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posted by on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the let-'em-eat-brioche dept.

Trump is planning on signing an executive order on Tuesday that will cause a review of the H1-B program. It is just a review, and undoubtedly business interests will step up the pressure, but there are some interesting ideas:

"If you change that current system that awards visas randomly, without regard or skill or wage, to a skill-based awarding, it makes it extremely difficult to use the visa to replace or undercut American workers, because you're not bringing in workers at beneath the market wage," the official said. "So it's a very elegant way of solving systemic problems in the H-1B guest worker visa."

Breitbart of course has an article out (though it reads like they need to hire some native speaking editors) -- still, recent college grads face a huge hurdle:

The federal government releases little data on the many different guest-worker programs, but the available evidence says the national population of white-collar contract workers is up to 1.5 million. That population is roughly twice the population of 800,000 Americans who graduate from college with skilled degrees each year.

And finally, lest people forget that progressives also have issues with H1-B visas, here is Bernie Sanders (a decade ago of course) attacking this ploy to make sure money only trickles up by ensuring low wages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR9QdQIKqMc

[Ed Note: Trump did sign the executive order at a photo op in Wisconsin.]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:35PM (16 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @04:35PM (#496401)

    These tech firms have outsourced their bullying to the monopoly on imposition: Government.

    Without government thugs being ready, willing, and able to follow through with the threat of deportation, these tech companies wouldn't be able to do that; the problem is the inherent nature of government: Imposition; involuntary interaction; dictate; mandate; ultimatum; decree.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:17PM (8 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:17PM (#496462) Journal

    Repeat after me, child: "Regulatory capture." Saying that this makes regulation or government bad is precisely the same as saying that a tumor proves that the concept of multicellularity is bad.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:26PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:26PM (#496471)

      That's just it: It is not the case that government has been corrupted by the power of corporations; rather, the corporations have been corrupted by the power of government.

      If you organize your society around the notion that imposition is acceptable, then that is what you'll get: Imposition.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:35PM (6 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:35PM (#496479) Journal

        If a government, even the best, most benign government with the best possible public interests in mind; if that government is unable to coerce things with the force of law, then it simply is unable to function. It's regulations mean nothing. Laws mean nothing. Taxes to pay for public projects are meaningless.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:14PM (5 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:14PM (#496496)

          Why do you not yet understand that? The problem is one of organization, not enforcement.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:22PM (4 children)

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:22PM (#496524) Journal

            Hey, dumbass, what the fuck do you think "entity that has power to enforce consensual mutually-agreed-upon contracts" is called? That's right: government. Even if it doesn't call itself that, at the end of the day, that is government.

            Your ancap retardation is a shallow, literal-minded, shortsighted third-grader's caricature of a free society. 30 seconds of logical thought would show anyone with a shred of honesty how that system would quickly collapse into dictatorship.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
            • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:43PM (3 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:43PM (#496536)
              • There is very little support in a western society for strong contract agreements; it's all smoke and mirrors that hide the ultimate truth: "The outcome is whatever the government says".

              • What makes an organization a "government"? I'll tell you: An organization becomes a government when it allocates resources by imposition, rather than by agreement (including agreement in advance). In a given jurisdiction, any such organization which has the greatest claim to a monopoly on such imposition is the organization that people usually call "government".

              • (Score: 1) by charon on Wednesday April 19 2017, @11:58PM

                by charon (5660) on Wednesday April 19 2017, @11:58PM (#496608) Journal
                You appear to be saying something, but really you're hiding behind vague words. Tell us all what precisely you mean by "strong contract agreements". What makes them strong? What would make them weak? What happens when someone cheats? What happens when everyone cheats? Who enforces the letter of the agreement, and (the tricky part) how do they do it without using violence or threat?
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @12:32AM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @12:32AM (#496618)

                What makes an organization a "government"? I'll tell you: An organization becomes a government when it allocates resources by imposition, rather than by agreement (including agreement in advance).

                I guess you have never heard of this thing called democracy? Democracy actually does work by agreement, at least in theory; that is what that whole idea of "consent of the governed" is all about. Granted, it isn't perfect (nothing ever is) but that is precisely the way it is supposed to work. You should read up on it sometime.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @10:44AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @10:44AM (#496790)

                  Equal votes for unequal minds.

                  It's based around the notion that it's OK for one group to dictate to another group.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:30PM (6 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:30PM (#496474) Journal

    I can agree that corporations can outsource bullying to government. But this only works when the government are thugs willing to go along with corporate bullying. IMO, the government of recent years is happy to be the corporations' bully -- as I wrote elsewhere in this topic, because the government is hopelessly corrupted.

    There are TWO things that are (or should be) the inherent nature of government:
    1. the power to coerce or force, as you point out
    2. managing common resources for the public good (using the power of 1 above)

    You seem to suggest that the coercive power of government is inherently bad. I don't believe it is, in principle. Governments should coerce people not to steal, rape and murder. Governments should coerce polluters into not polluting -- or at least regulating it. Governments must coerce taxation. However I want to pay for the smallest government necessary to accomplish things in the public good, like roads, schools, GPS, etc. Coercion is a necessary function. But it isn't necessary that it must be misused. I would rather have functioning government than anarchy.

    When government power is used to coerce the wealth divide to get bigger, then something has failed completely. There was a time when things were not this bad. Government power could be used for the overall good. (Despite respectful disagreements about precisely what the common good is.) But given my personal belief that people are inherently evil, I recognize that you must have the necessary checks and balances in place at all levels. The founders of our government seemed to recognize this very well. However what they failed to see, could simply have not foreseen was the rise of global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that were simply unimaginable to them. And that is what brings us to today. The system is broken. Don't expect it to get better. It's not some fundamental problem with government. It's some fundamental problem with what is in the human heart.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:30PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:30PM (#496501)
      • You AGREE with such governmental actions; therefore, for YOU, those are not examples of coercion.

        To enforce a contract to which you have agreed in advance is not coercion of you.

        If you agreed not to produce anymore beer, then the Prohibition wasn't coercion for you; it was simply following through with what you promised.

        If your system allows a particular organization ("government") to declare your 100-year-old pub to be illegal, or to confiscate your family's safe of gold, or to lock up people in internment camps for having Japanese heritage, or to barge into people's abodes and beat them up for smoking a leafy plant, etc., then your system is not acceptable.

      • The United States Government is a naive, primitive, crippled attempt to create a separation of powers (or a system of checks and balances);

        A real separation of powers is achieved through competing law, whereby "law" is the collection of all contracts between individuals, and whereby the contract-enforcement industry must compete within the market like any other industry.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:53PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @07:53PM (#496510)

        Ok so help me out.

        Let's say that I'm living in Libertopia (or whatever we'll call a theoretical place that implements your system--and I'm starting to like it more and more), smoking some leafy plants in my house, and a bunch of thugs with guns break in, wreck my furniture, beat me to a pulp, drag me out my front door, and throw me in a cage.

        I've never seen those people before, never liked who they say they work for, and I was absolutely certain that I had not agreed to something like that in any of the myriad of contracts I'd agreed to.

        What happens next? How do I get out of the cage? Why would they possibly agree to me make me whole again?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:23PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @08:23PM (#496525)
          • In these discussions, it is quite common for someone to say "OK, so, all of a sudden, overnight, government completely disappears. What happens now?!" Well, I'll tell you what happens now: Mayhem, violence, death, and despair. Go to the nearest grocery store, and grab as many cans of beans as you can cart away in your shirt.

            That is to say, I'm completely uninterested in revolution; rather, the key is evolution: To evolve society into another mode of organization, likely by establishing new organizational structures in parallel to the existing order of things.

            Your question is deeply embedded in the context of our present societal organization—that is why you find the scenario so bewildering. However, I'm not saying that the current system should be thrown out and replaced with some nebulous notion of contract negotiation/enforcement—and I'm certainly not going to tell you how society should be organized. Indeed, there is no such thing as Intelligent Design; society must evolve by variation and selection (that is, by trial and error; that is, by producer competition and consumer choice), a process that yields solutions that are often very surprising and downright unintuitive, especially because those solutions solve problems that no sentient mind even new existed.

          • I will say at most this: The scenario you are describing is essentially war; such activity is usually not very profitable overall—enforcement agencies would have a large incentive to come to agreements about how to establish well publicized, transparent, enforcement of well-defined contracts. Woe to the enforcer that storms a house without overwhelming justification.

            As it is now, that justification is "The Law is the Law!" That is, the justification is a cultural reverence—almost a religious reverence—for this one particular organization in the market (the one that calls itself "government").

            By comparison, consider that there has never existed a World Government; in a sense, "national" governments exist in a kind of anarchy that is increasing governed by contract negotiation, dispute-resolution, and enforcement as a matter of public justification and agreement between each other. Hell, despite decades of provocation, the United States is still struggling to find a good way to barge into North Korea's house in order to give the resident a bit of roughing up.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @02:21AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @02:21AM (#496664)

            Nations are ever at war.

            Thus would sovereign citizens ever be at war, until they banded together into villages, then city-states, then nations, then we're right back to the beginning.

            I believe the best way to argue for your ideal to be workable is to argue that men can become angels.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @10:56AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @10:56AM (#496793)
              • Firstly, you're the one supporting a monopoly on imposition (violent imposition, no less); so, you are the one who would require men to be angels—the ideas of which I speak are a direct acknowledgement that men are not angels, and therefore cannot be trusted with such a monopoly.

              • Secondly, Bastiat wrote the following around 1848: [bastiat.org]

                The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority.

                They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.

                Please understand that I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law—by force—and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.

          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:53PM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:53PM (#496853) Journal

            I'm "bewildered" as well. Tell you what - give us all a half dozen working examples of this utopia you preach of, so that we can study how they work.

            Oh, what's that you say? There are no working examples of utopia?

            STFU, idiot. You're just another fucking false prophet, looking for a cult of clueless idiots to tell you how smart you are. Evolution, you say? Yeah, right - get back to us in a couple million years. People aren't changing much, any sooner than that.

            You sound very much like the socialists/communists, who preach on and on about the merits of communism. Except - they can't point at one single successful communistic country. They CAN point to some small groups that have made communism work pretty well, but it simply doesn't scale up very far.

            You, and they, are stuck in that monkey theory. You only know a few people, and you just know that if the world would go away, and leave you and your few freinds alone, you could get along just great with your own system.

            Get used to the idea that your small scale utopia doesn't fit into the great macrocosm known as "society".

            If it makes you feel any better, I don't fit into society either. I'm an asocial asshole, and I don't give two fucks about society. So, you can I are somewhat alike. Your problem is, you expect society to change to meet your expectations. I don't. You should get a grip on reality, and understand that society will do as it will, and it sure as hell isn't going to listen to your brand of nonsense.