
In the current immigration debate, neither side is revealing the whole picture - simonsarris
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216
======
dang
Here's a rare thing, a submission on a classic flamewar topic that is
substantive and at least partly grounded in genuine study. We'll try taking
the usual penalty off the thread and see what happens. We've also replaced the
title with a more neutral sentence from the article.

All: if you comment in this thread, please be civil and substantive and avoid
political rants. Let's see if HN can reach a higher level than usual.

~~~
davidw
Borjas is known among economists as one of the few proponents of the theory
that immigration does hurt US workers at all. His findings are disputed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_J._Borjas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_J._Borjas)

------
caseysoftware
I think this is the key quote to all of this:

 _" Instead, it has changed how the pie is split, with the losers—the workers
who compete with immigrants, many of those being low-skilled Americans—sending
a roughly $500 billion check annually to the winners. Those winners are
primarily their employers. And the immigrants themselves come out ahead, too.
Put bluntly, immigration turns out to be just another income redistribution
program."_

If you're worried about income inequality and improving the opportunities for
people near the bottom, the current system is devastating and only making
those situations more pronounced.. which will have an impact for years, if not
generations.

~~~
merpnderp
I'm not sure I get his solution. "...massive new government programs to
supervise a massive wealth redistribution totaling tens of billions of
dollars" How? Is he thinking that high school dropouts will all of a sudden go
back to school? Or just longer unemployment and more welfare, which are
unhealthy for people to be on for extended periods.

~~~
zigzigzag
Probably he is. Retraining is the classical economics answer to the question
of a skills mismatch in the population.

------
Animats
This suggests a path to a solution - a _higher_ minimum wage for immigrants.
At the low end, this could be implemented by requiring 2x the minimum wage for
anyone whose residency or citizenship hadn't been verified through E-verify.
At the high end, we just need tougher enforcement of the H1-B visa pay rules.

To make this work, if you've been underpaid as a non-US person, you can file a
complaint, and even if you're illegal in the US, that would get you a U visa,
which allows up to four years residency. Winning the complaint would get the
employee double pay retroactively plus a green card. That would encourage
employees to file complaints, and would encourage employers to be much more
careful about whom they hire.

California could try this on its own, and should.

~~~
noobermin
One thing, this would discourage immigrants to become citizens, as they most
likely will take a pay cut once they become citizens. This might create a
permanent class of non-citizen residents.

~~~
slavik81
That doesn't make much sense to me. If the employer could hire someone for
cheaper than the immigrant minimum wage, they wouldn't hire the immigrant in
the first place. Or they would fire the immigrant, if he was already hired.

------
an_cap
The article quantifies the major cost of increased immigration as "the
earnings of [high school dropouts] dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each
year." It describes the benefits to immigrants as "Immigrants, too, gain
substantially; their total earnings far exceed what their income would have
been had they not migrated."

To take a specific example, maids in India make about $3 a day. If they had
the opportunity to move to the US and do similar work at say minimum wage that
is at least a 10-fold increase in their earnings. While the cost of living in
the US is much higher than in India, its mostly because the quality of life
here is much better. Back home she probably lives in a tiny shack in a slum
with no running water. If she lived in the US college-dormitory-style, it
would be a massive upgrade of her living conditions and still allow her to
save money to say give her children a better education.

So what we're weighing here is $1000 reduction in the wages of some of the
most vulnerable Americans against a life-altering opportunity to the most
vulnerable global poor. I don't really see how Borjas (or anyone else) can
pick the side of the Americans in this ethical dilemma.

Take another example. Say a college educated Indian female decides that she is
sick of the sexism in India and wants a better life for herself. Using the
large amount of resources online she teaches herself programming and becomes
as good as people who graduate from coding bootcamps in the US (so not a
stellar programmer but a net positive with proper guidance). Her primary
competitive advantage is that she's willing to work harder and for lower wages
than the Americans graduating from coding bootcamps. Requiring that she be
paid the same (or more as many commenters have suggested) prices her out of
the market.

So the choice we face is whether we allow her to work as a developer for say
$40k a year which she would vastly prefer to being stuck in the shitty
circumstances of her birth at the expense of perhaps reducing wages for
American programmers from say $70k to $60k a year. Again I don't really see
how this is a difficult ethical decision.

~~~
zigzigzag
Borjas does not make ethical arguments or attempt to tell people what they
should do, he only lays out the choices and some possible answers.

If you start from the assumption that everyone in the world is born equal and
all deserve equal opportunities then the correct solution is to drop your
nation's borders entirely. No borders at all, anyone can come. Germany
basically tried that and lasted less than a year before the native population
started to revolt. It's now stuck in a kind of ethical limboland where
theoretically Germany still welcomes any "refugees" but is spared from
actually doing so by other countries. I put refugees in quotes because there's
no way to reliably distinguish refugees from people who just want a better
life by the time they make it to Germany: they arrive without papers or proofs
of any kind.

The reason the native population of Germans were unhappy about this policy is
fairly simple: there's a perception that some countries are objectively poorer
and worse than others because the people living there collectively made bad
choices and built bad cultures. Thus importing them risks importing the
problems of their homeland and killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

For instance, India and South Korea both started out the 20th century being
extremely poor and dominated by foreign invaders. They achieved full
independence around the same time. By the end of the 20th century South Korea
was an extremely sophisticated first world nation (this is the "miracle on the
han river") but India was still very poor. Would letting all of India into
western nations make everyone as rich as Americans? Or would it just flood
native culture and decision making with caste politics and other rather non-
American value systems?

~~~
yusee
You should read about colonialism. India and South Korea had wildly different
histories. The equivication that you draw bears little relation to reality.

~~~
zigzigzag
I've read an entire book on the history of the British Empire. I'm well aware
of the differences. South Korea suffered far more brutal treatment than India
did: Korea was conquered by the Japanese who are still notorious today
throughout Asia for their rampant brutality in war, then it was cleaved in two
by a communist revolution. Compared to that an organised handover of power
from the colonials to home rule is a stroll through a grassy meadow.

------
thescribe
This may be the best article on immigration I have read in a long time. Maybe
I'm completely misunderstanding, but why don't we use immigration as a knob
just like we use interest rates or any other government tool. Too few jobs?
Lower the quota. Too many unfilled jobs? Raise the quota. It seems really
simple to me.

~~~
0verD0ses
It's not quite as simple as that. Immigration can in some cases actually
create more jobs in the economy, but in other cases doesn't have this effect,
so its hard to pinpoint the optimal amount of immigration for economic growth.

~~~
norikki
I would love to see the study that can find a case where immigration creates
more jobs than it consumes.

~~~
schoen
Immigration is a form of population growth, so the question is in part what
happens when a population gets larger. The new members of the population are
increasing the supply of labor and also increasing the demand for goods and
services. Overall, that means more economic activity and more total
employment. (As the original article points out, that doesn't necessarily mean
more employment _of people who were in the population before_.)

You can envision a scenario where this doesn't happen because the new workers
earn so little that the new demand they create is tiny, _and_ their employers
don't spend their savings on things that ultimately create more employment.
(Like if 100 people showed up and started doing work for $0.01 apiece that the
previous employees did for $1,000 apiece, and the employer decided to spend
the whole $99,999 savings on some good that has very little labor input and
that somehow also fails to have a significant multiplier effect that generates
employment. In that case, while there has been an increase in total economic
activity, there hasn't actually been an increase in employment.)

This latter scenario seems pretty unrealistic to me, but I don't know exactly
how to describe the conditions under which it would or wouldn't occur.

~~~
norikki
I agree, the numbers you picked seem extremely unrealistic. However, the
scenario you envision is exactly what the Harvard economist who wrote the
article has discovered in the USA by looking at employment statistics.

There are plenty of ways corporate executives can spend their labor cost
savings that do not produce nearly as much labor demand for Americans as was
lost to immigrants. Most notably, they can take their assets overseas where no
American worker will see a penny of it.

~~~
schoen
I thought I understood the article author to be saying that employment will
typically increase overall as a result of immigration -- but not necessarily
total employment among the non-immigrants.

------
norikki
>Trump might cite my work, but he overlooks my findings that the influx of
immigrants can potentially be a net good for the nation, increasing the total
wealth of the population.

>The fiscal burden offsets the gain from the $50 billion immigration surplus,
so it’s not too farfetched to conclude that immigration has barely affected
the total wealth of natives at all.

~~~
jack9
I don't understand. Potential to increase wealth. Currently the reality is
redistribution from the lowest skilled workers to the business owners
resulting in a theoretical wash (barely affected total wealth). Yeah, that's
one of the points of the article.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I'm an economic immigrant- I work and live in a different country (the UK)
than the one I was born, and brought up, in (Greece).

Immigration is singled out as an issue because of its emotional impact (and
that impact is greatly amplified by the political debate that feeds off it).

Every other aspect of our common life has the ability to hurt some peoples'
bottom line and benefit that of others'. That's politics in a nutshell: when
some social condition changes, some groups benefit and some others stand to
lose.

But then, why is losing out to immigrants more of an issue than losing out to
local competition? Why would you be more upset if a foreigner gets your job
than if a local does? The issue is that someone else got your job- that's the
bit that hurts you. That the person is foreign may be adding insult to injury,
but kicking all the bloody foreigners out is not magically going to give you
the skills you need to do the job you currently can't. It's not going to make
it more profitable for an employer to hire you at a higher wage if you have
the skills to do the job, either.

A lot more could be achieved on the immigration front if countries spent all
that energy towards training their local workforce better.

But let's not also forget that when a foreign worker is paid less for more
work his or her intersts are also harmed- better enforced labour legislation
is to the benefit of all workers.

As to the natural effect of prices coming down for all when there's more of a
workforce- on the one hand that can be addressed partially by a better trained
workforce (which is mroe productive and can therefore afford to ask for better
wages). On the other hand, maybe we can agree that once the market for a given
skill is saturated, the price of that skill is the closest possible to the
true value of the skill.

~~~
r_smart
>why is losing out to immigrants more of an issue than losing out to local
competition?

The trouble is that the laws, in the US at least, are set up and (not)
enforced in such a way as to advantage people coming from abroad. The H1-B is
a good example. Employers want H1-Bs because they can lower wages (through job
title manipulation and increasing the pool of available workers), while
essentially handcuffing the employee to them. This isn't really fair
competition. The local employee didn't lose because of being inadequate, they
lost because of external forces making it extremely difficult to compete.

Personally, I'm all for making legal immigration and naturalization a much
easier and faster process, but I also want some of these weird visas done away
with. They want to move here, let them come, but don't game the system to the
detriment of local workers, and to some extent the immigrant, though they'll
likely be living better than where they came from, but not as well as they
should be.

------
feklar
Microsoft quote in this article advocating H-1Bs is interesting, as they spent
$90M USD to open a research center in Canada in order to avoid H-1Bs. When
asked why they didn't expand their Redmond base for the new research center
and make use of H-1B visas they gave an answer about 'needing to diversify
geographically and reach out to hubs that can offer new talent' which I just
read as 'wanting to pay lesser salaries and benefits'.

~~~
biocomputation
H1-B is a socially destructive program that needs to end. Big companies, in
tech and otherwise, use it to keep labor costs down and as another negotiating
tool. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

It's funny how all these huge companies that have billions in cash, and who
don't pay their fair share of taxes, are always crying poor and wanting more
subsidies from someone.

H1-B is effectively a subsidy provided by US workers to unfathomably rich,
tax-dodging corporations.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
All H1-B needs is for the superstars who come over (since the employer
supposedly can't find qualified US candidates) is to make wages corresponding
with that status. Make the minimum pay for an H1-B 140% of the local average
for a person at that position, and that market will evaporate overnight. As it
should.

~~~
mavelikara
If you look at the H-1B wages for people employed at AmaGoogFaceSoft, you will
notice that this is indeed true - for pretty much any position, the H-1B
immigrant makes a premium compared to the median wage for similar position
across all employers at that location.

As the prestige of the employer in the market drops, the employee's wages also
drops - this happens for both citizens and immigrants alike, but the drop for
immigrants maybe be larger.

My point is that these large tech firms hire H-1Bs out of necessity, and not
to keep wages down. The less prestigious firms do hire H-1Bs to keep wages
down.

~~~
geebee
"these large tech firms hire H-1Bs out of necessity, and not to keep wages
down".

I generally agree with you in an immediate, present sense. Google doesn't hire
H1B workers specifically to suppress the salaries of the local workforce.

Even so, I'm suspicious of the program. Here's why - immigrants to the US
(about 1.2 million annually) are generally free to pursue their educational
and career path as they please. They can study nursing, medicine, or dental
hygiene. They can open a sandwich shop or a hair salon, install drywall, or
save a bit of money and try to pursue a dream of becoming an artist or writer.

Now, clearly working at google is something a lot of smart people who have
that right to choose would wish to do. However, don't forget that those smart
people with US citizenship had the right to major in economics or history and
apply to law school, or study bio or chem and apply to med school, or major in
music or art! They chose to major in STEM and work at Google, they weren't
required to as a condition of living and working in the US. Is that a market
failure that the government should get involved in correcting by allowing
people to immigrate only if they study what google says they should study,
work on what google says they are allowed to work on? Funny how people differ
on this. Some think, look it's a good job, pays well, I'm sure it's fine. I
have a much stronger reaction to this - I guess I just feel very strongly that
if people are choosing not to do something, there's probably a damn good
reason for it.

Yes, I don't see Google as an insidious user of this visa, deliberately using
it to fire people to replace them with workers whose options are limited and
can be coerced into working for less. But it does still give them an end-run
around the concept of free labor markets.

Google pays good wages, but you know, the market still has spoken. If google
is having trouble getting people _with choice_ to pursue grad degrees in CS
instead of law or medicine, that really is the market's answer. If a typical
salary for an SSE at google were $350k, would that change things?

This is why I generally don't like any sort of immigration system that limits
personal freedom. I think people, immigrants and otherwise, should be free to
pursue their career path in accordance with their interests and abilities. By
and large, I think people make OK decisions, they don't need the government
and google deciding that they aren't going into STEM in the numbers silicon
valley employers feel they should.

As a practical matter, I'd bend on this (for instance, if we just set a very
high minimum salary) - but as it stands, I don't think salaries are high
enough, even at places like google, that we should be scratching our heads and
wondering why more people _with freedom of choice_ aren't going into this
field. And overall, I do think that the choice not to become a programmer is a
perfectly rational one, and I think that this sort of limited freedom visa
tends to suppress the market forces that would lead to a correction (i.e.., an
improvement in career prospects, pay, and working conditions that would draw
those high talent people out of other fields and into SSE positions at places
like google).

~~~
mavelikara
Not disagreeing with anything you said.

> This is why I generally don't like any sort of immigration system that
> limits personal freedom.

Me neither. But there isn't a skilled immigrant visa which has that feature.
HR 213 [1] tries to provide some improvements, but is a far from what you seem
to be asking for.

My point was that the wage distortion caused by top-tier companies hiring
employees on H-1B is small to nil. This thread started off from a mention of
Microsoft, and then elsewhere down there is mention of overseas consulting
firms too. These are very different market segments and the dynamics are
different.

[1]: [https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-
bill/213](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/213)

~~~
geebee
"My point was that the wage distortion caused by top-tier companies hiring
employees on H-1B is small to nil."

I'm really not sure that's true. Even at top tier employers with high
salaries. What I'm trying to get at, with my comment above, is that no
insidious intent needs to be present for the wage distortion to occur.

It's difficult to know how the market would behave at the upper end in the
absence of education and work specific visas. It's also difficult to make
comparisons, since all fields are somewhat different.

However, I would say that getting hired by google is tough, and is an
indication that you are working at the upper percentiles of the market. What
is a typical salary for a graduate degree holder at the SSE level at a place
like Google? Is that reflect of the 90%ile salary at other fields?

Truth is, these salaries are still considerably lower that you'd find for JD,
MD, MBA holder at a comparable percentile level. If silicon valley employers
couldn't rely on a visa to essentially coerce large numbers of would-be
immigrants into studying CS/Related fields and working as software developers
as a condition for moving to and working in the US, what would the labor
market look like?

I personally feel that CS, Math, Engineering fields are very, very rigorous
with high attrition rates relative to other academic fields. People don't drop
out of Poly Sci because it's too tough and decide to major in Physics because
it's easier. Admission to top graduate schools is very selective, and
attrition rates are high. PhD programs often have 50% attrition rates at top
schools, whereas attrition rates at top JD or MD programs are generally below
0.5% (yes, that's correct, less than one half of one percent). Even MS
programs (there's less data on this) appear to have attrition rates of 25% or
so, still two orders of magnitude higher.

Imagine if silicon valley employers had to convince top students that they
should pick a STEM graduate degree and job as a developer at google instead of
an MBA or JD or MD? That all people, immigrants and citizens, had that choice?

Honestly, I do think the landscape would look very very different. I think
salaries and working conditions would be far higher than they are right now.

You may have heard of the RAND research institute - they essentially reached
this conclusion: "Other approaches such as making K-12 science and math
courses more interesting and pushing for more qualified math and science
teachers "may have merit in their own right," researchers said, "but we think
they pale in importance to the earnings and attractiveness of S&E careers as
major determinants of the supply of U.S.-born students to S&E."

Here's a link to the full study.
[http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html)

In short: salaries and career prospects in STEM really aren't competitive with
the other options highly talented people can pursue - _provided they are free
to pursue them!_.

------
h4nkoslo
It would be more possible to take leftist arguments about the benefits of
immigration in good faith if they weren't simultaneously crowing about how
ongoing immigration will shift US politics permanently to the left.

Frankly I don't care if immigration is Good For The Economy. It amounts to
intentional population replacement, explicitly aimed at permantly changing the
makeup, politics, culture, etc of the country. My children will suffer as a
result.

------
jasonjei
I'm going to state a belief that may not be very popular, but it is that
technology is responsible for Americans losing jobs. Americans believe
immigrants are the reason for jobs not paying as much as they did before, but
I believe technology is reducing the need for all kinds of jobs. Think about
autonomous vehicles--when all cars are autonomous, will there really be a need
for truck drivers?

------
Const-me
Why is that regulated by federal government at all?

Shouldn’t there be different immigration regulations in the Silicon Valley and
in e.g. rural Ohio?

~~~
usaar333
Wouldn't that require having an internal visa system? While some countries do
it (China), it's a bit antithetical to having a unified country with a single
foreign policy

~~~
Const-me
Currently, if you’ll get a regular L-1 US visa, you’ll only be able to work
for the petitioning company. This effectively limits your ability to move. The
system works without internal borders within the US.

Also look at Canada. Different Canadian provinces have their own immigration
programs, with different caps and criteria:
[http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/provincial/](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/provincial/)

~~~
klipt
How enforceable is Canada's system? I believe permanent residents have the
right to live anywhere in Canada (citizens certainly do), so what's to stop
people applying through the easiest province and then moving wherever they
want?

~~~
khuey
Not very. [http://www.cknw.com/2016/08/17/quebec-immigrant-investor-
pro...](http://www.cknw.com/2016/08/17/quebec-immigrant-investor-program-
under-fire-for-pushing-foreign-buyers-to-vancouver/)

------
squozzer
Sadly the article did not go into more detail about the political constraints
affecting immigration policy.

"Our immigration policy — any immigration policy — is ultimately not just a
statement about how much we care about immigrants, but how much we care about
one particular group of natives over another."

The pro-amnesty side seems to want more voters, and can advocate such a
position without much backlash from their usual allies because their allies
are locked in politically.

[No backing quote from the article. The reader is free to determine whather my
statement holds water.]

The status quo side seems to want to suppress wages, and can advocate such a
position without much backlash from their usual allies because their allies
are locked in politically.

"The employers that profit from the way things are won’t go along with
[compensating harmed natives] without an epic political struggle."

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Once we understand immigration this way, it’s clear why the issue splits
Americans—why many low-skilled native workers are taking one side, and why
immigrants and businesses are taking another.

Is it really that clear? I don't doubt that the businesses know which side
their bread is buttered, so to speak, but does the majority of low-skilled
native workers have the same data, and the ability to draw the same
conclusions from it, as the article author?

Intuitively, I'd think that the public at large is much less well informed
than economists, or businesses even, and that the intensity of the debate is
largely due to the inflamed rhetoric on both ends of the issue.

------
internaut
Looking at this exclusively from an economic perspective is a strategic
mistake. The Irish say it puts the cart before the horse.

Migration does not merely bring units of labour or transfers of capital. In
fact that is the most benign aspect of this subject. Nobody has a problem with
his fellow man looking for his next opportunity, not even the most rabid
nationalists I know, and doubtless as NRX I know more than most.

The central problem is something that at first appears to have nothing to do
with migration. Namely; how is wealth actually created?

There are many answers to this question. Nearly all the obvious ones are
wrong. This is amply demonstrated by the fact that almost every aid program,
every economic structuring program in developing countries has repeatedly
failed.

I suggest that we don't actually know the answer. Perhaps we do not have all
the correct axioms. Perhaps extrapolating from having the correct axioms is
just infeasible. We do not know why nations rise or fall. There are just
people who pretend to.

What we do know is history and the present.

In history we know 4 centuries ago English and the Dutch began growing at
quite a different trajectory to the others. They were gradually followed by
most European states.

In the present the most powerful nations on earth are the result of that
outgrowth, with the Asian Giants only coming onstream very recently roughly a
half century ago.

I believe there are two things to take note here.

1\. Whatever economic growth is, it doesn't transmit itself parsimoniously via
word of mouth. We also know it has nothing to do with education, unbelievable
though that may seem, there is ample evidence for this. North Korea is quite
literate. The Communists were in general quite well read even as they fucked
their countries into the ground. There are many African schools filled with
enthusiastic learners (and disappointment when the economy proffers no value
to much of this learning).

2\. Economic growth is very discriminating. Based on culture. I think of
culture as a collective idea network. There is a Occidental culture, there is
an Oriental culture. The Occidental one grokked economic growth first,
followed by the Japanese, Singporeans, Koreans, Taiwanese and then the Chinese
with their SEZ. With the exception of the Japanese, that was very slow...
suggesting that there is something... not simple... going on. The Asians after
all are often very talented individuals. This is something about the
collective.

Plainly the cultures that did not grok economic growth at all are the Africans
and the Middle Easterners ex Israel. That _may_ be starting to change with
Iran but it is early days yet. Having oil is like winning a lottery ticket,
the native economies are extremely impoverished and w/o oil...

Plainly the 'Protestant Work Ethic' is rot. Economic growth is not native to
white people and certainly not a particular religion. Despite that, the
cultural explanation makes most sense in light of the economic disparities.

The interesting thing is that we know it is culture because of colonization.
We know it is in the particular people but not necessarily in the genetics or
their education.

If you have large numbers of migrants from MENA, places that have not grokked
economic growth, then they are bringing a dysfunction with them. They may be
carrying a silent burden, a deadly memetic anti-matter, and don't even know
it.

The individuals may be nice. Non-terrorists. Non-religious even. Friendly and
civic minded neighbors. None of that matters if their _network_ , which does
not produce economic growth interferes with our _network_ that does.

This is the great fear that afflicts nationalists instinctively.

Because again, if culture is what drives economic growth, and signs points to
yes, then absorbing another culture which _does not_ will lead to lots of
little zero sum games, culminating in crime, terrorism and finally in broad
conflict. You see it happening in France today, it is gradually but surely
turning into a horror show.

That is the problem I never see addressed by migration discussions. No, not
race, not genes, but the network problem.

Economists by the way know all of this. They just choose to call what I'm
talking about 'institutions'. They really are spineless. What are institutions
but groups of people acting in a certain way, namely; a culture.

~~~
tmptmp
Most liberals, I guess, were ignoring the problem you have described even
during the Brexit. [1]

I recall this Sam Harris piece [2] in this respect.

[1] most liberals are forcing the natives to tolerate even the intolerances
that the immigrants are bringing with themselves due to their cultures

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M)

~~~
internaut
I think what terrifies me the most, that genuinely keeps me up at night, is
not wars or pandemics, but powerlessness in the face of a steady inexplicable
decline that nobody can really understand.

That I find scary, because it has actually happened, and I suspect a complex
systems collapse (the technical term) is by far our greatest threat.

~~~
zigzigzag
You might worry too much.

One of the most fascinating conspiracy theories I ever encountered postulates
that the dark ages never happened. That is, this vast decline of the Roman
Empire and ensuing centuries of neglect and intellectual emptiness (which
inspires most contemporary worrying about the decline of great civilisations)
was not a real thing at all but rather an artifact of how we've dated
historical events.

The theory itself is very large, complicated, and weakened considerably by its
original authors attempt to re-build his own completely different historical
timeline after spending most of his theory on showing how we really have very
little idea of what was going on before about 1000 AD.

But the gist of it is that as you go further and further back, history stops
being a coherent timeline of events and starts being a series of snapshots
with only rather weak signals used to arrange them and order them. Many of
those signals are calibrated against each other, and often evidence that
throws doubt on the 'consensus timeline' (as he calls it) is simply discarded,
ignored, dismissed as a mistake by the original authors of the material or
just written off as a mystery.

Just one example among many: Athens is hardly mentioned in works we believe
were written during the dark ages, even in books written by people who
travelled in the region. On the few occasions that it merits a mention it's
described as if it were a small village of no particular importance. But the
history books would have us believe that at this time Athens contained the
vast ruins of a once great civilisation. It seems very strange that explorers
and travellers who wrote about their adventures in that part of the world
somehow just systematically forgot to visit Athens, of all places.

The theory explains this by suggesting that the construction of the great
works in Athens have been misdated quite significantly, and the reason these
works don't mention things like the Parthenon is because at the time they were
written, these things hadn't been built yet. It claims that many of the things
we assume are now ancient and separated from our world by centuries of
abandonment and decline are actually early medieval in origin.

Anyway, fascinating theory, if only because there's so much potential for hole
poking and resultant learning. The debunkings I found on the internet were
rather weaker than I had expected and ever since I've been curious as to what
exactly was supposed to have created and then ended this mysterious centuries-
long "decline".

~~~
internaut
> You might worry too much.

I don't bite my nails over it but it definitely niggles away at me.

> One of the most fascinating conspiracy theories I ever encountered
> postulates that the dark ages never happened.

Yeah, the Phantom Time Hypothesis, right? There might be more than one.

> That is, this vast decline of the Roman Empire and ensuing centuries of
> neglect and intellectual emptiness (which inspires most contemporary
> worrying about the decline of great civilisations) was not a real thing at
> all but rather an artifact of how we've dated historical events.

I have become attached to a cyclical interpretation of history. Mostly because
it is not fashionable nowadays. I'll come up with a more convincing rationale
later.

> But the gist of it is that as you go further and further back, history stops
> being a coherent timeline of events and starts being a series of snapshots
> with only rather weak signals used to arrange them and order them. Many of
> those signals are calibrated against each other, and often evidence that
> throws doubt on the 'consensus timeline' (as he calls it) is simply
> discarded, ignored, dismissed as a mistake by the original authors of the
> material or just written off as a mystery.

It certainly is interesting. It makes an historians job similar to that of a
crime scene detective. Of course it is a bit of a rabbit hole, you have to
trust history didn't begin yesterday or you might go slightly mad.

This is the great advantage of those secret surveillance satellites. Our
ancestors in an ascendant civilization phase might visit one in a thousand
years and discover the 'tape' has been running all the while.

> Athens is hardly mentioned in works we believe were written during the dark
> ages, even in books written by people who travelled in the region. On the
> few occasions that it merits a mention it's described as if it were a small
> village of no particular importance. But the history books would have us
> believe that at this time Athens contained the vast ruins of a once great
> civilisation. It seems very strange that explorers and travellers who wrote
> about their adventures in that part of the world somehow just systematically
> forgot to visit Athens, of all places.

Ah but the list of books is not very long and most were destroyed. The Irish
saved the Western world with a scriptorium (or maybe we made it all up). Have
you seen the TV series Civilization (the first episode entitled 'The Skin of
the Teeth' or similar). It is very much in the spirit of this thing.

Now you've intrigued me though, and I shall investigate the disappearance of
Athens in the Phantom Time Hypothesis.

~~~
zigzigzag
I've not heard it called the Phantom Time Hypothesis. The one I was referring
to is described in this series of books:

[https://www.amazon.com/History-mathematical-statistics-
Eclip...](https://www.amazon.com/History-mathematical-statistics-Eclipses-
Chronology/dp/2913621074)

A lot of the stuff in there is dubious, but it's a vast series of books and an
absolutely fascinating collection of historical mysteries even if you don't
subscribe to the theory one iota.

Some of it is available online from the authors. Here's the chapter that deals
with medieval Athens:

[http://chronologia.org/en/seven/1N07-EN-410-445.pdf](http://chronologia.org/en/seven/1N07-EN-410-445.pdf)

With respect to "most of the books were destroyed", indeed there aren't many
from this time, but that's part of what makes it so hard to figure out if
ancient history is properly understood. Somehow there's a wealth of books from
the early Roman and Greek civilisations thoroughly preserved by endless armies
of monks, but a dearth of them much later. Fomenko's theory states that this
is because many of the books we believe were written in ancient Rome were
either mis-dated or flat out forged. Doubts about historical texts are not a
new phenomenon: Isaac Newton was famously sceptical and here's a book from the
1800's that studies one of the big works of Roman literature:

[http://www.searchengine.org.uk/pdfs/4/287.pdf](http://www.searchengine.org.uk/pdfs/4/287.pdf)

------
anotheryou
Hm, but no word about humanity. If it might be worth the loss for the benefit
of the immigrants coming from even poorer circumstances. This however would
still not justify the income shift to the employers, but that could be handled
separately.

------
whybroke
a fantastic article and wonderful to have a calm conversation on the topic.

I can not fault anything in the article but I would add that immigrants also
bring dynamism and new ideas to the country. Not necessarily of economic value
but certainly of value. For example the relative greater openness and
tolerance levels of the cities with larger immigrant populations might have
become that way because of their arrival.

Obviously I may have confused cause and effect, obviously this may or may not
be worth the economic consequences but I think it is worth thinking about.

~~~
draugadrotten
> For example the relative greater openness and tolerance levels of the cities
> with larger immigrant populations might have become that way because of
> their arrival.

Looking at European cities with larger immigrant populations, "greater
openness and tolerance" isn't exactly what comes to mind to describe the
situation.

~~~
zigzigzag
Seems a bit unfair. Look at cities like London or Zurich. Very high immigrant
populations, and the population is comfortable with that.

------
jkot
There is also third side in this story; people who jump through hoops to get
legal option to work in US. We had to fill mountains of paper work, spend
thousands of dollars, wait for years...

But every illegal immigrant seems to have more rights than us.

~~~
amunicio
How does every illegal immigrant have more rights than you? Mind to clarify?

~~~
coldtea
They get to stay in the country, work, some welfare etc, but without having to
go through the system in the same bureaucratic way.

~~~
q75ir082hq
In what way do illegal immigrants get more welfare? I'm aware the some
programs are restricted for legal immigrants (pending some waiting period or
citizenship), but to my knowledge they are more restricted for those without
legal status.

~~~
dang
Please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts. HN is a community.
Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other
users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no
community, and that would be an entirely different forum.

------
0verD0ses
This is true, but voters are not good at dealing with ambiguity, unlike (some)
economists. If politicians muddy their message by focusing too much on the
small disadvantages of immigration compared to its large advantages, it will
make them look unsure of themselves.

