This is an old, old, old mistake people make when talking economics. "The Luddite Fallacy" - to be exact.

Yes, technology that reduces costs and automates production means the loss of jobs. However, it also increases the total production of society, which increases demand for other jobs.

We used to be a nation of 90% farmers. Now about 2% of workers are involved in agriculture. What happened to the other 88%? They aren't unemployed. Rather, they are employed in other jobs that never would have been created if those agricultural jobs were not destroyed by technology.

The long term has a way of happening.

Increased productivity doesn't necessarily imply fewer jobs. It might mean that everyone works less hours. There hasn't always been a 40 hour work week. It's only that low due to society's increasing productivity.

"Startups often make money primarily by reducing costs, and cost reduction nearly always means job reduction."

"If a company hires an employee whose efforts earn the company three times their salary, that gives said company the cash flow to hire two more people."

So basically, creating www.replace-your-secretary-with-web-2point0-technology.com and selling subscriptions destroys jobs. Probably true. But writing replacethesecretarywithvisualbasic.exe for a salary creates them?

The only real difference I see is that a startup will (hopefully) have a bigger impact.

Just following up on this particular point, what would be the problem with letting rich foreigners buy American citizenship?

Personally I think Paul's startup visa is a great idea, but orthogonally to that, I just don't see a problem with letting wealthy people buy their way into the US.

Steve Jobs for example got Feist, American citizenship: http://www.tuaw.com/tag/leslie-feist/ it's not the same thing but there obviously has to be different channels to go through for the wealthy.

Doing this, we import people who are most likely to be productive. To allow high human capital pople to compete, we could allow the immigration fee to be paid out over 10 years with a nation-dependent down payment required up front (e.g., $75k for brits, $10k for indians).

Of course, politically this is a no go. Politicians push immigration as a way of importing people to vote for them (e.g. dems want poor Mexicans and reps want skilled former Soviets); the good of the country comes second.

Besides, with your particular method, how do you prevent people from over-bidding and then being unable to pay the fee?

No, whatever algorithm is used to select immigrants, wealth surely is not the thing to use.

As for those who don't pay up, immediate deportation without the possibility of re-entry. Combine this with a policy of enforcing immigration law, and we might get a workable system.

I also think that if you average over a long enough time span, it seems that those that hit the moon, money-wise, at one particular time barely break even over the long run. (Except they've already taken home their own salaraies, of course.) That's what I meant by it being a bad idea; at any given time the highest earners will, by selection effect, be those with the riskiest, most highly leveraged strategies. I can do without those, I think we need people that create wealth, not concentrate it into their own hands.

Absolutely. The recent turmoil notwithstanding, people "like those that worked in Bear Sterns" are enormously valuable to the economy.

I'm not sure how the hefty requirements of the investor visa fits the Y Combinator model. It could create exploitation issues if not handled properly. One could imagine the investors putting the money up but that changes the dynamic of ownership. I believe the investor visa can be satisfied with job creation or money but then there's the issue of minimum wage laws, founders typically work at a loss since they own the company.

I've always felt our immigration law is absurd with respect to graduate students. I think a green card ought to be attached to an advanced degree so that these folks will stay here, enter the work force unencumbered in order to compete fully and start paying taxes immediately, raising families, etc.. Instead we try to keep them out whilst encouraging small businesses to hire illegal immigrants with poor skills thereby creating resentment over access to public services.

Sorry to rant, it's a touchy subject.

When my last startup got acquired, it was small enough that the acquiring company just convinced us all to move from London to Silicon Valley. Some of us decided to stay permanently, and the company got us H1-Bs and put us on the Green Card process. I'm pretty sure all of us were making more than $100K.

Having been on the H1-B process, I just don't believe what you said makes sense. The visa process costs the sponsoring enough time and money that it really doesn't seem worth using it to hire cheaper people.

I've also witnessed the green card "process" first hand within my own family. The numbers don't lie, programmers working in the same job while waiting for their green cards are paid consistently far less than the legal cost would warrant.

Mind you my experiences were all from the 1998-2004 time period, things may have changed since. Back then the body shops were grabbing the lion's share of the visas when the quota opened up annually.

A distinguishing characteristic of a start-up is that it has the potential to make big profits for its owners: either by creating an new technology (like Google did), or by drastically reducing the cost of an existing technology (like Microsoft did). Walmart is an example of a company that made its founders rich by reducing costs. Walmart is also hated by many Americans and their elected politicians because it causes many employees of its competitors to lose jobs. I don't think that a government program that encourages foreigners to come to America in order to create businesses that make its owners rich by drastically reducing costs (including labor costs) will be any more loved by the Walmart-hating crowd.

It seems that is the crux of your argument against Founders Visa.

(1) The flaw of course is that you are only looking at job reduction--and not the jobs that were created as a result of blogs and online news.

And even if the jobs created were fewer than jobs lost, that is free market: sooner or later it had to happen. The worst thing we can do is be delusional that it won't happen. The best thing would be to figure out jobs that are not going to exist and re-train those people for more sustainable jobs.

(2) You don't seem to be so much against Founders Visa as against startups in general. You might as well be arguing against ALL startups--not just those started by immigrants--using this line of argument.

what we need now isn’t another Google, it’s another Wal-Mart.

Add the adjective "vertically-integrated" before Wal-Mart and you may have something.

Obviously, this place is full of PG worshippers. Therefore, the fact that this article made the front page, while disagreeing with PG, suggests that lots of people vote up based on thought-provoking-ness, not on agreement.

And if so, that's cool. :-)

Yeah, because Wal-Mart is known as a big net job-creator...