an_cap

Nice motte and bailey there between "people who can be deported if they complain about their working conditions" and non-compete clauses.

Can you point me to a capitalist who wants to expand the category of workers without the right to switch jobs?

How was my comment dishonest?

The an_cap position on immigration is open borders which is the opposite of "people who can be deported if they complain about their working conditions". Feel free to check the comment history.

FWIW, the union (CWA) via its Seattle affiliate tried to get OPT banned, a visa status that many readers of HN benefited from - https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/2.... I encourage HN readers to better understand the relationship between unions and immigration before deciding whether they are in favor of joining/supporting unions.

An excellent career retrospective by John Hopfield - https://pni.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf321/files/docu...

"As an Academy member I could publish such a paper without any review (this is no longer true, a sad commentary on aspects of science publishing and the promotion of originality)."

'Browsing: enabled' doesn't actually work though. In the referenced thread, that comment is a joke.

At the risk of cementing your conviction of my troll status, I have some civics 101 questions for you. (I also have rocket science questions, but I'll leave that for another day.)

1. At a time when blacks were not citizens of the United States, many people argued that giving blacks basic freedoms would screw the whites that the government represented. I hope we all agree that according to basic human decency 101 that was not a compelling argument.

2. This is true even if it would indeed screw over whites by say pushing down their wages from, oh I don't know, absurdly high to only moderately high.

3. Which freedoms are privileges and which are rights? The freedom to not be a slave, a component of which was working for whomever you wanted, seems to be a right. The freedom to rent an apartment from a willing landlord irrespective of your skin color seems to be a right. But the freedom to work for Oracle for less money than you'd like if I was born in the wrong country seems not to be one. I'd appreciate a civics 101 lesson on why.

Actually, I suspect its easier to get a full-body skin graft than it is for a low-skilled third-worlder to get an American citizenship.

I'm just engaging in common-sense ethical reasoning. It seems wrong to require that all whites employ a much higher bar for hiring blacks. And, I have the same intuition about requiring all Americans employ a much higher bar for hiring foreigners.

Also, I think there is a big difference between allowing discrimination (which is only wrong if you belong to a protected class) and requiring discrimination, which is pretty much always wrong.

So its one thing to argue about whether employers should be allowed to discriminate against foreigners (or blacks). There are some good arguments on both sides. But I don't think there are any good arguments in favor of requiring that employers discriminate against foreigners (or blacks).

Might makes right. Got it.

Edit : Sorry addicted, I interpreted your comment as a justification, not as historical account. My bad.

How so? I claim that severe discrimination (like banning a group of people from entry level positions) based on circumstances of birth is ethically dubious. I think that's why we don't entertain the idea of banning people from entry level work because they were born to black parents. Why doesn't it generalize to being born to Indian parents?

Why is it morally acceptable for a country to prioritize the prosperity of its own citizens, but not for whites to prioritize the prosperity of fellow whites?

Why is it not okay to discriminate on the basis of your skin color at birth but okay to discriminate on the basis of which side of a border you were born in? Surely, there would a lot of outrage in HN if someone said - "Granted that H1-Black visas should ostensibly be filled only for positions where it is difficult to find qualified whites"?

I also spent about 10 minutes reading the relevant section of that review. Agree with your assessment. The measure is 'number of cookies eaten' broken down by whether or not the person was a randomly chosen leader and their gender. For men, the number of cookies eaten was about the same for leaders and non-leaders. For women, leaders ate about 1.35 cookies on average and non-leaders about 0.8 cookies. I don't much care for significance testing, but it would be nice to know the number of participants and the variance in the measure. The researcher characterizes this as 'in almost every instance' the leader ate the extra cookie to some publications, and as 2/3rds of the time the leader ate the extra cookie to NPR.

I recommend reading this review before deciding to read the book. https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/book-review-weapons-...

But wanting blacks to prosper over your fellow whites is surely not akin to betraying your race?

Your argument proves too much. Surely, you agree that its not okay to murder a foreigner if it boosts your country's economy. But you do think its okay to prevent your fellow American from hiring an Indian if it boosts America's economy. Why?

Note that I'm not arguing that you should be required to hire an Indian. I'm just saying that you shouldn't be allowed to prevent Bill Gates from hiring an Indian just because said Indian will do your job for half the money.

Your view seems to be that some communities are allowed to prevent outsiders from working in the jurisdiction of those communities in order to accrue modest economic advantages for community members. It seems like communities that share local resources and markets do have this property and communities that share skin pigmentation do not.

Why?

Typically people belong to multiple communities, say family, city, state, world. What kinds of actions are permissible in order to secure modest economic advantages to each of the these communities? What if there is a dispute between the various jurisdictions. What if the "world community" votes overwhelmingly in favor of open borders? What if a NYC block (which is certainly a community that shares local resources and markets) votes to ban black people from living/working there? Why is this wrong but the American community banning Indians from working in America not?

I can see how, in this example, using race doesn't really serve to clarify the issue. I definitely understand why a person might care more about their neighbor. In fact, I care more about my neighbors (or my family members). However, that doesn't relieve me of my duty to respect the negative rights of others. For instance, I'm not allowed to murder someone halfway across the world because it benefits my family members. Likewise, I am arguing that I am not allowed to prevent X from hiring Y because my daughter would like the job.

I don't have any problem with you caring more for your fellow citizens. I encourage you to do that. I just don't want you to prevent your other fellow citizens from hiring me if they want to because I will displace people you care about.

I don't think everyone is equal. I just think that everyone has certain negative rights that you must respect. For instance, you are not allowed to murder a stranger just because it accrues modest economic advantages to your family members.

Sort of like, "As a white person, white people are more important to me."?

Do you think it is permissible for your town to pass a law that requires your neighborhood coffee shop to preferentially hire a barista from your town?

Let me quote the parable of Sam and Marvin by the philosopher Michael Huemer to explain why I don't think your reasoning works.

Excerpted from - http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/immigration.htm

"Sam coercively prevented Marvin from reaching the local marketplace, on the grounds that doing so was necessary to prevent his daughter from having to pay a higher than normal price for her bread. This action seems unjustified. Would Sam succeed in defending his behavior if he pointed out that, as a father, he has special obligations to his daughter, and that these imply that he must give greater weight to her interests than to the interests of non-family members? Certainly the premise is true—if anything, parents have even stronger and clearer duties to protect the interests of their offspring than a government has to protect its citizens’ interests. But this does not negate the rights of non-family members not to be subjected to harmful coercion. One’s special duties to one’s offspring imply that, if one must choose between giving food to one’s own child and giving food to a non-family member, one should generally give the food to one’s own child. But they do not imply that one may use force to stop non-family members from obtaining food, in order to procure modest economic advantages for one’s own children."

Why is the sentiment "I will always put my fellow whites first" bad but the sentiment you espouse not?

You're completely ignoring the substance of my question. Of course I understand that the US constitution doesn't allow racial discrimination. Surely its the case that racial discrimination is inherently bad and THEREFORE the US constitution prohibits it. Do you really want to hold the position that racial discrimination is bad BECAUSE the US constitution prohibits it?

You seem to ascribe very special moral rights to this particular association of people that we call democratic states. Why is the USG allowed to ban foreigners from coming to the US if they undercut American wages? Is New York State allowed to ban people from NJ from working in NYC by a majority vote (or a super-majority vote)? Again, I'm not asking whether the US constitution allows this - I know that it doesn't. The question is regarding ethics not law.

I agree than one has greater positive obligations towards one's community, with the degree of obligation decreasing with the size of the community. However, one also has certain negative obligations against strangers. For instance, there is a strong presumption in favor of a stranger's right to not be killed by you. This is just a presumption which can be over-ridden say in self-defense.

Similarly two strangers have the presumptive right to associate with each other (as employer-employee or tenant-landlord). Do you agree that there is such a presumption? If there is, what if your view is the needed to overcome this presumption?

I am somewhat sympathetic to this argument but only with the following revisions.

An adult foreigner coming to the US has, if anything, better fiscal implications for the US than the children of American citizens since children need are very likely a net fiscal negative for say the first 18 years of their lives. New Americans, whether they are formed by birth, or by immigration enjoy the existing infrastructure without having paid for it.

If you say that American parents have already paid taxes on behalf of their children then I'll say that American employers have already paid taxes on behalf of their foreign employees. I'm fine with having a consistent 'entry fee' for all new Americans as long as said entry fee applies uniformly to both children of Americans and foreigners who wish to immigrate.

Other white people in my neighborhood don't want to accept a black person into the neighborhood. And, I am part of a social contract between these other people I live with (e.g. by fellow neighbors) where I can't just override them.

If you respond by saying that the social contract of the country (which bans discrimination based on race) supercedes the social contract of my neighborhood then I'll say that the social contract of the world supercedes even that.

I find very little to disagree with in what you say. All I ask for is a presumption in favor of allowing a willing foreigner to work for a willing employer. And I think that small harms like reduction in wages from say 100k/year to 60k/year is not sufficient to override that presumption especially since for the foreigner, the opportunity to work in the US often translates to a 5-fold increase in their income.

Whites expect other whites to protect them from people of other colors in matters of physical and economic security. H-1Black workers drive down white wages.

Blacks have no intrinsic right to move into the white neighborhood of their choice (they do have the right to leave their ghetto if another will take them, however..)

I don't give away my right to object when a black army moves into my neighborhood on the pretense of just wanting a better life. And yet I do demand strong evidence that this is a likely scenario before essentially banning black people from my neighborhood.

The correct analogy is not that you're being forced to accept a homeless person into your property. Its that if I want to accept a homeless person into my property, you shouldn't be allowed to prevent me from doing so. Unless you make a convincing case that they're going to invade you. Which I don't think you have.