> perhaps it's this painful barrier that filters out all of the immigrants who don't create jobs for the US and does identify the people that do.
I don't buy it. If 'painful barriers' were a good thing, you'd see the world's best capitalists in North Korea and Cuba, no? The US has fewer painful barriers to creating companies, and a lot of good infrastructure, and so a lot of the world's largest, biggest, most important companies are there. Not all of them, of course, but I don't think that barriers really do much good.
> correctly attributes the probability of creating a successful business by an immigrant to the US.
Predicting the future is often difficult.
Don't have time for the other points, I have some barbecue to attend to:-)
> I don't buy it. If 'painful barriers' were a good thing, you'd see the world's best capitalists in North Korea and Cuba, no?
You wouldn't expect that, because there are high barriers to starting successful companies there, and few that would want to go there to start companies.
What he is suggesting is that, GIVEN that there's a lot of people that want to move to the US to work or start businesses, it is possible that the barrier to immigrate legally serves as a filter so that those who make it through are people who are more likely than the average of those who would like to immigrate to the US to be successful.
If that is the case, then by increasing immigration, you might not increase the amount of successful businesses nearly as much as you might hope.
How much to hope for is not really all that important, the fact is that with 0 immigration there are no immigrant founders and with lots of immigration there will be more of them.
Therefore increasing the number of immigrants will lead to a higher number of immigrant founders. Barriers are silly and counterproductive.
If 'painful barriers' were a good thing, you'd see the world's best capitalists in North Korea and Cuba, no?
There's a difference between impossible barriers and painful barriers. Just because a wall exist doesn't mean you can't climb over it. My point is a psychological one - that perhaps it's the personality and characteristic of a person who is willing to circumvent government barriers that makes them so appealing to start a successful business. Honestly, I don't know, it's just food for thought.
Predicting the future is often difficult.
So who are we to judge who should be allowed in not allowed in?
Don't have time for the other points, I have some barbecue to attend to:-)
Hehe, no worries. I appreciate the fruitful discussion.
I think that immigrants face more barriers. Some of these startup folks, I think, probably faced some barriers into entering the elite societies in the US. For example, if you attend college at any of the top 20 colleges in the country, you're going to meet the elite, but an upper-middle class person, especially an immigrant, is going to face difficulties marrying into, or being accepted by these elites.
However, to use the language of the typical undocumented immigrant, of having "nothing to lose", doesn't accurately convey the truth. It's just going to confuse things. There are poor immigrants who start businesses, but by and large, they aren't venture backed startups; more like mom-and-pop stores, food trucks, or swap-meet businesses.
I don't buy it. If 'painful barriers' were a good thing, you'd see the world's best capitalists in North Korea and Cuba, no? The US has fewer painful barriers to creating companies, and a lot of good infrastructure, and so a lot of the world's largest, biggest, most important companies are there. Not all of them, of course, but I don't think that barriers really do much good.
> correctly attributes the probability of creating a successful business by an immigrant to the US.
Predicting the future is often difficult.
Don't have time for the other points, I have some barbecue to attend to:-)