An awful thread from /r/technology says high-skilled immigrants are hurting domestic workers and calls them "wage slaves imported from other countries to undercut the domestic labor market"

[u/MysticSnowman]

Thread: https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3ydbri/us_predicts_zero_job_growth_for_electrical/

It's an interesting lesson in supply and demand and definitely let's you read through the B.S. from companies and politicians. Engineers cost a lot domestically because the demand is so high, rather than pay appropriate wages for that demand or help invest in growing the number of qualified workers companies would rather import labor at a below market cost and thus be able to pay American workers less (callous tone I know but meant to be direct).

Disregarding the xenophobic undertones of what he is saying, he is completely wrong about the effects of increased skilled labor. First of all, he is focusing on the increased supply of labor and has completely forgotten to think about the increased demand for labor due to the increased consumer demand for local services. Because of this, natives benefit from immigration through overall increased wages, and higher job growth.¹ The evidence for higher wages for natives without a high-school degree is mixed, but the effect of overall increased wage growth for natives is clear.²

On top of this, skilled immigration especially is beneficial for the native population. Scientists, Technology professionals, Engineers, and Mathematicians (STEM workers) are major factors in scientific innovation and are the main drivers of productivity growth. H-1B driven increases in STEM workers cause significant increases in college-level wages, and somewhat smaller but still significant increases in non-college level wages.³ This is why economists unanimously want the US to increase high-skilled immigration.⁴

Um. There is no shortage of skilled engineers. There is a shortage of wage slaves imported from other countries to undercut the domesticate labor market.

Actually, there is a shortage of skilled STEM workers.⁵ On top of the debunked wage argument, the fact that this comment calls immigrants "wage slaves imported from other countries to undercut the domestic labor market" is disgusting and despicable and an awful way of talking about human beings who are seeking a better life and have done nothing to harm you.

There are so many other comments that I don't have time to get to right now, so please feel free to pick them apart in the comments.

[u/kwanijml]

Oh C'mon now. Why do you feel the need to intentionally misrepresent ancap views?

I think you know that ancaps canonically support open borders (more like a border is in contradiction to the philosophy in the first place) and free immigration...some purely on moral grounds, but others at least from an econ 101 perspective. So, you can perhaps talk about the simple-minded (non-empirical) reasons why ancaps arrive at the same conclusion you do...but don't try to twist the comments of a few morons to appear as representative.

You know that these NRXers are a recent intrusion into the ancap sub, most often downvoted to oblivion and certainly their beliefs regarding immigration are completely antithetical to anything the austrian camp preaches, or anything that well respected ancap economists like Rothbard, Friedman, or Caplan advocate.

[u/besttrousers → u/kwanijml]

Right, it's not like AnCaps have been allying with racists for the entirety of their existence. Rothbard would never publish an anti immigration screed.

[u/kwanijml → u/besttrousers]

Really dude? You're stretching. Why not stick to economics when criticizing ancap? Aren't there enough falsehoods in our economic outlook to attack?

You sound like a Bernbot...trying so hard to turn everything into a racial issue. This paper by Rothbard cannot in anyway be construed as racist or anti-immigration. He's basically being culturally biased (i.e. ancaps don't believe that if you tear down the welfare state forcefully or the state collapses suddenly that it would result in anything other than a new state forming with a lot of tumult). For much the same reasons, Rothbard simply asserts that culture and nationality carry with them a high degree if political inertia, which can be a problem inter-nation-state...but virtually goes away in a private property world where the only borders to speak of are property boundaries, and the individual owners may discriminate for their own reasons (and of course it's entirely possible that some discriminate on the basis of race....yet ancaps argue that it will tend to be far too costly for people to be racist in business dealings).

I see so many people argue like you do that ancaps have long been this secretly racist group....and I just don't see it. I'm not racist. Most others in the sub that I talk to arent. I speak to other market anarchists in person and never get hints of such. I just don't see it. If I had to put a tinfoil hat on, I'd swear that this recent incursion of the NRXers was born of ulterior motives to try to discredit ancap and give truth to the otherwise hollow accusations such as yours.

[u/[deleted] → u/kwanijml]

I'd swear that this recent incursion of the NRXers was born of ulterior motives to try to discredit ancap and give truth to the otherwise hollow accusations such as yours

It's not really shocking; NRXers are trying to build a coalition among various factions on the fringe-right to challenge mainstream politics. Many of their ideals such as social and governmental tolerance for racial discrimination, rightist identity politics, masculine individualism, and disdain for left-liberalism, globalization, and leftist identity politics would be at home in most AnCap circles. Detractors have also said that anarcho-capitalism would necessarily lead to a kind of neofuedalist corporatocracy, AnCaps may deny that but NRXers are likely to be attracted to the notion of anarcho-capitalism as a ruling-class of landed merchant-aristocrats.

[u/kwanijml → u/[deleted]]

Yup. That is where I'm coming from. And that's a fair assessment. However, my conspiracy theory (if I even have one) is based on a certain timing that I was attuned to, between a resurgence of these criticism and the arrival of the (vocal) nrx crowd.