- You're the one judging a cancer patient's response to their diagnoses. I'm the one pointing out how wrong that is. So yes, it's about you personally and your actions. Not just you of course.
We are all flawed. I think Steve Jobs was less flawed than most of his critics. Maybe less flawed than myself. The difference is we know everything he did wrong in his entirely life because it's so well documented.
- Let's not imagine scenarios that may or may not have anything to do with reality.
Answer this question: what evidence would you accept to show that major American tech companies are using skilled immigration to drive down their labor costs as the expense of American citizens?
- You reread the link?
He had the privilege of giving away a fortune, to causes he cares about, largely thanks to Steve Jobs.
He's never worried about money and has millions in the bank and multiple houses, thanks to Steve Jobs.
Some people love their celebrity. I've met more than a few, including Wozniak. He seems to genuinely love it, which doesn't mean it doesn't also get tiring at times.
- There's a lot more to fairly criticize about this. Mostly the system that allows it but also him for taking advantage of it.
And yet it's basic human instinct to do what's possible to survive. I admit that I would have done the same and I wouldn't believe most people who would claim otherwise.
- Many poor people could make it into the middle class by learning to do skilled jobs if given the opportunity.
The number of opportunities is significantly reduced when companies have the easier and cheaper alternative of hiring non-Americans.
And those poor people that don't have the capability to become skilled workers can at least not be kicked while they're down.
- Major corporations are hiring them because they're cheaper not because there aren't well educated Americans available.
There are more than 60 million college educated Americans. That's 50% more than the entire population of Canada.
It's a very big and well educated country, bud.
- It's very obvious that people, seeming you as well, take some delight in the idea that Steve Jobs killed himself with arrogance.
That is morally repugnant. He was a pancreatic cancer patient coping with his diagnoses the best he could manage. The fact that he was a "billionaire" has nothing to do with it. He was a human and all sentient life is sacred in my view.
You also do not actually know the facts of the case. He did not spread disinformation to anyone. He was intensely private during this entire period and very little information is known for a fact.
But by all means enjoy your mocking, judging, and condemnation of cancer patients. I'll continue to find it morally repugnant.
- Steve Jobs's entire job for thirty years was recruiting, listening, and working with experts in various fields. He never would have succeeded without being able to accept that other people knew more than him in certain areas. He worked with doctors very successfully most of the time.
My take is that he was scared and acting out of fear. Hoping against hope that his bullshit alternatives would work because he was so terrified of having his body "opened" and "violated" by a major surgery. Maybe that fear sometimes masqueraded as arrogance but that's still just fear.
Like many others, you seem excited to be able to judge Steve Jobs on this point. To judge and laugh at him for his arrogance killing him. When in reality you're judging and laughing at a pancreatic cancer patient for procrastinating on their surgery out of fear.
- Funny how you applaud yourself for being correct but make no actual arguments.
What are you claiming? That immigrants do not actually remit significant percentage of their income? That all or most remitted money comes back to America? That short-term effects do not matter even if they're highly destructive?
You're claiming that I believe in a fixed pie which could not possibly be further from the truth. But I do believe that some pies are fixed, some of the time, in some places. Are you claiming the opposite? That pies are never fixed?
You're the one who isn't arguing in a rational way.
- I'm sure it's just a coincidence that slave labor is most represented in the industry that generated nearly all of America’s economic growth during the 18th and 19th century.
Is the argument you're making, which is ridiculous.
The success of an industry says nothing about how exploitative or unethical its practices are.
- Your suggestion that these are "right wing" ideas when Bernie Sanders says the same thing and for the same reasons. You might accuse him of being "zero sum" but you can't accuse him of being right wing.
- Poor Americans are the most in need of the opportunity tech jobs provide. That's how they can become non-poor Americans.
Poor Americans are also the most vulnerable to unskilled immigration making them even poorer than they already are.
It's not that complicated.
- 1. Immigrants send to their home countries very significant amounts of their income, so it's always going to be net-negative in that sense.
2. Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?
Of course America is a land of immigrants. And of course immigration can be positive-sum.
That doesn't prove that it's always positive-sum.
It's easy to see many situations that are not positive sum. Huge amounts of unskilled immigration is, at least in the short-term, going to be extremely zero-sum because they will consume far more public resources than they pay for, depriving the existing users. This has played out many times.
In other words:
Too much skilled immigration takes good middle class jobs away from citizens that need them.
Too much unskilled immigration takes public resources and jobs away from citizens that need them.
Given those facts, the argument should be about how much is too much of any particular kind of immigration for any particular time and place.
- I've never met anyone that argued for open borders that wasn't capable of isolating themselves from the negative effects. Like say, a tenured professor like Bryan Caplan.
Open borders might be net-positive but would very predictably devastate the lives of poor people in America. Not that most people who advocate it know anything about being poor.
- Your arguments are so convincing you don't even need to make them and there's no chance you're the one that's refusing to acknowledge reality. Okay...
- Your argument is that all games are non-zero sum and supply and demand don't apply for some magical reason?
Seems like I'm making the sound economic argument and you're just casting aspersions.
- The way many people like yourself seem to have been completely fooled by major corporations wanting cheaper labor to exploit (through both legal, semi-legal, and illegal immigration) will be studied for generations.
Their favorite trick (which you've adopted here) is to accuse people of being "racist" and "right wing" for objecting.
For the record, you would have to search long and hard to find someone more opposed to Trump and his minions than myself. Bernie Sanders has the same basic viewpoint I've expressed.
I have absolutely no hatred for anyone based on their origin or race.
I am completely in favor of allowing as many people into this country as we can sustainably absorb, and even a little more. At the same time, I strongly object to prioritizing the desire of major corporations to exploit cheaper labor at the expense of American citizens.
- Some games (founding companies) are non-zero sum. Some (like employing Americans vs non-Americans) are zero sum.
You're just hand-waiving away reality, which is a very non-programmer thing to do.
- You're arguing that Americans have no more right to success in America than non-Americans. I don't think many Americans will agree with you.
And neither will most people from any other country agree about their own country's success.
- Even ChatGPT is making the same point I am
"it’s widely believed by medical experts that Steve Jobs might have had a better chance
See the keyword "might" in there? No one knows if he could have been saved, not even his own doctors can be sure.
- "And it wasn't a lack of courage it was a misguided belief that he knew more than his doctors."
You don't know anything about human psychology if you think searching for alternatives means he thought he was smarter than his doctors.
Here's the most relevant quote from Steve Jobs: "I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way,"
This is the language of fear not arrogance.
- Steve Wozniak's world-touring adventure wasn't as an English teacher. He toured the world as a technology celebrity.
Steve Jobs corralling him into starting a company made him an engineering hero, technology celebrity, and rich beyond his wildest dreams.
- Steve Jobs brought a hell of a lot more to the table than just raw ambition.
I just meant to contrast the level of ambition between the two. Wozniak was extremely unambitious and Jobs pushed him into starting a company, with great difficulty.
Nothing is guaranteed in life but I've certainly met more than a few people that I predicted would be successful and then they were. There are character traits that incline people toward success.
- On the contrary, I know all about that. Wozniak's company was self-funded with his Apple money (thanks Steve Jobs). It was innovative but not terribly so and was a complete failure as a business.
- Jobs was a fanatical asshole, and Woz knew he was making a deal with the devil.
You clearly know nothing about the history of these two. Or, maybe even more likely, you want this to be true so you can feel better about your life being relatively unimportant in comparison to Steve Jobs' life. Seems to be very common.
Woz and Jobs were best friends as teenagers and loved each other. And like many good friends they had their issues but loved and respected each other until the end.
Woz wasn't doing a deal with the devil. He was co-founding a startup with his extremely ambitious and abrasive best friend.
Almost everyone that ever worked closely with Steve Jobs came away with enormous respect for him and deeply appreciated their time together. Yes, they also say that he was sometimes an asshole but that's how people are: complicated.
There's a very good chance more than a few people think you're an asshole at times.
Steve Jobs is the reason Apple, Next, and Pixar made their mark on history. No amount of envy and revisionist history can change this.
- "He said he had a curable cancer and he should have taken the treatment."
He never uttered this sentence. You're making it up (lying).
Supposedly, he did say "I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way,"
Which shows a man struggling to come to terms with his diagnoses, desperate for alternatives, and eventually gathering the courage to undergo a major surgical operation.
2. That is not my claim at all, since you're dropping half of the claim.
I think we're done here.