Comment by tc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tc | Hacker News Reader

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I was with you until the last two paragraphs. After that point, you got it all backwards. Let's see:

that's what free markets are - a chump's game

You're blaming the wrong thing. I believe you mean to say, "pretending that the markets we have now are free is a chump's game." Is this the sort of hypothetical story that you have in mind:

"Joe the programmer has gotten laid off from three companies that ended up going out of business while watching insurance giants and bankers get bailed out by the government, seeing people in licensed professions (lawyers, doctors, nurses) remain secure in their lucrative jobs, and observing that government employees never get fired, have great benefits, high pay, and low levels of work and stress."

If so, you can make a case that Joe is a chump. You could argue that he should be using force to get a better deal at the expense of others rather than naïvely working to increase total wealth. But in any case, the problem has to do with the breakdown of the rule of law, disregard for property rights, and neglecting to observe the hidden costs. Free markets have nothing to do with this.

Yes, allow talented workers to come here. No, don't issue so many visas that young Americans are rightly deterred from entering the field.

The American economy has grown to its present level because smart, hardworking people built companies in America -- not because people who were Americans at the time of their birth built companies. How would America be any better if Sergey Brin's father had been one of those marginal cases you had decided to keep out? It's easy to forget that if we keep out X Indian individuals, some Y of those individuals might go on to build the next Cisco -- and if they're excluded from America, that company might be built in India. The other governments of the world would love it if we further closed our borders (to any degree).

<the problem has to do with the breakdown of the rule of law, disregard for property rights, and neglecting to observe the hidden costs. Free markets have nothing to do with this.>

I agree, 100%. I phrased that badly. The chump's game is blithely accepting the markets we have as "free".

<it's easy to forget that if we keep out X Indian individuals, some Y of those individuals might go on to build the next Cisco -- and if they're excluded from America, that company might be built in India.>

That's true. But the US takes 1.2 million immigrants a year. I consider that to be a high number, but that's really just a matter of opinion. But we (almost) all have our limits. Should we increase it to 2.4 million so we don't lose the marginal cases? Even if we do, there will still be marginal cases. So then should we increase it to 4.8 million/year? I'm sure we could find takers. Eventually, we have to accept that as a practical matter, some of the people who want to come here aren't going to get to - and some of them would have been truly excellent Americans.

<The other governments of the world would love it if we further closed our borders (to any degree).>

On this one, I completely disagree. Seven of the top 10 users of the H1B visa are actually Indian outsourcing firms. They use the visa to cycle a worker through the US to learn the job, then bring that worker back home to outsource the job. India actually gets quite angry with the US when we talk about limiting H1B visas.

Lastly, a big problem I have with the current visa situation is that it creates a market distortion by bringing in hundreds of thousands or engineers/programmers while leaving other fields completely protected. Imagine if the united states banned all foreign grown lemons but allowed in all foreign grown avocados. Well, you could say that by removing all tarrifs from avocados, we've increased free trade. But you can bet that any farm outside the US hoping to access our market that can shift production to avocados will do so, and any farm in the us that can shift to lemons will do so as well.

This is what we've done to engineering. If you make it easy to come to the US as a programmer, but not as a lawyer, you distort the market. You should absolutely expect this to deter americans from engineering and encourage them to go into law.

I agree with that. Anywhere the government coerces the market you're going to get distortions. Is playing favorites the worst type of market distortion? That's hard to judge, but it is probably the most egregious.

I don't think that immigration or foreign competition is the primary driver behind the decline in American engineering (if there is such a thing) though. The other mistakes we've made completely dwarf any effect this would have had:

Our fiscal policy over the past few decades has made debt our primary export. Wall Street firms can make more money just dealing in US Treasury debt than the profits of all the successful companies in Silicon Valley combined.

Steadily increasing regulation (SOX, whatever nonsense comes out of the current situation, etc.), litigiousness (often spurred by statue law: sexual harassment claims, hostile work environment, discrimination, etc.), and complicated tax code has made lawyers and CPAs more in demand, while licensing keeps their numbers down.

The increasing nationalization of health care has misdirected a shocking amount of resources into this industry.

All in all, the major reasons why a smart, rational young person, who is primarily motivated to make a buck, should go into law, medicine, banking, (or politics!) have almost nothing to do with immigration.

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