Long term though... bans, tarriffs, protections of any kind are all ill conceived. You will absolutely get a boost in wages, but the cost is quite significant. Shortening supply artificially always raises prices, and ends up meaning the same amount of output costs more to achieve than it otherwise would without the restrictions. Why would any economy want entertain that for too long?

You're right --- but as John Maynard Keynes famously wrote, "In the long run, we're all dead".

In the medium term, it is unreasonable to expect middle America to compete with workers from countries with no environmental laws, no safety regulations, and no worker safety. Likewise, it is unreasonable for ask us free people to compete with H1-B holders who cannot leave their jobs without being deported.

Besides, historically speaking, we make productivity advances fastest when labor is expensive. In a sea of cheap labor, technology stagnates. Of course, in the long run, we're going to have a single integrated global economy. But a policy of immediate free trade and free movement is not a feasible or fair way of getting to this state.

Accounts that use HN primarily for political or ideological battle are an abuse of this site, as I believe you know. We ban them. We've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. That eventually gets your main account banned as well.

Throwaway accounts to stoke ideological flamewars are not ok here. There's no possibility of civil, substantive discussion of any of it, so please keep it off HN.

I don't know what was so bad about that comment enough to ban them right away.

>Accounts that use HN primarily for political or ideological battle are an abuse of this site...

How did you decide this was the case here, just curious.

> ban them right away

I'm not a mod and I'm not speaking for the mods.

I think it was a pattern of behaviour, with some previous warnings.

This is an incredibly cynical comment. I'd only say that around 60% workers in Silicon Valley tech companies are immigrant born. As far as I can see, they didn't pushed the salaries down in recent times.

Personal attacks like this are not OK on Hacker News. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at all.

Hey dang. What about this ^ comment? Why wouldn't you show up and threaten this user with a ban.

There are only two mods, 'dang and 'sctb, and they definitely don't see everything (which they will readily admit). If you find something you think is inappropriate, please contact them via the Contact link in the footer.

Mods don't see all comments.

If you click the timestamp you can flag the comment.

If you still think it's a problem you can email the mods to let them know.