From Facebook:
Okay, Mark, we get it, you've given the government indirect access.
Interestingly, Twitter, unlike many of the other big tech players, simply refused to make it easier for the government to get Tweets. (I'm not sure how world-historical most Tweets are, but still ...) Twitter's successful recalcitrance suggests that the tech firms that did play along did so less because the government was holding a gun to their heads, than because they figured it would be worth their while in the long run to play ball with Washington.
One obvious question is whether the big increase in H1-B visas in The Eight Banditos' immigration bill is a quasi-quid pro quo payoff to the National Association for the Advancement of Billionaire People for their cooperation in spying on their customers (or whatever it is you call what, say, Facebook has).
It kind of makes sense, but the fact that it makes sense probably means this theory is less likely. A simpler, more general explanation is that the Gang of Eight wants to drive down the standard of living of American engineers merely because they hate Americans.
By the way, if 18,271,654 people are electronically following Mark Zuckerberg, how many people is Mark Zuckerberg electronically following?
By the way, if 18,271,654 people are electronically following Mark Zuckerberg, how many people is Mark Zuckerberg electronically following?
Posts
61 comments:
As Steve Jobs said on his death bed, "Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow."
I dont remember if it was grubbler of Hunsdon who posited all these technocrats run amock be they lawyers,regulators,bankers,economists or software tycoons as revenge of the nerds.
Isnt all this their equivalent of giving Joe sixpack a wedgie in revenge for latter stealing the formers lunch money in the 9th grade?
Who knew the caste system in coastal high schools would have such pernicious effects in the real mega global world?
To Dr Van Nostrand:
Not only that, these out of control nerds developed their sexual tastes in High school while spanking their monkeys to National Geographic instead of trying to go all the way with the girls in the French Club. Now they support continued third world mass immigration, which keeps them amply supplied with a variety of vibrant Craigslist hookers who help them fulfill their HS fantasies of coitus with pygmies, Eskimos, Hmong, and Amazon mud women.
giving Joe sixpack a wedgie
This seems more a case of "we can do anything; go anywhere; adopt any lifestyle; accept any immigrant; and it will work out, we will be okay." Thus we have Obama playing basketball with pros, because "he can do anything"; Charlie Sheen (Carlos Estavez? WTF?) bragging that he has tiger blood and can party to any extent; Bush into Iraq.
I'm shocked, shocked, to discover that two Israeli firms are contracted to process all of the resulting data from Verizon and AT&T.
A simpler explanation is that the Gang of Eight wants to drive down the standard of living of American engineers merely because they hate Americans.
========================
I really do not understand why you would actually believe this. These senators are extremely ambitious people. They crave fame, money, power. In order to get these things, they have to please those who already have lots of money and power. Like, say, billionaires. Also, they want to be portrayed favorably in the media. That would help smooth their ways to more money, fame and power. So they do things and say things that make the media and billionaires happy.
The media will praise people who make their bosses happy. THe media works for those who own the corporations that buy ads in the media. Who owns most corporate shares? Rich folks.
So, if you are a senator and you want to be president someday or want to be a billionaire, then you need to curry favor with billionaires, and their minions, the corporate media. As you already pointed out many times, mass immigration, more H1B visas etc make billionaires happy. Cheaper labor so profits go up, and more americans buying things so revenues go up.
So it is not that billionaires hate americans. They do not, no more than the man who wields the sledgehammer on the slaughterhouse killing floor hates cattle. He is just in it for the money.
So are they. The problem is that we working class americans need to face up to the truth.
Okay, then what was the motivation for PRISM?
Is Obama merely collecting information for OFA, as Maxine Waters suggested a few months ago?
Considering that Osama's main motivation as he started his career was the Israeli – Palestinian issue, loss of our privacy rights is just another cost, in addition to endless Middle East wars, of supporting the Scottish homeland.
Robert Hume
A simpler explanation is that the Gang of Eight wants to drive down the standard of living of American engineers merely because they hate Americans
So do ordinary Americans, and they would try it if given the chance.
You guys are totally owned.
It makes perfect sense for the nation of immigrants to hate the nation of settlers. Once the land has been settled and a civilization is in place, its time to take it. The nation of settlers is generally too busy holding the civilization together to defend its political interests, so taking is generally easy as long as you keep centralizing things away from the immediate perception of the settlers. However, every now and then, the settlers notice things like -- oh, I don't know -- their lives are being made Hell by the collapse of the middle class with consequent broken marriages and collapsing demography. They even start noticing that their collapsing demography is being used as justification for replacing them as a people by the nation of immigrants and that's when its time to HATE. Of course, HATE is only a crime against humanity if it is the nation of settlers who HATE the nation of immigrants. Its OK to HATE the nation of settlers because, well they don't have any right to HATE and there they go all a-HATE'n as though they had a right to even think of themselves as a nation of settlers.
OT: Steve, have you seen this article on the influence of genes on differences in childhood reading proficiency? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22801713
Are the three genes mentioned thought to be connected with reading ability, in particular, or general intelligence?
http://darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-timidity-of-john-hibbing-and.html
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/20/gore-vidal-ashes-hollywood/
I find it enlightening that all those Congress-critters who were yapping at Benghazi, AP and the IRS like hyper Pomeranians fell silent on PRISM.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/my-negro-problem-and-ours-at-50/
Sheeeeeeeeet, bro.
From the prospective of Zuckerberg/Facebook, I think it was the other way around. The govt "asks" for the data - in ways that mean we'll probably never know the details without a massive high level leak - and he decides to get something in return.
As far as the immigration goes, I don't think there's much active, conscious hatred of Amurca. It's just a complete lack of that visceral feeling that they owe anything to the wider community. Plus, it's not like they and theirs will be the ones affected, right? It's wilful cluelessness.
Let me reiterate that H1-B visas are perhaps an abuse, but a rather mild one.
We all realize that John D. Rockefeller was not a nice man. He was hard on his competitors but he was ultimately good for the nation. The public benefitted from his ruthless business practices.
So it is with the tech barons who want to bring in coders at below market wages. Having more smart young guys in America is a fundamentally good thing. But everything comes at a price. In this case that price is paid by the segment of native coders who otherwise might have had higher wages.
But if a smart young native coder can't get a job in one of the high tech industries that have conspired to fill all slots with low paid foreigners, he will have to do something else, probably for less money. That's not a perfect situation but it's not all that serious.
What's the solution? The native coder can do something else. Other areas of the economy will be enriched. A sharp coder doesn't get dumber when he switches fields.
My educational background was in math and management. But in the mid nineties I decided to be a coder because the market was right. It took me three days to get my first coding job - no previous coding experience on my resume.
The market for coders was good then but if it hadn't been, I would have done something else. I might have gone into chemistry or the oil industry or some other field. Opportunities constantly shift. Unemployed native coders will find work.
Compare that with the typical barely Neolithic level Mexican peasant who loses his job when the economy shifts. He may take an ineffective government training program or he may go straight onto unemployment compensation for as long as he can manage. Uneducated and unskilled men with poor English and low intelligence just add to the genetic burden. A burden that is growing.
I think you should just ignore the H1-B problem.
Albertosaurus
The creepy thing was how the statement from Larry Page at Google was almost identical to Zuckerberg's. It denied "direct access to our servers" and said they had never heard of "PRISM". Why do two different tech companies use almost identical statements unless they've planned this denial ahead of time.
Yes, more H1-B visas. My area needs more highly skilled Indian (dots not feathers)Subway franchisees. They rock as sandwich artists.
The other thing is that now the terrorists know (if they didn't already…) that anything they push through the internet is scanned by the USG. But they have the advantage that the amount of data they need for communication is miniscule compared to the flow of the internet. All they have to do is exchange wedding photos, or comment on youtube, or set up a minecraft serve on rackspace, and they can hide whatever evil doings they want in a flood of data that even the NSA can't see through unless they're tipped off.
It's a good thing the Pakistanis are generally so dumb they can't figure out anything better than gmail accounts. If Israelis were trying to blow us up you can bet they wouldn't get caught by the NSA.
But basically, the NSA has now sunk tens or hundreds of billions into datacenters that are only going to catch the dumbest of the terrorists. And political opponents who communicate in the open.
Must have been grubbler.
I dont remember if it was grubbler of Hunsdon who posited all these technocrats run amock be they lawyers,regulators,bankers,economists or software tycoons as revenge of the nerds.
Plenty of lawyers, government workers, people in the finance sector, and programmers are getting hammered by the flood of foreigners into the United States.
From an April 19, 2013 press release from the FBI on Tamerlan Tsarnaev:
"Once the FBI learned the identities of the two brothers today, the FBI reviewed its records and determined that in early 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.....
In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history."
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/2011-request-for-information-on-tamerlan-tsarnaev-from-foreign-government
Steve just wants white people in this country. He wants no brown people, whether educated or not. It will be fun to gloat here when the bill passes, the quota increases, and a South Asian son of an HI-B take's his kid's spot at Berkeley *on the merits*.
=======================
Laguna Beach Fogey quoted sailer and said...
A simpler explanation is that the Gang of Eight wants to drive down the standard of living of American engineers merely because they hate Americans
.........................
So do ordinary Americans, and they would try it if given the chance.
You guys are totally owned.
=================
Emma West, in her heroic tram rant last year, said, in regards to mass immigration in Britain: "Britain is nothing now. Britain is f**k all. My Britain is f**k all now."
Well, that goes in spades for america (no pun intended).
"Formerly Anonymous said...
I find it enlightening that all those Congress-critters who were yapping at Benghazi, AP and the IRS like hyper Pomeranians fell silent on PRISM."
Also, FOX News. They're making a lot of hay out of the IRS scandal (and good for them for doing so), but then trot out their stable of neo-con stooges (like Karl Rove) to tell us that it's good that the NSA is spying on us.......all of us........every single goddamned one of us.
"pat said...
I think you should just ignore the H1-B problem."
It's something that resonates with middle-class white engineers - because it could personally effect them. It's a way of getting them to begin to realize that immigration is bad for the nation.
"Anonymous said...
I'm shocked, shocked, to discover that two Israeli firms are contracted to process all of the resulting data from Verizon and AT&T."
Amdocs, an Israeli company, handles billing for most of the major phone companies in America, which means they know who placed calls to whom, when, and for how long. They should be classified as a foreign intelligence gathering organization, but of course they are not. For example, they know exactly who Senator Lindsey Graham talks to. That perhaps explains a great deal about Lindsey Graham and his legislative agenda.
Also, look up Comverse and Verint. It is really no secret why America so readily serves Israel's interests.
Anonymous said:Steve just wants white people in this country. He wants no brown people, whether educated or not. It will be fun to gloat here when the bill passes, the quota increases, and a South Asian son of an HI-B take's his kid's spot at Berkeley *on the merits*.
.................................................................................
Is it wrong to care more for one's children than for strangers?
-The Judean People's Front
I think you should just ignore the H1-B problem.
You're usually smarter than this. If we're going to turn back the tide of mass immigration, we're going to need as many citizens on our side as possible. We can't afford to leave out an entire sector of the work force just because the people who are in line to replace them aren't as offensive as the people who are replacing others.
Also, while the H1-B push might currently be focused on programmers, there's no reason it can't be used to replace plenty of other white collar and clerical jobs. Once the programmers have been replaced, next might be the bank tellers, the paralegals, or the insurance adjusters. Is there any job that someone in some other country couldn't learn to do and be willing to do more cheaply?
We need the country kids who can't get a summer farm job anymore because Mexicans replaced them. We need the construction worker who got laid off because subcontracting to a crew of Guatemalans was cheaper. We need the family who lost a member to a drunk-driving illegal who was arrested but never deported. We need the couple whose property values dropped because of the incursion. And yes, we need the programmers who are being replaced by Indians. We need every person who can see the negative effects of mass immigration, and few see them better than the replaced worker. We can't afford to ignore him.
"http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/my-negro-problem-and-ours-at-50/
Sheeeeeeeeet, bro."
I notice that Podhoretz doesn't even mention the possibility that, instead of racism, low IQ and other HBD is the cause of conflict between black-and-white and the cause of lack of achievement by blacks.
Is he afraid of being Watsoned, or is he ignorant?
Robert Hume
"Having more smart young guys in America is a fundamentally good thing." - Regression to mean, ethnic tribalism,etc.
Cail Corashev wrote:
"We need the country kids who can't get a summer farm job anymore because Mexicans replaced them. We need the construction worker who got laid off because subcontracting to a crew of Guatemalans was cheaper. We need the family who lost a member to a drunk-driving illegal who was arrested but never deported. We need the couple whose property values dropped because of the incursion. And yes, we need the programmers who are being replaced by Indians. We need every person who can see the negative effects of mass immigration, and few see them better than the replaced worker. We can't afford to ignore him."
The problem with that though, exactly who is "we?"
I gather most of the readers here camp in one section of the big ideological wilderness, but personally I want no part of a Libertarian world.
I think Free Trade is a mistake in most cases. Whether you want to call it Fair Trade, Managed Trade, or Mercantilism, something of that sort is what I want to happen.
I'd be content with the kind of educational system California had in the 60's if it could be affordable. I wouldn't even think twice about taxing people to have it. If you don't like it, or a business doesn't like, you can move.
Leaving aside Obamacare, some sort of mass health care initiative is inevitable. Medical cost already suck us dry, and the costs are still increasing. It's not practical for a great number of people to pay insurance premiums on their own, and it is increasingly out of range for smaller companies as well.
And this is without considering Obamacare and the changes that are going to happen. The health care system is broken now, without considering that.
The situation is similar with all the other things insurance covers, auto, home, etc.
And the regulatory boards of most states are in bed with them.
I'd feel a lot more comfortable with a Republican Party that was willing to say "We are going to kick some insurance company ass. Get your pitchfork and torch and meet down at Blue Cross."
Of course I'm not holding my breath on the Democrats either.
Many of us here observe the same problems. I'm not so sure we agree on the solutions.
One, there is a class struggle between rich, White, mostly New England culturally neo-Puritans, and the rest of the Western world, "rednecks," or NASCAR nation or hooligans or whatever you want to call them. The first group wants to annihilate the latter. Simple as that, and as old as the New England HATE HATE HATE for the backwoods people and the Southern Aristocrats.
Two, Bin Laden's "awakening" had nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians, but as Lawrence Wright in "the Looming Tower" recounts, was all to do with the 1979 takeover of the Mecca Mosque by Islamists and their slaughter by the Saudis and GIGN. It awakened in Osama the idea that he could topple the regime and be essentially a mini-Mohammed. That's the constant danger in Islamic societies -- young men on the outs deciding to topple the regime for insufficient Islam. Copying explicitly Mohammed.
I'm with Steve. I WANT more Whites in this country because it means more people like me, who might plausibly be my greatly extended family, who would share my basic interests and be willing to sacrifice some to help me when I need it. I know for certain I won't get a bit of help and nothing but the boot from non-Whites.
I thought the bigger sociological problem with H-1B--rather than the dollars/cents decision to recruit employees able to write cat-photo-database subroutines but unable to quit and start up cat-photo competitors--was the Family Reunification pressure-cooker. "Labor" might frictionlessly move to & fro but lately people seem not to
In America, you watch TV.
In [fill in the blank], TV watches you!
pat: Let me reiterate that H1-B visas are perhaps an abuse, but a rather mild one.[...]
So it is with the tech barons who want to bring in coders at below market wages. Having more smart young guys in America is a fundamentally good thing. [...]
I think you should just ignore the H1-B problem.
Pat, this was an astoundingly thoughtless comment on this topic for somebody who's been around here as long as you have. Yeah, right, H-1B visas are just some minor problem for a small segment of the skilled labor force (and with no ramifications beyond lowered wages or a spot of unemployment). To quote a previous (unrelated) comment: Sheeeeeeeeet, bro.
Anonymous: "Steve just wants white people in this country. He wants no brown people, whether educated or not. It will be fun to gloat here when the bill passes, the quota increases, and a South Asian son of an HI-B take's his kid's spot at Berkeley *on the merits*."
JPF: "Is it wrong to care more for one's children than for strangers?"
That depends. Is one brown or white?
"I think you should just ignore the H1-B problem."
I think this is absolutely wrong. Couldn't be more wrong. Might as well just ignore the whole immigration problem or ignore the future of the US. Embark on a program to deliberately destroy the US. The Sampson Option. Albertosaurus you must have woken-up depressed.
It's the other way around. Given that it exists, whether unemployment of field workers in the central valley is 30% or 40% doesn't really matter that much (what matters is that it exists, period). I was in a meeting last week with a core engineering group of a major silicon valley company. Over a dozen engineers, plus me. I was the only non-Indian. A few of the Indians had US grad degrees but the majority had degrees from schools in India. Odd how engineering groups in the US can be all Indian, and it raises absolutely no diversity issues, but if it's all white males...
Why should California invest in education if Californian tech companies are just going to hire their technical talent direct from India?
Maybe if H1-B's were markedly more intelligent than average engineers, maybe it would be worth it. But they're not. They are average, sometimes less than average and almost always lack the "I want to be in engineering to change the world" kind of drive. At least 90% of them are in it primarily for the money. They are an investment for their extended family. And where does their loyalty lie? That's right, with their extended families back in India. It's foolish to structure careers in the US such that these people will be in charge. They will simply continue to be primarily loyal to their larger ethnic group to the detriment of others.
As it is, there is absolutely no reason for this type of "replacement logic" not to go on forever. Why stop at software engineers? Why not replace Albertosaurus at whatever he does now? Why should the company ever stop hiring ever-and-ever cheaper employees from wherever is poorest in the world and bring them to the US? It's a net win! Why shouldn't they bring in lawyers? Or marketers?
Take all the working population of the US, including those that do supposedly non-outsourceable jobs like EMT and plumber. Why couldn't you replace them all with cheaper workers, given the billions of people that exist in the world? Surely if you try hard enough and wait long enough, you could replace all the US workers with smarter workers?
Why not go for it? Think of the lower wages and the higher profit margins!!! Think how much all the poor brown people would enjoy it! It would be evil not to do it!!!
I claim Western civilization as we've known it just can't exist without a deep intrinsic connection to engineering. It's that simple. And for that reason alone H1-Bs are bad. (There are numerous other reasons why the H1-B is bad; like you say, it's an H1-B "problem".)
If Israelis were trying to blow us up you can bet they wouldn't get caught by the NSA.
How could the National Security Agency catch them, since the NSA has outsourced its information technology work to Israeli firms?
... Another motive for certain peepul wanting to import more H1-B's. Computer work that previously was outsourced to Israelis could be brought back home to an American firm staffed by the proper sort of H1-B's doing work for which American Americans just don't seem to be qualified.
" ... revenge of the nerds.
Isnt all this their equivalent of giving Joe sixpack a wedgie in revenge for latter stealing the formers lunch money in the 9th grade?"
I don't think this sort of soap-opera thing is involved. Over the last 25 years there has been very tight integration of the Wall Street investment banking industry and silicon valley.
Start-ups gave the investment banks a way to print money if they had legal bodies with legal degrees, be it from Rwanda U. The investment banks didn't care about anything else but the money; that was their job. The people at the top, both of the investment banks and the companies, often had little reason to give Joe sixpack, or the future of the US, for that matter, a thought. Despite some prominent exceptions, most of the people at the top of the banks or the large public companies were not (and are not) "tech nerds". They were in it for the money.
Heck, I knew a few Wall Street investment bank types dabbling in silicon valley who just a few years earlier had been Soviet technocrats. Amazing how many of those guys successfully made the jump to Wall Street traders and programming in silicon valley, within just a few years of the fall of the wall. (Albertosaurus had a story about some ex-KGB programmer or somesuch...) If they had the right background, education, and language skills it was an amazingly easy transition. These guys fit into the culture of making big bucks as fast as possible, devil take the hindmost. Why would anyone expect these guys to act in a way that took the well-being of Joe Sixpack into account?
This is an extreme example, but the overall point holds. There is an institutional problem, a structural problem. Perhaps in the war between the guys who would do anything for money and the legal/political/diversity profession, the fate of Joe Sixpack (and Joe Sixpack programmer) just slipped through the cracks. Or maybe the politico/legal types decided, perhaps unconsciously, that money was power and they were just in it for the money as well. In any case, hard to see how this will end well.
"It's something that resonates with middle-class white engineers - because it could personally effect them. It's a way of getting them to begin to realize that immigration is bad for the nation."
Sighs. Hits head on wall. Can this really be?
Among other things that come to mind, back in the late 1990s there was a small silicon valley header-hunter recruiter "newspaper" that got to the point where it carried some interesting writing. About a year before it went out of business it started carrying stories and debates about outsourcing and H1-B type stuff and running editorials along the lines of "...as a newsman I thought all those American engineers complaining to us were racists, but now I'm beginning to think there's a problem..."
By and large US engineers, including software engineers, are far ahead, maybe decades ahead, of the rest of the nation in understanding the negatives of open immigration. They often have first-hand experience with the issue at a professional level. They are also often analytic enough to wonder about that old line about open immigration and the modern welfare state being incompatible and know that oscillating systems with negative feedback can destroy themselves.
There are liberal and libertarian programmers, but you can find those in any profession.
Dr. Norm Matloff of the UC Davis computer science department has an H1-B page. Some of the points he high-lights:
"The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor.
...the average quality of the H-1Bs is LOWER than that of the Americans.
Age is THE core H-1B issue.
Another major attraction for employers, especially in Silicon Valley, is the "handcuffed" status of H-1Bs.
H-1Bs are often paid less than comparable American...
Underpayment of H-1Bs is usually done in full compliance with the law.
Legal fees are tiny compared to the wages savings the employer accrues by hiring the foreign worker.
There is no tech labor shortage.
...there is no shortage of American engineers at the bachelor's degree level.
The world's "best and brightest" should be welcomed, but only a tiny percentage of H-1Bs are in that league.
H-1B is causing an internal brain drain of the best and brightest American talents.
...almost no jobs in the computer industry need a PhD...
...the use of the H-1B program as a means of holding down PhD salaries, by flooding the job market with foreign students.
The per-capita rates of patents among immigrant engineers have been similar to, or lower than, those of natives.
H-1B employers are NOT required to try to fill the jobs with Americans before hiring the foreign workers."
"It will be fun to gloat here when the bill passes..."
This sort of attitude is why immigration to the US should be dramatically reduced, perhaps even a moratorium like back in the 20s. How is importing this attitude good for the US?
Does this sound like someone you want to be bound to by American citizenship?
Me thinks all this Obama scandal stuff is to get the bad stuff out of the way so as to give Obama a grand sendoff in 2016.
The Jewish-controlled media want Obama to leave office as one of the greatest presidents ever. So, by raising all this fuss about scandal so early in the second term, the media are sending a message to Obama to be careful and clean up his act a bit.
Also, by making all such noise, the media get to claim that they didn't just serve as the propagandists for Obama but really did their job. This way, they get to keep their street cred as the 'fourth estate'.
Think about it. Why are all these things coming out so early in 2013? I think it's really to clear the air by 2015/2016 when the media will give Obama the grandest send-off ever.
Suck out the bad blood early in the second term so as to celebrate Obama's exiting the stage in 2016.
Jews don't fool me.
Having locally-owned social media is now a part of national sovereignty, though obviously a less important one than nukes. There are only a handful of truly sovereign states in the world.
Russia has its own Facebook-like system called "V Kontakte" (in contact). According to Alexa, it's the second most popular site in Russia. Facebook is #8. The most popular site in Russia is the search engine Yandex. Google is #4.
The top 6 web sites in China are Chinese. Google is #7, followed by lots of Chinese sites. I've just looked through the top 100, and didn't find Facebook. THAT's national sovereignty. US intelligence would have to hack and spy hard for access to Chinese social media servers. And it might still not get it.
I've looked at Alexa's rankings for Iran. Facebook is not in the top 100, but Google is #1 and Yahoo is #2. Unsurprisingly, no data at all for North Korea.
Nerds could develop open-source, non-profit alternatives to social media that would safeguard users' privacy. If the Wikipedia stays afloat, so could a non-profit, independent Facebook knock-off. And it's a shame that we all use Google every day even though there are lots of less evil alternatives.
"direct access to our servers"
There'll be some kind of special interface no doubt. Given that, say, google and the USG have the same kind of big data issues (scanning massive amounts of data looking for patterns - for advertising/trawling and putting together data - for individual 'pictures' or for web searches), it would not be completely surprising if the expertise of one wasn't loaned to the other.
In the days when the Internet was just starting to take off but was still pretty much the province of computer geeks who could figure out what AT codes their modem required to make a decent connection, I remember an online poll in which the libertarian candidate (I think it was for president, which would have put it in 1996 or late 1995) won the poll. Yes, won outright, getting more votes than any other candidate at the time. Now, I'm sure that didn't happen in every poll, but for a guy who probably got 2% at most in offline polls to come anywhere close to a plurality in an online poll shows just how different that world was.
Geeks tend to lean very libertarian, especially the idealistic, unworkable variety of libertarianism, because they're smart, logical, and tend to be low on empathy. They're used to dealing with things that work as they say on the label: put in the right inputs, you get out the right outputs. Open borders makes sense to them because it works out on paper, and if you point out to them that welfare and fiat money keep it from following the ideal, they just say fix those things too. Just get the inputs right.
And the low empathy means they just don't think much about what ditch-diggers need. Their ideals will raise all boats, so they don't worry about the effect on individuals. They cheered as loudly as any Marxist when Spock said, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." That's why H1-B is important -- it hits them where they live. They may not care about the fruit-picker who gets replaced, but they'll notice when the last other American in the office gets replaced.
I think People here are a little extra paranoid about Indian H1-Bs, Here are some facts I can relate to this H1-B issue.
1. According to CIA fact-book there are like 10 Million Computer Jobs created by 2020.
2.USA wants to be the sole Super-power, China, East Asian, for that matter Europe is an competitor to USA. Courting India with a few peanut jobs, make it a vassal state to USA and not a competitor to USA.
3. Many H1-Bs want to earn in Dollars, see the "Good Life" quickly, buy real-estate back home, get out of poverty quickly. So going to USA is a dream.
4. Many Indians/American Indians who have excelled through hard work in many Universities can cater to STEM needs in USA.
5. Mostly Java, SQl, Database, and some SAP usage is what most H1-Bs know.
6. Comp-Science/Engineering is more than these languages.
7. It is a head-ache being a software programmer as you need to be upto date with the latest knowledge, which most H1-Bs dont invest in.
8. Most elite people in USA who are for H1-Bs, know very well American IQs are higher, the bar is raised for Americans to take risk and innovate more.
9. Doing Java, or database job that these H1-Bs do is the Blue-collar tech jobs.
10. Influx of H1-Bs may be polluting American culture, and driving standard of living down.
Most people in this paradigm are here to make "Money while Sunshine lasts". An H1-B without a Job in USA is in more depravity than an American with a Job.
USA now dictates Business, and Government policies in India by exporting some menial computer Job.
To quote from an Indian B-Tech Computer Science grad. "Even a trained Monkey can do what I am doing at work"
Pat has never been all there. I can only take his latest as a parody of libertarianism - which is extraordinarily difficult to parody, granted.
>It will be fun to gloat here when the bill passes, the quota increases, and a South Asian son of an HI-B take's [sic] his kid's spot at Berkeley *on the merits*.<
The enemy isn't motivated by sympathy and fellow feeling for each other, but only by malice toward us. Note the "*on the merits*" in that comment. How unbiased do think this person is?
>I know for certain I won't get a bit of help and nothing but the boot from non-Whites.<
Yes, too many Whites believe non-whites can be "fair" toward them. If you have any experience with this, you know it's only under extraordinary controls and in extraordinary cases that Whites aren't booted with relish by the diversity 100% of the time. (If Scots-Irish are involved in any way, it does happen 100% of the time. The 19-year-old black female with a high school education and no experience is always chosen for promotion or hiring over the 25-year-old white male with a college degree and years of experience - if the white male isn't Scots-Irish and the boss or hiring manager is named Marty MacHorowitz. Seen it many times. Also seen the black females wash out within months every time, but Marty always manages to manage.)
Let me clear up a few things.
When I took over a team of H1-B programmers I remember thinking that finally I would have real control. If someone wrote shoddy code, I'd just send him back to Moscow.
But it didn't work out that way. On paper the employees were more vulnerable but in practice they were more protected. It was considerably harder to fire someone when that meant they would be sent back to Russia. I might do that, but no one in upper management would. They knew a lot more about the former Soviet Union than I did.
So this talk about H1-B immigrants being indentured servants or slaves is just bushwa.
The point is that you don't just let in a particular individual when you accept an immigrant. You are accepting all his progeny until the sun grows cool. H1-B immigrants are a better lot than typical illegal immigrants. That much surely is certain.
Some commenters have claimed that all H1-B immigrants are not geniuses. True enough. But some are. Slava from Leningrad was scary smart. The first day he showed up at work he begged a ride to Stacey's so he could buy a copy of Knuth's famous book "Semi-Numerical Algorithms".
My senior Russian programmer was dumb as a board, but Slava from Kiev and Slava from Leningrad were damn smart and a fine contribution to our gene pool.
I've also hired Mexicans and Mayans for yard work from time to time. Trust me it's not the same thing at all.
Albertosaurus
"Whiskey said...
One, there is a class struggle between rich, White, mostly New England culturally neo-Puritans, and the rest of the Western world, "rednecks," or NASCAR nation or hooligans or whatever you want to call them."
Yeah - Neo-Puritans - that's what they are. One can tell such people by their austere black clothing and wide-brimmed buckled hats. Why, the nation's elites and main-stream media are practically beating the rest of us over the head with bibles in an attempt to enforce their strict calvinist ways. The chutzpah (that's an old calvinist term, I believe) of these puritans is staggering. Such tsuris these puritans give us - such michegaas they cause. Oy, Gewalt!
Whiskey, if you were any more full of shit, you'd look like one of these:
http://www.oursoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/sewage_truck.jpeg
Mr. Anon wrote:
"Yeah - Neo-Puritans - that's what they are. One can tell such people by their austere black clothing and wide-brimmed buckled hats. Why, the nation's elites and main-stream media are practically beating the rest of us over the head with bibles in an attempt to enforce their strict calvinist ways. The chutzpah (that's an old calvinist term, I believe) of these puritans is staggering. Such tsuris these puritans give us - such michegaas they cause. Oy, Gewalt!"
I hereby declare it uncool to use Yiddish, until if and when I say it is cool again.
You have been warned.
That said, he is not the first to notice a parallel between Cotton Mather's old crowd and the PC. Dovetails nicely with geography, including the areas settled by New Englanders in westward expansion.
Don't make me pull out my google. It can unleash more minutiae on you than you could read in a lifetime.
Pat:
You seem to think the H1B visas will be going to Russians. Do you have any basis for this?
Albertosaurus, have you worked with Indian and Chinese H1-B teams, as well as Russian? I think you might need to take cultural and extended family differences into account.
"The point is that you don't just let in a particular individual when you accept an immigrant. You are accepting all his progeny until the sun grows cool. H1-B immigrants are a better lot than typical illegal immigrants."
Yes, and something else to add... Those young H1-Bs grow up. They become middle managers, hiring managers. Unlike Albertosaurus, who is probably pretty good at spotting bright high-achievers with ability from non-traditional backgrounds, many Indian and Chinese immigrant managers in large tech companies are very conservative and risk-adverse. They wouldn't dream of hiring someone without a CS degree or a degree in exactly what they need. If they can't find someone locally with exactly the degree they are after, or they can't find someone willing to work in their establishment because of its poor reputation, they import someone from the home country. They don't seem saddened by that.
I've had this exact conversation with some of them, mentioned that the people who built silicon valley didn't have CS degrees, that creativity can sometimes be found in strange places... but no, stay safe and credentialed.
You've got to factor in the ethnic pipelining. Pretty soon they are making the decisions about whom to bring in, not you.
".. were damn smart and a fine contribution to our gene pool."
Many of these Indian and Chinese are married and commute back to the home country once a year for the better part of a month to rekindle the family fires and intro the kids to their parental culture. (Kind of like the Mexican ag workers who used to go back once a year.) It's not clear that maybe, say, the majority of the H1-Bs want to be part of our gene pool when they can just bring their gene pool here or commute back and forth at will.
I think maybe you're looking at all these people as individuals, young immigrant men willing to set their past behind them, and not as members of extended families of the elite of their home countries who are well aware of the advantages of immigration pipelining; are married to members of their own ethnic group; can easily afford air-fare back and forth; and can daily stay in touch with family back home.
It would be interesting to compare marriage rates among H1-Bs of different ethnicity. I suspect Indian H1-Bs have very high marriage rates (to other Indians). In many groups it seems to be near 100%. They seem at least as capable of building a cohesive American ethnic group that remains, overall, as distinct as American Blacks or Hispanics. I don't see evidence that, as a group, some exceptions likely admitted, they want to loose their current ethnic identity.
"Post anonymous encrypted Twitter messages with AnonTwi"
Fundamental misunderstanding of the medium
"That's why H1-B is important -- it hits them where they live. They may not care about the fruit-picker who gets replaced, but they'll notice when the last other American in the office gets replaced."
I understand what you mean (and I agree overall with the sentiment) but I think what you are missing is that in many of the large silicon valley tech companies the process you describe has already played out. There are few young "normal" American engineers in the engineering departments of some of these companies. Many of the Americans that are left are the older aspies, gays, or just truly unreplaceable old guys. And yes, a lot of the gays are libertarian or hard-liberal and a lot of the aspies are a-political or SF space-cadets...
It is a comedy treat to watch the peanut gallery attempting to socially groom Albertosaurus/pat/whatever he-she-shim goes by locally. You Yiddish-obsessed bums find it more urgent to correct comrade's deviations in virtual reality than to interact with the detritus of meatspace. And such a panoply of policy samurai we have here -- those Traitorous Eight might be sitting pretty today, but just wait till the ventriloquists of cyberspleen snap into action! Hopefully Bluffdale can then be repurposed to policing Alt-Right™ netiquette. Allons allons
"sunbeam said...
I hereby declare it uncool to use Yiddish, until if and when I say it is cool again.
You have been warned."
Oh, come now, Yiddish has given us some very rich and evocative words. I can think of few english words that - for the purpose of expressing derision - come anywhere near words like "yutz" and "schmendrick".
Mr. A: 2 + 2 = 5.
Mr. B: No, 2 + 2 = 4.
prism theory: Mathematics has no practical consequences. Mr. B is an idiot and needs to get a life.
David: Somebody lost an argument.
>a parallel between Cotton Mather's old crowd and the PC<
Aw, sunbeam, let's be nice and unleash one reference anyway for the sake of newbies.
American Transcendentalism: An Indigenous Culture of Critique
Post a Comment