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ericdschmidt's comments

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Well, i'm glad you see open borders as an ultimate goal, kudos there, but why do you think its important for "bilateral treaties". Workers are engines of production. They're valuable. We want more of them. Even if they're poor, they can still produce value. Production is the root of all prosperity. So there's no harm in letting people come here at whatever rate is best for them - if it's a sensible move for them, that implies that their productivity (reflected by their income) is increasing. More productivity = more stuff = more stuff for everyone in the economy to enjoy. Again, there's no harm in letting people come. Only increased production. So we should definitely let in anyone who wants to come. And so should every other country. But if the other countries remain economically stupid / bigoted and want to keep valuable workers at bay, fine, doesn't mean we should make the same mistake. It's still hugely beneficial to us (and everyone) to let them come here unilaterally.

Please see my other comment in this thread for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Wrong wrong wrong.

Reality check: (1) Immigrants are actually NET CONTRIBUTORS to the welfare system. (2) Immigrants (at least the poor ones you're apparently worried about) are hard-working and yearn for financial stability; leisure is an utterly alien concept to them. (3) As societies become more heterogenous, welfare systems decline, because of inherent racism/xenophobia. The various elements of the population don't want to contribute to welfare cause they don't feel in communion with those "others". (4) If the welfare system becomes overburdened, I say Great! It just forces us to fix our broken system sooner than we otherwise would have. (Although again mainly because of my points 1 and 2 this would never happen.) (5) We can charge immigrants an entry fee, or a tax premium, or we can exclude them from benefits altogether. Any of those options would be vastly more humane than the status quo where we keep these foreigners trapped in their unproductive backwaters making ~$1 a day, starving.

Please see my other comment on this thread here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Making cheap clothes and electronics in factories are good jobs relative to the kind of work that the extreme poor do - scrounging for food in a garbage dump in Manila or farming shitty land. And they make clothing and electronics in Mexico (which is a relatively rich country by global standards) and in America and other first world places. It's not like the economy would just stop making clothes or electronics. It would adjust to satisfy the forces of supply and demand at some optimal equilibrium. Just keep your eye on production, keep your eye on production, keep your eye on production.

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

"Move from one stagnant area into a prosperous one to the point of dragging it down to be stagnant as well?"

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong... 100 times wrong.

Productivity is the root of all prosperity. First read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.

Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Productivity is the root of all prosperity. First read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.

Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Productivity is the root of all prosperity. Read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.

Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

"A basic security problem"

So what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals. So if we don't want walls around towns or cities or counties or states, why do we suddenly want them at the country level? What the hell is so special about your country? Does no one commit crimes there? No, of course they commit crimes.

And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.

Please see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Fallacy, fallacy, fallacy, fallacy. Oh, I lost count.

Private property != public property. There are things called roads, parks, forests that are public - these spaces are designed for common use. Separately, there is private property. Like your house or your real estate. That's yours. Just for you.

Open borders is about removing borders between our public spaces. Allowing one to drive from e.g. a US road to a Mexican road without a passport. Open borders isn't about letting someone stay in your house. It's about letting someone rent or buy a house in America and inhabit what would then be their private property. It's about letting them take a job in a foreign country or hire a foreigner to work in their business.

See my other two comments for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Uh, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.

Also, so what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals.

"I'm totally against an open borders policy." That's cause you're severely underinformed. Please see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

Open borders would enrich everyone, not just the immigrants or the poor. Please see my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632. I live in SF where there's a "housing crisis". All it means is that a lot of people want to live here and so it's expensive. And NIMBY pieces of trash vote against high rise development so supply isn't allowed to naturally keep up with demand. It's not really a 'crisis', it's less than peanuts compared to the crisis of extreme poverty. Rich first worlders like you and me, we can deal, we'll be fine.

ericdschmidt | 10 years ago | on: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

"I have two Ivy League degrees. And I am on the verge of deportation."

So you obviously deserve to come here, while the people living on $1 a day in extreme poverty and under oppressive regimes, they should be kept out? No, you didn't say all that, but I'm passionate about the cause of open borders (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e...., http://www.openborders.info), and I can tell you a lot of Americans think exactly that way - they have a poor understanding of economics and they imagine that importing relatively unskilled laborers into our country would somehow 'taint' or bring down our economy toward their levels of poverty. (See here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you.... if you have yet to be disabused of this fallacy.) And your suggestion that you should be allowed in because of your degrees is suggestive of that kind of broken thinking. Productivity is the root of societal prosperity. And labor, whether skilled or unskilled -- in fact, especially unskilled labor -- is able to be much more productive when allowed to move to the first world. That extra productivity benefits everyone. Economists estimate, on average, that a move from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (open borders) would result in a DOUBLING OF GLOBAL GDP. That's an INSANE silver bullet.

And most of those gains would go to the extreme poor: in fact, it would be by far the most effective step we could take to reduce extreme poverty - which a lot of people don't realize is the single worst humanitarian crisis of all time, killing ~10 million people per year, a higher rate than WWII, which was the deadliest war ever. Open border should be foremost on every smart, informed, ethical person's mind, and it's a crying shame that it isn't. Instead you see people whining about the plight of 1st-world Uber drivers and middle class Americans and not being able to stay in the US with their Ivy League degrees. Spoiler alert: all those people are crazy rich relative to the extreme poor. There are ~1 billion people, 1/7th of the world's population, living in extreme poverty, which is defined as making less than $1.25 per day. That's PER DAY, NOT PER HOUR. They are literally starving, malnourished, have no clean water, no education - they have practically nothing. So unless you can show me evidence that you've spent many hours worrying about open borders and the extreme poor, screw your first world problem.

And by the way, I'm a rich american with an Ivy League degree myself, so this is not coming from a place of ivy-envy or anything. I've just spent a lot of time reading and thinking about open borders and the state of the world and I'm disappointed in my fellow educated first worlders that they're so oblivious, apathetic, uncaring, so this gets me angry.

Please see my other comments in this thread for more of my thoughts.

Great links: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/01/sitting_on_an_o.... https://vimeo.com/15000835 http://www.bottombillionfund.org/extreme_poverty.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/debunking-the-myt... http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/if-... http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e.... http://www.openborders.info

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