But this is just disappointing. That "cheap import worker" has every bit the same right to the job that you do. There's no moral reason to deny it to him.

True. But there is a moral issue with allowing the company, who benefits from local society (infrastructure, security, etc), to receive those benefits without contributing appropriately. We can impose restrictions on a company's behavior in exchange for allowing them to benefit from our collective activity.

The key there is what behaviors we choose to permit or deny in exchange for what we give to that company.

For example, it is common for a locality to provide public roads, police service, emergency fire and medical coverage, education, etc to a company in exchange for that company providing jobs and workforce development in that location. To me, this is an specific abstraction of the general societal contract between employers and the general public. When a company decides to import cheap labor to avoid paying market rate on local labor, that is a violation of the societal contract, and thus is immoral.

Employers get the benefit of being located in the US, without bearing their share of costs. Not good.

But I am really under the impression that most visa are issues because one could not find a local ( == US) worker to fill the position in.

That's the official line. In fact, for many temporary visas, that's the only reason the visa will be granted.

But in actuality, it's not the case. The truth is that by increasing supply of qualified workers, companies can keep the price for those workers low. Basic microeconomics at play.

In my experience, the way it generally works is that the largest H1B-using companies actually provide the training necessary to meet their requirements via either related parties (offshore affiliates) or outsourcing firms. Then, because they haven't trained anyone locally in the skillset they need, they get those employees to come here under H1B.

Basically, instead of investing in the training in specific skills in local employees, they do so overseas. Then we watch those skills go back to the employees' home country with them.

I believe we need to increase the standard of living across the globe wherever we can. But I do not believe that companies allowed to operate in a certain country should be allowed to get away with not investing in the workforce of that specific country when they need skills there.

In that vein, I think we need to get rid of H1B and most other temporary visas. I believe all foreign workers who come here should be required to file for US citizenship. We bring over bright, well-educated, risk-taking people... them watch them leave after a few years, bringing their knowledge and experience back to their home countries. We are left with little to show for it, other than profit to their employer.

We should welcome these people with open arms, and have them settle here and contribute to our society for their lifetime. This has been one of the foundations of the US's success over the past couple centuries... why are we abandoning it now?

Risk-taking immigrants are the historical source of the US's economic vitality. Let's get back to what made this a great nation, and welcome not only "your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", but also your innovators, your risk-takers, your eager engineers yearning to create.

No one deserves a "living wage" or any wage except what someone is willing to pay.

True. But that doesn't mean we can't to encourage employers to be willing to pay a living wage.

We can do this lots of ways, such as limiting their ability to import cheap workers, or by instituting fines for them paying too little (to expand upon this, I think we need to rais ethe minimum wage a la Australia to an actual liveable wage). I don't see a problem with 'nudging' employers to be willing to pay a living wage. You may, but that's because you're a pseudo-anarchist.

No one deserves anything from another, except to be left alone when desired

That's your opinion, and I respect that. I disagree, however, and I believe that we, as a whole, owe each other the opportunity to pursue action at the societal, rather than the individual, level.

That may be going a little to far, but the simple fact is: the total energy released in earthquakes represents a constant power input. Fracking may change the timing (for better or worse), but it has no effect whatsoever on the input power, or the total release energy over time.

Even if that is true (and I can think of a couple reasons it may not be true at any scale that is useful for discussion), it's meaningless. The "over time" qualifier is the tricky one... it's possible for the tectonic stress to be dissipated in a non-violent manner, over a long enough timescale. But we're not really concerned about low energy dissipation over millions of years... we're concerned about the one big event that causes catastrophic damage. And just as there is a straw that broke the camel's back, just as there is a keystone without which an arch will fail, the worry is that some action related to fracking may enable the release of a hug amount of energy in a very short time.

I think fracking is most likely viable; but I also believe we must act with caution and mitigate our risks. "Damn the torpedoes" is no way to run an energy industry when other people's lives are at stake.

- most people were producing food around the world, I said that industrialization allowed the economy to gain efficiencies necessary to shift most people from food production to something else, I didn't talk about any specific locality. Today farming is 1.2% of the reported GDP of USA and 6.1% of the reported world GDP. [wikipedia.org]

Nothing to do with my point. You're not addressing what the status was pre-industrialization. You're also ignoring mechanization, which has driven gains in yields wrt labor far, far more than industrialization.

OTOH 300 years ago [google.com] most of workforce was occupied in farming and farming related activities. (open that link and scroll a page down for actual statistics).

You equate agriculture with food production. They are not equivalent. Read the link you provided... 60% of the economy was based on agriculture... but a significant portion of that agriculture was non-food items (wood production, for example, is agricultural, but wood is obviously not a food item). Furthermore, % of the economy does not equate to % employed in food production.

If it's not growing in one particular day at the same rate that it is growing in the overall sense, over years, then it doesn't change the fact.

US government has been shrinking for three years. Cherrypick timelines all you want, you're still lying. You claimed it's the fastest-growing sector of the economy, and that's just false. Over the longer timelines you NOW reference, many sectors have grown faster than government. Healthcare. Telecom. Take your pick, there are many.

As to manufacturing - in USA manufacturing is shrinking, not growing. The pathetic little bit of growth that registered in the last 2 months is in assembling, not manufacturing, they don't grow manufacturing in USA and assembly is not the same thing.

Now you';re just making shit up to support a point, again. Stop lying. Manufacturing has been growing steadily, albeit slowly, since the end of the nominal recession in 2010, with a brief pause in Jun-Jul of this year.

Yes, it's true, the service sector is growing in USA, that's just like government, it adds to the trade deficit

What the hell are you talking about? Service sector growth doesn't add to the trade deficit. I have no idea where you get your "information" from, but you clearly have no fucking idea about economics.

(well, I consider the Federal reserve to be an arm of the government).

I see. you choose to deliberately believe something that is false. Extrapolated to everything else you write... makes sense to me.

I'm done discussing with you, it's a waste of my time. But please stop lying and making claims out of ignorance, it'd be a shame for your idiocy to spread further.

But capitalism became the main factor in the real push towards industrialization

This is false. The push towards industrialization was driven by demand for cheaply produced goods. Capitalism was a means towards an end, not a driving factor wrt industrialization.

...industrialization, and that's what really turned the economy into a much more productive one, so majority of people stopped being farmers, hunters, gatherers, fishers altogether,

Most people weren't food producers prior to industrialization, you have a very romanticized view of pre-industrial society. Most people were tradesmen or laborers. Specialization has existed far longer than industrialization.

I think you have a very limited, and often incorrect, understanding of economic history.

the government itself is a parasite, it produces nothing, it takes from producers, it promises to give to people who didn't produce part of wealth created by the people who do produce.

The government is not a parasite, it is a symbiote. Go ahead, look up the definition. Government produces transportation infrastructure, it produces legal infrastructure, it produces education, it produces economic stability, I could go on and on and on... all these things are things that businesses use to make profits.

- it is a fact. The government is spending more money than any company, the government has more employees than any company, the government has more contractors than any company, the government is entangled in more businesses than any company.

So, government being bigger than any company means it is the only sector of the economy that is growing?

Your logic fails. As Homr pointed out, government is *shrinking* while the private sector is *growing*. Manufacturing is *growing* right now, construction is *growing* right now. These are two sectors of the economy that are growing faster than government. The Health Care sector is growing faster than the government. There are a ton of sectors that are growing faster than government.

Nobody can get a business loan while governments are in more debt than ever.

One has little to do with the other. There is plenty of capital available for lending. Plus, I personally know at least three people who have been able to take out business loans in the past two years. You're using hyperbole.

Stop blaming all problems on the government. No government is perfect, far from it. But the government is not the root of all evil.

And while you're at it, please stop using falsehoods to support your points. Every time you lie and get called out on it, more people choose todisregard everything you have to say. If you have a message you want to get spread, lying defeats your purpose. So just stop.

You're asking Edison to know the future here. He didn't have The Doctor to take him away in the TARDIS and show him what the consequences of pollution would be.

Seems you've stumbled onto the crux of the problem. It's The Doctor's fault, for not going back in time to warn Edison of the future pollution impacts of his invention.

Also, it's The Doctor's fault my wife has no tampons, since The Doctor did not warn me on my way home from work, with me having forgotten all about my wife's ill-timed request (as I stumbled groggily to the bathroom this morning) for me to pick them up.

But I digress. Back to your claim that Edison didn't have The Doctor; while that is true, evidence suggests that Edison did indeed have time-traveling (and FTL traveling) capabilities. Unfortunately, he used them solely to assuage his loneliness by visiting the much-renowned Scintillating Whores of Europa during their 27th century heyday.

Contrary to your assertion, Edison fully knew how widespread the use of energy would be. What he misunderstood, however, was the extremely long time it would take us to move from fossil fuels to nuclear and solar as primary energy sources. He did not anticipate the NIMBYism of the anti-nuclear factions, nor did he anticipate the power the entrenched fossil fuel industry could bring to bear on the political process.

All this is rather humdrum and beside the point, however. You see, Nikola Tesla was fully aware of all these things. To our great and lasting chagrin, though, the fossil fuel industry was able to get a mole inside his lab, and with the cooperation of the nascent US security apparatus, this mole was able to both ferret out Tesla's true intent (which, of course, was to found Google and successfully complete the Rite of a Million Targeted Advertisements necessary to invoke Googol the Destroyer).

That is incorrect. The Government does not create corporations, individuals do. Government recognizes them and provides a legal framework. That is a very big difference.

I disagree. Corporations are granted special status by the government that a collection of individual does not have. The most important one, IMO, is that shareholders of a corporation are not legally liable for the actions of the corporation they own, except to the extent of their investment.

When there is no personal responsibility for the "actions" of investor money, then the government needs to regulate to ensure that corporations can't be used to divest investors of the negative repercussions of awful actions -- like wanton pollution that causes cancer, for example. If I knowingly dump toxins that make people sick, I can be imprisoned. A corporation cannot be imprisoned... so we regulate to ensure corporations don't do that kind of thing.

My understanding is that, in the case of S-corps, income is treated as a straight pass-through to the shareholders' personal income, and the corporation itself pays no taxes directly.

True, except that it's not passed through when the S-Corp earns the income, it is passed through when it's distributed to the owner(s). There are other rules governing when distributions to owners have to be made, etc.

You have or should have no responsibility or liability for my actions unless you specifically knew of them before enabling them with the loan.

This is a false analogy in some ways. In your example the drug-seller is an individual who is responsible for their actions. A corporation is no such thing. Let's say you create an enterprise, with documentation and everything, to buy and sell cars at a profit. You ask your buddy for $100 to get you started, in exchange for partial ownership of the enterprise. He agrees, gives you the cash, and then you go on to buy and sell drugs. Does he have responsibilty? Yes. He did not oversee the actions of the entity (like a partner in a partnership) or hire anyone to do so (like shareholders in traditional corporation). His money enabled the drug dealing.

It doesn't matter if he knew of the specific actions you'd take with his money. He should have known, it is his responsibility as a partner or shareholder.

This is one reason why we pay corporate board members so much. They assume a lot of the personal risk that the shareholders would otherwise hold. The legal structure allows shareholders to divest the risk onto the board... but someone can still be held accountable to some extent.

The question is: why should limited liability impose a constraint on collective political speech?

Because limited liability is designed to separate the person from the entity. Why should the entity have any right to political speech? It is not a person, it is not a citizen. It cannot vote. You do not give up any rights to free speech (or any other human rights) when you form an LLC.