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Comment by q3k | Hacker News Reader

> I'd much rather have Daniel's brain here in the US than anywhere else.

This sentence strikes me as very odd, and I can't quite put my finger on as to why. Like - why? Why does it matter? Is this some sort of competition? Is this like poaching talent into your company? Do you feel pride from sharing a territory with someone important?

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I feel this deserves an answer from the guy who made the comment. First, I'm nationalistic. I want my home to be the best possible place it can be. There is an undeniable benefit to the economy, culture, general education level, ability to get things done, and overall 'coolness' of a country to have people like Daniel in it. If we're lucky he'd want to immigrate, and he'd get to vote. The US could SORELY use more tech savvy people in the electorate. Also, make no mistake, it IS a competition. Nations rise and fall on their ability to create, retain, and attract skilled and intelligent citizens.

The network effects of intelligent people in your country are positive. On average, you want their voting behavior, their parenting skills, their risk assessments, their economic and tax contributions, and their cultural contributions.

It's the 'than anywhere else' part that I have an issue with. If that's the way you see it, you're doing this at the explicit detriment of everyone outside your country.

There's ways to grow that 'intelligence pool' locally, without having to see the rest of the world as just a pool of immigration candidates. Not to mention, just because someone travels to the US doesn't mean they want to actually immigrate there...

Maybe you are learning that being actually "nationalistic" (ie maximizing the prosperity of the nation) implies supporting strong high skilled immigration pipelines because of the incredible benefits these immigrants have for the nation and it's native inhabitants.

It's a great irony that those who reject taking the best and brightest are the "nationalists" and those who want to take the best and brightest are the "globalists".

The "globalists" are also in favor of illegal immigration, because it provides them with cheap labor (gardeners, nanny's, construction workers), while never providing any threat to their livelihood - the illegal immigrants are not competing for white-collar and professional jobs. The people whose livelihoods are adversely affected are the poorest people in the US, working unskilled and minimally skilled jobs

More often than not, I've heard so-called "globalists" being in favor of substantially open borders so that the immigration you describe would be legal.

From an economic perspective, having a specific person in your economy is zero sum; either they’re in your country or they’re not in your country.

This doesn't make sense. Their labor can benefit your economy even if they don't live there, and they can consume your countries goods without living there.

Yes, but the effect is magnified if they're in your country. You would collect local taxes, and the majority of money spent would circulate inside the economy, rather leaving.

That isn't zero sum though. Plus, I doubt Stenberg living in the US would noticeably alter his contributions to the US economy.

Taxes are absolutely zero sum. In most cases only one country gets to collect the taxes from a person.

Stenberg is one of those rare cases where he has a huge impact on multiple companies in multiple countries. Most of us aren’t like that; I personally work for a US company paying US taxes, consume in the US paying more taxes and enriching US companies, and I don’t make any libraries or services with international impact. My contributions to the economy is so lop sided that it’s almost zero sum. If I were to move to another country, I’d deprive the US of my tax revenue & consumption, and provide all of that to my new country.

> If I were to move to another country, I’d deprive the US of my tax revenue & consumption, and provide all of that to my new country.

Your labor could still be used by an American company, and your labor is by far your biggest contribution to the economy. This isn't even close to zero sum, that's why globalism and colonialism are things.

I guess that's true in some sense, but I wouldn't frame it that way. When I say I'd like my company to hire some great engineer, that doesn't mean I see other companies as just a pool of job candidates or that I'm trying to stick them with bad employees.

maybe minus the cultural part.. in most of the USA, every social act is monetized by someone, meaning (among other things) that real cultural contributions must get sold (since you personally have bills for waking up each day) or else they are moved to the backseat in the public eye by something else that is similar and is being monetized.

As a US citizen I personally think this was not a bad thing at first (minority culture cannot be dis-allowed) but over time, there are 100x more disposable cheap plastic things than any genuine cultural expression in public.

source - worked in the cultural arts instead of going to college, in the USA

Unfortunately, he's not trying to vote, raise children in the US, or earn money. He just wanted to tell people how to write better software (conference speaker) and his non-immigrant visa is apparently not forthcoming.

>you want their voting behavior

What does that mean?

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