Default Yes Immigration

Great Debates
81

Outcomes. We have let people in in the past, and we have data on them. Language, culture, education, race, country of origin, religion.

We decide on what outcomes we care about. (this is called terminal values)

We decide on how much weight we care about these things. Ideally these weights come from a rational overall model. For example, do we care about taxes paid? Crimes committed? Since a crime is the same thing as a theft from the taxpayers (since it costs money to punish and someone else loses value as a victim) you can connect the 2 variables to a single metric and have a relative weight between the two.

Once we decide on what matters, we then pick immigrants from the pool that our model says we will get the best results with.

I don’t know who those people will be, you don’t either, but this is how to rationally go about optimizing your policy.

82

(Lest people think I’ve abandoned the thread, I’m continuing to read it, but I don’t find I have much intelligent to say; I’m happy to hear various perspectives. As I said in the OP, I’m quite willing to have my mind changed.)

83

I havent read all the posts but that is a similar policy for other countries who allow immigration but only if such a person qualifies. Like having a certain income.

84

Well, you admit that you don’t know who they will be, that’s start. And I admit that I don’t know who they will be.

But I don’t think that your model is going to do much to clarify the matter.

I’m not sure what you mean by crimes committed and taxes paid, there. I do agree that we should probably keep criminals from entering any more than necessary (we already have enough here), but if a few slip through the cracks due to generous immigration policy, I think we still come out well ahead.

We are looking for people that are willing to work. To work hard, for not a whole lot of compensation, and to appreciate the opportunity to do so. We are not going to find these people in developed countries. The people in developed countries that are interested in that sort of work are the dregs of their country, while they are the cream of the crop in others. Nothing to do with ability, only to do with opportunity. We provide that opportunity, and we both benefit.

I really really don’t care about education. Maybe that’s because I don’t have a college education myself, and so I see that there are many things that I can do without it that are still beneficial to society that I don’t see it as necessary as one who has it and thinks that anyone without isn’t worth considering. I do care about work ethic, and when I see a family working 80 hours a week just to manage basic survival, I see that that family has people with excellent work ethic. It’s hard as hell to get any of these lazy first world people to put in an honest days work without constantly cajoling and herding them. When I see a family that has manged to eke out a living off of terrible land with no help from anyone at all, I see people that are very highly intelligent and dedicated. That they have no formal education or ability to speak english does not mean that they are stupid. In fact, if you see what people have accomplished that they have come up with by their own wits, you’ll realize that higher education, being told things rather than having to figure them out for yourself, doesn’t actually make you more intelligent.

People from these areas will have pretty dedicated children as well. These kids are going to either know, or be reminded of what things could be like. Any first world complaints about how hard homework is, or how the school food is plain and unappetizing will be met with parents who actually understand what suffering and deprivation is like.

So, we get the parents in to do a bunch of heave construction work to rebuild our infrastructure, as well as build it up more to accommodate the hundreds of millions that we will be adding to the population, and we get kids who are intelligent and have every motive to do as well as they can in education and into their careers as academics or professionals.

Who is going to come from Norway? The people that can’t make it in Norway. We don’t want people that can’t make it in Norway.

85

The model as I described it would clearly and obviously detect trends like that. Remember, the model is a mathematical construct generated between :

Inputs. What data did you start with?

Outputs. What were the results?

If your theory is actually correct, the data would show that people coming from Norway and other top tier nations would do more poorly than people coming from poorer nations. And the model would recommend the correct policy.

Models are not perfect. Incomplete and limited data. Overfitting. Optimizing for the wrong parameters. Models can fail in many ways. But done right, they do much better than human reasoning and will give you better outcomes.

86

I don’t know that you can just create a model that tells you who is best to take, people are complex creatures, and unless we end up with a Strong AI as a “benevolent tyrant”, the models are going to be lacking.

But, I will agree entirely that a computer model is better than the racist model that we currently use.

87

You’re mistaking “better” for “perfect”. A strong AI is a super-model that is making decisions very close to perfect. (plus a bunch of other subsystems, so it can recognize speech and refuse to open the pod bay doors, etc)

Making a model that beats human judgement is relatively trivial. You don’t even need a computer to execute one, you just do better with a computer.

88

As long as that model is made by people, it will be influenced by their prejudices. And if the model doesn’t come up with results that conform to our prejudices, the model will be adjusted until it does.

People are just a hair more complex than a flow chart.

89

Here’s a case for open borders laid out: The case for open borders - Vox

Here’s a key portion: [INDENT][INDENT] Dylan Matthews: In rich countries, a lot of people imagine that an influx of foreign workers would reduce wages at a time when median wages have been stagnant for several decades. And because most people are nationalists who privilege the well-being of their countrymen ahead of that of other human beings, that’s considered a huge problem with immigration, one that open borders would, on this view, exacerbate…

Bryan Caplan: The simplest response is to say, “Fine. Let’s accept that way of modeling it, let in immigrants with a entry fee or a surtax, and redistribute the proceeds to low-skilled Americans.” That’s the easiest way out, which doesn’t require changing the whole way that people think.

But more important is realizing that there are many different kinds of labor. Even Americans we think of as low-skilled actually do very different kinds of labor than, say, low-skilled Bangladeshis. Most low-skilled Americans speak English. They’re familiar with the modern world. When you’re thinking about the kinds of jobs different groups will do, and whether they’ll be competing with each other, you shouldn’t just put everyone into the same “low-skilled” box, but rather realize, “Wow, there are actually a bunch of different low-skilled boxes, and the global poor are in a box that is much lower skilled than even the Americans we think of as being low skilled.” [/INDENT][/INDENT] There’s more. The interviewer is convinced by Bryan Caplan’s argument for open borders. I am not: I much prefer incremental reform over untested and untestable large scale reform. There is an economic case for open borders though: those interested can click the link.

90

I am pretty convinced unrestricted immigration (and emigration) would be generally better for most Americans than what we have now. I believe this because I accept the idea an economy must be forever growing to be successful for the people participating in it. The cheapest way to keep an economy growing is to add more people to it, particularly people who have nothing but a willingness to work very hard. Take a typical person from Mexico who probably never owned a car, a house, a computer, or a Snuggie. They want these things and they will work very hard to get them. This increases economic activity that wouldn’t ever happen if they stayed in Mexico. Every purchase they can make ripples across the entire economy, affecting people in a huge number of professions.

On the downside, a person who feels they are losing because of such a policy, whether due to losing a job, upsetting their prejudices, changing their culture, or any other unwanted change rightly or wrongly attributed to immigrants will not be convinced by what seem like economic abstractions.

I doubt the overall picture would be much different than what we have now. There are
millions of illegal immigrants in the USA. They will find some way to get across the border because they see the opportunity for themselves. The cost of even a few years of misery in immigrating, a lifetime of hiding, and potential prison is far outweighed by a house, a car, good education, and getting type II diabetes. There are also millions of people who are upset by the changes they believe immigrants bring to their communities. The only difference is we can take out the parts about risky immigration, hiding, and prison.

91

Doesn’t this harm American workers, in the sense that it makes them more replaceable, and gives them less bargaining power with their employer?