
Zero-sum thinking on immigration will make America poorer - betocmn
https://sites.uw.edu/uwpoliticaleconomy/blog/blog-post-3-magistro-and-wittstock/
======
jacobriis
The authors are making the very popular claim that the "lump of labor fallacy"
and that migration is not "zero-sum" conclusively demonstrate that any
permissive migration scheme is undoubtedly beneficial for everyone in any
country at any time ("In short, immigration creates more economic
opportunities for everyone: a win-win scenario").

It is true that there isn't a "lump of labor" (the amount of work is not
fixed) and that migration isn't "zero-sum" (where each participant's gain or
loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of
the other participants).

But those are very narrow claims. It doesn't follow every conceivable
permissive migration scheme is beneficial for every receiving country and it
certainly doesn't follow that nobody is harmed by any permissive migration
scheme.

The H1B scheme, a topical example here, is restricted to a small number of
professions by statute (and in practice is 70% software people) so the
arguments about migration generally and the economy broadly shouldn't be
applied without further consideration.

It is easy to imagine if you had a profession that has some limitation to
demand and narrowly allowed migration for that profession only that given a
sufficient number of migrants you would displace some current residents from
the profession and preclude some number of current residents from joining that
profession and lower salaries of the profession.

~~~
arcticbull
The broader issue is that the US birth rate is 1.77 births per woman -- and
falling, which is below the replacement rate. If you want to maintain the
population (and economic activity) at the same level as today, you're going to
have to bring in 0.23 people per woman per generation via immigration. In the
pathological case of closed borders, the economy _will_ shrink in accordance
with the birth rate.

This effect is on top of the non-zero-sum impact of qualified migrants.

Consider the 1.43 births per woman (and low net migration rate) of Japan and
the fact that the GDP was lower last year than it was almost twenty years ago.
In the same time period the US GDP has tripled. Canada's has almost quadrupled
-- and Canada brings in 1% of the nations population each _year_ via
immigration, in part to offset its 1.5 births per woman.

~~~
beaner
Why is continuous growth even a goal? There's a physical reality that at some
point it must stop. We should plan for that. GDP growth is just a number. We
should focus on quality of life.

(Notwithstanding transitionary points like "but this other country is still
growing and will displace things," and "but who will take care of those
decaying cities," etc)

~~~
logicchains
Human wants are unlimited. GDP growth (in the ideal sense, when perfectly
measured) means more wants are being satisifed. It doesn't imply growth in
resource usage: if your CPU becomes twice as efficient, or your package
delivery route is optimised, or your barber learns to cut hair faster, that
all counts as GDP growth.

~~~
cycomanic
I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a pretty
big statement to make to not back it up with evidence.

However even if we except your premise that an increased GDP will help to
fulfill this is highly doubtful. A increased GDP can (and does) very well
decrease quality of life. Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity,
divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants.

In fact one of the reasons why the US has been so successful at increasing GDP
is that the population has an increasingly unhealthy livestyle.

~~~
logicchains
>I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a
pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence.

For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It
wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate
doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true;
compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US).

Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at
some stage should require evidence.

>Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase
GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants.

Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.

~~~
cycomanic
> >I don't know where your "human wants are unlimited" comes from and is a
> pretty big statement to make to not back it up with evidence.

> For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It
> wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate
> doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true;
> compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US).

That's a giant leap, to get from savings rates decrease in some countries to
human wants are unlimited. Moreover, savings rates are quite country dependent
(e.g. Germany has very high rates). Might it be that people in the US have
been led to believe that they can make up for their unhappyness by buying more
things?

> Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at
> some stage should require evidence.

I can easily think of many people who are quite happy without having more
things. So I just falsified your claim. Moreover there is significant research
showing that having more things beyond some point does not increase happiness.

> >Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase
> GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants.

> Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.

~~~
logicchains
>That's a giant leap, to get from savings rates decrease in some countries to
human wants are unlimited.

If human wants were limited, we'd expect to see, for any given country,
savings rates increasing as incomes increase. We have not seen this, and in
fact have seen the opposite (even in America, savings rates now are less than
50 years ago, when Americans were much poorer).

>Moreover, savings rates are quite country dependent (e.g. Germany has very
high rates). Might it be that people in the US have been led to believe that
they can make up for their unhappyness by buying more things?

Someone could just as easily suggest that German savings rates are too high
because Germans are too fearful about the future so they save more. There's no
objectively correct savings rate, so we can't say one country's rate is better
than the other's.

>I can easily think of many people who are quite happy without having more
things. So I just falsified your claim.

My claim is that "human wants" are unlimited, which does not imply that every
human's wants are unlimited. If some people have limited wants, and some
don't, we'd still expect the sum of human wants to keep increasing. And
savings rates suggest that the majority of people don't have limited wants (or
at least have not fulfilled those wants).

>Moreover there is significant research showing that having more things beyond
some point does not increase happiness.

We're talking about wants here, not happiness. Who are we to say that somebody
can't have what they want just because there's a chance it will make them
unhappy?

------
addicted
The simple consequence of making life difficult for immigrant software
professionals in our company has been a wholesale shift to hiring in India and
Eastern Europe (well, also Canada for all the people who were hired in the US
and then the US wouldn’t give them visas based on the lottery) instead of
hiring within the US.

And it makes complete sense. The potential H1B visa holder the company was
hiring otherwise does not disappear off the face of the universe the moment
their H1B disappears. They are still available to work from their home
countries, where, in almost all cases, they will be happier with a lower
salary!

Most software jobs don’t require client meetings, but it’s anyways been
cheaper for the company to just fly them in once a month anyways if needed.

Making immigrants life harder increases offshoring, and not domestic hiring.

The H1B visa is indeed flawed and ripe for abuse. The obvious solution is to
fix the flaws, and eliminate the abuse. The current administration has instead
chosen to make it more capricious and arbitrary, basically telling all honest
companies that if you want a global workforce, it’s probably much better to
leave that global workforce outside the US.

The current administration keeps promising a “smarter” immigration scheme, but
it’s been 3 1/2 years and there isn’t even an outline for such a scheme, never
mind an actual effort at fixing the issues in work visas.

Offshoring consultants are once again in vogue thanks to the administrations
capricious efforts and the pandemic basically forcing companies to work
remotely, making any local advantage disappear entirely.

~~~
kamaal
>>They are still available to work from their home countries, where, in almost
all cases, they will be happier with a lower salary!

I disagree, there is dog-eat-dog politics in offshore centers all the time for
visa and abroad work opportunities. And you'd be surprised the kind of dealing
goes behind the scenes for a person to make it to a visa.

It is a toxic mixture of nepotism on several lines, plus Machiavellian game
play for a person to land to US shores.

In fact most of the Green card holders and Ex-Indian US passport holders you
see are ace at office politics and not at Software.

Its not surprising Indians do well in climbing the ladder in company ranks in
the US. They have years of practice, and success at wrecking dozens of careers
back home in India to get there. The US citizens are rookies and worst sitting
ducks against this kind of Machiavellian talent.

------
ahupp
Sometimes it's useful to look at the most extreme version of the problem. So
instead of, say, tweaks to H1-B, imagine a world where we did open the borders
and gave everyone who wanted one a plane ticket and a US work visa. Economists
would say that this would greatly increase aggregate world GDP, and they are
probably right.

But its not clear that existing American workers would be better off. The
usual claim is that all these new workers create more demand and thus more
jobs for everyone. But that only holds in industries that scale employment
linearly with demand. Most of the people on HN are _not_ in that sort of job.

I think immigration is hugely beneficial for the US, but we should be wary of
simplistic arguments from economics.

BTW, the book "Open Borders: the science and ethics of immigration" is a great
quick read on this topic. I disagree with its conclusions but I'm glad I read
it.

~~~
logicchains
>But its not clear that existing American workers would be better off.

There's actually a relatively noncontroversial theorem in mainstream economics
that suggests with free migration (or trade), the wages of less-skilled
workers in the richer country will fall, and in the poorer country will rise,
until they meet in the middle:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_price_equalization).
Economists still consider the outcome to overall be positive because the
workers in the poor country gain more than those in the rich country lose, and
both benefit from increased productivity growth in the long term.

~~~
ahupp
Or as Snow Crash put it:

“When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-
drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out,
they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling
them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by
giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to
New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those
historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a
Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's
only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode
(software) high-speed pizza delivery”

~~~
nafey
Off topic but would you suggest reading Snow Crash. Its from 1990s and i was
wondering if it would still be relevant.

~~~
nathancahill
Snow Crash is a fantastic piece of literature. That's like asking if Tolkien
is still relevant today since it was written in the 1950s.

~~~
evgen
While Snow Crash has its problems (like the standard Stephenson 'ending? what
ending?') everyone should read the first chapter. That chapter on its own is a
work of art.

------
gumby
This is a major foreign aid program by the US. For decades the US has
benefited from a so-called “brain drain” as smart people from other countries
came to the US to work, or to be educated and then staying to work. Germany
sent their best and brightest starting in the 1930s and continuing into the
40s when they induced other countries to do the same. There would be no A bomb
without this, for example, nor US moon missions.

GW Bush returned the favor by sending stem cell work to China and Singapore
(and to a lesser extent, Europe). Now smart scientists, if they want to work
in person with the widest supply of good colleagues, will go to other wealthy
countries.

It’s hard to see this as anything good for the world.

~~~
jariel
"Now smart scientists, if they want to work in person with the widest supply
of good colleagues, will go to other wealthy countries."

Except there are no such places for the most part.

Europe's economy is stagnant and they are not paying competitively.

China's wages don't remotely compare, it only makes sense in the context of a
National who might value their lives their due to family, history, nationality
etc. etc..

Germany was rubble in 1945.

America still leads most industries.

There is an easier, less theoretical issue here, and that is the H1B program
was a hustle. Infosys and a few others use it to 'inshore' IT talent and
that's it. Not R&D by the way.

"It’s hard to see this as anything good for the world."

Actually it's crystal clear: those jobs stay in India where they pay local
taxes where they are desperately needed and many more boats are lifted.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
> Except there are no such places for the most part.

That's a pretty amazing claim to make. The United States is not the only
wealthy country in the world, and does not have the highest standard of living
in the world. Western Europe is comparable. I would argue - for many reasons
having to do with social solidarity and public goods - that it generally has a
higher standard of living than the US. There are lots of other places
scattered around the world, like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea,
and don't forget Canada.

> China's wages don't remotely compare

Neither do prices in China. Moreover, as the difference between the US and
China narrows, the attractiveness of the US over China as a place to live
decreases, and the US will benefit less and less from brain drain out of
China. Places like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen already have a GDP/capita of
around $25k, and actually feel much more modern than American cities in many
ways. I'm sure this dynamic is not unique to China.

The US had an incredibly good thing going for it - the ability to attract the
best students and workers from around the world. People just take it for
granted that the global tech industry is concentrated in Silicon Valley. Many
people believe that if the US restricts immigration, all those tech jobs will
remain in Silicon Valley and be redistributed among Americans. That might be
the case for a short time, until companies adjust and move operations abroad,
to where the labor force is.

------
logicchains
What really surprises me is that, while most Americans seem to agree it's not
okay to discriminate based on the colour of someone's skin (because skin
colour is something we can't control), they're quite happy to discriminate
based on the country of somebody's birth. People have just as little control
over their country of birth as they do over their skin colour.

~~~
foogazi
What country based discrimination are you seeing?

The US accepts a lot of immigrants due to hardship or persecution from around
the world

~~~
Barrin92
>The US accepts a lot of immigrants due to hardship or persecution from around
the world

During the last three years the US has admitted about as many refugees as
Sweden, a country of 10 million people, did in 2015. It wasn't that much
higher under earlier administrations. On a per capita basis[1] the US hosts
about three times fewer than Russia, and 10 times fewer than comparably
prosperous Western European countries like Switzerland or Germany.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_population)

------
forgingahead
Zero-sum thinking on business and wealth-creation has _already_ made America
(and many countries in the West) poorer - an entire generation has been
brainwashed into believing that business, profit-seeking, and earning money is
an ignoble pursuit.

~~~
Pfhreak
Is this comment satirical? Because when I look around in the states I very
much see a _deeply_ held belief that making a profit, operating a business,
and earning money is one of the most important things you could do. Those
things come with significant cultural cachet.

~~~
splintercell
Comment said 'a generation'. The rest of us still hold the belief quiet deeply
that profit, operating a business and earning money is one of the most noble
things you can do.

~~~
Dylan16807
_Noble?_ It's not bad to want money, but that's not in and of itself noble.

~~~
splintercell
I think the difference between you and me is that I understand the benefits
other people get when I make money. You think the only benefit is for the
person itself, so trying to call it noble is tacky.

~~~
Dylan16807
_Sometimes_ other people benefit, not always. It depends on how you go about
things.

~~~
splintercell
It always does, or else the transaction won't take place (as long as it's
voluntary, in the strictest sense of the word).

~~~
Dylan16807
Lots of real transactions have pressure applied. But more importantly there
are always externalities, and it's basically impossible to make those entirely
voluntary; there are far too many to evaluate manually.

Many businesses have a positive or neutral effect on almost everyone. And many
others have a negative effect on almost everyone they touch, outside of the
parties directly involved in a deal.

------
elevenoh
Those constrained by this, note Canada's relatively new startup visa:

[https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-
citizenship/se...](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-
citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/start-visa.html)

------
coldtea
Something doesn't have to be zero-sum to be detrimental for certain parts of
the population and beneficial for others...

And the idea of the positive or negative general sum doesn't mean much -
unless you're not affected or you believe in trickle down economics, or you're
into sacrificing yourself for some greater good.

If you're on the side that gets negatively affected, the fact that "in general
the economy/GDP is better off" doesn't mean shit to you sleeping in the
street.

And it's doubly hurtful to see it used as a smug argument by people positively
affected. Even more so when the benefits to the economy go to an ever smaller
segment... (so you can have a 2x larger pie, but a smaller slice than before,
even in absolute terms).

Addressing that with empathy (for those negatively affected, those positively
affected doesn't need as much) is how real progress is made...

------
CM30
> In many instances, positions that native born workers are not willing to
> fill create opportunities for migrants.

Why do people assume this is a good thing? A lot of the jobs native born
workers are unwilling to fill get few/no applicants because the conditions are
terrible, they pay like crap or they're undesirable in some other way.

In those cases, the answer isn't 'import workers willing to do the work for
cheap/in terrible conditions'. It's 'improve the job so people actually
want/will tolerate doing it' or 'automate said job so you don't need employees
doing it' or 'do it yourself/with less employees because your
company/organisation cannot support/afford more of them'.

No business needs to exist, nor does every business or individual need to be
able to find workers. Being able to import people to do work at worse wages in
order to keep a failing business afloat is not a good thing.

~~~
logicchains
>No business needs to exist, nor does every business or individual need to be
able to find workers

Jobs don't appear out of thin air. If somebody has no other option (or, their
only other option is subsistence farming in some impoverished part of the
world), who are you to tell them they don't deserve the chance to work a
better job?

------
chaostheory
I wonder how many US tech companies wouldn't exist were it not for immigrants?
Germany and Canada are probably taking advantage of the situation.

~~~
repsilat
Yeah, _that 's_ the zero-sum thinking the US needs. "We'll take all the people
in your country who are smart and hard working enough to support themselves
here." It's what the country was built on.

In my home country people talked about "reciprocity" on immigration policy,
like "if you admit our workers we'll admit yours", but smarter policy would be
_retaliatory_ \-- "if you steal our workers, we'll steal yours!" See the UK
threatening to give visas to Hong Kong residents in the last month or so.

(Though calling that transaction zero sum could be debatable. When someone
moves to the US, normally the US wins, the migrant wins, and the origin
country usually loses unless there are remittances, but relative magnitudes
can be haggled over.)

~~~
rayiner
> Yeah, that's the zero-sum thinking the US needs. "We'll take all the people
> in your country who are smart and hard working enough to support themselves
> here." It's what the country was built on.

That’s some sort of retcon. The US was already one of the richest countries in
the world (in terms of per capita GDP) by the 1820s (which is when the first
wave of non-UK immigration began, with the Germans). It overtook the UK for
the first time in 1814, and was significantly ahead of continental Europe by
that time. By 1890, long before skilled immigration to the US began in volume,
the US economy was as big as the entire British Empire’s excluding India. The
US has done a good job assimilating immigrants, and one can imagine that it
might have lost the edge in the 20th century if it hadn’t. Or maybe we
wouldn’t have had. Japan and Korea had meteoric development in the 20th
century with almost no immigration at all. Regardless, the US was already
developing like a rocket even back when it was primarily UK people here.

~~~
lultimouomo
Errr... there was plenty of non UK immigration in the 19th century in the US.
It wasn't voluntary, and it probably wasn't very skilled, but it certainly was
hard working. The entire cotton industry was based on it.

~~~
repsilat
Oh dear. Let me be clear that my post meant only to refer to voluntary
immigration.

------
fergie
This article contradicts itself by simultaneously claiming that H-1B visas
_dont_ affect pay and conditions...:

"The misconception is that there is a fixed amount of work — a lump of labor.
According to this view, jobs are a scarce resource to be distributed among a
pool of workers who would otherwise compete for those jobs. Also, more
laborers always equal less pay."

...whilst also making the case that they _do_:

"restrictions like the ones just passed will turn many skilled workers away or
make it virtually impossible for companies to hire foreign workers on short or
long-term bases. This will make these companies less innovative, less
flexible, and ultimately less competitive."

And as a bonus, also throwing in the (often debunked) claim that there exist a
category of jobs that native workers under no circumstances will do:

"In many instances, positions that native born workers are not willing to fill
create opportunities for migrants."

In software, the abuse of the the H-1B is pretty well documented by people who
have experience of it. It is typically a mechanism to import programmers into
consultancy mills who then carry out relatively low-tech work well away the
FAANGs. It is racist, and absolutely calculated to undercut the cost of
existing local labor
([https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/hefnfm/m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/hefnfm/my_experience_with_h1b_as_a_poc/))

The thing is you can reasonably make an argument that all of this is OK. That
we should as a society work to keep a lid on the pay and conditions of workers
in order to maximize the economic output of business. However, that is not
what the linked article is doing- it is talking up the benefits of H-1b to
business (fair enough), whilst attempting to brush the very real disadvantages
of the scheme to all involved, native and immigrant, under the carpet.

------
diogenescynic
I agree, but I also think that billionaires need to start sharing productivity
gains with their workers because most workers haven't seen a raise in decades.
Millions of Americans have been left behind.

~~~
pmiller2
This needs to be higher up. Real wages (and I mean _wages_ , the part of most
peoples' comp that pays their rent, not "total compensation"), have remained
flat since the mid 1970s. How's that supposed to work out when people still
have to pay for things like housing and education, which most certainly have
_not_ remained flat in real terms? Let's not forget that we all have to fund
our own retirements now, since pensions are no longer a thing.

------
sprash
This article is wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to begin.
Firstly for the last 40+ years the growth of wages stagnated when at the same
time productivity per hour was rising at roughly the same levels like it was
before. Where did all the surplus capital go? Simple: the fact that the wealth
of the top 0.1% grew much faster than that of the bottom 99.9% is well
established. As the article correctly mentions this was achieved with two
major supply shocks. One is women entering the workforce and the other is mass
immigration. But none of them made "America richer", only very few Americans.

The reality is that immigration is not only a zero-sum it is much worse than
that. Keeping labor cost artificially low will lead to stagnating technology.
The industrial revolution could only happen because the wages in England were
(for many unrelated reasons) really high and even though the principles of the
steam engine were known since the year 200 (!) for the first time it was
economically feasible to use the technology to replace workers. And thus the
new era of technology was born. There will be no technological advancement
without labor shortage. Labor shortages are good for everyone.

------
dropit_sphere
The discussion on this has really not been intellectually honest, or, to be
more charitable, has not taken the issue seriously enough to _really_ dig.

The "lump of labor fallacy" is...not really a fallacy, or at least can act
that way longer than a lot of people can remain solvent. Let's look at the
article:

>Furthermore, immigrants are not only workers, but they are also consumers.
__Ultimately, the amount of jobs available depends in large part on the level
of demand for goods and services, __

This is true if everyone 's on a manufacturing line making frozen food and
Model-T's for each other, but modern production isn't linear anymore. If you
add fifty million more people to the U.S.: how many people will Google need to
hire to deal with the extra demand? _Zero_.

The extra jobs created are instead _service_ jobs, of varying levels of
crappiness. More lawyers and psychiatrists---good, I guess. But the lion's
share is more demand for waiters and Uber drivers.

>In many instances, positions that native born workers are not willing to fill

There's about an inch of separation between this and "we can't find any
programmers!" I would hope, on HN of all places, I wouldn't need to debunk
this.

>The idea that immigrants will steal jobs from American workers assumes they
compete for the same scarce pool of jobs. Studies show this is often not the
case.

Sure, because those jobs (and business models that rely on them) exist
_because of cheap labor_. Poor whites in the South presumably weren't lining
up to pick cotton unpaid, but without slavery, somehow I think plantation
owners would have found a way to get it out of the fields. Yes, the price of
cotton in England would have gone up. Life would have gone on.

>And despite immigrants only making up 16% of inventors, they are responsible
for 30% of aggregate US innovation since 1976,

Let's posit an explanation for this: engineering in the U.S. is not _really_
respected. Similar to Jews in medieval eras who became bankers because they
were disallowed from everything else, foreigners face real barriers to entry
to exploitive soft-skills jobs like sales, finance, law, and management. So
they're often stuck in an engineering/post-doc ghetto. Does anyone find this
hard to believe?

As for the rising-tide effect---there seems to be no mention of _negative_
externalities. Housing pressure is probably the most obvious one to most HN
readers (mull over the phrase "lump of housing fallacy" if you want to
chuckle), but decreased social capital in ethnically diverse neighborhoods is
another.

I'm relatively cosmopolitan. I've lived abroad, I speak multiple foreign
languages, about half my coworkers (whom I like and have no animus towards)
are immigrants. I'm working on side projects with people in Asia and Europe.

But _boy_ is it hard not to notice that at the same time institutions which
are _nominally_ economic complements to labor, but are looking preeeeettty
extractive these days---universities and corporations---that it just happens
to be _now_ that immigration is a human right. Compare to California in the
90's!

I think if you look for the man behind the curtain, it's---surprise!---
Capital, again and again.

~~~
baddox
> If you add fifty million more people to the U.S.: how many people will
> Google need to hire to deal with the extra demand? Zero.

I highly doubt that’s true. 50 million new employed people would almost
certainly create enough economic activity that would directly or indirectly
lead to increased activity on some a google service that would cause them to
hire more people.

~~~
luckylion
Possibly, even probably (though I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have to). But
they certainly wouldn't scale up by 16%, not even in sales.

Neither would Walmart or McDonald's.

------
Frost1x
I find the non-zero-sum arguments often lacking imagination. Outside of simple
mechanic table games, in most of reality, resources and energy are finite and
basic human needs are fundamentally shared.

Most scenarios claiming to be non-zero-sum often lack imagination or pursue
academic dishonesty by isolating systems to a few components to project the
scenario as being positive sum, when in the fact the goal is to sell zero sum
or net negative sum game by outside players or those on the other side with
much to gain.

~~~
klipt
If reality is zero sum as you say, why did we evolve cooperation?

~~~
buzzkillington
Because two people cooperating can kill one person who isn't and end up with
1/3rd more resources each.

~~~
renewiltord
That is literally zero sum and probably negative sum action.

------
ngcc_hk
Hence you need to be selectively so to minimise the negative and boost the
positive. The question is not open ended. If one has to be utilitarian one
might as well do it all.

------
foogazi
> In many instances, positions that native born workers are not willing to
> fill create opportunities for migrants.

What are these positions that native born workers are not willing to fill?

~~~
qtplatypus
Agricultural labour.

~~~
pnako
They are unwilling to do it at certain wages, yes.

------
curation
We are all the same species herded around imaginary walls that only apply to
us as individuals; moreso if we were born inside the imaginary walls that mark
us as hollow, dangerous beings. Immigration is a story we tell ourselves to
know we are powerful and good. We are poorer indeed by our assertion that some
humans are more human and require proper paperwork to gain access to our
mythoreligious order of the West.

------
hamilyon2
I always thought that it is established truth.

Like, I was taught that in school. Immigration increases general wealth of
nation. If 100% of that wealth is captured by immigrants employer (highly
unlikely) then it might be that it is net neutral for everyone else.

Otherwise, she pays taxes. She buys products. She provide services. Sooner or
later, she might employ someone herself. Obviously, sosiety benefits from
every single deed of immigrant.

------
sergeykish
I've recently stumbled on United States Department of War film from 1943

> We must guard everyone's liberty or we can lose our own. If we allow any
> minority to lose its freedom by persecution or by prejudice we are
> threatening our own freedom

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4)

~~~
ianleeclark
A year prior to this, the US turned away a boat of Jewish refugees.

------
Kephael
H1B visas are quite literally issued to new grads. Confounding this with
inventors and people founding companies is disingenuous.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Founders and inventors were new grads once. Established founders and inventors
usually aren't looking to migrate as easily. It's easier to get them when they
are just starting out.

------
rdlecler1
The math here neglects the human element to all of this. There are speed
limits to change and you also need to worry about the opinion of the other 50%
of the population because when they fee disenfranchise they go and elect
someone like Trump as a counterbalance.

~~~
082349872349872
It could be worse: Trump has at least been keeping it inside his own borders.
Consider the alternatives:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628595)

------
m0zg
Anything that kills US-based H1B sweatshops and de-facto indentured servitude
is a good thing in my book. And I say this as a former H1B. Either use it
properly (for highly skilled immigration only), or shut it down entirely. You
don't get to first abuse the system and then tell me what to think about it.

~~~
qtplatypus
Shutting it down would shift more of that to offshore sweatshops.

~~~
hiram112
Personally, as an American who has worked in India and the US for one of the
biggest abusers of H1Bs, I'm willing to take that risk.

I dare these armies of Fortune 500 executives and managers to send all their
indentured H1Bs back to India and China. I'm sure they'll enjoy explaining why
they and their large salaries and bonuses are essential, when they have 0
actual employees in the same country reporting to them.

They would have offshored things already if they could do so, and felt it
wouldn't risk their own fiefdoms.

Or if they are needed, they can move themselves and their families to
Bangalore. Globalization is great, or so we plebs have been hearing from the
management class for so long, it's time for them to experience it themselves.

------
ycombonator
There are tons of 45 and older American software professionals looking for
jobs. Immigration specifically related to tech labor is promoted by big tech
to dilute the labor pool and reduce their labor expenses. This group is the
last of the good paying jobs in America.

~~~
eyelidlessness
If you're wondering why you're being downvoted so quickly, you would be
encouraged to read the article which addresses exactly your thinking (even the
title does, but it provides detail!)

~~~
zamalek
It's also in the article title. The problem is that positive sum games are
very hard to understand and internalize - I've tried to explain it in-person
multiple times and have been met with zero-sum questions.

~~~
corporateslave5
There’s basically no older people, no women, and very few black and Latino
engineers. It’s not positive sum

~~~
zamalek
That is not how positive sum games are defined.

~~~
corporateslave5
The standard of living for Americans has been going way down, not up. It’s
zero sum

~~~
zamalek
Ask a Tesla employee who created their job. Ask any involved in the immense
space delivery chain who is supporting their job. And that's just one
immigrant.

~~~
corporateslave5
If anything technology has exacerbated the destruction of the middle class

~~~
imtringued
Inequality between countries is decreasing. Poor countries get richer and
wealthy countries lose some but less than the poor gain. That is positive sum.

For example you might lose 10% of your salary but four people in India double
their salary. It's a slow process so it will feel like the downward trend will
go on forever but one day it will change its course and salaries will go up
again.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Inequality between countries is decreasing.

Inequality within countries is increasing, and is more directly connected to
experienced disutility (though media saturation from one country to another
can also make inequality b/w coubtries a factor in experienced disutility.)

A problem with naive economic analysis is that it tends to pretend that
absolute material wealth is the prime determinant of experienced utility (and
consequently that disutility is mostly driven by absolute deprivation), which
while true in the most abject poverty isn't true beyond that level.

------
anticonformist
American universities sell out their limit capacities to foreign students for
huge amounts of money. This forces out huge numbers of American students from
attaining the educations they need to get the jobs many H1B workers take.

Space at top American universities is currently a zero sum game by design.
Many top universities could easily afford to expand. They choose not to for
purely unethical reasons.

And then American tech companies hire these (and more) foreign citizens to
avoid the expense of investing in the American education system as well as
directly drive salaries and increase employee retention.

And that's not even the worst part. The fact is that big tech companies are
almost never using the H1B as intended. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and
all of them are hiring (using the H1B) for roles that could in 99% of cases be
filled by Americans. It would just drive up costs significantly if foreign
workers were not added to the labor pool. The data is all public and plain for
anyone to see.

The price of real estate in the Bay Area is also currently a zero sum game.

American tech companies and universities, in conspiracy with corrupt
politicians, have betrayed the country that made their existence possible.

Just as all American organizations have an ethical duty to pay taxes, they
also have an ethical duty to benefit American citizens above foreign citizens
when there is a conflict in their interests.

There is nothing wrong with an ethically oriented "America first" policy.
Putting your family first above strangers is perfectly reasonable and good.

And yes, I agree Trump is an unethical incompetent. But his nose for unethical
scams is what makes the H1B scam so transparent to him. He has also exploited
the H1B scam himself and probably laughed about it with his fellow assholes.

~~~
gautamdivgi
>Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and all of them are hiring (using the H1B)
for roles that could in 99% of cases be filled by Americans

I have a hard time believing that statement. The salaries these companies pay
is really competitive. Their interview process is pretty clear cut. They have
a pretty steady stream of applicants. I doubt they need to game the system.

I understand your statement in the general sense though. The system is gamed.
But it will still be gamed. If roles are "remote" and not needed on site, they
will be filled in Canada where getting a work visa I believe is a whole lot
easier. What you're asking for is a law that says you can't hire non-US
contractors for any job that can be done in the US. I doubt that's happening
anytime soon.

The zeroing in on h1-b abuse is probably 15 years too late at this point.
Large corporations needing something like it have moved to fill those roles in
Canada or opened centers in Canada. This freeze is doing nothing more than
pandering to the base.

~~~
zamalek
My foreign friend recently joined Amazon. Her PERM process (where an employer
has to advertise a job to Americans before they can green card an employee)
was instantaneous, no 3 months, no cooldown. Why? Amazon currently has
multiple open positions for her position, that they can not fill, and she was
able to fill one of those positions that had been on the market _for months._
The PERM process is already complete, multiple times over, with honest
advertising. At a ludicrous salary, at that.

What you are saying is absolutely true for parts of Amazon, and I'd bet good
money on it being true for the others.

~~~
corporateslave5
I work at amazon and I’m pretty sure I’m the only American in my whole org

------
dragonwriter
How rich or poor “America” is is something no one really cares about. The
people who pretend to care do so to avoid saying the policy they propose will
make themselves rich, often at the expense of a larger number of other
Americans. That's quite obviously the case when capitalists support policies
designed to constrain increases in skilled labor prices and thereby inflate
capital returns.

This is not a knock on the article content, which is good (though not without
problems), but the headline addressing an abstraction that is always a
distraction from real interests.

~~~
yew
Increasing the size of the economy is in the interests of many people if
wealth is widely distributed and in the interests of few if narrowly
distributed?

------
kwistzhaderach
I’m not American.

It’s interesting to note that America has a foreign born pop of 46.6million
(~14% of total pop)

The next biggest is Germany, with 12 Million (~15%)

~~~
qtplatypus
15% is larger then 14%

Curiously the country with the largest foreign born population by % is Vatican
City.

~~~
logicchains
>Curiously the country with the largest foreign born population by % is
Vatican City.

This maybe makes sense; Catholic Priests aren't allowed to marry or have
children, which reduces the locally-born population.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)

------
aaron695
Every argument in this document seemed to be for job creation in years to
come.

People need the jobs today.

Does no one get we are in a pandemic?

Long term thinking is out. We need to survive for the next 5 years and work
out how, it's going to be hard and will involve really large sacrifices.

This seems like the delusions of academics - "upward pressure on American
wages" We are struggling to get jobs FFS.

------
jagannathtech
How about America stop poaching the best minds from all other countries and
making those countries poorer.

~~~
0xy
This comment is basically "how about America stop competing". If your country
isn't competitive for tech or any other worker, then it's a problem with your
country.

I have zero sympathy for European tech workers who complain about the
dramatically lower salaries they receive while they simultaneously vote for
giant governments which levy effective tax rates of 50%+ on them.

Now that the UK is leaving the EU, the EU is one of the worst places for tech
in the world from the perspective of the employee. This only serves to benefit
the US, Switzerland, the UK and other countries supporting their industries
rather than crushing them with ridiculous regulatory burdens (GDPR and
others).

If you have brain drain, it's 100% because your country is not competitive.

~~~
randompwd
The tax rates are on the gross salary. Those tax rates help lessen inequality.

Europeans aren't complaining about their net income. They're complaining about
their gross income.

> supporting their industries rather than crushing them with ridiculous
> regulatory burdens (GDPR and others

Ah, I see. This was an irrational rant with 0 critical thinking put in to it.

edited to address:

> levy effective tax rates of 50%+ on them.

Effective is what people actually pay. No software engineer in any European
country has an effective tax rate of 50%. With progessive(staggered) tax rates
& pension relief, most would end up with ~30-35% tax rate. 50% is charged on
money over x, everything below x is at lower rates so your _effective_ tax
rate is not 50%.

