amerliore

You're right. I would edit it but the comment is now too old to edit. My sincere apologies to Facebook.

Here is a partial list of guilty companies:

Apple

Google

Microsoft

IBM

Adobe

Oracle

Sun

Intel

Earthlink

Virgin

Genentech

eBay / Paypal

Pixar

Intuit

Lucasfilm

Dreamworks

Dell

Comcast

Clear Channel

WPP

AOL

AskJeeves

Lycos

Oglivy

Illumita

DoubleClick

You won the birth lottery by having the IQ to do this kind of work.

Software professionals would not be against immigration if VCs and their portfolio companies were not illegally suppressing wages using anti-competitive tactics.

Employers are suppressing wages using both hard and soft collusion. If they stopped doing that no one would have an issue with letting more workers in.

Still--the argument applies--why not just create software companies in your place of origin?

How are you giving back to your country of origin by participating in a brain drain, where all the talents of your high IQ are awarded to the imperialists that keep your home country in a state of economic subordination in the first place?

There is a very strong argument to be made that the best way to help "3rd world countries" is to refrain from draining their best and brightest brains. Paul Graham is arguing that America should fuck the rest of the world by stealing their best people, leaving the dregs to wallow in a ghetto of human misery.

Training is seen as competitive suicide, because while you bear the costs of training, your competitors can then poach your trained employees by offering a salary that is less than your total cost for that employee but more than the salary you pay that employee.

X = cost to train employee

Y = salary of employee

Competitor pays Z such that Y < Z < Y+X and puts you out of business.

The second factor is that if you raise wages for one person, then the rest of your workforce expects those wages. So a 10% salary increase for one person quickly becomes an across the board 10% bump on your personnel costs.

Bribing, lobbying, paying PR firms, pulling the wool over people's eyes is all judged to be a smaller expense and a worthwhile cost-saving measure.

The economically viable solution is to have schools do the training, but universities are likely not the best model for getting good tech workers.

How can Paul Graham sit there and not mention the anti-competitive and illegal collusion of the top tech employers while he tells us to vote against our own financial self-interest?

He wants us to vote even more money into his pockets, and vote to undermine our wages, and he doesn't even give the smallest mention to the fact that the most respectable and respected tech employers have been fucking us over for years!

So disingenuous, so pernicious.

We already bring in 1,200,000 immigrants per year.

Limiting the number of new graduates is exactly what doctors and engineers have done to keep their wages high.

Only a fool would destroy his own livelihood. VCs would never, ever support a policy that would threaten their oligopoly on the good deals, for example.

Don't be a sucker. No one is looking out for tech workers but ourselves.

P.S. If these companies can successfully relocate to Vancouver it totally torpedoes the VC-sponsored idea that San Francisco is somehow essential. Limiting all the jobs to one city is NOT good for tech workers. Silicon Valley is not a good place to make money because the cost of living is stupid. I would go so far to say that the Silicon Valley anti-density and anti-development culture and government make Silicon Valley a shit place to start a company, and companies should be moving.

I would rather work in Vancouver or San Diego or most any other urban center than get raped by rent-seeking landowners in SV.

And where would wages be if the biggest tech employers had not been blatantly colluding to depress wages, using illegal anti-competitive tactics?

Paul Graham advocates for free trade when it will increase the value of his portfolio and the wealth of his friends. He doesn't say a word about how free trade has been undermined by the illegal collusion of Facebook, Google, and Apple.

>Yes he became really rich but the net sum of wealth he provided in return has made everyone else much richer than him.

Prove it. This is just neoliberal dogma and is contradicted by empirical research that shows that economic growth is awarded to the super rich while the middle and lower classes slip backwards.

Class warfare means that Elon Musk is lowering my wage. I don't give a fuck about paypal or spaceships. I want affordable food, housing, healthcare, childcare, and other basic necessities. These are no longer available to the majority of the population because of an artificial scarcity imposed on us by the ownership class run by neoliberal ideologues like Elon Musk.

How does your logic apply to the superrich ownership class?

Are they actually any more talented than the people they rule over?

Why is questioning their wealth taboo, but undermining my modest career prospects virtuous?

So the laws of supply and demand don't apply to labor markets?

Increasing the supply lowers the price. Are you disputing this?

When supply goes up price goes down. Logic 101 says that H1-B immigrants lower "the local market salary".

Why are Computer Scientists forced to play by different rules than every other decent job?

American electricians don't have to compete with Chinese electricians.

Can you imagine American doctor/lawyer/engineer associations allowing their bosses to lobby to let cheap and desperate foreigners flood into their country and undercut all their jobs, drive down wages, reduce the value of their educations?

It's ridiculous that computer scientists are being asked to work against their own financial best interest, while VCs are explicitly in the game of maximizing their own profit at all costs (including the willingness to sacrifice all decency and compassion, put entire industries into homelessness and poverty, destroy the social safety net, turn the middle class into indentured servants...)

If this isn't class warfare, what is? You have a near-billionaire VC writing essays to convince the lower classes to work directly against their own financial best interest in favor of his own financial best interest.

No competent businessman would allow a cheap competitor to flood into his market and ruin his business. Why do VCs expect computer scientists to allow their labor market to be destroyed?