> Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone.
Citation needed!
For reference, here's a toy model where pricing a scarce resource screws someone over:
- There are two people in the model, Alice and Bob.
- Alice is very rich, Bob is very poor.
- Each of them needs a loaf of bread per day to survive (100 utility), and would also enjoy eating a second loaf (1 utility).
- Initially, each of them gets a loaf from the government for free. There are only two loaves available per day.
- Now let's price the scarce resource, and have the government sell the loaves instead! Alice buys both loaves and enjoys life. Bob doesn't get anything and dies.
Not being able to afford the market price of a resource is not "getting screwed" and you're just being inflammatory by making it a matter of life and death. H1B visas are not a matter of life and death; we're talking about people who want to make more money, not people seeking political asylum.
Suppose we make your exact scenario about a rare/endangered species of caviar. Bob can still buy bread for one credit but you're arguing that the government should ensure the equitable distribution of caviar because the market price isn't fair to Bob who can't afford it. Bob is not getting screwed, Bob just can't afford caviar.
Sure it does. At least when that scarce resource is artificially constrained.
Now that doesn't mean it shouldn't have restraints. But it does mean there are winners and losers and it is perfectly fair and reasonable to call them out.
(Edit: Who the hell is downvoting the artificial scarcity comments? That's absurd. Care to have an actual discussion?)
It's not artificial scarcity. The US doesn't have an unlimited capacity for immigration. We can argue around the edges of what the correct number is, but whatever number we pick, there are still going to be more people than that who want to be US citizens and we still need to choose between them somehow.
Tata can rake the auction price up because even though their worker doesn't have a great salary, they're being billed a lot. 10k, 20k for a H1B? NO PROBLEM!
You're just shutting the small players out.
As an example, Red Hat hires a lot of H1Bs, now, since they know how to work remotely this is not such a big issue, still.
Its going to be a scare resource regardless of bidding. At least bidding will allocate to some correlation to real need since people pay more for critical skills.
Sounds like a great way to skew immigration in favour of big business and completely screw over start ups and SMBs.