From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Jun 28 2002 - 01:37:51 MDT
Transhuman relevance? I actually think there is some here, but it is a
bit hidden. If people are fundamentally passive entities that have to be
taken care of by external systems or if they are active agents that can
create their own support structures will ínfluence what kind of future
society we strive for profoundly.
On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 09:07:25PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
> >
> >Prime minister G?ran Person told the media recently that he was all for
> >labour immigration, but only after all Swedes and current immigrants had
> >jobs. Which is a way of saying "never" that sounds nicer - but it is
> >still both a stupid and immoral policy. The same goes for most other
> >applications of "you can get X, but only after you have achieved Y".
>
> I disagree. I've seen estimates that due to the economic and
> especially tech sector crunch there are on the order of half a
> million highly trained American technical workers unemployed.
> At the same time we want to increase the number of H1B visas for
> lower cost foreign technical workers. Free trade is fine but
> failing to take care of people or leave any room for them to
> exercise their skills without vastly lowering their standard of
> living leaves much to be desired in our so-called "progress" as
> far as it is manifest at the social and economic level of
> people's lives.
Who creates jobs? If jobs are a scarce resource that is produced by some
external agent then it might make sense to ration them (in Sweden the
government is generally believed to be the agent that somehow creates
jobs, not just jobs in the big government sector of the economy but also
in the private sector). If jobs instead are something people create for
themselves by starting businesses or making businesses interedted in
hiring them, then the above strategy makes no sense. The more people,
the more entrepreneurs - the government can help or hinder, but it can't
really create the jobs (except of course by hiring a lot of people and
financing it with more taxes).
I would say the evidence is overwhelming for the last position. And
hence the idea of keeping others out so the locals can get the scarce
jobs will in fact keep everybody worse off (that is, everybody except
certain vested interests benefiting, in Sweden the labour unions and
their intimate friends the social democratic party).
One of the reasons Sweden needs more people is that it is a rapidly
graying generation. Within a few years a sizeable fraction of the
workforce will retire, and by 2020 25% of the population will be above
65 years. Unless we want the living standard to decrease, we need more
people to keep the economy floating. But immigration is politically out,
while Göran Person instead suggests giving economic incentives to people
to get more children and marry more! One reason the US is such an
economic powerhouse is the open immigration policy (yes, it is open when
you compare to Europe) that produces a relatively young population. Add
to this an entrepreneur friendly climate, and you are set. Closing
borders and regarding entrepeneurship as some kind of alien superpower
is not a smart idea in the long run.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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