From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@gondwanaland.com)
Date: Tue Apr 02 2002 - 19:28:04 MST
On Tue, 2002-04-02 at 03:47, Randy Smith wrote:
> >Here's to hoping that doctors do face increased competition in the near
> >future, whether from immigrants or from teleoperating doctors in India
> >or wherever.
>
> I hope so, too. You see, I, and EVERYONE else in America, have much
> to gain should such a series of events occur. Each and every one of
> us inhabit, and are totally dependent upon, frail biological shells.
>
> However, if the job market for computer science grads is flooded by
> foreigners, I, and maybe 95% of Americans, have maybe a little to
> gain. And 5% of Americans (programmers, engineers etc) have a lot to
> lose.
However, the cumulative costs distributed among consumers who
individually have little to lose far outweigh the cumulative gains made
by protecting those with concentrated interests. Nearly every stupid
policy can be analyzed in terms of concentrated interests trumping the
general welfare with disastrous results. If I remember correctly, this
is largely what the field of "public choice" economics is dedicated to
explaining.
> Ever heard of the Social Contract, the contract you have with
> your "Fellow Citizens"? I thought not....
How did you know I emerged from a dank cave only yesterday?
Why should the nation be the granularity at which the social contract
applies? Why not my family, city, state, continent, earth? Why should
US citizens have an obligation to protect certain US citizens operating
is certain professions? Shouldn't California citizens, or San Francisco
citizens act in the same manner to protect their fellow citizens?
Californians were really stupid for allowing me to immigrate from
Illinois and drive down the wages of California computer programmers!
Even if the US (or California, or Santa Clara County, or the city of
Mountain View) completely prevented the immigration of software
engineers, existing citizen software engineers would still face
competition, from those in Sunnyvale, San Mateo County, Texas, Canada,
etc. Those competitive areas that did let in new engineers would
quickly supplant the closed regions. The constant influx of engineers
into Silicon Valley and more broadly into the US have helped maintain
SV/US as the most dynamic place for software development. Contrary to
your expectations software engineers in SV/US command higher salaries
than those in similarly wealthy regions not "suffering" from an influx
of software engineers.
Prevent migration of software engineers to the US and software jobs will
migrate to India, Russia and elsewhere with increasing rapidity. End
result: fewer US citizen programmers doing less interesting work for
less money. Ah, to be protected by my wonderful fellow-citizens!
Praise to the nation-state and the social contract which can only apply
to the nation-state and its citizens! No strange foreigner's gonna
steal my job and wealth when I and my fellow nation-state citizens can
leech them away ourselves!
> That is why I support building and maintaining free medical schools
> overseas, and allowing any grads of those schools to emigrate to the
> USA.
>
> Not surprisingly, you, and virtually everyone else in America, have
> never heard of such an outlandish idea. That is because the organized
> lobby of doctors control -- to a great extent -- the public "debate"
> in this area.
I recall some cave paintings several years ago that outlined similar
ideas in response to some healthcare crisis or another.
Mike Linksvayer
http://gondwanaland.com/ml/
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