If you don't provide opportunity and a good civil environment to brilliant/enterprising people, they will find a way elsewhere. And once Vancouver or any other city starts working for them, Silicon Valley will lose its exclusivity. The thing to note here is that this response from YC is not a political one, but a response that came out of market demand; it is pretty significant if it works out.
The thing to note here is that this response from YC is not a political one,
Indeed. It wasn't formulated as political -- but the intrinsically the move does have significant political import (as a form of "voting with one's feet", as it were). Which has the potential to send signals that signs, slogans and marches (alone) cannot.
A large reason many people are pushing back against globalism is _because_ of this thinking -- capitalism is blind to political movements, quality of life for its people, or growing inequality. All that matters is the bottom line. If it's cheaper to do it elsewhere, it will move there. But if this leads to yet continued wealth inequality while the laborers work for less in worse conditions, is it a good thing that it created more wealth in the process?
I know that example is an extreme one, but it is an example that is being seen throughout the country. Middle class jobs are being shipped overseas or supplanted by exploited H-1B visa holders. Lower class jobs are being displaced by illegal immigrants willing to do the job for below minimum wage. These are serious issues, and issues that will not be solved in a global economy where the bottom line is king.
Well it's hard to say that America has not significantly benefitted from it.
And the gains in the countries which supply the West with their goods are also significant.
So the world on average is significantly better off.
I think the issue today is
1) the huge disparity of the wealth distribution within that average.
2) the inability of human beings as meat space constructs to adapt to those changes. You can't train everyone to be programmers, and as you remove the niches for arts, soft sciences and so on, you remove the ability for the non mathematically inclined to find meaningful, gainful employment.
In this case, though, isn't it working against those consequences that you mention? YC's contribution to a non-US company, in terms of guidance, doors opened etc., might be bigger than the money they get back through selling their share of the startups. This will be a net-negative for the US economy and would have created wealth, elevated working conditions etc. elsewhere in the world.
> In this case, though, isn't it working against those consequences that you mention? YC's contribution to a non-US company, in terms of guidance, doors opened etc., might be bigger than the money they get back through selling their share of the startups.
YC's existence is based on that not being the case, on average.
This is a negative for the US economy not because YC is losing money, but because if we'd let these companies start in the US, we've be getting significantly more of the gains.
The problem is that it is the US that has been forcing this down on other countries for decades if not centuries. And the US society benefited a lot from this.
Is the problem that the US has been doing it? I would argue that, with the internet, massively increased global communication, and a massively different economy from 1853 when the Perry expedition occurred, the problem isn't that the US used to do it long ago when imperialism was the norm, but rather that this form of globalist capitalism is becoming the norm worldwide, to the detriment of the lower and middle classes across the world.
Do they, now? From the abstract we only read that (according to the authors) there is some kind of consensus:
Consensus is particularly strong for propositions of free international trade and capital flows.
But as to what that consensus (in particular, as to whether the effects of free trade are "good", "bad", or "mixed") -- we would need to dig into the full text of the article, which is available only to subscribers.
And anyway that "consensus" was from 2003, and a lot has shifted in the universe since then -- particularly in regard to the question of whether free trade is still a pretty neat idea, or not.
From what I understand, free trade allows for unparalleled wealth creation by optimizing the flow and utilization of capital, which is fantastic! The problem is that it optimizes other things too, like labor costs by taking advantage of countries with incredibly low minimum wages, workplace safety standards, and standards of living. Meanwhile, the increased profit doesn't go to the society impacted by the transfer of these jobs, but rather to the capital owners, thus exacerbating wealth inequality. So yes, free trade does create more wealth than non-free trade, but it's not to the benefit of the society losing the jobs.
Been hearing this since late nineties about how inability to get visas is going to be the death of US tech industry. Absolutely nothing has changed since h1b visa was initially implemented, its almost exactly the same when as it was conceived. And yet U.S tech industry is not dead.
Honestly, if the US had generally a welcoming visa/immigrant policy, I and most startup founders would not even think to set up my company elsewhere as it is in some regards "the center of the world". But as the US gets a more and more unwelcoming image, other places like London, Berlin or Vancouver rise. Of course tech in the USA is not dead and will not be any time soon. But it could be attracting much more talent if it was more open and easier to get into. Look at Dubai: you want to found a company in Internet Zone? Go there, found the company, get your visas in a simple process, move over. The fees are high, but it is straight forward. That is how it should be in the US. I know there are investor visas, but it is a difficult process with an open end. And then there is stuff like the random travel ban, which, for example, makes it impossible to take my wife (Iranian) with me.
But, this could also be quite positive for the bay area. By reducing the number of jobs, It might finally provide the housing relief the bay area so desperately needs.
If the bay area continues its absurd aversion to adding housing or transportation, some other cities are definitely going to eventually pick off all the jobs till the bay area looks like Detroit or 1970s New York. You can stay #1 just by already being #1, exploiting the chicken-and-egg problem, for a while, but not forever.
San Francisco provided good jobs way before the tech revolution.
I would bet they had better union jobs before tech moved in.
You could always live in the outlying areas to commute, and not spend all your money on rent.
Tech bosses decided they liked San Francisco, and the rich enclaves like Marin County.
They decided to set up shop, and hire like no tomorrow. I have never seen more money just thrown away, except in certain areas of government. This did make things worse for a lot of workers. I don't want to say blue collar workers because a lot of you fancy yourselfs as white collar. White collar will always be able to move across the county and find a new shiny job? The problem is your not really white collar. This bubble will end. All those frameworks you memorized will become useless. You will be eventually looking for a union job, or any job. Good luck.
Yes--San Francisco has always been a tough housing market. I think tech needs to worry about where they are going to move to when the current party is over. I'm for better transportation, and more low income housing. All I'm saying is the influx of tech workers did not make the Bay Area better for a lot of us. Tech moved fast and loud, and did disrupt life. It kicked out many with the Ellision Act. It added to traffic. Many displaced workers who didn't look like a young Bill Gates couldn't get that shiny new job. Even those that could probally do a good job.
Truthfully, I think it will just spread more in the bay area. You have all the talent concentrated and you have people commuting far each way. Companies can just start popping up in concord, vallejo, and gilroy (just random examples. I have no clue how much real estate cost there) because it would be easy to get talent from the bay area and might shorten commute for some.
> If you don't provide opportunity and a good civil environment to brilliant/enterprising people, they will find a way elsewhere.
While I am not certain how true this is in general, it is for me anecdotally. I have no intention of wanting to emigrate and work in SF based on what I have learned on HN. I like the idea of choosing a city based on what i want from that city then doing what I want to do there. Not living somewhere for a one dimensional 'job opportunity' and otherwise hating it.
Weather here is amazing! Vancouver has such a bad rep when it comes to rain, but honestly it's not that bad. Here's what it's really like:
Between May and October, basically half of the year, you'll have very comfortable T-shirt weather, and blue skies I'd say 70% of the time!
Between December and March it's gloomy, but you'll have awesome snow in the mountains, just 30 min from downtown :) from our office we can see the slopes. Just went skiing with the team 2 months ago.
Vancouver is one of the few cities you can ski in the morning and lie on the beach in the afternoon, grilling BBQ and play beach volleyball.
Life's not that bad! I've been here 5 years :)
BTW, if anyone is in town for the YC interviews, I'd love to show you a good time!
The temperatures are very moderate in the winter, but the rain is bad. It can, and does, rain for multiple consecutive weeks in the winter. The lack of sun is even worse. It can have a very real effect on mood if you're from somewhere that gets more reasonable amounts of sunlight, which is pretty much anywhere else in Canada.
I lived there for four years and I had a very tough time with the lack of sun. It can be very oppressive. Vancouver has a lot of things going for it (as you mentioned) but I think it's unfair to gloss over the overcast weather.
I moved out to San Francisco during a historic El Nino season so I'm sure my perception is a little warped, but I'd note that you're providing a lot more detail about one than the other, and no citations. Not that any of this matters.
> Vancouver gets 1900 hours of sunlight a year. That's not a lot. Compare to Seattle (which is considered gloomy) at 2170 hours and SF at 3000 hours.
Are you talking about sunlight or sunshine? I think these are different. The city where I live gets apparently between 1500 and 1800 hours of sunshine, is a bit South of Vancouver (but in Europe) and not particularly known for not being sunny. So the amount of sunshine could actually increase for immigrants, not coming from California.
Ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon? What month of the year? Whistler-blackcomb tops out at only 8000ft.
March or April. We've had an exceptionally harsh winter this year (snow on the ground in Vancouver for weeks on end -- happens about once a decade) but usually around now people are admiring the cherry blossoms on their way to the beach.
Whistler/Blackcomb has a perfectly skiable alpine through to the end of April, and you can ski past that if you want (but I wouldn't personally recommend it).
Ok, but even in May average high in Vancouver is 16.7C, average low of 8.8C. That's hardly beach volleyball weather. I'm skeptical of the claim that people ski in the morning and play beach volleyball in the afternoon...maybe one or two lucky days a year?
These are exactly the temperatures tons of people in this thread are saying is cold when referring to San Francisco. They actually correspond with March in SF.
People definitely play beach volleyball in Vancouver in May. Maybe they are just insane. But some days are much warmer than 17C, and when it's sunny the air temperature doesn't matter that much.
16c is almost tshirt weather in northern europe, which is about same latitude as Vancouver. This would pass as a colder summer day too. No rain = beach :)
60 Farenheit is not T-Shirt Weather, it certainly is not beach weather, that's cold for a high. As far as the latitude that's fairly irrelevant thanks to the Atlantic Drift, Great Britain is at the same latitude as Southern Alaska though their climate is quite different
I visited SF for the first time in December and at first I didn't realize why people were complaining about the cold when it was rather nice weather outside (I'm from 60 degrees north) and the weather was in the 60-70 Farenheit range (20 celsius) which I consider to be nice and temperate climate.
But after a week it hit me. It's cold as hell indoors! I have warmer in my house now than I had in my hotel room or office and it's snow and ice outside.
Blackcomb is open until late may, and then also has a summer season. (glacier)
Vancouver does get a lot of concentrated rain, but summers are sunnier than most cities in North America. 90% of that 1900 hours is between June and September.
Sunshine hours has more to do with the fact that the sun sets here at 4:00pm in the winter. More often than not it's sunny or cloudy with sunny breaks.
Actually, just the opposite. If most of the cloud cover/gloomy weather happened in the winter, then much of the clouds would be at night...which wouldn't dramatically reduce your sunshine hours.
If the gloominess happened during long days, you'd really see a drop in mean sunshine hours.
If people are used to Seattle or Portland OR weather, they'll be used to Vancouver weather. I must say though, getting used to the Winter gloom takes some getting used to.
Canada has lower corporate tax, liberal startup grants, greater income mobility, higher qol, health care, safer, more tolerance - but it's an itsy bitsy tad cold, no one goes.
This is only true if you're right up on the Peninsula. The South Bay area where YC is located is gorgeous for a huge fraction of the year, and the East bay is at least far less cold than downtown SF.
To each their own. SoCal is too hot for many people. Your comment might seem to imply that SF weather is silcon valley weather. 30 minutes south the weather is consistently warmer though leave the coast a little ways and the tempature can also dip more at night.
My family is from Victoria/Vancoucer and likes it cooler to enjoy active outdoor activities like running, biking and hiking. For this SF and Oakland weather is wonderful.
I also work a few blocks from the ferry building and wear shorts near year round, though that isn't saying much spending all
my time in a temperature controlled office.
Vancouver's climate/geography is a feature, not a bug. Mountain biking, climbing, and skiing in Vancouver is amazing. And you don't have to drive two or three hours to get there. It's literally right outside your front door. This will be a draw for outdoorsy types.
In my opinion, Silicon Valley is what it is majorly due to the kind of people it pulls in. There are several other places in the world which have a much better weather than SV, but don't have this kind of an ecosystem.
I don't mean people move to SV because of the weather. But if Vancouver somehow manages to have interesting and innovating tech companies, lots of jobs, high paying jobs, it would still be missing one key ingredient that California has - lots and lots of sun.
Oh, and burning man. That might not be everyone's thing, but its culture permeates throughout the bay.
Literally one of the things I hated the most when I visited California and all I hear about California is the weather (I should say, "San Francisco", not CA, since obviously CA is a pretty big state). I can't imagine what living somewhere that is the same every day.
If you grew up on the east coast, where you have about 1 week of pleasant weather in between hellish hotness in the summer and ball-shriveling cold in the winter, you'd appreciate SF's boringly middling weather.
I did grow up on the east coast, and have, so far, lived my whole life here.
I would never describe the summers as "hellish" nor the winters as "ball-shriveling". I thoroughly enjoy the tremendous variety through all the seasons. I would say there isn't "1 week of pleasant weather", but rather, a year of tremendously varying, enjoyable weather.
But, of course, that's sort of the point - to each their own.
I think he meant NY or New England when he said East Coast. North Carolina doesn't fit that pattern of having consistent 0°F to 105°F range every year.
Except Vancouver IS also the same every day: dark, gloomy, overcast clouds with constant rain or drizzle.
I lived in Seattle for a year, and I got depressed from the weather. My doctor handed me a huge bottle of Vitamin D to take, saying most of her patients that lived there are deficient.
I couldn't handle it, so I moved back to sunny California, and immediately, my happiness levels returned back to normal again. Humans rely on the light to regulate their biorhythms, and Seattle/Vancouver are so far up north that in December, the sun rises at 10 AM, and it starts getting dark at around 3 PM.
For what it's worth, I grew up on the East Coast in Pittsburgh, PA with its notoriously bad weather, and I could cope with the variety of having four distinct seasons, including real winters with snowfall, much better than Seattle/Vancouver's monolithic climate (excluding the short summer that gives you two months of what SF weather is like every day).
> Seattle/Vancouver are so far up north that in December, the sun rises at 10 AM, and it starts getting dark at around 3 PM
That's a bit of an exaggeration. Even on the shortest day of the year in Vancouver, the sun rises at shortly after 8am and sets just after 4pm, which is a full 3 hours more of sunlight than you're giving it credit for.
Yes, if you want to be pedantic, and you define sunrise as the "bottom of the sun" touching the horizon -- as a meteorologist would -- instead of the much more practical definition of the sun is "sufficiently above the horizon for it to no longer be dark outside."
I came in to work at 10 AM every day, and that's when it would start getting light outside (9 AM, still dark out).
Then, I struck a deal with my boss to work later and run my daily 5 kilometers midday at 2:00-2:30 PM instead of after work because by 3 PM, it would be too dark outside to feel safe from cars while exercising.
100x this. I get a lot of energy and happiness walking in the sun in the morning. Something so simple, yet has a dramatic effect on my quality of life.
I do feel like an outlier in that I really enjoy living in distinct seasons. It feel like it helps me mark the time internally, and reminds me that I'm a pretty small part of nature overall.
> I do feel like an outlier in that I really enjoy living in distinct seasons.
You're not really an outlier, I learned that I feel the same way after living in SF for a while. It's just that it doesn't occur to many people because many people don't live in two such radically different climates.
You guys realize that our weather sucks right? A handful of days over 75F per year, near-freezing cold and fog in _July_ in some parts of the city, needing to carry at least a light jacket/hoodie every single day of the year?
I've met a Londoner in Seattle (which is about 2 hrs from Vancouver), said he felt "at home" with the weather in Seattle... I'm guessing they're about the same, though I suspect you're right, given the UK's one big island ...
Winters are mild in Vancouver. What kills anyone who wasn't born there is the nearly yearlong overcast gloom... Sunshine is a necessary ingredient to feeling good. Coffee is just a temp fix.
> And once Vancouver or any other city starts working for them, Silicon Valley will lose its exclusivity.
Silicon Valley doesn't have exclusivity. It has startup funding. It's all about the money, not weather, not talent, not Berkeley, not Stanford, not visa availability. It's about money.
> The thing to note here is that this response from YC is not a political one, but a response that came out of market demand
At base, this is an expression of YC's disagreement with the Administration's positions on immigration. It's saying that the imposition of even more onerous visa restrictions is misguided because it prevents from entering people who would make valuable contributions to American society. That is political.
So all in all it's a good thing for everyone but Silicon Valley, suddenly bright people will stop clumbin in SF but start working, paying taxes and spending their money back home. They will not need to move to a different country and keep their social net, etc.
This was the illusory hope of many of us in the beginning of the IT revolution. Work from anywhere, connected with everybody and the equal distribution of wealth.
I would believe this is not political if YC would have done this in the past. Its not that Visa issues to enter US is something brought by Trump administration. In any case, I celebrate the decision.
I completely agree that visas are a problem but I disagree that they will be "the problem" to unseat Silicon Valley as the world nexus of startups.
I've spent most my adult life in Asia and have lived in several countries and cities that claim to be very serious about becoming the next tech hub. None of them have very liberal immigration policies. All have visas for highly skilled workers, all have visas for entrepreneurs and all have visas for investors. I have yet to see a single case where a founder could get a visa without either significant revenues or significantly more funding than YC originally gave. It's also pretty hard for mid-stage startups to hire foreign workers, even in places with exceptional government-driven startup initiatives such as Singapore.
In my perception, Silicon Valley's most critical weakness is housing prices and its most likely true competitor is Beijing—not due to openness of immigration by any means, but due to a larger base of technically educated citizens and access to what is becoming the largest market in the world.
I agree that the most critical weakeness of Silicon Valley is real estate costs. I find it hard to imagine Beijing as a serious competitor though. If it were going to be anywhere in China I would expect it to be Shenzhen.
Shenzhen is a very different thing. It's important but not a challenger to SV. Huge startups come out of Beijing because it's the hub where the top students, founders, investors and regulators are.
If you look at Fortune's list of unicorns, 3 of the top 10 are in Beijing. As they build, they're strengthening the founder/techie/investor ecosystem in the city even further.
And yet Boston has some of the highest real estate prices in the country these days. (Fortunately you can commute out of it easier than in the Bay Area.) The Tech world doesn't begin and end with web/social/mobile.
I'd say the Research Universities, Medical Technology, Robotics, and Travel Technology that comes out of Boston is significantly ahead of Silicon Valley.
Automotive and related tech is quite small even with Tesla in the bay area. The number of automotive technology jobs is quite small. Automation technology from cars is picking up, but I doubt the number of jobs is very high in comparison to Detroit, Stuttgart, or Nagoya
There are a lot more aerospace outside of Silicon Valley with Aerobus and Boeing having little presence in California.
Google is #3 in cloud technology compared to Seattle/Redmond with AWS and Azure with significant marketshare advantage.
Amazon is 45% marketshare in US for online commerce. Logistics technology for them is mainly built in Seattle and Boston. Not much for Amazon going on in Silicon Valley. Alexa not made in Silicon Valley.
I'm still quite surprised people still believe Silicon Valley + SF lead in technology.
Beijing? Right with the Great Firewall, it's a ridiculous place to run a tech company. With the air pollution it's a ridiculous place to live. I lived for many years in Shanghai but ultimately moved because it was nearly impossible to do anything tech related that relied on standard tools such as Github or marketing venues such as Facebook, etc.
That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go.
As for self-driving cars, Chinese companies like Baidu are not unlike Google, and they are investing/researching heavily in these fields. The only twist is that self-driving in China would be a lot harder to solve because the roads are a lot messy there :) At the same time, many of these companies directly invests in US companies as well
>That's just an example that i find interesting enough, that quite a few US companies tried to solve, but still have a long way to go.
Because it's not a technical problem. Nobody cares about the ability to pay with their phone in the US when a credit card works so well and doesn't have a battery that dies.
Android and Apple pay work perfectly fine but almost nobody in my tech circles feels the urge to use them, let alone normal citizens. The credit card infrastructure in the US is so prevalent and reliable that there needs to be some serious perks to unseat the dominance.
Spoken as the incumbent. Of course it's a technical problem, as least as much as other SV companies. Hard tech hasn't been the edge for SV for many decades and it's getting even less important today. All the big companies has tried to tackle payments, but with lackluster results. What's "perfectly fine" for the US isn't in most of the rest of the world. Some of the more prominent startups in the UK, Germany and Sweden are payment related exactly because SV is weak in this area. There's a great opportunity for Chinese companies here if they ever decide to go outside their own borders.
I don't see how that is adding anything to the discussion. If you want to be the leader you actually have to lead. You have to be the one that figures out "the future" and have the solution people didn't know they wanted before other people do. The "perks" of mobile payments should be fairly obvious to anyone who has experienced it, I suspect you and the parent just aren't one of those people. No one is going to stop the US to remain dysfunctional in infrastructure, but it still has a price.
My (admittedly snarky) point was that there are clear differences between countries in their preferences for payment systems that can't be chalked up to "dysfunctional infrastructure." And it's not a US vs. rest of world thing. Even across Europe there are clear differences in cash vs. debit card vs. credit card vs. etc. acceptance. And stored value cards (for use outside of transit systems) seems mostly to be an Asian thing. I have certainly used mobile phone payments in Europe where chip without PIN can sometimes be a bit of a pain because it's not part of the normal checkout process. In the US, I find just using a credit card is a bit easier even if I know a store accepts mobile payments.
Something like WeChat really isn't like cards though. It's more like cash, cards and bank transfers in one. Like if most everyone would accept Paypal for everything without fees and it was integrated everywhere (web, store, phone, chat etc).
What YC has to do - is classical very very early Symptom Ecosystem dissolution.i.e. SV (i know its too early to say so). Its very hard to disrupt such woven ecosystem due to inherent resiliency and there is higher chances it will survive but this is unprecedented . I checked few VC twitter feeds, they are leaning towards Canada ,very early ,very slow but still unprecedented.Networks are strong as long as the inflection point. One can watch this video i attached here to understand how ecosystem fails without the participation from value serving members and how quickly it may :by the way this is all facts checked. Here is vedio how ecosystems are fragile : http://bit.ly/2mqDdjf .
If there is a move of any importance into Canada (doubtful to me as a Canadian) it will not be to Vancouver with its outrageous real estate prices, and very few tech companies, but to the Greater Toronto/Hamilton area, which is where 90% of these types of businesses are. Amazon, Google, and IBM are all already here or around here [Google is in Kitchener/Waterloo]. Apple is here for sales/marketing only (at least when my worked there 6-7 years ago).
Facebook and EA have presence in Vancouver, and Amazon has some there, too. But I get the impression that Facebook and Amazon are merely interested in using Vancouver as a 'feeder' office for getting candidates long run into their Seattle offices.
In any case, the wages are lower here which means talent still continues to emigrate. Also -- the weather. I work for Google Waterloo and I suspect there are far more Canadians working for Google in Mountain View than there are here in our largest Canadian office.
I don't see Vancouver "happening" (at least not more than it already is). Being similar to places like Seattle or SF isn't a good thing if you want to compete with them, because you'll always end up behind them in a comparison.
I generally agree with most of what you said and yeah, the weather and salaries are generally what attracts people to the bay area. You also get the bonus of being around the brightest folks from around the world and that provides great mentorship opportunities.
As the other child comment on your post said, I think it would be wise to consider how important Vancouver's more mild weather and being in the same timezone as SV would be beneficial for those looking to move out of the US.
> You also get the bonus of being around the brightest folks from around the world and that provides great mentorship opportunities
This is actually the biggest advantage for me. I moved to the Bay Area after school because I am a technical person, but stayed because of the culture (capital and lowercase) and the large numbers of very smart people. Have lived in NYC and Bremen, but the Bay is home. While the money and weather are great, it really is ready availability of top-tier folks. (In a coffee shop on Mission St., I literally tripped over a person I later came to realize is probably the single most accomplished programmer in a particular domain, not to mention a great person to talk art with.)
It's a little bit "сonspiratorially" from my side, but I feel like high real estate prices is a feature, not a bug - without it potential founders can have more resources to bootstrap and less dependency on VC - but when your personal budget is being eaten just by rent/cost of life - you have no other choice but to raise money
It would be delicious and terrible irony if Vancouver took over the role of startup capital, since it is the only place with a more unaffordable housing market than the SF bay.
The average price of a detached home in Metro Vancouver (includes suburbs of Vancouver) in February was $1.76 million. That's down from $1.82 million a year earlier. 99.7% of properties in the City of Vancouver proper are valued at more than $1 million. The average price for a detached home in the City of Vancouver in 2016 was $2.77 million.
I've had some trouble finding closely comparable values but it seems like the median SF detached home price is ~$1 million. Even considering the exchange rate, it seems like Vancouver is more expensive.
Certainly when one compares typical incomes Vancouver is dramatically less affordable than San Francisco.
Quick fact check returned this: "In all, 745 detached homes sold in Metro Vancouver last month, a massive 58.1 per cent drop from February 2016. The benchmark price for detached homes was $1,474,200, unchanged from the previous month but down 6.5 per cent from the past six months."[1]. Also [2].
And that's CAD, not USD. In USD it's $1,092,000. Still very expensive but not $1.76mln.
Yeah those are "benchmark" prices, which is a special MLS measurement designed to value a "typical" home. I decided to ignore that valuation method and instead use average prices because I'm not sure if a similar or comparable measurement tool as the benchmark exists for SF home valuations.
The housing price has deflated substantially in the past year because of a one-two-punch of a foreign buyer's tax and the Chinese government cracking down on rich Chinese people smuggling their money out of the country into foreign real-estate systems.
Vancouver's market had a reputation of being driven by Chinese cash... and whether that's true or not, perception is reality when it comes to markets.
Are you only counting detached homes? There are very few of those in Vancouver proper. If there are any, they are mansions. Do the same comparison with condos? And apartments?
No you are very incorrect. 81% of the land area of the City of Vancouver is zoned for detached homes and most of these are simple, cheap post war houses or cheap 60s era "Vancouver Specials."
The houses in Vancouver are so crappy someone even made a joke quiz about it, in 2010, when the prices were a lot lower: http://www.crackshackormansion.com/
$600 CAD/month for a bedroom in a house that's close to frequent transit and in a low-crime area isn't hard to find if you don't have your heart set on living right in downtown Vancouver. I am not going to pay $2200/month to live in gangland-torn East Menlo Park.
"$600 CAD/month for a bedroom in a house that's close to frequent transit and in a low-crime area isn't hard to find if you don't have your heart set on living right in downtown Vancouver."
(Has not looked for an apartment in Vancouver in the last 10 years)
600 a month for a bedroom is definitely doable... I found two <$500/month vacancies within a year of moving to the vancouver area in 2014.. One was in Burnaby near SFU and the other was a steal in the commercial drive area with the catch of having a roommate who filled up the living room with bike parts.
You're right that it's not easy to come by though, and if you want to live within a 30 minute transit commute of downtown and have a single bedroom, it's unlikely you'll find anything for less than $750 that's not an SRO
And a salary that's a tiny fraction of SV (or anywhere in the US for that matter.) I recently had someone offering $35/hour for a "Lead Ruby Engineer" contract role in Vancouver. Salaries are ridiculously low there which even with cheaper housing, results in far less disposable income.
Yep, no options either, and our dollar is expected to plummet below $0.63 USD over next 3 years too so making $20-25/hr USD as a senior developer if anybody foolishly moves here.
The area bordered by US 101, Willow Road and the Union Pacific tracks is an exception. However, the rest of EMP makes Vancouver's Downtown Eastside or even the neighbourhood of Whalley in Surrey look like the most peaceful, crime-free utopia that has ever existed. At least we don't have Nortenos and Surenos blowing each others' heads off like in adjacent East Palo Alto.
Dude, what are you talking about? That triangle you outlined is virtually all of East Menlo Park that isn't office space. Anything south of 101 is not EMP (and generally pretty nice).
Have you been in the area in the last 30 years? There hasn't been a homicide anywhere in Menlo Park since 2012.
Even EPA has come up in the world dramatically in the last few years. As of 2014, its violent crime rate was half that of SF, only 25% more than San Jose, and roughly double that of Mountain View. I'd consider Mountain View a very safe place; EPA is basically turning into just another Silicon Valley suburb.
If anything worried me it would be fundamental research more than startups -whether the new admin affects fundamental researchers coming in would be a bigger issue than a few entrepreneurs having to work harder at home. Missing up on start-ups is not all that. Uber, AB&B, etc. are nice to haves, but aren't making fundamental discoveries --they are changing how we use resources we already have rather then providing new things.
Don't worry so much. You have a mortal lock on the pipeline of first-time tech founders, and your cycles are overwhelmingly populated by graduates of US and European universities. Yes, a fair number of talented people from disfavored west Asian countries won't be able to start up here. That's OK: because of the way venture capital works, and because of YC's role in it, they really won't be able to start at all, and you won't have to compete with them.
Sure, they'll remain outside the US as a nucleation site for new startups that could have in theory challenged US dominance in technology startups. But the US controls the financial energy. They won't get anywhere.
Startups will survive large-scale institutional bigotry just fine. In fact: some of them will even profit from it.
"because of YC's role in it, they really won't be able to start at all"
Not sure what the reasoning is here. How is YC doing anything to block people from starting companies? You don't lose anything by getting rejected from YC, other than the few days spent applying.
YC is just the beneficiary of the status quo. If they disappeared one of the lesser players would just take their spot in line. But the real status quo edge, the real big deal here, is the ability to get rich without actually making any money, i.e. unprofitable growth at scale (minus profits). This is a real, real big deal, but you can't do it without access. You can turn an honest buck anywhere. Making a bundle without actually turning a profit is extraordinarily hard to do outside of Silicon Valley.
The startup ecosystem is heavily based on gatekeeping and validation by existing players - YC is one of many (but one of the most influential) in this space.
To be a bit simplistic, I think Thomas' point is that the likelihood of tech startups outside of the traditional US-centric startup ecosystem succeeding is very low, due to lack of funding and the general consequences of being an Outsider to the Silicon Valley elite.
YC's role in it is, of course, being one of the most influential players that control which ideas get funded/attention, and which do not.
Even physically outside of the US, the startup ecosystem is still overwhelming reliant on US money. Which is to say even if there is an appetite for funding founders in these disfavored countries, regulations (or simple politics) may prevent it.
That said, I do disagree somewhat - US/European money is not the only source of venture capital dollars. I suspect at least some of the founders we're losing here will be able to start their companies with Chinese money. The loss of this talent pool will contribute - in a small way right now, but snowballing as time goes on - to the loss of US-centric economic hegemony.
There are certain kinds of businesses - drug discovery - say, that take years and years to become profitable. It's not really possible to start them without a lot of capital. Not everything SV does is that way, but many companies are.
Don't be naive. If you're not in with the cool kids, then you don't get invited to the cool parties. That's not a criticism of YC, it's just the social reality.
Contrary to popular belief, it is in fact possible to grow a startup without VC money. Perhaps not all types, but certainly a bigger subset than people tend to admit.
There's a lot of tech talent all across the US and North America too, but they end up flocking to SF. For the same reasons they'd hypothetically flock to Vancouver in this situation.
Just because a few people from outside the US are worried about visa issues before applying to an incubator doesn't spell the end of Silicon Valley. The money, talent, and infrastructure to support startups (and large tech companies for that matter) aren't going away anytime soon and likely wouldn't go away even if we completely completely halted green card holders. Not that I would ever advocate something like that.
I don't think it's "a few people." It is everyone holding or desiring a US visa that is worried. I would contend that it is only the extent of that fear that is variable.
Maybe I am wrong and there are visa holders feeling absolute confidence at the moment, but I would like to hear why from even one before considering your "a few people" categorization as anything but spin.
> It is everyone holding or desiring a US visa that is worried
It's so far out of line of reason to believe that the US is going to basically end all - or any meaningful portion of - legal immigration, as to be nearly impossible to reply to. Where to start?
The US will switch, if anything, to a merit based system. Canada already uses just such a system. Nobody seems to be outraged about it, or proclaiming the end of Canada because of it. There's far too much emotion in this thread.
As someone that is look for jobs right now and talking with a lot of tech comapny in the US on the side, they just hold all tentative to get visas. O1 are still doable, but all H1B are on hold. If you are canadian, it is not a problem.
But all Europeans that would like to get visa are on hold right now. People that already have one are in limbo, worrying about how the coming ruling will affect them.
I'm speaking in relation to Y Combinator and those who are looking to apply to come to the United Stats to start a company. The number of those people is an absolutely small number compared to the whole. Unless you have data proving otherwise?
You haven't been reading the news very carefully. Worst case scenario is that you get sent to a 3rd party country, have your passport seized upon landing, and possibly end up in prison where your human rights are at risk.
I don't think that's necessarily true. The Bay Area's become an international hub for tech, not just a domestic one — many influential founders (including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel) were born outside the United States.
I don't disagree. It is the world's premier tech hub. But a fleeting 4 year long ban on immigrants wouldn't turn the city to rubble and leave everybody without jobs as Google and Y Combinator pack up bags and move to Tijuana and Beijing. There are larger forces at play here than that.
Isn't it a bitter irony that someone who became successful in Silicon Valley (Peter Thiel) was a driving force to get a president, whose policies could potentially lead to a bit of a decline for Silicon Valley, elected?
Of course. But it'll do some damage, which will only get worse as time goes on. What about 8 years? 12? If you restrict skilled legal immigration long-term, you're necessarily going to (slowly) drive companies away.
It's not a zero-sum game of open jobs to potential employees.
If you're able to interact with the smartest people in the world - and not just your own country - you end up forming more effective and larger companies. Which in turn create jobs.
If you shut out your country to the rest of the world, the next Google will be founded somewhere else.
And I'll dispute your claim that the US has enough talent. There was a submission on HN recently about the top deep learning papers. Go through it. Count the number of American-born people. Geoff Hinton? Yann LeCun? Russ Salakhutdinov? Demis Hassibis (of Deep Mind)? Virtually everyone on there was born somewhere else. They're not Americans, but they're mostly working for American companies and contributing their talent to YOUR economy.
Sure and I love that those people (highly skilled immigrants) are working for American companies.
But so what? That doesn't demonstrate that the US doesn't have enough talent. It just shows that some people from out of the country were working on something. Maybe if the situation was different then that paper could be exclusively written be Americans. The majority of the worlds most intelligent people reside elsewhere, but the US has nearly 400 million people. It's fine with or without immigrants. Japan is fine isn't it?
Let me end off by saying there's a difference between being "fine" and "exceptional". If you're content with the former, then that's okay, no problem there -- cutting off immigration will be okay. America will survive, there won't be an apocalypse. Like Japan right now -- it's got mediocre companies with a mediocre economy.
Many papers are written exclusively by Americans, but they're often not the best. That's what you're going to have to be content with, if you shut off immigration. Being okay, but not the best.
Imagine that those researchers couldn't go to the US. Imagine instead of Google DeepMind beating Lee Sedol it was a Canadian or Chinese company. Imagine if the first company to roll out mass self-driving cars would be Didi instead of Tesla. It's an inevitability, once all the top minds in the world go to companies outside the US. And as I said, it's not horrible for America, the country will surivive and do okay, but there'll be jobs lost and innovation will go somewhere else.
I'd love to actually take that bet. Excluding thermonuclear war, if things get annoying enough we'll just elect a democrat next year and restore the political arena that people believe is best. One (what seems to be) bad president isn't going to completely ruin Silicon Valley. It's pure hyperbole.
> Excluding thermonuclear war, if things get annoying enough we'll just elect a democrat next year and restore the political arena that people believe is best.
In Germany and many other European countries, when the government resigns (or the government is mistrusted by parliament), there is the possibility of immediate new elections.
In the US "The Government" is not a thing that resigns - it'd be the President. If the President resigned, the VP would become acting President until the next election. If the VP also resigned, we'd work our way down the line of succession.
The system we have here is quite different from the parliamentary system you may be more familiar with.
No. We won't. It's a constitutional impossibility for the American government to 'fall' outside of a revolution. The only thing that will happen is that two years from now there will be elections but not for president. I consider the fact that the government can't fall to be a bug in the US political system but it's not even the biggest one.
For all the reverence the 'founding fathers' get they could have done a much better job setting things up. America got rid of royalty, then brought it back in by electing them, and not in a ceremonial function either. It's a huge problem (that, and the 'two party system').
Technically the two party system could change but things are set up in such a way that no third party will ever gather enough votes even if you were to say pit two un-electables against each other.
It's like people don't remember that there was a president that called a press conference, spoke to the people, put on a jacket, got in a helicopter, and flew away from the White House forever.
Yes, and other people seem to forget that that did not lead to new elections.
Presidential elections happen on schedule. If Trump should leave that gives you Pence, if Pence should leave that will give you Ryan. And likely by that time it will be 2020 and you'll have those new elections but until then you'll be stuck with a Republican as president, like it or not.
Only if there's no mechanism for bad governments to be replaced, peacefully.
We'll see if we still have that mechanism in 4 or 8 years, but in the meantime, I'll remain cautiously optimistic. The U.S. has had terrible presidents & strong political leaders before, ones who drove the country down a terrible path, and they've usually been forced out of power and their policies reversed within a decade. That's the great strength of democracy: it's not that it governs efficiently (it doesn't), but it provides an escape hatch so if a government is seriously going down the wrong path and everyone realizes it, the government doesn't last long.
Because they were the only ones pointing out the economic collapse of rural and interior America.
Liberals should have been in front of this issue but they ignored it, preferring to hide in coastal urban bubbles and navel gaze. So they opened the door to a bunch of demagogues.
Immigration may not be a major cause of these problems but it makes a convenient scapegoat.
I don't disagree with your analysis. I'm left-leaning in my politics but find myself unwilling to support the Democratic party at all for being politically ineffective, culturally asinine, and for being distressingly corrupt.
American politics is in a terrible state right now.
How would switching to a merit based immigration system - copying Canada's system - unseat the Bay Area as the startup capital? It won't, at all. If anything switching our immigration priorities will dramatically boost the Bay Area. This thread is overflowing with what is essentially revenge fantasy.
Yes. Depending on where you're going it's surprisingly straightforward. Hell, you can even go set up a business in the Netherlands if you're self-employed with relatively few restrictions.
Also, what do you mean by "visa"? There are many different sorts, depending on whether you come to interview, work, be an entrepreneur, etc.
Calexit would allow California to bring in anyone they want though, and SF wouldn't have to worry about the US immigration policy screwing up it's tech scene. I'm looking forward to the Calexit proposition vote.
Why would there be a war? Large parts of the country seem very resentful towards California. Seems like both sides would be happier without each other.
Edit: I obviously don't think a Calexit will happen but I'm just curious why you think it would result in a war.
There'd be a war because of ports, military facilities, oil, and, because, politically California may on average be more slightly liberal than the rest of the US, but overall it looks a lot like the US as a whole, with very liberal coastal enclaves and an ultraconservative inland agricultural heartland, and much of the latter would revolt from California to stay in the US in the event of an attempted Calexit.
Even if there wouldn't be a physical war, there would be no reason to expect free trade, free movement, shared currency or a stable replacement currency.
It would be a war within California. The Central Valley isn't going to willingly leave the U.S. to be ruled by what they see as liberal coastal elites with no counterweight.
And because of that (and the leverage the central government would have because of that), there'll be no peaceful divorce of California from the Union.
Considering the demographics of California, nobody really lives there, so that "war" would be short if such a thing were to occur.
If California does split it'll probably just employ a live-and-let-live policy with their wild eastern frontier. Leave the hillbillies alone and they'll leave you alone.
Well, the thing about laws, is if a state decides it isn't bound by them and secedes, who enforces them? I can't see any soldier being willing to go to war with California. We've been taught the horror of civil war since we were in grade school. This generation is also much more open to new ideas in the world than those of the past. If California seceded, it would meet very little physical resistance I suspect.
The obvious question is will the US government allow one of its most profitable states to leave? Highly doubtful. Great way to start another civil war, though!
I hear a lot of people in my area (West burbs of Chicago) joke about building the wall up to cut off California. Sure, they're joking, but I don't think the average citizen outside CA gives a damn about the state as a tax revenue base. They do, however, get tired of the far left rhetoric. Nobody thinks more highly about California than Californians.
Personally, I am ambivalent (and technically I am a Californian).
Your US 2 party system is busted to the extreme, and in other G7 countries your Democratic party would barely be considered "left" let alone "far left", so yeah, pretty lunatic.
As for sanctuary cities, when your state is sitting on territory that was formerly part of Mexico, its major cities still carrying Spanish names, its labour force overwhelmingly dominated by Latinos, it doesn't seem crazy at all to question the rationale of the US immigration system and borders and try to accomodate to the realities of the actual real world demographics.
Not to mention from my understanding sanctuary cities have their origin with the migrant fallout created by the central American wars that the United States was directly involved in.
Meh. Not really. In parliamentary systems, you might have a lot of parties in the mix, but they caucus and forms blocs. Same happens here, just upstream through primaries. Democrats have centrists and progressives and a fringe of anarcho-socialists. Republicans Ave moderates, conservatives, libertarians, Tea Party, and whatever the Alt Right is.
As for "overwhelmingly", you make it sound like we're living in Mexico but have the indecency of calling it the US. As for the current state of population, LA is around 50% Latino at most. That isn't illegal immigrants. Those aren't people that identify as Mexicans in America. Those are Americans. Some even voted for Trump.
All territory was formerly part of someone else's territory. Borders move and people along with them. I feel no moral burden to accommodate previous inhabitants, nor would I expect any if the table was turned. That said, if states truly moved to nullify federal law based on a tenable legal position, I'd listen. However, they'd have to make such an argument, as opposed to a philosophical one (like yours, which I don't agree with).
As for your "understanding" of the origin of sanctuary cities, you've been reading fake news.
> In parliamentary systems, you might have a lot of parties in the mix, but they caucus and forms blocs. Same happens here, just upstream through primaries.
In our two party system, the lesser parties normally never get included in the legislative process. (those primaries effectively exclude them) In a parliamentary system any party that gets enough votes will get some seats.
If we adopted that sort of system you'd immediately see some greens and libertarians involved in the legislative process, and presumably you'd see an end to jokey pseudolibertarians in the Republican party, since everyone would just vote for the real thing. The "you're just throwing your vote away" disincentive would no longer exist. (based purely on how often that topic comes up in conversation during elections, I assume you'd see some big changes in the ideological makeup of the legislature)
> and in other G7 countries your Democratic party would barely be considered "left" let alone "far left", so yeah, pretty lunatic.
True, the Democratic Party is basically a coalition where the two main factions are the dominant center-right neoliberal faction (the "Third Way" that reached its peak under Bill Clinton and his since lost some ground in the party while still remaining dominant, if barely so) and the secondary center-left progressive faction.
Sanctuary cities are absolutely protected under the Constitutional doctrine of anti-commandeering; a direct and obvious and firmly established application of the Tenth Amendment.
The Federal government has to enforce its own laws. The States may voluntarily assist, but the Federal government has no authority to mandate that states, or subdivisions thereof, enforce federal laws.
Well, I personally am not bothered by the concept of a state having the right to ban abortion, but I know that statistically it's stupid decision because exactly the states that would end up banning abortion are the same states that would refuse to give proper sex education to prevent the abortions in the first place.
Also, not allowing abortions desperately increases the tax burden.
> I absolutely love how the left becomes a fan of states rights on immigration, but pretends it isn't a challenge to Roe v Wade.
Indeed, Roe v. Wade or Gay marriage too. I mean, my state voted in gay marriage willingly, but I imagine some more religious states may want to determine the laws in their own state, like California does with weed and immigration
I could make a strong argument, however, that a government seeking to strip the ability of states (cities) to have "sanctuary status" is fascist, or at the very least not very republican.
> International borders fall under federal jurisdiction, so I don't think your point is as strong as you think,
Sanctuary cities don't change anything about international borders or who can enter the country, because international borders are federal issues with federal staff. Sanctuary cities refuse to make their local staff spend time and money reporting on immigration status every time they issue a parking ticket. It's not even a states rights question - nobody even suggests that city officials should check if you have paid your federal taxes every time you take to them, but that's not because (normal) people are objecting to a federally run tax system.
I do, however, think sanctuary cities (which are so fuzzily defined legally...) create an incentive for illegal immigration. It sends a message that one need only get through the border to make it permanent. My family immigrated legally. They should too.
If states choose not to enforce federal law, I think they need to clearly establish a legal position as to why.
The better question is would the rest of the world allow the remaining US to do a damn thing about it? The US itself has a history of supporting states that leave other states in civil wars.
You get the entire Los Angeles basin. You get most of the Bay Area: the area served by BART, Berkeley, things west of Berkeley, and Marin County. You also get everything in the middle. Generally the border runs along the ridge of the coastal mountains.
The USA keeps San Diego, Eureka, Davis, Fresno, etc.
You get exclusive rights to the "California" name. The USA will split the leftover bits into at least 3 states.
sure. you keep the engineers, we'll add all of the stock owned by Californian's in US companies to the Fed's balance sheet. We'll keep the infrastructure and apply tolls liberally. Obviously National Park/Forrest and even state parks will stay. You can visit for a fee, of course.
It actually doesn't matter what California voters want, or what a red federal government wants, a constitutional amendment would require 2/3rds of both the house and senate, as well as 75% of all the US state legislatures to approve Calexit.
I think it's a good idea, and would probably move there if they did exit, but it's practically impossible for it to happen.
Does that not require that other major nations loosen their policies in conjunction with this, in addition to cultural aspects of self-promotion as well as failure and access to *capital.
A friend of mine runs a large, well known webdev agency in India and is attending a conference in Arizona in April. His friend was planning to come as well - he owns a US based business, has a US bank account, pays US taxes, has purchased airfare, hotel, and conference tickets.
He was denied a US visa because "attending a conference is not a good enough reason".
My friend with the agency who has a visa is concerned he won't get thru immigration. He was planning on expanding to the US, but is has shelved those plans.
This is great news for both Canadian and international founders.
Is the next step having an additional Canadian office for those that can't get US visas? Canada has a generous startup visa for founders coming from other countries [0].
The Canadian visa might sound appealing at first blush but won't help for ycombinator founders as far as I know.
To be eligible you need to have funding from a canadian venture fund, see below.
I guess ycombinator could setup a Canadian fund and apply for the funding eligibility, but with the principles being mostly American and living in the US, I'm guessing it would be a very tough sell.
They're moving damn fast about it. Protests and Moby's posts are one thing, but when an administration/state gets involved, and more importantly when money is put on the table, you can tell things are happening. I don't how far this'll go, but I wouldn't be surprised if some places relatively 'close' to SF/Bay (say from Vancouver to perhaps Mexico) became sort of a surburb for less-demanding offices (think: grade A workers/projects in SF/Bay, everything else remotely to save costs and troubles with US immigration).
I'm sure if YC opened up a Canadian branch they could be one of the accepted incubators. The federal government seems keen on trying to make Canada a home for startups, even if it hasn't been a totally successful effort yet.
As a Canadian, I'm doubtful that this is the case. There is a reason why almost all Canadian startups seek funding South of the border. In Canada, it is easier to get government grants than it is to secure venture capital.
I don't think that it has anything to do with there not being enough capital available in Canada but rather the risk tolerance of most Canadian investors.
I wouldn't be surprised if those YC alumni were hesitant to make more bets on the startup roulette wheel. I'm not saying that venture capital/angel investing is gambling per se but most Canadians, even past startup founders, probably see it that way.
Canadian founder who relocated my startup to US for funding reasons here. It is very hard to secure seed level funding. The mindset is very un-SV unfortunately. But that could change rapidly if we see a few pillar companies emerge, but that's a big if.
Oh please no. Leave the VC reality distortion field south of the border please.
We don't need YC ruining Canada with hopped up "startup" bros. If we even need more VC firms (I don't think we do), let indie VC or something like it come up.
Edit: This isn't meant to mean people shouldn't start companies here. They should. But they should do it firmly grounded in reality, not based in SV VC world which has very little to do with building solid long term businesses.
I agree! Canada needs to continue giving depressed wages for the same/more work to its talented citizens and then just complain passive aggressively when they move down south.
> We don't need YC ruining Canada with hopped up "startup" bros.
As a Canadian who once got funded by YC and is no "\"startup\" bro" I wince at this comment, which is beyond inaccurate. So is the bit about solid long-term businesses—I can tell you from plenty of first-hand observation that you're quite wrong in YC's case.
Alright, now if I work like a dog and make a successful company (chances of this are in the low single digit %), after I hand back the YC cut I can get me a small family home in Vancouver that a regular factory worker could afford 30 years back!
In a scenario where more YC companies set up shop in Vancouver, and US investors follow to bet on the next Slack up here, then this will naturally change as a function of supply/demand.
Yes, but you get healthcare and being non-white isn't illegal, so that helps.
Also - not really? The highest federal tax bracket in Canada is 33%. The highest in the states is 39%. The highest provincial rate in BC is 12% and that's about the same as California. I'm sure there's a lot of variation depending on an individual's situation, but you're really deluding yourself if you think American taxes are low, for the shit deal you guys get.
Yes, but you get healthcare and being non-white isn't illegal, so that helps.
That made me chuckle. You think Canada doesn't have racists? Good lord.
And sure, if you just look at the income tax rates BC looks reasonable. Of course, if you look closer at the actual income brackets for each rate, it looks very different. That doesn't even include the sales tax (up to 15% in some provinces), taxes on alcohol, gas, etc.
I was being facetious, and yes, we do absolutely have racists, and yes, most of the people in our prisons are not white (they're First Nations, in our case).
Even so, we don't quite have the same legal system that seems to systematically lock up non-white people in bulk. A lower percentage of our population is in jail, they stay in for less time, and we have less violent crime overall. If you aren't white, I feel confident in saying you'll feel welcome here and won't get arrested for walking down the wrong street along at night.
I'm sure Canada has had several such incidents (some that happened more recently than 17 years ago), but I'd wager that you're still safer here from the police (across the board, but especially for minorities), than you are in the U.S.
Frankly, seen from Europe, most things 'police', 'safety', 'justice' are nothing short of wtf-grade in the US. It's surreal, it's one of the closest thing there is to dystopia (of the wrong kind) in the west. Arguably SF/Bay is a bit of an island (even politically) but still deeply embedded in the rather 'extreme' US culture.
By comparison Canada, much like Sweden or Switzerland here, feels like a pretty 'normal' country overall, much more reasonable in many regards. And it's safer there's no question about it.
I was a bit emphatic because I'm considering the general culture, i.e. beyond (thus before) current news stories.
A couple examples. Keep in mind none of this is absolute, with close to a billion people involved in this comparison there's bound to be a bunch of counter-examples. My anecdotal and very subjective perception is by no means 'reality', at least not yours, not necessarily.
Ok, let's look at citizen <-> police rapport. Generally in the US, there's a very strict and quite 'robotic', not to say dehumanizing (perhaps both for the citizen and the agents...) process, which can appear quite shocking to foreigners --being forced to put hands on the car, etc. There is a very strongly enforced sense of authority (what Kelsen called "monopoly of violence" of the State, here materialized through the Police) in the way State-emanating agents operate and interact with the population in the US. To many european people, it seems a bit "too much", or too military-like, perhaps brutal or violent on a psychological if not physical level.
At the same time, considering the kind of shit that happened during the last century in the US (gangs, mobs, etc.), you have to understand logically why all of this has evolved as such; it probably was a response to a both very organized and diffuse menace. I'm not sure the intensity of crime has been felt as strongly in Europe generally since WWII, aside from localized places/events obviously (war theatres such as Serbia or Ireland, etc.) --again this is a very general impression of major cities during peace time.
That's actually another "thing" that sets aside the US from Europe: war. I can only speak from a personal point of view but it seems to me that the toll of war (how many young people become soldier, the whole challenge of supporting a large veteran population, the actual cost relatively to other endeavors, and perhaps most importantly the general culture that it brings to a society) is relatively heavy, at least enough to be felt, to shape individuals thus society on a high-level --it's not the end all be all of course, but it's something, it matters. I'd love to hear feedback, actually. If my country had been at war for essentially as long as I'd been alive, I'm not sure I'd feel as safe as I do right now in my lively coastal city in the south of France --a probable SF clone as far as the weather is concerned.
So I'm not considering the hype at all, I'm generally comparing these two continents, over the anecdotal and admittedly little perception 20 years of travelling infrequently between the two let me appreciate (from age 12 to now, 34, I must have spent about a year overall in the US, always as a tourist).
It goes without saying that the EU also has its fair share of 'wtf' moments, and the situation has degraded quite rapidly in recent years (especially in regards to racism and racial 'profiling' and everything it entails, regardless of the actual nationality of individuals --judging a book by its cover and all that). It also goes without saying that there are far more 'wtf' places in this world than the US.
To put a final nuance to all this, on a personal level I have no problem living in the US --all of this is cultural and I can adapt. I could also talk about hundreds of very cordial and even enjoyable encounters with the Police all over the States, I think that's the most common case actually. It's just that when it goes 'wtf', well it does so in a rather dystopic hollywood style... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You sure about that? Canada is, 78% white, 92% white + asian, only 1.2% hispanic and only 2.9% black. 700 million hispanics in the Americas, and Canada somehow only has ~300,000. The US is around 15%-16% black by comparison, and 20% or more hispanic. Sure sounds like it may be illegal to be non-white in Canada, how else to explain the lack of diversity?
$100,000 USD, $200,000 USD, and $400,000 USD, you will pay:
$32,000, $69,000, and $159,000 in taxes in California.
$28,000, $73,500, $169,000 in taxes in BC.
But that's just income tax. There's also Social Security/Unemployment Insurance contributions. In the US, 13%[1] of your salary up to $130,000 will go to social security contributions. In Canada, 10% of your salary, up to $40,000 USD will go towards the CPP and Unemployment Insurance.
So, at the $100,000 USD salary, you will pay $45,000 in taxes in California. In BC, you will pay $32,000 in taxes.
At $200,000 USD, you will pay $86,000 in taxes in California. In BC, you will pay... $77,500.
At pretty much every tax bracket, you will pay more taxes in California, and get less for them, then you would in BC. As it turns out, maintaining twelve super-aircraft carrier groups is expensive.
Mind you, BC is not all flowers and roses. The provincial government runs the place with all the integrity and forward-thinking of a banana republic.
[1] Yes, your employer pays half of it. That money would have otherwise gone towards your salary.
That's a common misconception. I paid more in US + California taxes than Canada + Ontario taxes at the same company, same salary, when I moved location.
I'm skeptical, because both Ontario and the feds have raised the higher tax brackets in the last few years, plus the dollar is around 74 cents to the US dollar now.
Sigh... The annual Demographia study is mostly BS. First, they only look at a handful of Anglosphere countries and yet claim to cover the world; Second, they have strong ties to the automotive industry and have an agenda of urban sprawl -- this leads them to target negatively cities that are fighting sprawl, like Vancouver; Third, their only metric for affordability is housing price yet places where there is a more dense population often have high housing prices but lower overall affordability when all costs are considered, most importantly they don't include renting; Finally their numbers don't line with any other major reports (EIU, Mercer, etc).
While Vancouver, has the worst affordable city in Canada, it is very middle of the pack when you look at major cities in the world. And the notion that SF is more affordable than Vancouver is just laughable if you've lived in both places.
> And the notion that SF is more affordable than Vancouver is just laughable if you've lived in both places.
I have lived in both SF and Vancouver and I don't find it laughable at all. I also now live in NYC and have previously lived in London, UK. My experience may be anecdotal but it is representative. Of all the places I have just listed, I saved the least amount of money when I lived in Vancouver. To be clear, the amount of money I put away each month after all expenses was lowest in Vancouver.
In fact, the number of devs being recruited from Vancouver down to SF should be an indication of how much more financially attractive it is to work down there. I can't even imagine someone from SF choosing to make the move to Vancouver.
In light of recent events [0], there's a non-zero chance that some founders out there would rather avoid going to the US at all - if only to protest with their wallet.
It might be more sensible to open a second incubator in the EU. Berlin, Amsterdam, Dublin, Barcelona, there are plenty of options. (London is a good choice on paper too but pray tell what'll happen after Brexit.)
Let's not forget the upcoming European elections. Bar that, even as a French citizen, I would actually give my vote to Amsterdam as being probably one of the best places to start a startup in Europe.
How long ago? I've been here 12 years (first school, now work), and it's changed a lot, almost all for the better. There's a decent arts/music scene, a dozen good restaurants, affordable housing, lots of new construction, light rail coming online next year.
Not much to do in Waterloo. It's good if you're introverted and just want to game/do projects/self-improvement after work, though. Which isn't that bad thinking about it.
Agree that Toronto is lovely, but 113km is a curious definition for "stone's throw"... Especially given the 401's proclivity for stop-and-go traffic...
I went to Waterloo for school and used to make the drive to TO regularly - under an hour is a very optimistic estimate that probably relies on some fortuitous celestial alignment.
In any case I also wouldn't describe Berkeley-SF as a "stone's throw" either...
Which is actually a great example - many a person has moved out of SF for Berkeley, because "I'll be around all the time, it's not that far" - only to be rarely seen again.
The "work/live in Loo, hang out in TO" thing is mostly theoretical, though I'm sure you can find a few people who actually do it.
To your note about people avoiding the US - I've already seen this for personal travel. I was planning on doing a bit of a holiday around the country, but now the US just leaves such a sour place in my mouth and I would much rather go elsewhere. A number of my friends have made the same decision.
Yes. If you want to start a startup, it requires excess liquidity among a group of individuals willing to take risk.
In Montreal, there are very few high-net worth individuals, and almost nobody invests 100K chunks in small businesses.
In America, particularly the Silicon Valley, there are tons of wealthy, and semi-wealthy people who back projects.
A 'simple idea' can get you $2M in Angel funding ($100K cheques by high net-worth individuals) in the Valley, while it would get you laughed out of the room in Montreal.
And that's just the start. The same for later stages. There are few later-stage funds in all of Canada, and almost zero big acquirers to 'end the funnel'. Both exist amply in the US, specifically the Valley, creating and end-to-end system for entrepreneurialism.
The same problem exists in Europe to a lesser degree, which is why there are so few big startups that come out of there.
Honestly i dont see the point of big funding anyway. As entrepreneur myself i rather do it myself, ask friends or even take a credit but keep my company and go for small growth. Its a american thing i think to think that a company has to start big, and sure for social media things this is a very relevant factor but for everything else meh.
Dublin? Sure. Amsterdam - if you believe you can grow decent startup scene in location with 52% income taxes and 1.2% wealth tax and 21% VAT, I have a bridge to sell you.
Silicon Valley happened before the tax madness, and there is now net wealth outflow to lower-tax locations.
It is still pretty high though. Maybe not the highest, but high enough that a lot of people will take into account when deciding for or against Amsterdam.
An one who lives in Hungary at the moment, I'd trade this country for Amsterdam any day from a tax standpoint - but admittedly wouldn't go there either way because their extreme right wingers are on par with Jobbik. It's a matter of reference points I suppose.
Surely the land of Donald Trump is somehow better? Or not... /troll
I'm confused, are you claiming that Amsterdam has more right wingers than Hungary? Perhaps this is a case of media distortion. My Czech and English language media tells me that Hungary is currently the 4th Reich.
I'd like to know the reasoning behind choosing Canada as an alternative interview location because from experience, it easier to get a US visitor visa than that of Canada.
Nigerians cannot even transit the Canadian airport without a visa which takes upward of 8 weeks to get AFTER approval vs days for the US. Requirements for Canada are more onerous.
2 suggestions.
1. A country of interview per continent. For instance, Dubai will cover Africans + Middle East + Europe
2. Shortlist some countries and let people select 2 options to interview at.
On paper, the passport index [1] looks like a good way to do it but doesn't take into account spread of countries that can visit
I also know several US citizens that have been denied entry into Canada because of a DUI in the United States. AFAIK It's not a hard fast rule, and you won't find out until you get there.
As a Canadian, I was surprised someone would be denied entry for a DUI. Since I looked this up I'll summarize:
Essentially Canada can prevent people who have committed what would be indictable crimes under Canadian law from entering. DUI is particularly strange because it can be either an indictable (serious) or summary (less serious) offence, and in Canada this depends on the circumstances and the way it's prosecuted. Coupled with the varying laws in different states regarding DUI/DWI/OUI/etc, and presumably to prevent the border guard having to act as a Canadian criminal court (to judge how it would be handled here) they just always treat it as if it was an indictable offence.
So even if you're not driving and not intending to drive, the fact it's a potentially indictable criminal offence is what prevents entry -- nothing at all to do with it being a DUI.
There appears to be a couple possible ways to be admitted despite a criminal record[1], by getting either a Temporary Resident Permit (TRP) or being granted Criminal Rehabilitation. I'm not sure what's involved with either, or how likely it is to be approved, but they apparently issue around 10,000 TRPs a year.
Yes this has been a problem for several people I know. There is an arduous apology form process one can go through but most people just give up because it is so embarrassing. I've had more complications at the US-Canada border crossing than at any other crossing I've ever taken.
It's particularly interesting given that having a DUI on your record is not disqualifying for entry into the USA. The US denies entry for what it deems crimes of moral turpitude, a relatively nebulous concept, though one a DUI does not fall under.
I totally agree with you especially your suggestion that Dubai be considered for the interview. In fact Dubai should be considered as a site for the 3 month program.
I applied to YC for the 2017 batch and I'd rather get into the program than not. But if I have to jump through needless hoops to do so, and put up with the bullshit of a narcissistic circus-performer politician while at it, I'll bootstrap my business for longer or seek investment from someplace else.
If YC is committed to 'discovering world-wide talent' it had better do something more drastic in pursuit of this goal in the light of recent events and challenges.
Combined with Expa Labs opening an office in Vancouver, it seems that President Trump is the best thing that could ever happen to Vancouver's tech scene. Our anchors historically have been companies like IBM, HSBC, Nokia, and Ericsson, which are all shells of their former selves and have long since closed down their presences in Vancouver. The few existing long-term anchors include MDA and Vision Critical, and SAP's BI division (SAP BusinessObjects and BusinessObjects Cloud, which originated from a local startup called Crystal Decisions which was purchased by SAP in 2008 by way of some Seagate M&As), along with gamedev and film/TV VFX studios which are all feast-or-famine. Just look at the fate of Radical, Roadhouse Interactive, United Front Games, Pixar's office in Vancouver. Sony Imageworks, A Thinking Ape and Animal Logic might go the same way if the loonie increases in value. HootSuite is set to go under eventually as CRM suites integrate social media management; they waited too late to IPO. So this might be the kick in the ass the Vancouver tech scene needs in the eventual post-HootSuite landscape.
Expa's founder is from BC so I think them opening up an office there is mostly due to an excess of cash they have from Uber's success, not that it necessarily makes sense from a VC perspective.
I hope I'm wrong since I would love to see Vancouver / Toronto have the same earning power as SV.
> Expa's founder is from BC so I think them opening up an office there is mostly due to an excess of cash they have from Uber's success, not that it necessarily makes sense from a VC perspective.
The founder of Slack grew up on Vancouver Island and went to UVic, the co-founders of Tableau is an SFU comp sci alumnus; so is the founder of Buddybuild[1] (the first genuine mobile-first CI provider, raised a series A round from KPCB (!) for $7.6M which is unheard of for a Van company, let alone they managed to find an SV VC firm which was okay with the company keeping the company local).
The way I see it, it matters less why they came (whether it makes sense from a VC perspective, the founders are homesick, or as a response to shifting political tides in the United States) and matters more that they're here.
We're opening up Vancouver because there's a massive untapped potential of talent in the area that we can help bridge with SF.
I've met and seen many amazing entrepreneurs, developers, designers and all other roles of a startup in this city who are very capable and talented. Our goal is to give them a platform and a opportunity to realize success without having to move south.
How are you comparing Tijuana to Vancouver? I have lived in Tijuana. It's one of the worst cities in Mexico. Guadalajara or Mexico City would make much more sense, but even they can't compare to Vancouver. I openly say that the bridge that connects the Tijuana airport directly to the United States is the best thing that ever happened to the city.
Going to 'Diet USA' is likely more seamless and convenient. I lived in Canada for several years and I honestly think that's a good description for it, you cannot really tell whether you are in Michigan or Ontario if you don't look at the road signs.
Or visit the museums, where all the exhibits have both French and English text.
As an American who worked in Canada for a summer, I can honestly say that the two countries are so similar you're surprised by any minor differences that do come up.
Have you been in Quebec? Montreal is more like a central European city than anything in the US. I haven't been to Quebec City but I gather it's not much different.
It's also starkly different if you look at share of wealth. Class divisions are smaller in Canada, noticeably so.
As a Chicagoan, being in Toronto can be a little bizarre. After a while I forget I'm not at home. That said, Canada is fairly diverse. Montreal has no easy American city comparison.
I'm a Canadian who lived and worked in the US for six years, and my impression on returning home is that Canada is the country you'd get if you took the U.S. and removed the extremes of wealth and poverty.
This will no longer be true as the divide in the GTA grows out of control.
Canada has a very small population so you haven't noticed these divides yet but they will only get worse with time unless our government takes a serious stance on ensuring the middle class doesn't shrink.
Other than the language barrier? I imagine its terrible crime problem is a mark against it as well. It had 100+ more murders than often-cited Chicago last year with 1/3rd the population of Chicago!
Also at $15,000 GDP per capita, its not exactly a wealthy place. Vancouver chimes it at 3x that and had all of one murder last year.
Another reason: despite being closer to the Bay Area, flights to/from Mexico from SFO are actually more expensive (by 100-200 dollars) than to/from Vancouver.
Unfortunately I haven't traveled Mexico much to recommend one from personal experience but my friends who have visited Guadalajara and Guanajuato have loved it.
It's oddly ominous reading about America's rise on the back of textile patents taken from England and Europe, then poaching of German physics talent and scientific talent from across the world. Germany was, by far, the pre-eminent power in theoretical physics at the turn of the 20th century, with Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck & Born about to be at the peak of their powers. Then the country decided to turn on intellectuals, immigrants, and minorities and turned its scientific prowess to war rather than peace.
There's an old saying out there that history is merely a set of cycles. I suppose we'll see if that is true in the upcoming years.
*one note I would add is that with recent policy uncertainty (i.e healthcare) the advantages of hiring around the world have come into starker relief. That's even more dangerous. Sure, the United States may become less competitive in the war for talent because of walls and tighter borders -- but it'll become less competitive, period, for companies relying on high-skill workers who by definition will be close to or at the peak of their physical and/or mental health.
As a Texan it boggled my mind to hear people complain about immigration. Walk into UT, A&M, UH engineering departments, half the students are Chinese or Russian or Indian. In the grad programs it's even more.
That means their best talent is here, paying US taxes, contributing to US companies, making the US more powerful, all the while contributing almost nothing to their home countries. How is that a bad thing! I don't get it!
The move from calling illegal aliens to illegal immigrants (or undocumented workers, or whatever) creates so much confusion.
I don't know a single person, and I know a good number of Trump voters, who is opposed to legal immigration. What many people, myself included, are opposed to is the illegal part.
Yet I consistently see this stance twisted to mean opposition to all immigration. This conflation is patently ridiculous but it makes for a nice straw man.
Trump passed an EO stopped legal immigration from certain countries. I get your point but pretending Trump isn't also hostile to some legal immigrants seems naive.
You don't know a single Trump voter that's opposed to legal immigration from countries that in majority muslim?
Trump outlawed legal visa holders from Iran from entering the US when he signed the first immigration executive order. I don't think Trump voters were against that.
The point is that what used to be legal (like say, visiting from a "Muslim-majority" country for tourism or to find work), or what should be legal, isn't... with bigotry and anti-intellectualism at the heart of it. Economics have nothing to do with it aside from the fact that an economy gets bigger the more people who participate in it - as in - we need more people, not less.
> I don't know a single person, and I know a good number of Trump voters, who is opposed to legal immigration. What many people, myself included, are opposed to is the illegal part
If you are only opposed to the illegal part and not the immigration part, it's relatively easy to fix: just better align the supply of visas with demand. There's a number of obvious things you could do to achieve that:
(1) Keep by-category caps but eliminate per-country caps within each visa category entirely, or
(2) Keep existing caps, but allow immigrants qualified in existing immigrant visa categories to pay an (initial and annual) additional fee to skip the line and get a "supernumerary visa".
(3) Allow people who aren't barred entry but who aren't qualified in a y existing immigrant category to pay an (initial and annual) additional fee to enter on a special visa.
Obviously, if what one has a problem with is immigration and the "illegal" part is a smokescreen, then one will be less likely to support reforms which address illegality without aiming to reduxe overall immigration.
If you look at Trump's ACTUAL actions (denying re-entry to "permanent resident" green card holders, etc.), you'll see that even Trump makes this conflation himself.
It's important to judge someone the most by what they do, and not just by what they say.
But it's also important to judge people by what they say, i.e. people saying "he doesn't actually grab women by the pussy, that's just locker-room talk."
You might want to rethink that assumption, what about Trump & co.'s stance on h1b visas? Which are probably the only legal channel for skilled immigrants
It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
That sounds like a grossly inaccurate generalization to me. A lot of "illegal immigrants" are an absolutely essential part of the economy, performing jobs like picking oranges in the Florida heat/humidity, doing roofing work, washing dishes, etc. Interview farmers in the south and ask them how many American born workers are willing to even take many farm jobs.
These people most definitely are not "sucking the system dry". And a system that can be "sucked dry" has a design flaw which should be rectified anyway.
> A lot of "illegal immigrants" are an absolutely essential part of the economy, performing jobs like picking oranges in the Florida heat/humidity, doing roofing work, washing dishes, etc
This is what kind of gets me though. Supporting illegal immigration is supporting indentured servitude. I've especially noticed it in NYC, it boils down to "I'll support your right to stay here as long as I can still find a $6 burrito and a cheap nanny".
That's not entirely fair. If the immigrant feels that they have a better life as a low-wage worker in the US (keep in mind many are escaping violent or oppressive surroundings) then I won't be the judge of that by imposing artificial limits on livelihood. We can at least acknowledge that we are improving the lives of those immigrants for whom this is the case.
I don't know why its so uncomfortable for conservatives to admit that illegals play a role in our economy[1]. If they didn't they wouldn't be here as the market would choose against them. This is why Democrats have been fighting for amnesty programs for long time illegals, to keep this labor and the work it does here. Native borns aren't fighting to pick oranges for 12 hours a day at minimum wage, but these guys will and do.
On top of the moral argument that these people have kids here and are rooted in our culture and schools and dragging their parents off to Mexico and breaking up families is just inhumane.
Thus far Trump has not addressed any of this. He has a "jail and deport 'em at high noon" attitude that does no one any good. Disregarding the labor they do is foolish just as Trump supporting California farmers are starting to learn.
[1] The only people I know who are definitely employing illegals are a white wealthy couple with an illegal Mexican nanny. Funny how that works.
>I don't know why its so uncomfortable for conservatives to admit that illegals play a role in our economy[1].
I guess I'd call myself a conservative (I think) and I don't get uncomfortable at all admitting that, but that doesn't mean that the fact they do "play a role" is right or correct. You're implying something that I think is quite dangerous: that the US economy can't function unless we allow people to break our laws to be here. That sounds like a caste system by another name. I genuinely don't understand arguments from the left that attempt to minimize the importance of State Sovereignty in the context of these debates. "Native borns" used to be able to find that work...until we started importing illegal immigrants willing to work for fractions of the cost.
> Native borns aren't fighting to pick oranges for 12 hours a day at minimum wage, but these guys will and do.
An economist would say it's because the wage being offered is too low. Businesses don't get to have access to unlimited labour at whatever wage they choose in a market economy.
Yet they're not all illegals. Natives of Mexican heritage and others of the poorest class perform this work at this wage.
Regardless, why aren't we jailing those who hire these people and cause these problems then? Oh right, they're Trump loyalists, political donors, and white.
My grandfather owned many apple orchards, and he said without migrant labor, he would have had to go out of business years ago. He could not hire US citizens as workers because nobody that is born here wants to climb trees all day picking fruit for minimum wage. This was back in the 80s. He also had very good things to say about how hard-working and dedicated the migrant workers were.
Now, you might argue that without migrant labor, he should just pay a decent wage, but what is a decent wage for hard manual labor? Would you be ok with paying $10 an apple at the grocery store because someone was paid $30-40 an hour to pick them?
The narrative that illegal immigrants are all criminals is deeply flawed and inaccurate.
No. The numbers don't work. A typical apple picker (the most labor intense/apple part of the work) can do 1000 lb/hour [1]
So even if you had to pay domestic workers $30/hour, and you could pay migrants nothing, that still only comes to charging 3 cents a pound more. Not $8.
It makes me wonder to what extent migrant labor features in the other parts of that apple's value chain, though.
Much of the price of that apple comes from the farmhands who loaded the truck, the truckdriver who drove it, the gas that the truck burned, the warehouse that stored it, the shopkeeper that stocked it, and the cashier that sold it. I don't know the prevalence of migrant workers in each of those industries - but looking around, I'd guess that lots of cashiers, lots of farmhands, and maybe a few truckdrivers and gas station attendants are also immigrants. If you had to pay them $30-40/hour, would the apple still cost a dollar?
Only a few of those are labor cost issues, and most of those are not typically migrant labor (truck drivers and grocery employees). That leaves the truck loaders, which is much less work per apple than picking.
Point being, this "$10/lb" is extreme exaggeration.
Now, it's probably true that orchard owners would love the free 3 cents a pound (or 2, or 1). And they're not going to leave money on the table when others can get away with hiring cheaper illegal labor. But the idea that apples have to be that much more expensive is pushing it.
I'd love to see a formal study on how often Americans "go out" for food rather than buy from a grocery and cook it themselves. In Scandinavia, the cost difference between eating-in and going-out is much, much larger than here in the USA.
how many apples per hour does a worker pick? If you paid a worker an extra $20/hour you don't get $10/apple at the store unless the worker only picks two apples an hour, now, does it?
Not paying farm workers acceptable salaries otherwise things at the grocery store will cost 5x don't seem to pass the math smell test...
> And a system that can be "sucked dry" has a design flaw which should be rectified anyway.
This is politics not engineering. Flaws are part of the design. Every flaw is designed to appease one group or another. Restricting access on any arbitrary basis would lead to calls of racism, xenophobia, class warfare, etc.
> Interview farmers in the south and ask them how many American born workers are willing to even take many farm jobs.
Working hard is not the issue. Working in the heat is not the issue. Plenty of American citizens do that. The issue is of pay. Southern farmers can not afford to pay above minimum wage which is why they sometimes resort to hiring illegal immigrants or prisoners.
Why can't they pay more than minimum? Because they're competing against border states, like California, who have: illegal immigrants working below minimum wage, large economies with well developed public infrastructure, and the greater take of federal and state subsidies.
They are also competing with other countries that might be better equipped to produce those goods (e.g. Chile might have cheaper labor, and better water/soil/climate) for some types of fruits.
Without subsidies or this cheap labor, a lot of agr. would cease to be profitable.
It's funny how the left is all about living wages except when illegal aliens are involved. Evidently, near-slavery is acceptable for these people. If we didn't have them, wages would rise, and Americans would in fact perform these jobs.
It's notable also that some of the worst-affected Americans happen to be black, and that wealthy liberals aren't hiring black housekeepers. It's as if there might be some fear of certain Americans, so we find foreigners to hire instead.
You make an interesting appeal. I am not sure what you are trying to prove by saying that the poster will "get" it if they just talk to cops, ambulance drivers, and immigration officers. I would assume that you are trying to say they will find that immigrants commit crime (the original poster is speaking to a cop), they get hurt more often (the original poster is speaking to an ambulance driver), and they, now I am really stretching, deal with immigration officers more (the original poster is speaking to an immigration officer?). These will all be true regardless of the immigrants status and background. You haven't made any point at all.
The original poster said that immigrants pay taxes. Do you not agree? He said they contribute to US companies. Do you not agree? He said they make the US more powerful. Do you not agree? He said they don't contribute these same things to their home country. Do you not agree?
I think the point that is really crying out to be made is that college campuses and the backs of ambulances/squad cars are two very biased sets of places to attempt to collect a representative sample of the immigrant population.
In fact, if you were to collect samples of natural born American citizens in the same two sets of places you'd reach the exact same biased conclusions about Americans.
If you collected statistics about immigrants on college campuses and immigrants in the back of a squad car you'd find they got here from very different places and on very different visas (or lack of visa).
In fact, if you were to collect samples of natural born American citizens in the same two sets of places you'd reach the exact same biased conclusions about Americans.
What conclusions are you referring to, in particular?
What conclusions are you referring to, in particular?
The respective ones. If you collected statistics about Americans in the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that Americans are a bunch of criminals (shocker of shockers). That's the point: it's just about the silliest, most extreme way to bias your sample.
Are you saying that police officers, by virtue of the fact that they primarily interact with criminals, would conclude that people here on, say, student visas are a bunch of criminals?
You said "If you collected statistics about Americans in the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that Americans are a bunch of criminals (shocker of shockers).".
I'm challenging you on that. I think your statistics would show that certain classes of Americans are comparatively very criminally oriented, and certain classes of Americans are not. Similarly, if you collected statistics about foreigners in the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that foreigners here without a visa of any kind are much more criminally oriented than foreigners here on, for example, a student visa. You seem to want to dismiss the usefulness of those statistics just because they're only dealing with a particular segment of the population.
I think your statistics would show that certain classes of Americans are comparatively very criminally oriented, and certain classes of Americans are not.
I didn't say anything about certain classes of Americans. I said that if you sampled the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that Americans are a bunch of criminals in general. That is the point. Asking a police officer about their experiences with immigrants is extremely biased. Just as asking a surgeon about athletes is biased (hint: surgeons have a lot more contact with injured athletes than the average person).
Asking a police officer about their experiences with immigrants is extremely biased.
So I ask again (and I won't use students this time, since you didn't get the point the first time): If you asked police officers about their experiences with immigrants here on E1 visas, would you conclude that people here on E1 visas are a bunch of criminals? What does that tell you about people here on E1 visas?
I did not make that statement at all. The part you quoted references an implication that if you ask cops, ambulance drivers, and immigration officers about immigrants they will talk about immigrants in the light of what they see.
I'll be very clear. Immigrants and non-immigrants are not equally beneficial to the country. No one is equally beneficial to the country.
The statement you responded to implies that cops and so on will speak negatively about illegal immigrants but will not speak negatively about (certain types of) legal immigrants.
That doesn't mean none of those types of legal immigrants cause problems for those people, it means they don't cause enough problems to draw the ire of those people.
US citizens pay taxes, contribute to US companies and make the US more powerful. US citizens also contribute a higher percentage of their income to local communities than immigrants do. It is a myth that their is an infinite supply of jobs, and that supply/demand somehow doesn't apply to immigration. You aren't really making an argument either.
> US citizens also contribute a higher percentage of their income to local communities than immigrants do
I don't know, man. The state of California and the federal government take their rightful 38% share from my income. I'm not a citizen.
My girlfriend also pays her rightful 38% share of income. She is a citizen.
And my income is a bit higher so in absolute terms I contribute more as an immigrant than my girlfriend does as a citizen. Percentagewise it's the same because we're in the same tax bracket.
Anecdata, yes, but my point is that everyone who is in X tax bracket pays Y% taxes. Want immigrants to contribute a higher percentage of their income to local communities? Give them higher salaries. ;)
Also, unless a migrant stays in the US forever, they won't receive the benefits of their social security contributions.
EG: I pay 6.2*2=12.4% as social security, but unless I contribute for at least 10 years, those contributions are lost. So many H1B holders end up paying 12% more in taxes than their American counterparts...
Oh that's a good point I didn't even think of! I have to pay all those social things and will likely never see them again. Like throwing money in the furnace.
And unlike an H1B, my O-1 visa is not dual intent. That means I get to stay in constant purgatory. Haven't really looked into it, but I probably should.
Either way, legal immigrants contribute just as much, if not more, as citizens do.
Edit: Looks like they support sending social security payments to foreign countries, if you meet requirements. That's neat. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10137.pdf
I for one do not. And none of my immigrant friends do either.
There's two types of immigrants in that regard. One has family back home that they support by getting a better job abroad. They might be the majority, I don't know.
Then there's the young person who moved abroad right after college or studied abroad in the first place. They're looking for better opportunities for themselves. Many start families abroad and their children are citizens.
Many if not most immigrants are hybrids of above. One family member moves abroad with the goal of sending money back home to provide for their family. But the endgame is to eventually bring the rest of the family over once the first immigrant finishes bootstrapping their new life.
I would wager that most immigrants who do have family back home, would love nothing more than to bring the rest of the family over to their new country.
Economically speaking everyone pays taxes. Also economically speaking no one pays taxes equally. I would love to see actual statics that show that immigrants do not contribute to local economies at a rate similar to others in a community at a similar pay bracket.
As for supply and demand. I believe the supply and demand of the job market as a whole is exactly what is causing immigration. I believe those market forces will continue to pull in immigration, legally or not. Market forces have a hard time understanding law.
If your supply/demand argument works, then why is rural Europe suffering from long term unemployment when European cities long-term have more open positions than unemployed? Why is it, that in southern siberia, where there is massive mining and forestry industry, there is also massive unemployment and people move cross continent to Moscow to find work, despite the fact that Moscow has almost no real industry.
Chat with an immigrate in a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the feeder high schools (mostly Irish Catholic) that make police and fire departments fraternal, recalcitrant, racist and corrupt.
I'd called my county sheriff's office with a similar question a while back. They wouldn't agree with you. These sanctuary policies don't come from nowhere. Often they originate from law enforcement, as was the cause with my county. If you want to talk about sucking dry, it's expensive for local law enforce to enforce federal law on otherwise contributing members of society. This isn't touching on how it erodes trust in immigrant communities.
> Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it.
Cities don't have immigration officers (especially sanctuary cities, which are cities that refuse to have their law enforcement act as immigration enforcers for the federal government.)
And local law enforcement is usually the biggest proponent of sanctuary city policies, because their job is made vastly more difficult when immigrant communities see them as immigration enforcers; cooperation with law enforcement in those communities (and not just by undocumented immigrants or even just non-citizens in those communities) drops radically when they are sending in that light.
It seems like we could solve the immigration problem very quickly if we started imposing harsh penalties on the people who employ illegal immigrants.
Undocumented immigrants, by definition, are going to be hard to track down. Businesses on the other hand have to have an office, be reachable, file taxes, etc. They're also probably breaking a host of other employment laws as well (easy to do when your employees can't go to the authorities). If the availability of jobs dried up, people would have no incentive to come here illegally.
Of course, that would involve arresting rich white people instead of poor brown people, so it will never happen.
Yes. Of course, there are native born citizens who suck the system dry, too. But a sovereign nation can dispense with illegal aliens. (And should.) Then we must turn to, you know, growing the economy fast enough to support this massive welfare state for the people who are constitutionally entitled to it -- both native born and legally immigrated.
Or we could eviscerate the welfare state and be richer, freer, happier, and healthier! [1]
Richer, freer, happier and healthier than the Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Danes? Those are among the most extensive welfare states in the world, proividing:
"[A] national system of free health care and education for everyone, job training, subsidized child care, a generous pension system and fuel subsidies and rent allowances for the elderly." [1]
And on top of that, better healthcare (#11, 14, 23 are Norics, 30 is Canada, 31 is USA [3]), low wealth inequality, low income inequality, low gender inequality and high happiness (#1, 3, 4, 5 are Nordics [2]). By all metrics, those people in the welfare states are happier, freer, richer and healthier than your average American -- some of the most in the world -- and they live longer too (#15, 18, 20, 30 vs. US at 43rd [4]).
Americans in my experience tend to equate socialism with Venezuela not Canada and the Nordics, etc. Sounds like based on empirical evidence the way to improve these metrics is to expand the welfare state not cut it back. There's a reason nobody in Canada is itching to repeal single-payer.
Additional stats that makes this even more interesting are rankings of economic freedom from places like the Heritage Foundation.[1] Canada and the Nordic countries are on par with the US, and on many important factors ahead.
It doesn't follow that a comprehensive social welfare system requires state ownership of the means of production, arduous regulation on business formation, weak property rights, weak rule of law, or anti-business labor laws. All of these countries do very well when on these factors; the citizens simply choose government services (through voting) in areas of the economy where the government performs well (health care, social insurance). Sweden was capitalistic enough to refuse to bail out SAAB during the financial crisis, you can't say the same for the US and GM.
Undocumented immigrants do not "suck the system dry". They pay taxes, for the most part, and because they are undocumented, are unable to benefit from most of the services available to legal residents (citizens or immigrants).
The Trump administration has stated it might cap H1B visas further. This move will directly impact academia and the Tech industry and the influx of top talent. By combining the issue of illegal immigration with legal high value H1B visas, the Trump administration and its supporters are not helping their own argument. There is a nuance there which the parent comment was correctly mentioning. You want the best of another country to come to the US as they have been or risk the slow spiral of insignificance that Germany faced.
H1B is currently randomized lottery, benefiting sweatshops cluttering the pipeline, Current administration is not eliminating it but at least from their talk its about restoring their original intent, to bring in extra-ordinary talent. Which might actually be good news for SV, depending on how it is implemented?
Google, Microsoft, Netflix & Facebook benefit directly from H1B visas and are most certainly not "sweatshops". Even when you consider companies that pay less than the top tech companies, no one would consider them sweatshops. So hyperbole aside, and keeping in mind that H1B also brings academic talent to universities, the hate towards the H1B program seems more rooted in a hate of immigration than a worry of the program not realizing its "original intent".
If you don't want 85,000 of the best talent in the world per year to power US companies' and academia's growth, that's fine. Go ahead and limit the visa program and risk that talent going elsewhere.
If you know where to find these H1B "sweatshops" on US soil, please take those charts and company names to the Department of Labor and report the wage crime or occupational hazards you are implying with your hyperbole. Otherwise, your statements are deeply exaggerated. Here's a link to get you started: https://www.dol.gov/whd/howtofilecomplaint.htm
> It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
Vast majority of illegal immigrants perhaps just keep their head low and work hard. Also, they barely get anything from welfare and work below minimum wages. It is probably the criminal aspect that is sucking the system and good solution for that is to decriminalise drugs and help American companies sell drugs for a profit instead relying on Mexican cartels.
I have never understood why Mexican citizens cant get a 30 day to 1 years temporary below-minimum wage job permit
> not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
I know founders who had employed 10+ American being rejected visa and sometimes entry for no good reason. I have seen cops, CBP officials and other government departments harassing these individuals all the time.
It's the police in my sanctuary city that want the "sanctuary" status. Our police should be free to prioritize using their limited resources on pursuing important threats to the safety of our community, and illegal immigration is just not the threat that flyover methlab-country is convinced it is. Our immigrants fearing using public services, fearing reporting crime to the police, that stuff hurts our city.
> You might want to take a step outside the academic setting every once in a while.
> It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry
And you apparently carry a user name that matches your posts, at least this one.
Stuff like your last sentence is something that is heard (in Germany, at least) only on the right-to-fringe-right sphere. It's long since I have seen such outspoken racism here.
As someone who grew up in a rural small town in the midwest before attending a top 15 university and starting a company in Silicon Valley, I really don't appreciate the perceived stereotype of my hometown.
BI just noted that the problem is a bit more widespread, it also affects the affluent "masses" in the Hamptons:
(Unfortunately, yours seems to be the prevailing attitude towards my "roots" here in northern California with its conflicting culture that purportedly prides itself on being free of stereotypes.)
I agree with you 100%, but people who complain about immigration would argue that they're taking away the opportunities for Americans for the same education / positions.
Heck, that's what they say about undocumented migrant workers in agriculture. But seeing them in positions in the "intellectual elite" is even more threatening to them because such positions are seen as a position of power.
I can confirm based on my Texan friend who voted for Trump that when he sees so many foreign students, he thinks of the potential American students that were "displaced" by them. I put displaced in quotes because it's not true that they could all be backfilled by americans (there are only so many people who graduate with an undergrad degree in EE or Physics each year).
The schools aren't the problem? How do you think the parents got into a position where they don't push their kids to succeed? Have you been to an inner-city school? How about a school in Mississippi or South Carolina?
The government defunded the schools and created a culture of anti-intellectualism. Fixing education is just about as perfect a solution you can get to the myriad of problems this country faces.
Well it is a bad thing if you are an American student and have to compete with cheaper foreign students (Universities recruit foreign students because they pay more money). There are winners and losers in immigration.
Germany waged two world wars over 20 years and tens of millions of people died because of that.
Germany, even at its scientific height was racist and nationalist. Hitler didn't come to power in the 30s without generations of Germans being the foundation.
The US is very far from that.
I don't understand the massive overreaction. The United States in the 60s was a place where there were sundown towns that blacks dared not travel. In 2004 they were seriously considering a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Now?
We can't lose sight of progress and we can't overreact to the sway of government. All progress has not been lost and the US is not in the dire state some act like it is.
I don't think it's a bad thing to bring up the negatives of what happens when nationalism is at its worst. I agree that we can't lose sight of our accomplishments -- not all is dire, and the United States is quite far from a Germany scenario as of now.
But a bit of nationalism has crept up in the politics of the United States and several other European countries. Bringing up what happened when nationalism ran wild is relevant.
After all, even with the current policies Trump enacted, it is not impossible that our nation will lose out on being the home of the next Einstein, just because they were born in the wrong place.
But the US has a history of racism, slavery (even today, in the prisons), genocide angainst the natives, Christian supremasism leading the military to torture people without cause [1], mass internment of native Americans, Japanees, and Irish. In US history, Americans have already killed more inocent civilian Native Americans and blacks than the germans killed Jews, Polls and Gypsies. Unlike the Germans, Americans still deny their own hollocaust of the Natives. Claiming that it was smallpox, which echos the hollocaust deniers claims of typhus quite clearly. And in the past 30-40 years, Americans have been quiet about this. This has become taboo. But many people, even in the US government, such as Jeff Sessions, and Donald Trump are rooted to the history of racism and genocide. They are alive today, and they are ruling the country.
The US obviously isn't perfect. It has a very sordid past. It's just that it's sordid past isn't any worse than others (this is a human problem) and at its best it does stand for something - continual progress.
You are also absolutely incorrect on numbers of Native Americans or blacks killed vs the Nazi actions. The Nazis killed tens of millions systematically, not even counting incidental casualties.
The Native Americans were not systematically wiped out. The vast majority died prior to contact with Europeans due to simple disease. There's really no contesting this, all you can do is contest the numbers. Something like 50+% (conservative numbers) of the NA population pre-contact was killed by disease.
Many Native American tribes experienced great depopulation, averaging 25–50 percent of the tribes members lost to disease. Additionally, smaller tribes neared extinction after facing a severely destructive spread of disease.[2] The significant toll that this took is expounded upon in the article Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. A specific example was Cortes' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. This shows the main effect of the arrival of Europeans in the new world. With no natural immunity against these pathogens, Native Americans died in huge numbers. The eminent Yale historian David Brion Davis describes this as "the greatest genocide in the history of man. Yet it's increasingly clear that most of the carnage had nothing to do with European barbarism. The worst of the suffering was caused not by swords or guns but by germs."[9] By 1700, less than five thousand Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region.[4] In Florida alone, there were seven hundred thousand Native Americans in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2000.[4]
That of course does not deny the past. The US mistreated natives and exploited them, there is no doubting this.
Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have literally never publicly made a statement supporting genocide. The gap between reactionary politics and genocide is vast. Has Trump at age 70 ever even killed a man? Where does this idea that he's going to become genocidal comes from? How can you equate his actions (no deaths) to something which killed tens of millions?
Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Concentration Camps issued orders on December 28, 1942, that "The death rate in the concentration camps must be reduced at all costs" (Reitlinger, "The Final Solution"). The camps had been hit with a deadly typhus epidemic that spread by fleas and body lice. Stomach pain, high fever, emaciation and death can quickly follow. All of the camps were factories and the loss of workers was hurting war production. Inspector of the camps, Richard Glucks responded to Himmler's order on January 20, 1943, "Every means will be used to lower the death rates" (Nuremberg Tribunal Document No. 1523).
""" Quote from a holocaust denial website [1]
> The Native Americans were not systematically wiped out.
"""
From the earliest years of colonialism, conquistadores like Vasco Núñez de Balboa would brazenly advocate genocide against the native population.[50] In the 1700s, British militia like William Trent and Simeon Ecuyer gave Smallpox-exposed blankets to Native American emissaries as gifts at Fort Pitt, "to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians", in one of the most famously documented cases of germ warfare. While it is uncertain how successful such attempts were against the target population,[51] historians have noted that, "history records numerous instances of the French, the Spanish, the English, and later on the American, using smallpox as an ignoble means to an end. For smallpox was more feared by the Indian than the bullet: he could be exterminated and subjugated more easily and quickly by the death-bringing virus than by the weapons of the white man."[52] The British High Commander Jeffery Amherst authorized the intentional use of disease as a biological weapon against indigenous populations during the Pontiac's Rebellion, saying, "You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execreble Race", and instructing his subordinates, "I need only Add, I Wish to Hear of no prisoners should any of the villains be met with arms."
""" Quote from wikipedia article on extermination of native Americans [2]
If you read the literature from that time period, Darwin, the various western diaries, ect. You will find that the desire to kill Indians, and the vision of Indians as undermench was universal. This impression of Indians continued up until very recently, when US children, when given squirt guns, would run around playing "shoot the Indian". An endeering game in which American childern would simulate the systematic extermination of the natives 50-100 years earlier.
> You are also absolutely incorrect on numbers of Native Americans or blacks killed vs the Nazi actions. The Nazis killed tens of millions systematically, not even counting incidental casualties.
I was refering to the Holocaust, the systematic cilling of civilians. There were some ten-elleven million killed in the Holocaust[3]. There were some nine or ten million killed in the slave trade [4]. And millions of natives killed by european settlers (the exact number is really hard to place). Since ten million + some unknown number of millions is greater than ten million alone, I stand by my claims.
> Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have literally never publicly made a statement supporting genocide.
Did Hitler ever do so? The Jews didn't know that they were going to be exterminated. Otherwise, they wouldn't have packed their things and gotten on the trains to the concentration camps. They were under the impression that they were merely being deported. And Trump certainly talks about deportation [5].
What's he point of Himmler's quote? He wanted to reduce deaths in a system in which the end goal was extermination?
I agree with you that there are instances where Europeans wiped out natives and even where that was the mindset. The fact remains that the majority of Native Americans did not die due to systematic extermination. It is indisputable.
The US had done bad things, but every single culture in the world has done evil things. That is human nature. Many native tribes engaged in torture and regular warfare of their own. The only thing we can do is learn from it and the only way to do it is being objective about history, not engaging in exaggeration.
Can you get more genocidal than that? Can you find a Hitler quote, from before the start of WWII that comes close to that?
Mein Kampf?
Hopefully when Trump does not become Hitler 2.0 you will admit you were wrong.
> What's he point of Himmler's quote? He wanted to reduce deaths in a system in which the end goal was extermination?
My point is that you are denying the systematic genocide of the Native Americans. Just as the Nazis denied the systematic genocide of the Jews. Using exactly the same arguments.
> The fact remains that the majority of Native Americans did not die due to systematic extermination. It is indisputable.
It is also true that most Jews survived the Holocaust. Your point?
I have not read the entire book, as it is very long, but as far as I know Mein Kampf does not actually talk about genocide at all. It was not untill 1941, after the war had started, that Hitler first publicly mentioned the idea http://ww2history.com/key_moments/Holocaust/Hitler_talks_of_... He was hateful. Yes. But Donald Trump is hateful too.
> Hopefully when Trump does not become Hitler 2.0 you will admit you were wrong.
I don't think that Trump will become Hitler 2.0. But his supporters may well commit a genocide and cause either totaltarianism or mayhem. If they do not, I will not be wrong, just as I would not be wrong, if I were to say that cancer can kill a patient who subsiquently survives.
We've asked you before—this account and previous ones—to please comment civilly and substantively or not at all. We have to ban this account if you continue to violate the guidelines this way.
They're unlikely to be secret in the information age. Not even the CIA's blacksite torture program could be hidden, thanks to casual plane-watchers noting unusual traffic around military airfields.
No, the depressing thought is that it's far more likely to be out-in-the-open labor camps. Americans already interned their Japanese-American population during World War II; we get irrational when we feel threatened.
Well you see, the lack of sanctions against US exports and the lack of the US relying on exports pretty much undermines the oddly ominous parallels.
The US could benefit in the coming years by being more inclusionary again. It spans an entire continent and has a diversified portfolio of industries to sustain itself. It is unquestioned by its allies officially in wars that are remote and primarily benefit the industries within the US. It really could use an inclusionary policy to enhance its population wealth machine making selective immigration there to once again be a greater object of envy.
You see where the parallels to Weimar and German fascism fail? There isn't enough to extrapolate outcomes just because you see the trendiness of dietary restrictions in the US and notice that the fascist german leader had one too SO OMINOUS.
Enough of this fear mongering, and Nazi comparisons. Nazism, after all, was practiced by a majority of German population, and if everyone now in the US is forecasting it and fighting a what's to come, how can it really happen?
I am much more concerned about our "soft hegemony", propagated by politicians (for politicians) and accepted by a wide populace. Namely, slogans and ideals that are passed as a public policy. Instead of delivering goods, these politicians deliver slogans. California governor would talk for hours about the environment, but nothing would actually be done about the Oroville dam or building a new reservoir to store the water, to actually improve the environmental impact of millions of Californians. Take any lingering issue, from inner city blight to terrible situation of African American males, it's all political talk and nothing is done to actually fix things. That's where hegemony is, in my opinion.
>There's an old saying out there that history is merely a set of cycles. I suppose we'll see if that is true in the upcoming years.
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
I don' think the situation is as dire as people think. Europe exported many technical people during the war years and one would be hard pressed to say they are backwards because they lost talent. Japan as well is not very friendly to labor migrants and they are at the forefront of science in technology despite their small population size relative to other geographies.
It did, however, dramatically help the U.S. We got the atom bomb, moon landings, computer, and many other inventions out of European immigrants who fled the Nazis. The U.S. had a strong science program before the war, but its superpower status afterwards was just as much because we got all the brightest minds in Europe as because we bombed everyone else into rubble.
I could see Australia, New Zealand, or Canada similarly benefitting if the U.S. turns towards xenophobia & warmongering.
Some of the major postwar US innovations — particularly in the space program — came not from European immigrants who fled the Nazis but rather from German immigrants who were the Nazis. US intelligence services brought them here through Operation Paperclip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
One big problem is economies of scale. The U.S. has more than five times the combined population of these three countries. A similar problem affects the Nordic wundercountries. They are some of the richest and happiest countries in the world and have some of the best education systems in the world, but their small population sizes hinder their sheer economic potential. Finland's population is only 5.4 million and Sweden's is only 9.5 million, and yet they still gave birth to Colossal Order, Spotify, Supercell, Rovio among others. Imagine how many tech powerhouses would come out of the Nordic countries if they had larger populations and thus larger economies of scale. Same with Norway. For years its economy has been tied to O&G, but with the collapsing price in oil the Norwegian government is investing their oil billions into startups; in the coming years, Norway's startup scene will explode. And all with a population of 5 million. If their population was larger, I think Norway's startup scene could be so, so much bigger.
One possible issue with the Nordics usurping the US's lead is their Janteloven which can work against entrepreneurship. However, other European countries may be able to take advantage, the UK, DE, FR (to a lesser extent due to regulations).
It's interesting you bring up warmongering when it looks like some in the opposition party are concerned about the US receding from interventionism and seeking more effort from the other NATO countries. That the US is becoming more isolationist --which would seem to contradict the US becoming more interventionist.
Modernization? Do you think it's likely he'll be more interventionist than the Obama years? It's hard to imagine that, but of course it's possible, the question is is it likely?
Obama was actually very restrained in foreign policy - far moreso than Hillary Clinton would've been, for example, and also moreso than Bush Jr., Reagan, or even Bill Clinton. He's relied largely on drone strikes and covert assistance, while the other presidents mentioned actually invaded other countries. Obama's own national security staff criticized him heavily for this.
Anyway, I didn't mention political parties in my original post, and AFAIC trying to make this partisan is just projection. There are hawks on both sides of the aisle: the Democrats are milking Russophobia for all it's worth and seem to want to start a new Cold War, the Trumpists see the world as a clash of civilizations between the Judeochristian West and Islam, and old-line Republicans like McCain and Graham are very skeptical of Iran and China.
I don't mean to take it into the ideological realm. I can't disagree with what you said, except the money spent on foreign wars/intervention was pretty ramped up during Bush II and Obama.
The United States is never going to decay to nothingness.
However, whether or not it becomes the top place for technologists to congregate and build things will become an open question.
That alone, while perhaps not dire to the nation as a whole, will be quite damaging. There, so far, has been an order of magnitude difference between the best technology ecosystem and the second best.
Japan is also looking to open up permanent residency rules, and it has suffered through a nearly two decades long spurt of deflation-driven economic stagnation, with incredible debt/GDP, some of it due to demographic concerns and an inverting age pyramid. Just pointing out that might not be the best counter-example.
I (U.S. citizen) personally know highly-skilled software engineers who emigrated to the U.S. from Anglosphere countries to work at U.S. companies, who have since resigned and gone back to their home countries explicitly because of Trump's election. These aren't Middle-Easterners or illegal immigrants, these are white people for whom a $200k salary wasn't enough to convince them to endure a rising tide of nationalism. Skilled foreign workers are already selecting themselves out of our economy, regardless of country of origin. Not equivalent to the Nazi brain drain, though in an amusing twist I also know one American software engineer who has moved to Germany to ride out Trump.
Beyond the policies, there's also a signaling problem. I know several people who have taken a pass on U.S. jobs because of the uncertainty and growing anti-immigrant rhetoric. And they definitely don't trust the average American not to lump them in with targeted groups by virtue of being brown.
There are a lot of very smart people from Iran. Sure, the current travel ban is only a small portion, but Trumo has only been in power for just over month. There is no reason to think he and Bannon are satisfied.
As someone who is tired of the decades long wait and uncertainty in the US immigration system, it would be amazing if tech companies were to open a Vancouver outpost and offer transfers to people in visas. I would take that in a heartbeat. May be YC can consider another incubator in Vancouver
Vancouver has been a popular place to transfer foreign talent to the U.S. for years. It's a short drive to Seattle, a short flight to San Francisco, and in the same time zone as both cities.
Famously, Facebook had an office in Coal Harbour that was just for transferring hires to Menlo Park, they didn't hire any Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
Even more famously, Microsoft's recent expansion in Vancouver, the "Excellence Centre" (doubling its workforce from 400 in Yaletown to 800), was mostly going to be for L-1 visa transfers to Redmond HQ. 360 of those positions were planned, with MS only promising 40 positions (5%) for citizens/PRs. The former Conservative government offered winking acknowledgement. However, voters in Canada were furious when the mass abuse of the TFW program came to light, which forced the government's hand.
The vast majority of positions at the "Excellence Centre" (which was opened by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and houses ~650 engineers as of now) have gone to locals. Anecdotally, I've heard that ever since the TFW backlash, the most popular cities in which to open visa transfer offices have been London and Zurich.
If you want to see the documents proving that MS was mostly going to hire visa transfers in Vancouver, documents obtained by CBC News under the province's access to information laws show what were the draft plans: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1685182-b-c-atip-doc...
How is the border between the US and Canada these days? When I went skiing at Wistler, it took us longer to wait to cross the border than it took us to drive from Seattle to the border!
Ditto. Will complete a decade in the states shortly but I don't see myself breaking free from the visa chains for another 5 - 10 years at least unless the US immigration system is overhauled. We (me and my spouse) have decided upon a hard deadline (~5 more years) before shutting up shop and moving on if things don't change.
I understand this post is more startup-visa focused, but generally the US employment based visa and permanent residency system is fucked. I'm in the US on a work visa, but due to my nationality am looking at over a decade of wait time for getting permanent residency. This means I've to stay in the country at fear of losing my job, pay top of the line taxes and still not get any rights during my best years. Which is highly unfair. Canada is a culturally similar first world country where I can get to a citizenship quickly. The only thing preventing me from moving tomorrow is the large difference in tech industry size. If more and more companies set up shop in Canada, I'm ready to go.
You could say that things are how they are, and if I don't like it, I should go back to my home country, but I _want_ to be American/Canadian. I identify with the outdoor, adventurous culture of the American West more than anything else. I am willing to pay my dues and become a well integrated citizen, but this country doesn't want me to, because it continues to conflate people like me with immigrants who don't pay taxes or commit crimes. Or because it has weird laws that cause these delays and a government unwilling to change that because indentured labor is better for existing companies. I already see Canada being a much better choice in a few years.
So the problems for highly-skilled people who want to to become a part of the US are more widespread than just having difficulty getting a visa. If this YC experiment is an indicator of things to come, and more tech companies lead to better salaries in Vancouver, I can see many engineers taking their taxes and skills north of the border.
Nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen that do not currently hold dual nationality with another country, an existing visa, or another document permitting entry. No hysteria there.
A brief search turned up one from Sudan. I don't know where to find a comprehensive list. Don't forget to include non-Americans with dual citizenship. Someone "from" a totally unrelated country might still have citizenship in one of the banned countries and would not be allowed in. See Mo Farah as a prominent example.
I imagine the main concern here is uncertainty, though. The original travel ban was introduced with no warning and affected people who already had plans, who already had visas, and even who were already in flight. There's no telling if and when they might do something like that again. That kind of uncertainty tends to discourage people from trying to make plans in the first place.
Given that this was the administration's attempt to implement a ban on Muslims entering the country, I'd expect it to be expanded to more predominantly Muslim countries if the courts don't completely smack it down and the administration survives long enough.
And beyond that, who knows? When insane people are in power, anything is possible. Maybe some big attack is carried out by a radicalized Muslim from France or Sweden, and the response is to ban entries from there. I'd have called this idea absurd not too long ago, but now I consider this kind of thing a serious, if small, possibility.
>Given that this was the administration's attempt to implement a ban on Muslims entering the country
This is an inflammatory comment, and not a given.
> When insane people are in power, anything is possible
Also inflammatory.
>Maybe some big attack is carried out by a radicalized Muslim from France or Sweden, and the response is to ban entries from there. I'd have called this idea absurd not too long ago, but now I consider this kind of thing a serious, if small, possibility.
This is plausible, and a good point.
Sorry to spend most of my comment criticizing your comment but I really cant stand this kind of rhetoric.
Trump spent his campaign talking about banning Muslims. Rudy Giuliani is on record saying that the original order happened because Trump asked him to implement the "Muslim ban" legally. Personally, I'm willing to believe the people involved when they state their goals and motivations, and I don't think that quoting administration insiders is reasonably described as "inflammatory."
Describing them as "insane" I'll grant you. But it doesn't matter whether or not they really are: a lot of people think they're insane, and that drives how people make plans. Trump might be the sanest person on the planet and might be ironclad in never doing any sort of visa ban again, and what I described would still be accurate as to why people might not want to make plans to interview with YC in the US.
Curious: Do you think Hillary Clinton is still at risk of being jailed? I mean, do you generally believe campaign promises, or do you selectively believe them?
I believe that Donald Trump wants to implement all of his campaign promises, including banning Muslims from the country and prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
I do not believe that he will be able to do all of those things. At least in some cases, either Trump or his trusted advisers know this, so he won't actively try. I suspect (but don't know) that prosecuting Clinton is in this category.
Not at all, but I don't trust Rudy Giuliani. There seems to be agreement that this administration lies in a new and blatant way. I want to stop taking their word for things across the board.
Part of that is not trusting their admissions of "guilt", the same way that I don't trust their admissions of "innocence".
They do sometimes tell the truth. Their animosity towards Muslims seems to be real, not a lie. There seems to be no other adequate explanation for the travel ban (the people who would push it as a rational security measure would also have been smarter about it) so I think this is a case where they can be believed.
I think the travel ban could serve any number of non-obvious political purposes. A show of power? A distraction from less unusual political changes? A way to get press (albeit negative)? A way to decrease overall immigration? Security theater?
Airline stewards want me to turn off my cellphone. I can't think of a good reason, but that doesn't mean I'll believe the reason they state, when it makes no sense.
The reason they usually do not tell you is that cell networks on the ground do not handle phones well that are visible in too many wide spread out cell towers.
If planes were in danger because of turned on phones they would check for them much more thoroughly and also check lugagge for turned on phones.
No, it's not inflammatory. You don't have to agree with it or condone the idea of a blanket ban on Muslims --- you don't even have to stop supporting Trump to believe we shouldn't ban Muslims.
What you can't do is object to facts that are simply on the record. Trump said early in the election cycle that he supported a ban on Muslims, and then after the election Rudolph Giuliani looked straight into a TV news camera and said that the travel ban was an effort to put that kind of ban into practice.
There's easy inflammatory versions of this observation. For instance: someone could accuse you of supporting bans on Muslims for debating the substance of the travel ban. But that's not what 'mikeash wrote, and it's not fair for you to take him to task for that.
Sorry, I wasn't aware that he was openly for a muslim ban and that this was openly a muslim ban. I'm very used to people misinterpreting his words which is what I assumed was going on here.
And as far as trump supporters go I'm hardly one, but I probably fall more on that side of the spectrum.
This is one of those things where you're certainly entitled to argue the point --- maybe it isn't a Muslim ban! But there's enough evidence at this point so that you can't be outraged when someone else claims it's a Muslim ban, just like you can't be outraged if someone believes in anthropogenic global warming, or, for that matter, in the economic flaws in high minimum wages or rent control. The Muslim ban is firmly in the zone of "issues reasonable people can bring up casually".
(Another way to be inflammatory would be to introduce the Muslim ban unbidden as a distraction in a discussion about something else; for instance, if I said "rent control is a bad idea" and someone else said "if you believe that you might as well believe the Muslim ban is OK". But as you can see that's not what happened here.)
Based on their statement YC believes the travel ban will affect their ability to conduct interviews. I was trying to get a rough feel for the magnitude of the effect by looking at previous YC startups.
I think you probably already know this, but this is simply a way for YC to virtue signal. There's basically no one from the affected countries interviewing in the first place.
Personaly I oppose the policy. I think blocking an entire nation for the crimes of an acute minority is stupid. However the reaction from the media and the excitement over hypotheticals I have no other description for other than Hysteria. It's not useful to overreact, and it makes having rational discussion about the topic difficult.
The whole ban is a hysterical overreaction, not the reporting on it.
Look, I'm all for better vetting of travelers to the US. But first, tell me what problems there are in the first place, and then tell me how you plan on fixing them. What's wrong with our current vetting process?
Banning travelers from countries carte-blanche "until we figure things out", with no identification of the original problem and no proposal for a fix, how is that something anyone can support? It is xenophobic, unreasonable, rooted in fiction, and in this case, it is a ban on muslims.
> Who is having trouble getting a Visa exactly? Just curious, trying to separate fact from hysteria
Anyone, even US citizens, who does not want ICE/CBP snooping on his/her IT equipment, cellphones or social media accounts.
Certainly I (born German/Croatian, living in Germany) might be able to land myself a nice shiny job in the US IT industry but no way I'm ever crossing your border as long as such outrageous privacy violations are legal.
Randomly grabbing people at border entry and dumping their whole device contents? Or demanding their Facebook passwords? Yes, this is unusual.
But, I have to admit, Germany is planning something similar in even more sinister form: our government plans to buy forensic imagers for all immigration officers... to mirror and scan phones of applying refugees, to determine if they really come from where they claim. Of course, you won't get much resistance from refugees, much less from the general public... but who knows, in two years this "test balloon" can easily be extended to every immigrant.
If you are making your choice of employment based on outrage stories in the media, you are making a big mistake. Of course, some of the stories we read are outrageous. But you should also take into account that literally millions of people cross the border of the US every year (US accepts a million a year only as immigrants, and vastly more as visitors), and vast majority of them have no trouble beyond maybe being asked a couple of questions. Minority of them do have problems, and these problems are a shame, and need to be fixed. But denying yourself opportunities out of fear of a tiny probability you may be unlucky to experience those problems is like never living one's home because accidents happen outside.
Lots of people. From the perspective of a founder, the US doesn't have a startup-founder-visa program (there is a recently approved parole program if you have >10% stake). There's two broad classes of visa for founders, EB5 investor green card ($500,000-$1,000,000) and E-2 treaty investor visa ($15,000-$100,000) but of course E-2's are non-intent (no route to green card), only valid for 2 years and only available to nationals of a handful of countries and require the foreign national to retain majority control of the business.
As an early employee you've got 3 options:
TN (Canada and Mexico only -- for as long as there's a NAFTA) - dead easy, $50 fee (+ $2000 in legal fees), 3 year status, no caps, no path to green card. Cannot have majority interest in the company. Need to prove intent to return to Canada once your temporary employment is complete, to the satisfaction of a border guard.
O-1A alien of extraordinary abilities visa, very challenging to get, requires meeting very significant criteria that is hard to do unless you've already started a business abroad. 3 years, no cap, $10,000 in legal fees, good way to test the waters on an EB1A petition without declaring immigration intent [declaring intent precludes you from future non-intent visas like a TN and happens when you file I-485].
H-1B expensive, slow (6 months processing window right now with premium processing suspended), 33% chance to obtain once every year in April and you can't start until October. $6,000 in total fees give or take. Dual-intent so there is a path to naturalization.
Unless they're a Canadian, I'm not sure how a foreigner can possibly join a startup as an early employee, except as an F-1 OPT student.
Outside of the 6 nations banned, it could just be anybody else at random really. CBP officers have infinite authority to reject people at will. It's commonplace at the Canadian borders for Canadian citizens to get turned away[1] [2], I'd like to point at their skin colour but then I'd get called hysterical.
For example, for europeans in general it's quite difficult to get to the USA. Sure, you can try the H1B visa, but I must remark the TRY part, as even though the company might want to hire me, they have to fight the visa process as there is a limited number of visas per year... and it also takes a lot of time. And when you get there, you still are not considered a citizen. For decades.
I visited Guadalajara for a few days and it was great! People were extremely friendly and tolerant of my 100 word spanish vocabulary. Housing and living is very reasonable, food is quite cheap, the weather is mild and the city is lively, if a bit spread out. I didn't feel more unsafe than I did in Istanbul. I didn't get a chance to see the tech stuff but there were a bunch of companies and also a reasonably lively meetup scene too!
This is just the opportunity Vancouver needs. They have been laying infrastructure to attract startups, and have been working on plans for a highspeed train between Vancouver and Seattle which are only 2.5 hours apart...
What if it's because I oppose the muslim ban and refuse to enter the US? That's a serious question. Actually I feel like the response to that will be, "It's your choice" but hey solidarity man!
Have all Muslims been banned from the US? I thought it was only a set of countries draw up by Obama.
Edit: Words are hard!
Edit2: Yes, downvote me & upvote the hyperbole. Welcome to the post-fact world. All Muslims are banned. Trump is Hitler. The stock market's going to crash. Anyone right of Obama is racist scum who should lose their job. Etc.
Whats the rationale for banning even one? Were there any actual threats? There were certainly no attacks by immigrants/refugees from those countries.
According to you we should wait for things to reach peak bigotry before reacting. Would you have the same "oh no big deal" reaction if a single Christian country was banned mainly for being christian?
I'm still trying to work out why many are so emphatic about the list being drawn up by Obama. It's not as if Trump signed a list without carefully reviewing and collecting evidence on the countries whose citizens' lives he would be directly affecting. I hope that wasn't the case, anyway...
I wonder what action you want Ycombinator to take to satisfy your standards of solidarity? Should they leave America? Apparently (I could be wrong) its their view that remote startups are not ideal, so it seems like you suggest they either operate in undesirable circumstances or move.
As much as the tech world wants to "disrupt" they want to stay "cozy" in their California corner with their known business environment and English speaking places and their way of doing things.
To which I can assume there is cultural shock even when they go to the East Coast
But the world is big and not everything that happens appears on HN (or even on English speaking media).
Perhaps a startup founder could exploit "ease-of-travel arbitrage" and offer a service: Remote working from several countries that are easy to get to, accept a wide range of passports, and have enormous bandwidth.
Canada is a lot more open than the US at this point in time, but it's not all roses for people even to get to Vancouver.
What if there were a hub in, say Dubai? And a few other spots around the world?
I imagine Ycombinator would be one of many potential clients. Universities whose students have to delay a semester might use it. Other institutions would use it.
Dubai is an excellent idea. UAE is one of the countries, for example, that bans any citizens of Israel and anybody who ever visited Israel from entry. Nice way to solve those visa questions once and for all. Why worry about unclear visa policy if we can choose a country with a clear "no Jews allowed" visa policy?
> it is true that Israeli passports are not allowed
So not misinformation. And not only Israeli passports but any having Israeli citizenship even if they use another passport, and anybody who has Israeli stamp in their passport, isn't it?
No, the "stamp rule" was never a rule, and it has long since been clarified that stamps are fine. Please do some googling before you get into disputes.
It would be great if they held interviews in a couple of places besides Canada, one place in Europe and one place in Asia. Would be a lot of travel for them twice a year though.
Good. The entire premise of the internet is that it allows coordination at low latency over distance.
It's also probably not fantastic for the United States to be strip mining the entire >130 IQ population of eg Sudan and packing them into SF/NY/DC to work on ad optimization when they're desperately needed by their own people; setting up infrastructure to work remotely is a great first step to eliminating the brain drain problem period.
I like the way your world-view treats intelligent people. Instead of having them being independent agents, there's some form of ownership of them... such that if they head off to foreign lands to pursue what they feel is a better life and earn more money, then it's a theft of community property.
All Sudanese should be happy with their lot in life and either work to improve it or rot. So how dare these Western companies pay the dark skinned people of Sudan as much money as rich white people could earn!!!
(No seriously though, the implications of what you say are disturbing to me.)
The disturbance you feel is likely at least partly cognitive dissonance at the idea of open borders amounting to labor colonialism.
It's an interesting idea, wouldn't you say? What are the effects of ensuring Sudan or wherever is unable to maintain a functional local elite? Are they good or bad, on balance? If we strip-mine all of their potentially capable administrators, do we have an obligation to administer their state for them, or just airdrop rice every couple years, or what?
The idea that states and people have reciprocal obligations beyond Maximum GDP isn't exactly novel.
I mean, YC's still onboard with Peter Thiel: YC Partner, one of Trump's most significant individual donors, and founder of Palantir, the analytics services company that's powering the Trump administration's purge of immigrants (http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/07/peter-thiel-palantir-trump-im...).
But good for YC. Helping several foreign entrepreneurs break into the Valley scene. Moving the needle.
For those who thing this will unseat SV, no, quite the contrary, showing this flexibility will just make people want to work more with Ycombinator and here.
I wondered the same thing. If they launched another location for YC, I would hope they wouldn't just do it because it's in the same timezone, because dang would Toronto be way better.
As someone who went through quite the arduous process to end up working in the US legally, this is great news. Many friends I've had over the years have been unable to access many great resources due to their inability to lawfully work in a different location. I'm happy to see YC making progress towards offering quality opportunities to exceptional individuals in different locations.
Very interesting considering the post even discusses participating remotely. Politically incorrect theory: enabling people with families just isn't as sexy as helping immigrant founders.
> “Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate in every way except that the ideology is flipped,” said Sam Altman, a prominent technology leader, chief executive of Y Combinator.
So now that the government has been "disrupted", YC has decided to avoid the issue by fleeing the country? Maybe instead of avoiding the issue, YC could organize Silicon Valley and spend some of it's political power actually addressing the issue (lobbying, funding local candidates, etc). Silicon Valley is home to many fantastically powerful corporations and individuals, it's time they took a stand for justice.
Yes, this is an important comment. While it's a virtue for Silicon Valley organizations like YC to adapt quickly, adapting in this case means clearing the way for the administration to solidify its haphazard immigration policy. Hopefully the YC staff is using its connections to Peter Thiel and others who have the president's attention to lobby hard against a policy that will directly and indirectly hurt many people and businesses in Silicon Valley.
Vancouver-based founder here. What's the best way to stay on top of this -- apply through the front door? Would be up for connecting with others looking to apply when YC comes to Vancouver.
If ease of attracting international founders is a concern, my recommendation would be Dubai. Unbelievable facilities which are turn key in their own business hub, a tax free environment to incorporate in, if it goes there. Foreigners can own property, which just makes sense for a future hub.
One of the easiest tourist visas to obtain for vast majority of nationalities, with cheap flights. Near EU, other Asian countries, and Africa. Thailand and Singapore could be other options, but they are far from EU.
What about the internet there? Isn't it censored and relatively slow and expensive? VPNs are legally banned (1). Last I checked, FaceTime + WhatsApp audio were completely blocked in Dubai. Skype was blocked when on mobile data (but available on PC-to-PC).
Those restrictions do not apply in the business district, AFAIK. There is a lot of encapsulation that Dubai provides international businesses from their local restrictions.
But you do want to work in a place where you get shot based on color of skin? You can see why making blanket statements based on a piece of news you read from another continent is not the right way to judge an entire country.
Besides, my recommendation was for conducting YC interviews, not exactly living there. A 2-day YC tour conducting interviews in Dubai would enable founders from 3 continents to participate more heavily.
I am not judging an entire country. I am judging their legal system, their sense of ethics and morality. There is a difference between a loose canon cop or idiot killing someone because of racial reasons and a whole ethical and moral and legal system which do not conform to my sense of morality. I would avoid the entire Middle East for this reason.
There are a number of questions that have not been asked:
How many applicants does YC have from countries with visa issues?
Has any YC applicant been denied entry into the US? If so, what were the circumstances?
In looking though YC historical records, how many people, on average, would typically apply from affected regions?
How many of those people were accepted into the program?
How many of those people succeeded?
In the age of Skype, why can't interviews be conducted without the need to travel?
Yes, I understand speaking to someone in person delivers a lot more information than possible through online meetings. An initial online meeting could function well as a 1 to 3 pass filter leading up to an in-person meeting, thereby providing a lot more time to deal with visa issues.
I am taking a wait-and-see attitude with regards to visa restriction issues. As is the case with any startup or new venture, mistakes are made, non-ideal rules are implemented, some confusion seeps in, etc. So long as the process is one where the right solution is evolved and the ability to pivot is retained things eventually improve. These rules should not behave differently.
What gives me hope? Take a look at who sits in Trump's business advisory council (not sure this is a current list):
It would be inconceivable that this topic isn't discussed with frequency in these meetings.
If I were to presume to be able to give YC advice it would be this:
Use your connections to gain a seat in this council.
Being part of the dialog is the best way to affect positive change. That doesn't mean agreeing with all policies, it does mean you'd be heard at the highest levels rather than not.
And, if you do gain a seat in this council I would further ask that you work hard to convince the administration to take the SBA and convert it into a YC-style program where, in every city of this country, entrepreneurs can have access to not just funding but a real support infrastructure to chase after their ideas.
The SBA has never been of real use to the myriad of startups that have revolutionized the world. If you want to borrow $100K from the SBA you better have $100K in the bank, or more. And the "advisers" they offer-up are often so far behind the times they are only good to help open a doughnut shop or more traditional non-scale-able businesses.
Yeah, do that and the immigration thing and you'll change this country. But you have to be on the inside to do it.
The lack of an expedited program does not really call for this kind of a move. If you are a new applicant (ie never held h1 before), you have to wait till Oct 1 to start anywy, so the USCIS taking 3 months to process your application does not affect your ability to work. If you are transferring to another company, you can switch after you receive your receipt, which is usually under a couple of weeks (at least the times I've tried).
Do YC founders usually come in on a H1b visa? I don't understand how that would work well, given that there is a lottery every year. Also, I wish you had adopted a less snarky tone.
Poles, for instance. But even when Canada, as the US, requires visas for most nationalities, it is extremely simple to apply for one (just scan your passport, fill out the online form and pay $7 CAD). On the other hand, applying for a visa to visit the US is a stressful and relatively expensive (~$180 USD) long process with a high chance of getting rejected. This is not new though.
I'll add that, at least here in Brazil, applying for a US visa necessarily involves at least one in-person visit to any US consulate or embassy, in a business day, and they naturally don't exist in all cities. Lines are long, and the visit can take the whole day. So there's this much extra stress and expense.
As others pointed out, Canada recently made mandatory their eTA program which is very similar to US ESTA, so the differences are non-existent anymore.
Original text:
The number is huge. For instance the whole EU doesn't need visa for Canada [0] but it does for US (although it's called a waiver program [1], which guarantees nothing).
For friendly Canada all you need is an Electronic Travel Authorization document, whereas the fascist US demands an Electronic System for Travel Authorization document.
The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) allows citizens of 38 countries to enter the US for up to 90 days without a visa.
The Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) is an online form which asks questions and determines whether someone is covered by the VWP. Using ESTA to determine this in advance is required when arriving in the US by air, but not when crossing a land border from Canada or Mexico.
The "doesn't guarantee anything" bit is true but misleading, since ESTA doesn't provide a visa and doesn't provide an absolute guarantee someone will be admitted under the VWP -- the determination of whether to allow someone to enter is always made at the border.
Couple things that are good to know:
1. VWP/ESTA is not terribly different from some other systems, like Australia's ETA, in using the "you don't need a visa, but you do need to check your eligibility online in advance" approach.
2. Not all EU citizens are eligible for the VWP. Citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania are not eligible for VWP. Which is something the EU has been consistently angry about, and recently the European Parliament rattled its sabers a bit about revoking visa-free travel to the EU for US citizens unless the US adds those five countries to the VWP.
> 1. VWP/ESTA is not terribly different from some other systems, like Australia's ETA, in using the "you don't need a visa, but you do need to check your eligibility online in advance" approach.
Relevant to this thread, it's also quite similar to Canada's eTA, which became mandatory for everyone arriving by air, except Canadian and U.S. passport holders, in November 2016.
I have lived in Tijuana and it's one of the worst cities in the country. If you _really_ have to choose a Mexican city, Guadalajara or Mexico City are orders of magnitude better options.
The lead the US has had in science/engineering/technology over the past 70+ years is in no small part due to the massive brain drain from Europe, and the rest of the world, due to fascist regimes.
If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace, you can bet that things will reverse quickly. Good bye, world leading startups, nobel prizes, top universities, etc. These things can happen faster than one tends to think.
The best thing countries like China could do right now is heavily open up to English, and fund things such as foreign PhD students. Everyone is fighting to get into Harvard and MIT right now, but a half decade of Trump policies could have drastic consequences a few decades down the line and give us a very different world.
People also seem to get stuck on "China" in my comment. If that makes you unhappy, replace that word with Brazil, Japan, Singapore, Estonia, whatever you want... the point is, viewed under the "startup lens", this new administration makes the dominance of the US in STEM/entrepreneurship ripe for disruption by a more nimble, flexible entity.
Would you mind not taking HN threads straight into political flamewar? The mess you set off is totally not in the spirit of this site, and the problems can be traced back to how you posted. Comments on HN need to get more civil and substantive, not less, as the topic gets more divisive.
Are we reading the same comments? I'm seeing a large number of people commenting on how they feel the various policies the current administration is enacting will affect STEM funding and research in the US in the future, and how this fits within the global context.
I'm not sure where you see incivility - are any of the posters in the child comments insulting each other?
I'm not sure where you see lack of substance - posts in the child comments are using past historical events, political analysis, and personal experiences to discuss current ones.
Maybe you're upset by the use of the word "fascist", but that's hard to avoid when the current government is discriminating against legal citizens purely based on their religion/skin color, or the president insinuated the assassination of his political opponents.
If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace...the best thing countries like China could do right now is heavily fund things such as foreign PhD students.
Wait, so you're saying everyone is leaving fascist USA, but China will be the beneficiary of that?
Perhaps, if funding to research is cut in the US via Trump policies (or even remains small as is currently the case) and China jumps on this opportunity to snatch the world's best talent, the question for brilliant young students will be China, a fascist regime where you are funded, or the US, a slightly less fascist regime where you are not funded and face hate crime, discrimination, and constant threats to your ability to remain due to your immigration status.
PhDs take a long time; do you want to commit 5+ years of your life to being in a place whose leaders are psychotic and don't want you around? Remember, if you are forced to quit your PhD program early, you don't get one and you have to start over somewhere else. And the time you've spent you're being paid nothing. Stability is key when you're making decisions like that, and it's something we've lost here inarguably in a big way.
So why do so many Chinese students chose to come to the US for college? Do they not know that China is better?
To call the US a slightly less fascist regime than China is wrong. Go read up on human rights violations in China some time.
Other areas of concern include the lack of legal recognition of human rights and the lack of an independent judiciary, rule of law, and due process. Further issues raised in regard to human rights include the severe lack of worker's rights (in particular the hukou system which restricts migrant labourers' freedom of movement), the absence of independent labour unions (which have since been changing[3]), and allegations of discrimination against rural workers and ethnic minorities, as well as the lack of religious freedom – rights groups have highlighted repression of the Christian,[4][5][6][7][8][9] Tibetan Buddhist, and Falun Gong religious groups. Some Chinese activist groups are trying to expand these freedoms, including Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Chinese human rights attorneys who take on cases related to these issues, however, often face harassment, disbarment, and arrest.[10][11]
The gap between the US and China in most measures of freedom and business rights is absolutely massive and isn't going to shift because six Muslim countries have restricted immigration. Maybe see how China treats Muslims in the western part of the country?
Right now it's better in the USA and presumably easier to get funding for various R&D projects at post-grad level.
However your parent post was suggesting that this could extremely easily shift if it's hard for talented African/European/Asian students to get US visas, and China siezes the opportunity - investing heavily in R&D making student immigration easier.
Likely it won't change overnight, but it's not impossible to imagine a world where this scenario plays out - a few more Trump Executive Orders, a savvy couple moves from the CCP and you're not far off.
Another possible reality is that nobody benefits - the USA squeezes its intake of the worlds best and brightest, the EU is too busy puzzling over Brexit and similar distractions among South American, Asian and African nations (sorry I'm not familiar enough with their internal troubles to speculate) scupper their own efforts.
> So why do so many Chinese students chose to come to the US for college? [...] To call the US a slightly less fascist regime than China is wrong.
You aren't reading very carefully. They're speaking of a plausible hypothetical future. Whereas your evidence is from a past that, even if it's a few months ago, now seems quite distant.
Notice how of all the groups listed there, "foreign university students" are not included.
I have little doubt that human and especially political rights in China are considerably worse than in the US overall, but you can live well anywhere if you're part of a preferred class and don't intend to rock the boat.
There are more than a billion Chinese, and only a tiny number of them came to US for college. From such a large population pool, you can find people with all kinds of options. Even if all of those who came to US are aligned with western ideology, it really doesn't mean much.
On top of that, from what I see most of the Chinese that came to US nowadays are becoming more patriotic, and more tolerant about Chinese government before they came.
Trump's early budget proposal includes huge cuts to research budgets at NOAA, NASA, EPA, US Geological Survey, Interior Department and the Department of Energy.
> Wait, so you're saying everyone is leaving fascist USA, but China will be the beneficiary of that?
In recent years, the US has turned noticeably anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-elite, and anti-government-support-of-almost-everything, including education, health care, the arts, science, and infrastructure. Whereas China has been energetic about pursuing global leadership in a variety of areas, and they're not shy about spending.
It would not shock me at all to see China take advantage of the US's turn to appeal to bright foreigners who just want to do their thing. The US previously did well because we were welcoming to immigrants and serious about having world-class universities doing world-class research. If we throw away our advantages and China makes up its deficits, why wouldn't more talent pick China?
Useful numbers, but in a discussion about what could happen, ultimately less informative than they seem. The U.S. can drastically reduce the citizenships they award, and China can start awarding permanent residencies or citizenship. That is one aspect of what China capitalizing on this might mean. China has shown itself willing to change to achieve what it wants.
Chinese concepts of race and nationality are hopelessly intertwined and Chinese nationalism has been increasing, not decreasing, over the past generation. In recent times, the very best chance of China becoming open—even in comparison to its neighbors—was in the late 80s... and we all know how that ended. The climate hasn't gotten close to being that tolerant since, and in the past five years, political control has tightened considerably.
Of course it is possible to reverse course and open up, but it would take quite a bit of time to change in the ways you're suggesting.
> Of course it is possible to reverse course and open up, but it would take quite a bit of time to change in the ways you're suggesting.
Interestingly, it might not need to open up all that soon to still reap the benefits. If in the future the US is also not very open, but China is apparently making strides to become more open, that could affect long term planning.
I also wonder if China, having more control and less ethos built up around inherent fairness of immigration (if that's true?) might be able to just say "10+ years in China as an academic or high end research position in X/Y/Z industries will get your pernanent residence."
I would expect that role to be filled more by Hong Kong than by the mainland, and in Hong Kong's case, that's how permanent residency works. If you maintain uninterrupted residency in the HKSAR for a period of 7 years, you get your HKID.
It's also a relatively open place for foreigners, English is commonly spoken (and an official language, so all government documents can be completed in English, and all laws translated). Except when meddled with, it retains a high degree of autonomy from the mainland, and very much follows rule of law under HK basic law. Due to it's unique situation, it's also fairly apolitical.
HK companies also have the advantage of not being taxed on non-HK source revenue and have no trouble doing business with/in the mainland.
Well, for one thing you'll need to learn to speak Chinese, and that'd be much harder than learning English. Also, it's close to impossible to immigrate to China at the moment.
Learning Chinese is not as big as an obstacle as you might think, especially when it's that or find a way to past US immigration and afford school + living in the USA. When I lived in Taiwan, I knew a tremendous amount of south american students that had come for the graduate programs because the schools were on-par with American universities, the cost of living was extremely low, and Taiwan is very open to immigration.
People are talking a lot about China in this thread, but I think Taiwan is the country to watch for. They already have a highly-educated population and are a major player in global high-tech hardware.
On the other hand, a train ride to Fulong beach is 1hr and costs 1$, or you can hike Elephant Mountain or one of the millions of other mountains, or you can bike through the mountains, or climb at one of the hundreds of walls, or pay $.50 to get into a gym....
I've never been as fit as when I lived in Taiwan :P
Learning English is not easy, the language is among the hardest to pick up. [1] Much of the language is intuitive and difficult to explain. Grammar and conjugations are particularly irregular (to be: be/being/been/am/are/is/was/were/will be).
Chinese is hard to pick up for sure, tones are not easy to intuit as English speakers are used to discarding that information. Mandarin is easier due to the smaller number of tones. It's also easier in many respects than English as there are no verb conjugations.
Tones are almost the easiest part. The Chinese characters are much more difficult thing to tackle, which a lot of foreign learners skip, but in that way you'll never be able to read anything written in Chinese. The article you referenced mentioned you need to remember 2000-3000 kanji (Which is the Japanese pronunciation for Chinese character), well you need to remember a lot more for Chinese.
You need to deal with almost everything the article claims to make learning English hard, when you learn Chinese. And it's often a lot more harder.
When it comes to grammar, English has much more well defined grammar than Chinese does though it might seem too flexible compared to many other European languages.
In addition, if you actually live in China, you most likely needs to deal with local dialects, which could sound like a entirely different language. That's why there are Mandarin and Catonese. There are a lot more inside China.
Consider that a lot of the talent the US attracts is from China, and they're leaving for economic rather than political reasons. If opportunities open up at home, and the US's standing erodes, that can swing a lot of momentum in their favor. Given the recent spikes in violence against Indian-Americans and tightening of immigration policies as a whole, Indian immigrants might also move to China rather than the US.
China and India are also deeply racist. I'm Indian, and I've been to China.
If you're brown skinned in China, you are treated far worse than you are in the US. Likewise, if you're Chinese (or look Chinese - people from the North East of India), most of India treats you very badly. And if you're a woman with Chinese features.. well let's just say that there's a (deeply pejorative) term for that in India.
In both countries, if you're white (occidental), you'll be treated MUCH MUCH better than a darker skinned person.
And if you're black.. it's even worse.
So it's not easy for Indians to move to China, or for a Chinese person to move to India. Of course moving back to your own country of origin is (usually) easier.
Unsure how things are now btwn China and India, but they have not always been the best of friends and often compete against one another, so it remains to be seen if they view china as a viable option over their own country.
China forces its citizens to have abortions if they have more than 2 children, and they censor the internet, so you can't access social media, like Facebook for instance. So, I would say they are ethically worse than the U.S.
If we were on a colony on mars where food, oxygen, and water were metered to the centiliter, I doubt you would bat an eye at enforced birth control and accidental-pregnancy control policy.
It's an extreme example, but I want to underline that enforcing birth policy is not automatically immoral. China has a lot of people, of course they enforce birth policy.
First, I would like to say I want to agree the USA is ethically superior, but let me show how I can see the other side.
Stepping into the murky quagmire of ethics, I could argue that the 2 to 4 million Vietnamese who died defending Vietnam from American invaders is much worse than censoring the Internet. That Internet is largely made by those same murderers and they have the largest spy agency in the world, the CIA, trying to break in and spy on seemingly everyone, so it must be filtered.
One could also argue that enforced family planning allows for centralized natural resource and pollution management. China per capita pollutes much less than the United States.
Again, I am not taking or defending these arguments, but it is easy to see that it is not clean and objectively true that one nation is always ethically superior to another.
If you (or anybody else) wants to count casualties, approximately 8 million Chinese dies in the Chinese Civil Wars. Surely the life of a Vietnamese person is not more valuable to America than a life of a Chinese person is to China.
And we also ought to include the lives of the between 15 and 45 million who starved to death in Mao's "Great Leap Forward."
It is also worth noting that China was largest foreign backer of North Vietnam, providing "both financial aid and the deployment of hundreds of thousands of military personnel in support roles" (quote from wikipedia), so it is untrue to say that the United States in uniquely culpable for the war's casualties.
You are assuming a perspective again. There are many perspectives.
For example different people will pick different ways to count. Some will distinguish between domestic and foreign, claiming that there some ethical difference. These people might claim that a government should kill its citizens that cause problems in the name of social order, and that the US is unjust and horrible because they don't kill enough dissenters.
Some will claim that lives lost in mistakes are different than lives lost in oppression and war. These people might claim that the great leap forward was good in intention, but lacked nuance in execution that could have saved many lives.
Some will claim that government and corporations should not be separated so will point the all the slave owning corporations and humans rights abusing industrialists in the USA and lump them in with the government.
All I am saying is that there are gray areas here, and that I cannot see a way to see different perspectives as objectively wrong or right. In some things there is objective right and wrong. Does Man-made CO2 change the climate, yes unambiguously no amount of perspective wiggling changes this. Is it ethical to make social that mildly harms one group to prevent a perceived larger harm to another, this seems fuzzier and innately requires something to be 'perceived' correctly.
So, is the problem that they are forcing abortions, or that they have a social policy about childbearing?
If it's about the abortions, apparently there's two types of action taken[1]. If it's in an urban area, they apparently either charge a fee or don't assign a household register to the child (not sure what that means), but if it's rural they do apparently force abortions. If you're okay with the social policy, it seems like there are solutions that don't require forced abortions (such as implanted birth control). Whether that aspect is still ethically worse than the U.S. or not probably depends on your view on reproductive rights.
Ah, thanks. I actually wasn't aware mobility was restricted like that. It's a little mind-boggling that China inadvertently emulated the national immigration problems of other countries with internal immigration[1], but at least it appears they are trying to fix it[2].
Why would you think that any particularly intrusive forced medical practive is ethical? Is such a policy really all that much more acceptable than mandating abortions?
That all depends on your view of individual rights vs the what's best for society. We make decisions all the time on things that restrict individual freedom because it's best for society overall. Which of these you think is okay and which you don't generally come down to where you draw the line. Here's a short list of things that in the U.S. we have dictated that everyone needs to deal with, except for specific exceptional circumstances ("exceptional" being somewhat relative depending on the item).
- Paying taxes
- Child schooling
- Vaccination
- Health care
A population growth policy that targets birth is not so entirely different from those, as fundamentally different as it may feel, depending on your background. Giving people the option of either birth control or an abortion if they get pregnant would be one way to handle that. Have a fundamental disagreement with abortion? Use birth control. Have a problem with birth control too? Take it up with the state, just like in those items above.
I'm not advocating for this, I'm just pointing out it's not fundamentally different than other things we already do.
While I do not think it is more ethical I could imagine arguments from someone in such a society.
One possible argument might be that the social cost of that unborn child is so high that is it is morally reprehensible to have conceived it in the first place, and that such an action is a horrible crime.
Plenty of places suspend human right to imprison or even execute people who have committed crimes. It could be seen that such an action isn't even isn't even punitive, just corrective. Some might feel that the government simply removes the child before it is born, and then is lenient because the mother is not imprisoned for her indiscretion against society.
Other possible arguments could stem from the long term environmental harm that the child will have on the environment. If someone places higher value on nature than on human life this argument naturally follows.
In terms of Human rights, it would be better to be in the US.
But things change. US is becoming more fascist which is potentially leading to an exodus of intelligent minds - who are perhaps going to be migrating to one of their main competitors, China.
The one good thing about China is that they are open to changes in their policies (but can't change the party).
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with all the immigration talk. I really hope Brexit and stuff like this don't actually happen. To me it feels like the reversal of the Fall of the Berlin wall.
By any objective measure the US's record on human rights far exceeds that of China. Has the US violated human rights? Sure. Does it try and remedy those situations? Yes.
China has zero qualms about putting people under house arrest for voicing opinions contrary to the Party. It doesn't come back and say "that was an injustice" it says "this is the right thing to do for China". Add on top of that forced abortions, mock trials, etc. The two countries aren't even comparable.
The US is a democracy with a flawed government in power. The system of checks and balances is still in place. The president isn't nearly as powerful as he wants to be.
China is an actual authoritarian regime guilty of many human rights violations. I can say whatever I want about Trump in the states. Try that in China against Chinese leadership.
I think is at least instructive to compare the number of Chinese citizens immigrating or wanting to immigrate to the US to the number of US citizens who would like to move to China.
Not parent, but it seems irresponsible to call someone that is ignorant about the domestic policies of a country half the world away "dangerous." It's not dangerous until national policy is based on that ignorance, which is several as of yet uncrossed bridges farther than even a majority of Americans being ignorant of Chinese domestic policy.
That said, parent is just as wrong to call the original comment "dangerous" as well.
> People also seem to get stuck on "China" in my comment. If that makes you unhappy, replace that word with Brazil, Japan, Singapore, Estonia, whatever you want... the point is, viewed under the "startup lens", this new administration makes the dominance of the US in STEM/entrepreneurship ripe for disruption by a more nimble, flexible entity.
The problem is that for various reasons, none of those are credible alternatives. One of the things keeping US dominance of science/engineering/technology going is that there's no place quite like it.
"Where to next"? I'm stumped, myself. Europe doesn't look very good right now. Australia? Or just hang out someplace nice like Chile and hope things blow over?
Taiwan has a low cost of living, highly educated population, fantastic universities, is deeply ingrained in hardware tech, has a relatively high immigrant population for students, and is very friendly to immigration.
Japan has phenomenal universities and many foreign-study programs.
New Zealand is pushing for international hires for tech and has several visa options available. It is has a very youth (20-30) oriented culture, is full of active people, and its natural resources are drop-dead gorgeous.
The USA is a vast place, actually composed of a diverse collection of communities. Thanks to Federalism, there is still some diversity within the states, and even local communities can be quite different. Consider 4 cities: Fergeson MO, Santa Monica CA, Chicago IL, Las Vegas NV.
CA is currently considering universal healthcare, like HI has. It has also stated firm resistance to Trump's policies. NV has no state income tax. Some states have no DMV registration fees. Other states give out oil money (AK).
E.g. the US is probably still the best place to be, just in a different part of it.
Consider that Trump actually can't do much. The Executive branch has the most visible power is at border crossings, particularly at airports. It's the fundamental power of group leadership (ownership?): "Who's in, and who's out." Trump is intoxicated on the prospect of wielding that power.
"How things might go". Hmm. There are three ways things could go rotten. Some all or none could happen: a) Muslim registration, internment, expulsion, b) "Trump resistance" is redefined as "treason" and the NSA and FBI given full reign to detect, disrupt, and prosecute individuals based on digital evidence (or no evidence), c) new war, or multiple wars, started purely because it's one of Trump's biggest powers as Commander-in-Chief (although it shouldn't be, since Congress is supposed to be the only part of government that can declare war).
What disgusts (and frankly, surprises) me is the number of Americans who would shrug (or cheer) at all of these outcomes.
Sorry, I was going to argue that you're better off staying, and fighting, but anyone of good conscience has got to start thinking of themselves as Jews in Germany in 1936. Your conscience won't let you shut up, and your talk will get you in trouble. New Zealand is nice.
I don't think it's that bad yet, and it may well not end up that way. I think David Frum's article was pretty good in terms of how things might go badly:
Canada, or any of the Immigrant friendly European countries. In fact, I wonder if harsh immigration policies will see a resurgence of EU as the scientific center of the world...provided it survives through Brexit and the Greek debt crises.
Fascism, much like Nazism is not restricted to the regime/party that originated them. It is now generally used to label all groups that show similar attributes.
> The lead the US has had in science/engineering/technology over the past 70+ years is in no small part due to the massive brain drain from Europe, and the rest of the world, due to fascist regimes.
Awesome! I was curious about hearing more about this.
> If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace,
You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory. Then you're making a comparison to someone and the party that is new to older established negatively impacting politics.
If something is going on at the moment that is relevant, name the specific thing. Trying to blame the whole group now is just silly pandering.
----
Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this? I'm really tired of hearing armchair politicians or regurgitation of political pundits. This is hacker news not r/Politics.
> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this?
The notion that we can remove politics from all the discussions we have is just silly. Especially when we're discussing immigration, something controlled by the governments we elect and the politicians that represent us.
I'm not arguing that the OP's post was great and insightful ("fascist" is indeed not helpful to use without elaboration) but neither can we say "keep the politics to /r/politics please".
Never said to remove politics from the discussion. The point that you started with was how the technical topic had influence from politics (from another time).
My point, don't make blanket inflammatory accusations of a current political party that just came into "rule" [I'm letting you get away with that claim] in the last two months). If you're going to interpolate, make a claim to the political action that occurred and what you feel is going to happen.
Right now we're seeing a lot of changes, to make a bold statement there is a direct cause is reaching. (It's because of the "fascist party" we have.. they ran under the conservative/right-party) To blanketly label the party/group of people "in power" that corresponds to the labels being thrown at it leads me to believe that your comment was motivated to just repeat the same catchphrases that are pushed in the left/liberal media.
We already have direct cause: the religious based travel ban. to my knowledge there is no exception for a founders visa application if you are from this list of countries.
Pretending you can ignore politics in any discussion other than a technical seminar about compiler optimization is in itself a political position: you are supporting the people who can afford to ignore politics at the expense of those who can't, endorsing the status quo whatever that happens to be.
This post is about people who are worried about being banned/being banned from the country who previously could enter and how YC is trying to help them. It's an explicitly political post. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.
I don't find them unfruitful. I find them quite fruitful and enjoy and learn from political discussions with others. The problem with them is that they are not scientific or technical questions, and this forum is populated by a lot of people who naturally tend to look at things from a science perspective -- that there is a correct answer, and we just need to arrive at it. A discussion is only 'fruitful' if it gets us closer to that goal.
There isn't a correct answer in humanities/politics but that doesn't stop some answers from being very bad, and some answers being better than others, or from some answers being interesting and insightful and valuable regardless of how 'correct' they are.
There's definitely a range of quality in politics discussions though and the barrier for entry to having an opinion is very, very low unlike technical discussions -- it's very easy for it to quickly sink to the lowest form of human interaction that you're describing -- Breitbart, 4chan, youtube comments, /r/politics, etc. I find HN is markedly better than that almost all of the time.
And your quote isn't even so horrible. Pointing out problems with a particular point of view if new can be enormously insightful and helpful.
Consensus isn't a reasonable goal or even desirable when you're discussing things which are more complex than, say, cut and dried technical facts. I can achieve consensus among mathematicians by providing a proof. I can achieve consensus among scientists by performing repeated experiments. I can achieve consensus among philosophers by, well, killing all the other philosophers. But if I don't do that, I can learn a lot and better develop my own positions and thoughts by having discussions with them even if I'll never force them to agree with me.
You don't have to particularly care for 'soft' discussion and reasoning, but that's not a problem with it, it's a personal preference of yours which is extremely uncommon among the general population, however over represented it is on HN. Every discussion about anything nontechnical has this 'soft' property.
> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this?
Because politics, especially what's happening now, affects all of our lives? Hacker News talks about politics all the time, just look at Bitcoin or Snowden threads.
>If something is going on at the moment that is relevant, name the specific thing. Trying to blame the whole group now is just silly pandering.
Huh yes, how about the current executive order ban on muslim countries, and the general eagerness of the current administration to purge the US of many kinds of immigrants who are there completely legally? Many of my Iranian coworkers - most with PhDs from US universities - are affected by this. Many academic conferences I participate in are experiencing problems because organizers or speakers didn't get visas. Several professors are telling me they had to pass on promising applicants due to visa concerns. Anyone in an academic/research environment right now will tell you these things.
> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this? I'm really tired of hearing armchair politicians or regurgitation of political pundits. This is hacker news not r/Politics.
And I'm tired of techies thinking politics can be refactored into its neat own class, properly abstracted out of any other activity they take part in. Everything is inherently political, and aspiring to "change the world" through your startup or work is obviously so.
Regarding your unhappiness with me calling the current regime fascist... well, when the president in power has insinuated the assassination of his opponents, encouraged his supporters to engage in violence, been spinning outlandish lies about the former president wiretapping him, etc, well I call that fascism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Huh yes, how about the current executive order ban on muslim countries, and the general eagerness of the current administration to purge the US of many kinds of immigrants who are there completely legally? Many of my Iranian coworkers - most with PhDs from US universities - are affected by this. Many academic conferences I participate in are experiencing problems because organizers or speakers didn't get visas. Several professors are telling me they had to pass on promising applicants due to visa concerns. Anyone in an academic/research environment right now will tell you these things.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's relevant, doesn't pander.
>when the president in power has insinuated the assassination of his opponents, encouraged his supporters to engage in violence, been spinning outlandish lies about the former president wiretapping him, etc, well I call that fascism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Consider looking up the definition, because the definition of fascism is not "having a leader who makes dumb statements".
Nor is this word a label for "a politician who makes you feel really bad emotions".
Did you actually look up the word? All the sources I'm seeing[1][2][3] also say that it can be used or is commonly used to denote someone with authoritarian or extreme right-wing views.
Please don't provide comment ratings or dismiss comments out of hand as "Just another political post". The startup community does not live in isolation, it is part of a system which includes political factors as well.
> Awesome! I was curious about hearing more about this.
Albert Einstein is only the most famous immigrant. Enrico Fermi is yet another. These were people who emigrated willingly. And then you have operation paperclip [0]
A lot of the current lead of American Science and Technology has its basis in the contribution of European scientists, mathematicians and engineers. And once Immigration opened up to the rest of the world, you've had smart people from all corners come to US universities, part of what makes them "great"
> You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory
He most certainly is not. The simple fact is that the Trump administration has shown alarming tendencies towards fascism, and the republican dominated Congress and Senate have been unwilling to stand their ground. The "Resistance" in encouraging and shows that Americans still care about their civil liberties, but this administration, the people that hold actual power, can be described as fascists.
The only real check seems to be the US judiciary... and that too cannot single handedly stop a determined WH and Congress + Senate.
> You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory.
Neither is true.
David Neiwart, an expert on US far-right militia groups, wrote a long piece in 2003 about protofacism in the US and how its ideas were being gradually mainstreamed by a chain of pundits and media organizations:
Personally, I still think full-on fascism is still unlikely in the US, but it's no longer unthinkable. Previously, serious concerns about fascism in the US were the provenance of ultra-radicals on the right and left. But now you can find plenty of political science professors both in the US and elsewhere soberly discussing the possibility.
I concur, but have to admit there are correlations between political policies & funding. Many of these same assertions were made back during the GW administration"s decision to defund stem cell research. Would anyone directly involved in stem cell research care to shed some light on the current standing og the US in the field and how those 8 years affected progress in the US and elsewhere?
How can we talk about recent shifts in SV due to immigration issues without being political?
Sorry that people can't frame their interpretations of Trump's policies to make you comfortable. They very clearly echo past fascist regimes. That's Trump & co's fault.
I think it's a signalling thing, like when people sign their emails with a single lowercase initial, i.e. we're too busy and important to spend time on this.
I'm new to the site. Seems you are controlling things around here (moderator to say). Why are my comments only visible when I'm logged in? as soon as I logout and look at the comments on this article as unregistered user, I do not see any of my comments. That gives false sense that everyone is looking at my comments but in reality they are being hidden. That makes me think other users even when they are logged in the website will not see my comments because they are censored Probably as comments are not in line with rhetoric of those in charge of this site, maybe? Is it a way to censor what YC does not agree with? I never knew this existed.
Your comments were killed by anti-abuse software that detects past patterns by trolls. The software looks to me to have gotten it right. You've been posting comments that don't fit the site guidelines and creating multiple accounts to do it.
Wow, that's pretty far out of context. Far enough to imply the opposite of the statement's sentiment. For reference, the full quote by Altman is,
> “Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate in every way except that the ideology is flipped,” said Sam Altman, a prominent technology leader, chief executive of Y Combinator and a major Hillary Clinton donor. “He’s an outsider. He took on a system he thought was broken and then disregarded the rules, he got to know his users well and tested his product early and iterated rapidly. That’s the start-up playbook. That’s exactly what we tell our start-ups to do.”
Cherry-picking the words in the quote to paint the picture that Altman supports Trump somehow is quite deceitful.
I can't believe I have to say this given everything I've written on the subject (here is the first thing: http://blog.samaltman.com/trump) , but I don't support Trump in any way.
My point in the parent-linked article is just that Trump beat us using our own playbook, and shame on us if we don't notice that and adjust for next time.
What do you want people who have a problem with what you're doing to say? That we feel bad for you, because you don't mean to be communicating the things you're communicating? Do I believe you want to support Trump? No, I do not.
I don't want to recap the whole sad thread from last night on this thread too. I took the time to reply to you there, and to explain more fully what my issue is. Just like I'm sure you don't want to be doing things to help the Trump administration, I'm also sure you don't mean to beg me to repeat a whole bunch of stuff I already wrote about this.
None of this conversation belongs on this thread. Rather than feed it, we should just ask the moderators to detach and bury it.
Perhaps Thomas he was a bit harsh with his language and aspersions, but he's absolutely right about the communication discipline that hands "Silicon Valley President" to people, who will in turn take that out of context to promote Trump.
Looking it another way: giving a quote like that which needs to be examined in full to make sure he does not support Trump, and which can so easily be interpreted to support Trump, is quite naive. When you're giving quotes you have to be extremely careful that it is not easy to take them out of context, because that "out of context" is exactly what most people reading the article will understand at first reading.
That Altman quote seems terribly out of context. I haven't found a full reference yet, but it seems to me that he's not endorsing Trump's policies, he's explainging that Trump won because he (perhaps accidentally) appropriated the "startup playbook".
“Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate in every way except that the ideology is flipped,” said Sam Altman, a prominent technology leader, chief executive of Y Combinator and a major Hillary Clinton donor. “He’s an outsider. He took on a system he thought was broken and then disregarded the rules, he got to know his users well and tested his product early and iterated rapidly. That’s the start-up playbook. That’s exactly what we tell our start-ups to do.”
Since there was a big thread about that yesterday I think we're going to mark this subthread as offtopic and invite those of you who are interested to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824680.
What else is there to say? It's the Middle East. Can women even start businesses there? What if you're gay? Will they behead the CEO of a Y Combinator-backed startup if he/she is ousted as gay or an atheist? Will the founder have to have a male escort to board meetings?
There's nothing substantive about what you're doing here, it's wildly off-topic, and just because there is a kernel of factual truth in what you're saying does not mean it isn't a smear. We ban accounts that post like this, so please stop.
The irony of choosing Dubai because of America's supposed intolerance.. hope you don't want not only women, gays, non-married couples, or all the other BS a muslim state enforces.
You're being a bit broad with your brush strokes there. The United Arab Emirates (of which Dubai is one) has a female labor force participation rate of ~46%. While that is low compared to the ~50-60% you'd see in most OECD countries, it's not that far off places like Poland (48%) and better than, say, Mexico (45%). It's definitely not Iran (15%) or Saudi Arabia (20%).
That statistic is simply meaningless in this context. Just today some girl got arrested with her boyfriend for sex before marriage. Does that happen in Mexico or Poland?
Look at the visa policy for unmarried women under 30 for Dubai.
It's not SA yes, but is still restrictive
update: It seems the restriction on women traveling who don't have husbands/fathers has been relaxed/ended. Looking more into it.
Update 2: On UAE Embassy for US no mention of restrictions
But not the case for other countries.
For Indian women one provider states: For female applicants and students who are above 18 years and travelling alone require NOC from parents / husband, Photo ID of parents/ husband. Coloured copy of the host passport / residence visa
I haven't. They won't allow me to enter, because of my nationality, ever. Please tell me more about how Dubai is like SF except with more relaxed visa laws. I certainly will never be able to experience it myself, since only SF will let me in, so I'll have to rely on your stories for comparison.
I appreciate the reply and admit "unduly" is occasionally a fine line, but on HN we have to err on the side of not allowing it because of the compounding effects. To get it right you really have to be scrupulous and the hivemind doesn't do scrupulosity, it does pile-ons.
