Okay that is anti-competitive, than what shall we call dumping a useless service onto consumers that they have to overpay for? Also these ISP's keep their competitors at bay, so consumers do not have a choice but to pay them high fees for useless service.
Actually, here's how I'd put it. If you are not competitive (in your terms, drive down the salary) OR produce something great at prices others can. Then jobs and companies will go overseas. Not only will there be jobs will lower salaries but there will be fewer jobs, period. Now that will be problem for entire country.
Having more programmers will not be a problem for the country, they will only be a problem to those who want to maintain their salaries turning their eyes away from reality of globalization.
Here are the insidious effects of outsourcing and remote workers. Slowly and surely they will take over. Take a look at this and you will understand the dangers of offshoring and remote work. How Dell lost to Asus.
If you are just worried about keeping your salary up, that will go down no matter what, as the talent pool all over the world increases and companies will offshore more work, that not only means less salary but fewer jobs.
Most of those who argue against pg's argument here are concerned about lower salaries, no one is concerned about fewer jobs (because companies will move work offshore), less innovation (new product development moving away).
Creating boundaries and not letting talent in, is just a big downward spiral and if it accelerates to a certain speed it will be too difficult to turn it around. May be not in short term but in couple to few decades.
Why can't programmers work as contractors from their location before filing for their H1B's? Yes, hiring process has to change. The companies those who have distributed teams have figured this out already.
>If Paul can figure out a way to filter in the great developers while filtering out those that are only coming to make money, then I'd be completely behind his plan to let them all in.
You are implying that all (most) of the American programmers are exceptional. That is not the case. If you have a good team, you had to do it yourself, weed out fakes from real ones, didn't you? The onus is on the company/manager who is hiring to pick the right ones whether they are already on H1 or before company files H1 for them.
> but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, that we might get more high-achievers
First, US is already the third country in list for highest paid programmers, there is not much room to grow.
Second, Companies are in business, not for charity.
Companies are there for profit so if they could hire a beginner programmer for 50k, they should, otherwise they would be out of business and you would be buying everything made in China.
I agree, I've seen it time and again, people taking multiple medicine for sleep disorder and nothing works. What works is taking a manual job or if you cannot take such a job, put yourself on treadmill and keep going till you fall off, I mean an hour or two. And see how you sleep after that.
>There are, of course, Christians who would be perfectly happy with the idea of Jesus being a pot-smoker and drinker
I have yet to know such a Christian.
>And let's ignore the fact that the original Christians would probably have been aghast at the thought of Gentiles daring to consider themselves as having a relationship with their God.
Gentiles were not allowed to have relationship with Jesus and God for 10 years after Jesus ascended. But God told Peter that Gentiles were allowed to have relationship with Him and Jesus. It was word of God, again not evolution by any means.
>According to the stories, he turned water into wine. He did work on the Sabbath.
I answered this in other comment above.
>to the point that he had to raise a kid from the dead to vouch for the assumption that he'd killed said kid
Are you kidding me? Not sure which Bible you read. But He made little girl alive again who was sick and her soul had left the body.
>Jesus was, even by the most generous of accounts, kind of a punk.
It was meant for hypocrites like Pharisees of the day. And to make His point He also said, who if their donkey or oxen has fallen in pits will not pick them up immediately on Sabbath day. It was meant for the people who were using religion as cover for their own agenda and these are the same people who crucified Jesus. Jesus said this not for evolution, it was meant to show the truth.
I doubt anyone following Jesus wants to see him as profane, pot-smoking, alcohol-drinking character. That is how this series portrays him. This does not look evolutionary by any means, it is blasphemy.
Government do and can regulate the mergers. They do it all the time and for last couple of big mergers with Comcast this has been on table but they seem to see Comcast with favorable eyes.
Remember ATT bid for T-Mobile? FCC stopped the deal to keep the competition and also so consumers have a choice. Same applies here but seems they are turning their eyes away.
Your example of Picasso painting does not apply, by definition that is one of a kind item and only selected people want them, it is not a commodity, so market competition does not apply.