formulaT
Joined 11 years ago
Joined 11 years ago
Edit: actually it seems like they plan to rent it out to people funded by grants money and government contracts: Pegasus plans to rent the facility out to parties interested in conducting large-scale tests, and they’re anticipating demand.
But in any case, H1-B visas can lower the wages of engineers without H1-B holders earning less than Americans. It's just like any import. The import itself doesn't have to be sold for cheaper, it's just that the presence of the import lowers the price via competition, so that both the import and the local good are cheaper than the price before importing started.
As a consequence [of our hypothesis], people overestimate the extent to which recipients of their self-promotion will feel proud of and happy for them, and underestimate the extent to which recipients will feel annoyed (Experiments 1 and 2). Because people tend to promote themselves excessively when trying to make a favorable impression on others, such efforts often backfire, causing targets of self-promotion to view self-promoters as less likeable and as braggarts (Experiment 3).
The only reason to limit immigration is externalities. For example, Israel has very open immigration for Jews. It does not allow open immigration for African refugees because they believe it would have a negative impact on their society. For some strange reason, other nations are fearful of stating the same thing, but they clearly have something like this in mind when they limit immigration.
Cheap labor is a net positive. The only valid reason to oppose immigration (and I think it is very valid) is the negative social externalities that immigration causes.
If you make money "squarely" as described in I-IV, then you have created some value. Cashing out in section V is simply consuming that value.
All we can say (given the assumptions in I-IV) is that the person was a net positive (or zero) for the Congolese economy.
The technical mistake that the author makes is not realizing that adding value to the Congolese economy means increasing the total amount of physical wealth in the economy. When the person cashes out their yacht, they are simply exchanging cash for the physical wealth they helped create.
I don't think you can logically say that I-IV are "libertarian twaddle" and that V "brings it home", because V is predicated on I-IV being true. If you're interested in the theoretical basis behind "econ 101" I suggest you look into general equilibrium theory.
My only reservation was the artificial 10% interest rate. The current interest rate is 0%. Over the last 100 years interest rates averaged 5%. This is a concern to me because people on the Right tend to fetishize compound interest rates, while MMM seems to focus on true fundamentals.
See also the #cancelcolbert controversy[0]. Imagine if this had been any "oppressed" group instead.
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-campaign-to-canc...
[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/27...
My position is that even with the current welfare system, technologies that increase productivity, but make some people unemployed, are still good from a utilitarian perspective. The trickle down effect (including through the existing welfare system), which benefits the entire poor population, makes up for the negative effect on the newly unemployed.
EDIT: as always, I have no problem with downvotes for my other opinions, but it's really sad to see downvotes for economic orthodoxy. If anyone reading this downvoted me, please educate yourself on mainstream economic thinking. You don't want to be remembered as an anti-vaccination advocate.
And the topics (the problematic ones of which I listed) clearly suggest they are anticipating similar content. If you want to defend both hackathons, please do so, but don't try to win this argument on an irrelevant technicality.
I'm trying to understand how all these safeguards failed.