will have no interest in at any reasonable pay rate.

you could also export the children, or the whole family, to a place that can support teachers

Depopulating rural Alaska, or America in general, is certainly a campaign strategy.

I mean, so's "Bumfuck, Alaska needs a handful of teachers, therefore we're going to import infinite Indians"

Who said anything about infinite? I don't see anything wrong with importing labor if it's of net benefit to our society. If there was genuinely no citizen that wanted the job for any reasonable price then what's the harm in bringing in an educated outsider who contributes positively? It improves several metrics simultaneously without harming anyone.

You could also say that India is below replacement fertility. Which, if Indian history is anything to go by, will mean India will outlaw emigration to protect ultra-rich Indians.

China has already mostly made emigration illegal. The rest of the world will follow.

> China has already mostly made emigration illegal

Genuinely news to me. Do you have any sources?

Depends what you mean. Communism loves bureaucracy and so there are 10 different system "totally not cooperating" to prevent leaving. In China you need permission to leave the country (or even your town), and so there is no law change. The big bureaucracies are referred to as "Hokou" (within China) and "Exit-entry administration" for international. So no direct announcement, everything is under direct control of Xi. You see, it was always illegal to go outside of the country without Xi's approval and those approvals have mostly stopped coming.

But here's one source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/02/18/china-right-leave-countr...

Yeah sorry no that's not the same thing as "made emigration illegal". When you say that I think of Soviet Russia with its exit visas that people hardly ever got.

It kind of is. You try to leave, the police stops you. You go to court, the court decides against you. What's not "lawful" about that (aside from the very unjust nature of China's laws)

For it to be true there would have to be evidence that it's default disallowed. Or that most people can't get passports at all, no matter what.

No country locks of passports 100%. And, look, you asked for a source, the hrw article provides a source.

Every country has laws about who can get passports. In countries without proper rule of law this is often arbitrary. Does that mean all those countries have made emigration illegal?

If the law also says you can't leave without passports, like Chinese law, then yes, obviously.

> If the law also says you can't leave without passports, like Chinese law,

Other countries don't let you in without a passport. Even in the absence of a Chinese law, an airline would deny you boarding if you didn't have a passport.

Houkou does not prevent a Chinese citizen from leaving a town. People move around all the time. Houkou is about registering to receive public services in the new city within China.

In any case Houkou doesn’t prevent a person from leaving the country. A passport does, but this is the same in all countries.

> You see, it was always illegal to go outside of the country without Xi's approval and those approvals have mostly stopped coming.

There are hundreds of millions of trips out of China every year. A good number of them to the US for work. That fact is hard to square with what you’re saying.

That would be "A distinction without a difference" ... a thing bureaucracies are positively excellent at.

There's an old Soviet joke: it's allowed! It's just that you haven't submitted your request, in triplicate, in our office in Siberia, open from 24:00 to 24:01 on Februari 30th every year! But it's allowed, with the proper permission. Just go get it!

Except that there is a difference

Do you really suggest to copy Ceaușescu and start evacuating villages in rural Alaska?

I wonder if he realizes that we historically went to great lengths to get people to move there.

After the subsidies stopped everyone moved out of Siberia.

> the vast majority of qualified americans will have no interest in at any reasonable pay rate.

Herein lies the whole problem. It is the potential employees who determine what a reasonable pay rate is, not the employer - the cat decides what kind of milk it likes.

Do we even realize this is the very beginning of the worldwide demographic transition? American and Worldwide cities aren't replacing themselves, and they're not having children ... as a way to save. And this is getting worse. Meanwhile the whole world is going through a demographic transition.

Which, allow me to translate, means in less than 25 years there will not be any society worldwide that has the people to allow Emigration. As stupid as it sounds now, Iran, China, the Taliban (just an example) are 15 years away from outlawing emigration, and Germany less than that. China is mostly there, btw, but apparently able to keep that little extra authoritarian detail out of the news.

You're a farmer in China? There's NO way out. You can't go to the city, you can't leave the country. No way out whatsoever, except perhaps death. And the question "how is that different from slavery?" will be fought, not answered, by Chinese authorities. As I said, pay attention, because the 2 presidents down the US president, whoever it is by then, will make the same arguments (Yes, I get that there were worse slavery systems, like the African slave trade, than that. But it's still slavery)

That means in less than a generation any American town WILL be forced to dedicate their own population to everything they need done.

Watch some documentaries about Chinese borders (easy to find ones of peasants illegally entering Kashmir for instance) or even look at a map. There is absolutely no way to keep even broke peasants from leaving. China doesn't even know where many of their borders are, that's why a lot of them show up as dotted lines. China has about the most porous border for leaving as any place on earth but Russia or Brazil (entering illegally is a different issue -- if you want to go anywhere urban desirable you will be found out -- that they have good controls for). This compounded by the fact that many of China's neighboring countries have robust populations of undocumented / nationless people into which they can be absorbed rather than sticking out as a sore thumb wherever they end up.

Iran and Afghanistan are almost as laughable. When I was in Syria I met an Iranian guy with one eye that travelled through the Kurdish mountains into Iraq and then Syria. Iran doesn't even control the mountain passes out of the country, they're literally controlled by Kurdish rebels who have very little concept of immigration controls other than pay me a dollar.

It doesn't matter how much money you have if you can't spend it.

That applies to a ton of people in the military. People are capable of delayed gratification.

Repeating trite platitudes only makes your argument sound weak and tired.

What is the federal budget for military vs education? Which one increases and which one decreases most of the time?

Well, maybe that’s the solution to the problem. Deploy troops to the classrooms.

Does Amazon not deliver to Alaska?

I would be fully willing to live in a pressurized bubble for a month for saturation diving. Sounds cool and doable. Living for years in rural Alaska and being a teacher? Absolutely not.

That being said, there are not that many saturation divers, because being a month in a bubble is kind of least problem with it. The lifelong health impact is.

The biggest issue with saturation diving is not the pressure or the health impact, it's the fact that you share a tiny space with 3-6 other people for a month.

This might be the opposite of living in Alaska where you share a really huge amount of space with not a lot of other people.

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