Apple played an important role in this, but that's irrelevant. The fact that this is still going on holds equal wait on all the Silicon Valley giants. I mean who cares if Apple played a role in this. Oh right... We hate Apple...
The fact of the matter is these are companies that are self interested, it just so happens that a lot of their technologies agree with what many people believe. Decentralization of power, power to the people, internet, technology, rebellion against old ways, etc. etc. But we can never forget that these companies are exactly what was in the past, just in a new era with new toys.
If we're to make progress it's important to try, and do things differently.
It's all propaganda. There's no engineering shortage. They're all just trying to flood the market with more engineers from all around the world.
It's all propaganda plastered with a nice marmalade of feel goody "let's help the immigrants", or "everything great about our country came from immigrants", or other such variants of rhetoric. It's actually very smart, because it plays to the tune that people dance to.
That said immigration policies do need to change, and immigration is indeed a good thing for this country. Attracting talent is a lot of what makes this country great, but we need to be careful with the fine print of such policies as to not destroy our own economy.
> That said immigration policies do need to change, and immigration is indeed a good thing for this country.
I want them to change too... but in a different way. I'd rather that we take the unwanted and wounded, the homosexuals threatened to receive capital punishment in Uganda, the atheists who worry for their lives in Saudia Arabia, the homeless in Mexico yearning for just a small improvement in the access of opportunity (no matter how small of a step it may be). Let the Indians keep their talented engineers -- let them improve India, god knows it's got enough problem of its own, don't send them to us here so they can make another silly app. Let China keep its engineers, so they may one day create technologies that truly challenge the great firewall.
Seriously, is it just me who sees this aggressive attempt of siphoning the world's talent as being opportunistic and predatorial? This is not the spirit of America that Emma envisioned, this isn't something to be proud of.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Idealistic and well-intentioned. But there's little opportunity in many places for Engineers to be fully used. Its a positive good for humanity to get the most out of talented people. That can happen in America.
> Its a positive good for humanity to get the most out of talented people. That can happen in America.
I seriously, honestly doubt this.
Consider the main force behind FWD.us: Mark Zuckerberg.
You're telling me the most positive good for humanity to get out of talented people is at Facebook, where the most valuable people to the company are those who optimize advertisement algorithms that exploit cognitive biases of a population already being challenged in all sorts of horrendous ways?
I really don't think your perspective is getting things right. If the engineers want to make great apps for Android or iOS, they can make it sitting in India or China or Brazil or wherever.
Who says Facebook will be where they end up? Will the legislature make a 'facebook' law? That's disingenuous.
Silicon Valley is definitely a place where talented people can find their own, and thrive.
Americans move there, to take part in the opportunities only available by meeting and visiting personally. Its a second-rate experience to try to do it from afar (this from a guy that is 2000 miles from SF), especially if you've never been there and have no contacts.
> Let China keep its engineers, so they may one day create technologies that truly challenge the great firewall
Aha! Eric Schmidt had to just write a clever email like this instead and he would be applauded instead of criticized. To Apple: We would rather that you keep your Engineers - god knows you've got enough problems with your services! We will keep ours in return!
I guess if the huddled and poor learn programming, get good at it and start working for less - that'd be the right time to send them home to fix problems in their homeland and look for other huddled and poor - lather, rinse, repeat and all of world's problem magically disappear. Hey "the other" people are malleable masses with no ideas/likes/visions of their own - we can do as we please with them. Oh and they all, being Engineers have absolutely magical powers to solve any problem you throw at them - Terrorism, poverty, energy, hunger - you name it and they will solve it no matter how much oppression and apathy and violence confronts them!
Yeah, you made it sound idealistic but it's hypocritical and has no chance of working. It isn't far fetched to say that if the Engineers in China/India saw a way to make great opportunities happen in their own homeland to further their and their country's interests, they would never migrate to whole another continent in the first place. It isn't easy to migrate you know.
I love how the discussion has gone from wage fixing to keeping out Indians and Chinese in the name of improving their countries. FYI, Indians and Chinese engineers come here because they are just as powerless as your atheists, homosexuals etc in their countries (but not discriminated against directly).
There's no engineering shortage. They're all just trying to flood the market with more engineers from all around the world.
You could argue that this is the actual natural order of things. Let the free market decide the value of an engineer, not arbitrary government regulation. It is the Silicon Valley way, after all.
Government control of immigration is a natural consequence of government establishing and defending a border. If you want to take the free market to its logical conclusion, we should get rid of that too, and leave Silicon Valley to its own devices vis-à-vis fending off hostile foreign actors. Historically that sort of thing has not worked out well.
Note that the products/services made by these immigrants are sold globally, not just in the US. Google, for example, acquires more than 50% of it's revenues from outside the US.
If you don't object to google's selling it's services across the world on free-market principles, it'll take a rather large leap of (il)logic to constrain the employment to be restricted to the physical location of the HQ of this global company.
Movement of residents is fundamentally different than movement of goods. Moreover, nothing constrains Google from hiring people in locations outside the US to service those markets.
Free market is strongly against "Cartels".
Because, yeah, ceo-cartels are another way of arbitrary regulation. See them as a "maximum wage fixed" and you get why.
Oh, I know. I wasn't disputing that. Just making an observation on perspective - that the current system of limited immigration is not the fairest, but it's in the interests of developers today to resist it being changed.
The natural order of things is that we have a process in place to create and change government regulation. If someone thinks that process is inflexible or arbitrary doesn't given the prerogative to break the law to get around it.
The natural order of things is the formation of powerful groups that ruthlessly exploit their environment. Ironically the Free Market needs governments to provide the institutions in which it can operate.
> we need to be careful with the fine print of such policies as to not destroy our own economy.
Au contraire. Many Americans and Europeans would get a huge and valuable smack with the clue-bat if there were no immigration restrictions, and if licensing schemes designed to create arbitrary shortages of e.g. doctors were eliminated.
I think immigration policy will eventually be nonexistent, but before then many things need to happen. The developing nations need to achieve a certain quality of living across the board so that the people there don't all just decide to get up, and leave.
Economies need to become less decentralized, and more global in their scope. Which arguable is very much a reality today, but I think this is simply the beginning.
And there's a whole host of other developments that need to happen, but I believe eventually will happen in the coming decades. We'll see a more homogenous world, yet also a more diverse one.
This idea is absurd which I believe arises from a certain type of perspective that humanity needs to go beyond. Humanity needs to be less caged in perception. Let me expound on a point of view that maybe different to what see.
To separate matter, and mind is a paradoxical argument, because they're both of the same thing. Going back to the old idea of the fallen tree, if there's no mind then matter does not exist, and if matter doesn't exist then mind can not arise.
To put in other terms, if there's nothing receiving the projection, then what is the projection projecting on? Projection, and reception are another way of looking at mind, and matter. Mind being reception, matter being projection.
So going by that logic, and assuming that we're all made of matter, we can say that matter itself is both projection, and reception. So if matter is both projection, and reception, then what does that mean? Are we all "just" matter? Yes. Exactly.
But the argument isn't whether or not we're made of matter. I think we all agree that we're made of matter. I think the argument is that we humans share a certain inexorable feeling of qualia that arises from being human. Yes that's it. It's that qualia that distinguishes us from the rest of everything, except...
The problem is that qualia arises from our material form. Of course assuming that everything is matter, and the idea of the eternal soul, or other such argument, is false. Then that means qualia itself is matter.
Ok. What the hell am I getting at?
Maybe matter is more complex, more interesting than we perceive. Maybe matter itself is "intelligent", and it's just another form distinct from human perception. hmmm... So am I saying that everything that is matter is "intelligent"? Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying, BUT there are different forms of material patterns that form different constructs intelligence.
Meaning that how we receive, or in what form we receive the projection determines our perspective. Right now it just so happens we humans have a POV of humans.
The thing is that due to our incredible ability to not just receive, but to also project what we receive onto different things gives us the power of empathy. The illusion that we can perceive from a different POV. That we can somehow distill our perspective, and project it onto another thing. It's worked quite well so far. Mathematics, language, science, etc. But once we try to see from another perspective that's unimaginably different then it all breaks down.
Let's try to look at the perspective of ant for instance. Well we can't, because if you think about it you can't think of non-thought. Think of non-thinking, is an oxymoron. An ant doesn't think, I mean I'm sure it thinks, but it has completely different sense organs, a completely different set of logical processes, it has a completely different structure, and a completely different perspective than humans. It's unimaginable, because we can only view it from our perspective, which in its renders the idea false. We can only view the world from our perspective. Yet we can't call the ant unintelligent, an ant is very intelligent.
What we see is just that, and what we see differently, is still just seeing. We can't stop seeing, and once we stop seeing, then we stop being human. A human being is just another form of seeing, ants another, computers yet another. Everything has intelligence, it's just not in a recognizable form. In a relatable form. We're all just a box of switches. A mesh of material patterns that filters through existence to produce being. Demeaning different forms of being as lesser is a very human centric perspective. See differently, from the top of the mount, and realize you'll only ever see like a human being.
By that logic we'll have to throw out some of the most influential authors. People like Hemingway, David Foster Wallace, Fitzgerald, Mary Shelley, etc. etc. Their reflections on life wouldn't matter, and the study of what they've thought on life would be meaningless. Perhaps from your POV that's true, but I simply don't agree with that.
An author's personal life is not indicative of their wisdom, or perspective. After all this life is simply a variety of events that just happen, all of which can't be perfect, or just the way you want. Life is just the way it is, and you, as a human being, are molded around it. Cognitively that's how a human being works, we learn, and we grow. See it for what life is, and go with it. After a while you'll develop your own perspective from wherever you stand.
Humans aren't unbiased. We have biases, hence why courts give the conflicting parties a chance to choose their juries, and dismiss them if there's conflict of interest.
Same thing applies here. It's valid to bring up his background, and considering his background I don't expect him to be unbiased in his assessment. I wouldn't even be surprised if he's actively working against Tesla.
Wouldn't it make more sense to live well wherever we are? I'm not saying we have to settle for Earth, but the focus should be on how people are living and not how many planets get checked off.
Living longer means signification rise in population on earth and given the unsustainable state of our planet, it makes more sense to look for other similar planets for habitation.
And if we invent faster than light travel in future it will be natural for people to leave earth in the spirit of exploration just like Europeans did to find the New World.
The fact of the matter is these are companies that are self interested, it just so happens that a lot of their technologies agree with what many people believe. Decentralization of power, power to the people, internet, technology, rebellion against old ways, etc. etc. But we can never forget that these companies are exactly what was in the past, just in a new era with new toys.
If we're to make progress it's important to try, and do things differently.