No, the United States is not a fraternity; I think a better metaphor is that it is the biggest baddest street gang there is. It should be no surprise that we are inclined to look after our own first.

I agree that Microsoft has no obligation other than following the rules and paying its protection money.

But America has an obligation to protect American workers ("by the people and for the people" remember?) "by putting them first during these difficult economic times".

So, they should change immigration law. And populist talk like this is often the first step towards that end.

In the end, I don't think it is meaningful to label this idea conservatism or liberalism. It is simply political pragmatism.

As usual, it will backfire in the most predictable way: Microsoft will close offices in the US and invest in hiring skilled people for its foreign offices. And so will all major US corporations that feel the heat from this kind of misguided discourse.

It's that simple.

And even relocate some of your US workers over there.

Moving labor overseas has consequences. The labor pool here will begin ignoring Microsoft (more than we already now, but that's besides the point), since there aren't any US offices. This leads to the further development of competing infrastructure.

Next, you find Microsoft's products will take much longer to get certified for government use. Now that the core developers of the OS aren't U.S. workers, what's to say there aren't "backdoors" inserted by Chinese/Indian nationals? Oracle products sometimes lag for a year and a half because of its "development in every time zone model" when it comes to certifying it for our Defense Infrastructure.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is echo'd by "The market's are that simple". As HP's CEO said when "globalization" was a "new concept" it cannot be ignored if you want to remain competitive. But in actuality that means being competitive in job markets globally, and that can be done with H1-Bs.

Classic make-work fallacy. American interests are best served when corporations (Microsoft in this case) are as efficient as possible. If that means immigrant workers, then so be it. If MS (and other corps) are forced to hire less-qualified or more expensive American workers then the cost of these measures is paid by their customers who are ... Americans and in lost market share which results in a cost to MS' investors who are ... Americans. The difference is that the plight of the unemployed programmers is obvious and easy to see while the plight of the customer and investors is obscured but that does not change the loss that they experience.

Lets imagine for a moment we allow the free trade phenomenon of American exogenously financed consumerism to continue to global equilibrium, how much wealth will the country have left?

Many prominent American investors; notably Warren Buffet, George Soros, and Jim Rogers; vocally oppose these ideas.

Academic theories are good fun, but we ought to slow down and act pragmatically. A perfectly free market is just too ugly.

One wise measure of pragmatism may be to adjust the H-1B quota downward as the domestic labor market contracts to maintain the status quo (as far as I can tell this is what the discussion is really about.)

edit: Also, I feel the immigration question is more nuanced than the "classic make-work fallacy," which is a lot closer to breaking something with a hammer and feeling good about creating a job for the guy who glues it back together.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Probably not. More Americans means more workers to produce and thus, more to go around.

Also, adjusting the H1B quota downwards is a luaghable proposition. As it is, the quota runs out in less than 3 months. Your suggestion would just lead to more outsourcing (which is often not as efficient as immigration) and higher prices.

I did a bike ride across the country about 10 years ago, and it was eye opening. Much different than what I saw everyday in Orange County, CA. It's easy to keep the blinders on in our everyday lives.

No: The quota runs out in less than 24 hours.

The US could support a far higher number of people with the resources it has. This is just more incorrect zero sum thinking. Which is why, by and large, the population of the planet now is better off or at least as well off as it was 2000 years ago, when there were vastly fewer people.

That simply doesn't pan out. It is in the capital-owner's best interest when their holdings operate as efficiently as possible. Most americans are not capital-holders.

Since (I imagine) that you advocate free movement of capital & free trade, it really doesn't make sense to point to Americans making up losses as consumers and/or investors. Unless the 'loss' is pretty negligible, which I don't think you can really argue.

The theoretical replaced workers themselves are worse off. They are in less demand & lost their theoretical job. If you assumed they made the best decision for themselves & that was MS, then taking that option off the table disadvantages them.

Since trade & investment are relatively free while immigration is relatively restricted, investors & consumers are international citizens while employees are Americans. The US is huge, so that's obscured. But try to think of this from the perspective of a European mid-size State.

*Anyway, I agree with your overall point. Economic arguments against immigration are equivalent to economic arguments against trade or investment. The losses are local & very visible. The gains while greater, are international & often hidden. There is a net gain & it is spread around by reciprocation.

Since immigration is so restricted today, the greatest 'free' market gains to be made are through freeing immigration, not investment or trade.

Also, most Americans are in more debt than they have assets. They are not capital holders. Don't conflate holding some currency with controlling the means of production.

...when I send my kid to school, I have to deal with a member of the teacher's union ...when I need a prescription, I have to deal with a member of the AMA ...when I get sued, I have to hire a member of the State Bar ...when I want a drink served to me on the plane, I have to deal with a member of a flight attendants union ...when I pay my taxes, I don't get to use the most efficient system - I am obligated to use the 50K+ page US tax code ...but when any of these people want to hire a programmer, they can bring someone in on an H1B

If you can find me a free market, let me know, because I would genuinely love to participate. But until then, if the US subjects Americans who become engineers to much more intense competition from foreign workers than they'd experience in other fields, we must not be surprised when young Americans prefer to become lawyers or mortgage brokers.

This seems to be the choice we've made as a nation. However, I see this as an (unintended?) consequence of government policy, rather than a natural occurrence in free labor markets.

That's the problem - it isn't their business. It's the ABA's business. You could be one of the great legal minds in India, but unless you have an ABA accredited degree, it doesn't matter (edit - I think a few states might allow such a person to practice provided he/she passes the bar). And US law schools definitely act as gatekeepers (check out the admissions pages for law schools - you will often find an explicit statement that they greatly limit the percentage of international students). US Engineering grad programs, on the other hand, tend to act as gateways rather than gatekeepers.

Some people want to see an ABA or AMA style organization for software engineers... personally, I'd hate to see this. I like the open nature of software, and I definitely don't think we'd see more innovation if the sort of people responsible for EJB gained control over licensing.

But regardless of how you feel about it, the dynamic is pretty indisputable: if the US uses the force of government and law to keep foreign lawyers out and bring foreign engineers in, then you should expect to see US citizens favor law degrees and foreign nationals (who would like to come to the US) to favor engineering degrees.

The part that frustrates me is when our wise leaders get on the soapbox and start preaching about how we need to encourage more Americans to get graduate degrees in science and engineering. If we've decided to staff our science and engineering workforce with guest workers, fine, but please stop acting like it's a big mystery when Americans respond to the market imbalance it creates.

So tell me again how corporate "efficiency" means a good customer experience. Make sure to include some details.

If you're going to claim that H1B employees are critical for making companies better at producing their products, it would be nice if you were to back up that assertion with something other than ideology and theory. I used only one counter-example (one of the largest H1B employers in the nation, not to mention the subject of the article), but it directly refutes the theory that cheap employees make products cheaper and better.

We don't live in a free market. Any theory predicated on that assumption is wrong.

Second, you've created a "counter-point" which doesn't even prove what you claim. You think your Microsoft example is "proof" of something and you are indignantly stamping your feet around making demands of others on some self-appointed perch of the intellectual high ground. Companies, markets, and economics are gigantically complicated things and trying to "prove" that H1B employees don't make better or worse companies by using a single example over some non-trivial period of time is ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Absurd, even.

Maybe the reason none of us are citing examples is because examples are altogether meaningless. Unless you want to actually do the statistical analysis, control for all the proper variables, and try to make a statistically significant statement at the end, all you'd be doing is talking out of your ass. So, to that end, for the purposes of internet discussion between anonymous people, -theory- is about as good as we are going to do.

So excuse me for trying to correct your theoretical mistake while altogether ignoring your anecdotal evidence.

I've never claimed a proof -- just a counter-example. But more importantly, I stop trying to have civilized discussions with people when they can't summon the maturity to avoid profanity.

>> It's possible to state your opinion without

>> questioning the competence of the person with

>> the opposing view.

> I've reread both your and my posts and I have

> absolutely no earthly idea how you decided _I_

> was the one with the condescending tone.

You violated the HN guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

No, seriously, stop for a moment and define it to yourself. I want you to come up with a serious definition, too, not "those assholes who hate darkies" or something like that. Come up with what they stand for, what they stand against, a serious definition of some kind.

Step Two: Determine if we've actually had a conservative government for any period of time since 1980 that have actually acted on the definition of conservatism.

I've posted this as a meta-message because you can get different answers depending on what perfectly legitimate definition of conservatism you adopt.

If you define it solely in terms of reactionary defense of the status quo, conservatism is politically dead, since the status quo has been, is, and will continue to never apply in our world. It moves too fast for that.

If you define it as isomorphic to the Republican party, then it has been in charge and is discredited... but I don't find this a very good definition, as we already have a perfectly good word for "Republican".

If you define it as involving cutting taxes, it has had some success, although only some.

If you define it in terms of libertarianism, i.e., "smaller government", then it has not been in charge since 1980. We've actually not tried "smaller government" in a long time. It's hard to even identify a year since 1980 where it was winning the war, let alone claim it has been winning since then.

"Conservative" and "liberal" are really such ill-defined constructs that using them seriously without defining them almost always indicates weak thinking. For example (and I'm not saying mattmaroon said this, it's just an example) claiming that "conservatives have been in charge since 1980, conservatives stand for small government, conservatives have been a failure therefore small government is a failure" is very bad logic because the meaning of "conservative" keeps shifting throughout the argument.

Social conservatism has had a much better run than fiscal conservatism or small government, which has had almost no traction since the New Deal or even earlier. A couple of years of exception, but even those years it was mostly lip service followed by expanded government.

You can basically define yourself along the right-left continuum by stating the year to which you wish to roll back the American political system. Progressives want to keep on marching forward. The folks at the National Review want to roll back our political system to the Reagan era. Ron Paul wants to roll back the system to 1900. Mencius Moldbug wants roll it back to 1687.

What's interesting is that some phenomena that we now view as "arch-conservative" - such as evangelical Christianity - turn out not to be very conservative at all. In 1900, the evangelicals were firmly in the camp of the left ( think William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, or Richard Ely).

I remember thinking that it was obvious that the safe choice was to be liberal. If you chose to be liberal, you'd have the values of the future today. It would be like leading a target. You'd just get more and more right over time, and the conservatives would get more and more wrong.

In fact, as I realized soon after, this explanation of the difference between liberal and conservative was bullshit. Conservative, as we use the term in the US, does not simply mean "wants to retain the status quo." If tax rates are high, for example, it tends to be conservatives who want change and liberals who want to retain the status quo.

The real distinction between liberal and conservative is much more complicated, and also changes over time.

Incidentally, there are several ways in which the US is more conservative now than under Kennedy. The most conspicuous is tax rates.

The Left-Right divide is about ideology, not status quo versus "change". But since the Left has been winning for 400 years, the debate often gets phrased in terms of "restoring the past" versus "progress".

In broad strokes, the Right believes in common law, property rights, localism, and acknowledging the reality of innate inequality.

The Left believes in administrative law, centralization, universalism, and equality.

The Right believes that the role of government is to provide order, security, and rule of law (negative law).

The Left believes that government is an instrument for creating a perfect world.

Again, these are generalizations. But if you look at the political battles since the English Civil War, I think you'll see the sides generally breaking into two camps that generally align with my definitions. Roundheads versus Cavaliers. Levelers versus Jacbobites. Patriots versus Loyalists. Whigs versus Tories. Jacobins versus the Ancien Régime. Unionists versus Confederates. Gladstone versus the Bourbons. Bolsheviks versus the Czar. Wilson versus the Kaiser. New Dealers versus the Old Right. Obama versus the Neocons.

You'll also notice that the left wins most of the battles. Thus the Neocons of today are far to the left of Woodrow Wilson, and Wilson is far to the left of Gladstone.

And of course, just because the Left wins does not mean they were correct and the Right was wrong. The history of politics seems to be something of a random walk. The political systems from Europe's age of reaction ( 1815-1848) were far superior to what followed. If more people had listened to Metternich's warnings about democracy leading to German nationalism, perhaps they could have avoided a couple world wars.

Incidentally, there are several ways in which the US is more conservative now than under Kennedy. The most conspicuous is tax rates.

That's not true when you factor in payroll taxes, local taxes, and state taxes: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/10/personal-taxes-as-per...

And even the above graph leaves out seniorage, which has increased dramatically. It also leaves out quasi-taxes, such as legal mandates that require people to pay for expensive college diplomas in order to enter their chosen profession.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/10/personal-taxes-as-per...

The boxed note in that graph says:

Most of the total "personal current taxes" (85% of it) is federal income tax. The remainder is state and local.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.ht...

If government is spending 40% of the GDP then taxes are around 40% of the GDP.

Oh course, that would never happen. :)

EX: The ban on abortion, the free market pre great depression, "small government", banning stem cell research, anti environmentalism, which really started around the great depression. I expect the "conservative" movement in 100 years will look back at the good old days of the hippie movement with longing.

I explain why there's a lot of definitions of the term, and your response is to... explain why one of my lines was wrong?

'If you want to compare government spending and fiscal responsibility then Democrats are by far the more "conservative" party.'

Do you live the in the same world I do?

Now, you might think I'm going to take exception to the idea that (D) spends less than (R). In fact, my incredulity is prompted by your "by far the more". From where I sit, neither party seems to have met a spending bill they didn't like, except briefly by the (R)s in the 90s which they quickly seem to have gotten over.

(And whatever credibility the (D)s may have had on this issue just got squandered these last couple of weeks, with this "stimulus" bill that, even if you accept Keynesian economic theory, won't do a damn thing to help.)

That's actually my point, there's significant things called "conservative" that haven't been tried lately, small government merely being at the top of the list.

(Oh, and part of the reason I said "make a real definition" is to head off things like saying conservatives are "anti-environment". Nobody of any importance is "pro-pollution". (I don't know of anybody, but it's best to be careful with absolute statements.) They just disagree about priorities or effects. That sort of thinking leads to letting demagogues make up your mind for you.)

Note: This rest of this is a long rant but I am not going to delete it.

OK, they all all corrupt bastards. Both the stimulus bill and the bailout package are supported by both sides. They like to talk shit, but watch who votes for it. Anyway, it's not a long term issue so moving on:

http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

The federal government has a 400 billion dollar budget deficit. Now let's forget about the huge unfunded liabilities from the Iraq war, the stimulus package etc but just look at that number. We spent ~800 billion on national defense. Inflation is one thing but "President Clinton's FY 1998 budget requests $250.7 billion in budget authority and $247.5 billion in outlays for the Department of Defense (DoD)." Granted the we are fighting 2 wars for some reason. Now, if we cut defense spending by 1/2 we would have zero budget deficit. No single Republican bill in the last 20 years would reduce the size of the federal government by that much hell all of them put together is smaller than that single change.

When the Republicans wanted to improve the national heath care system with their prescription drug plan they prevented the agency from using it's size to reduce drug prices. This is standard practice for all inshurance companies but for some reason they felt it was unimportant.

Obama's plan is require private heath care companies to cover people with prior medical issues. Regulation with Zero cost to the government which actually fixes a major problem. The other issue is letting inshurance companies drop people who become expensive to treat. You might take issue with this, but having inshurance that becomes unfordable when you develop a problem sounds like not having any inshurance at all. That's like your car inshurance saying we will pay for 5% of the damage but we decided to drop your coverage in the middle of the accident because it would have looked like you where going to cost us money.

When Oil was over 100$ a barrel GB kept increasing the size of the national reserve even when it was running out of capacity. Rather than using it as a strategic asset and bursting the Oil bubble sooner he decided to increase the problem by reducing the worlds oil supply costing us money and gaining an asset that's drooped to 1/3 of it's original value.

PS: The federal budget is also this out of whack while they have reduced funding for state programs. Yea, let's talk about states rights but at the same time let's cut the purse strings.

We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S. Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people.^

I think ideally that is what conservatives want to stand for, though in practice it may be quite different.

^ http://www.opinionjournal.com/ac/?id=110007417

I think ideally that is what conservatives want to stand for, though in practice it may be quite different.

I'm just saying it's what most conservatives believe in.

Conservatives believe in induction: that things that work the same way over time have a tendency to continue working the same way. That humans are basically good people but flawed. Liberals believe in experimentation: that the human spirit is basically flawed but can be perfected through the right combination of experimentation.

Burke is usually claimed as the first conservative. He was mostly a shill for the ruling class in Great Britain, but, to the dismay of his adversaries, turned out to be right in a large number of his predictions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke)

Both terms have varied so much over the last 30 years as to almost be meaningless, however. JFK? He was for big tax cuts to spur the economy. Nixon? Froze prices. Politicians (and parties) that were "supposed" to be either conservative or liberal basically abandoned their principles whenever they thought they could get votes.

People emotionally attach to the party, and then bandy about "liberal" and "conservative" as labels to shut conversation down. It has little to do with the actual philosophies of conservatism or liberalism (either classic liberalism or modern liberalism)

(Sorry. Political junkie here. Couldn't resist providing the information)

And long live libertarianism!

(I'm assuming you mean to imply that the caged compounds keep women in rather than keep pirates out.)

In fact, nowadays many manufacturers go out of their way to advertise their workers' working conditions and wages in an effort to demonstrate their social responsibility. Why? Because consumers demand it.

And then there are the Wal-Marts of the world, who do not do as above, because there are also consumers who do tacitly approve of inhumane working conditions.

The free market seems to be taking care of this problem - I don't see regulation needed here. Not to mention the fact that many of these "inhumane" conditions are actually pretty par for the course as far as those regions go.

My own mother worked as a child laborer in a textiles mill when she was still in primary school. The extra income allowed her desperately poor family to move into the city, find jobs, and get educations. I doubt I would be typing on this computer if it were not for the opportunities presented by what the Western world would have, at the time, seen as atrocious workplace safety standards and an abuse of labor. Modernization is a long and arduous process that can be sped up with the right pressure, but preventing these countries from competing is simply condemning them to continual and perpetual poverty.

The slippery slope is an easier thing to address; the comment that "Microsoft is not a public work" basically refutes all labor, trade, and immigration regulation. It's not a betrayal of the GOP to suggest that Microsoft might comply with the rules we already have.

Expecting a 3rd-world country to act like a 1st-world one, when it clearly isn't, does not work. In the same way that the US often forces American-style democracy upon other countries without going through the requisite social changes beforehand, so do Western nations force first-world labor standards on countries that are simply not ready.

What we, as modernized nations, should be doing is not unfairly punishing these countries, but rather establishing a roadmap to eliminate these evils through economic development. This may take years and decades, but at least in my birth nation child labor and sweatshops are all but eliminated, with the help of the US government no less. To try and play it black and white is foolish and solves nothing.

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/smokey.html

Also, you should take into consideration whether the US as a country should be in the business of telling other countries what to do.

Just to get my wife (not some random person) and mother of my daughter into the country is a 3 or 4 month process. She has a doctorate in biochemistry and speaks English well. To add insult to injury, she'll apparently have to go through a doctor's examination before she can get a green card, should we decide to go to the US.

The US has some serious issues with regards to immigrants, which is especially ironic for a country where a very minimal percentage of the people are really people who have been there for hundreds of years, let alone before 1492.

Furthermore, the US has some weird import policies - we can't send prosciutto to my parents because of some BS health regulations (as if Italy didn't care deeply about the quality of its food products).

Yes, there are practical issues: Luxembourg couldn't open up its borders to India and China, for instance, without some serious issues, but on the whole, I have to come down in favor of openness and opportunities for foreigners. Part of that might means some practical measures like loosening the restrictions on H1B workers so they are better able to seek market rates once they've arrived. Another thing I strongly believe is that if you opened things up between "wealthy" nations: US, Canada, Europe, Australia, NZ, etc... there wouldn't be any huge population shifts.

... Wow... it's easy to write lots when the rant is strong within :-)

I'm married to someone who moved to Switzerland for work, and my understanding is, the US is not alone in the world for onerous immigration and work visa policies.

That's correct - basically everyone treats their immigrants like shit. I was in Italy more or less illegally until I got married, although it must be said that they do respect the institution of marriage more than in the US: once you're married, you can stay, no questions asked.

Bureaucracy in the US isn't all that bad for many things, but from the point of view of a potential immigrant, it can be pretty ugly. Anyone remember when they were stringing along Linus Torvalds and people raised a fuss about it?