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There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch. But does anyone think through to the end-game

There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch. But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Aside from anything else, the other countries become less able to trade on good terms, and thus less able to buy US products/services. And so it becomes a self-defeating policy long-term. Good economists (and to be honest I don't know of many these days) know that there are no free lunches. We need to put as much effort into helping every other country develop and thrive - and by doing that we'll create many more customers for the products/services produced in our own countries, and everyone can end up richer. After writing this I wonder even if the economic and political dysfunction we're seeing in so much of the world as actually the inevitable consequence of decades of brain-draining, rather than an indication of the need for more of it.

maxerickson 2y ago
That when you drain every smart/productive person away from every other country This is a ridiculous premise.
- tomhoward 2y ago
  I edited that sentence to be less absolutist, but still, isn't this essentially what this article and many people are advocating? Attracting all the smartest and most productive people in the world to move to the US? How is that a mischaracterisation of the argument?
  - gsf_emergency_2 2y ago
    geohot is trying to convince himself not to be drained.. See https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/11/03/high-trust-society.html https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/11/03/high-... >Oh and in the IRL mean time, it’s very nice to be physically in a high trust society. Still working on opening an office in Hong Kong for those who want, salaries higher in person. Personally, I hope he'd flesh out more of that Bretton-Woods vs inflation argument (instead of fixating on gold, build an argument on that energy graph in the middle of it all (blackgold? stargold? hydrogold? datagold? Transmuted silicon ingots?))
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    What percentage of people do you think are capable of competence? It would have to be a low number like 10%, with perfect sorting of them into the US, to even start to have the impact you are postulating.
elisharobinson 2y ago
this assumes that a smart person would move to US 100% of the time. given the bipolar nature of US i doubt 100% of smart people would move .
- tomhoward 2y ago
  I worry that all the replies to my comment will be claims about what percentage of the smartest and most productive people will want to move to the US in practice, thereby avoiding debating the central point. The first reply asserted that my comment was based on a “ridiculous premise” without addressing the principle.
  - elisharobinson 2y ago
    we are talking about a pure <hypothetical> scenario which is not related to present day reality . If we are talking about reality "skill" is rarely the deciding factor when individuals decide to migrate. it is about risk tolerance you are taking a huge risk by moving to a different country / culture / social circle the ROIC is not always clear. Its not for everyone ( was my point ). Hypothetically if the success of country is based on how many risk takers ( and not skill ) are there then sure your argument makes sense.
foven 2y ago
More to the point, when you write an article like this foretelling the doom of the american economy, why would you think you are able to brain drain any country? What stops the countries you are trying to drain from offering better incentives to stay?
- lqet 2y ago
  Also consider that the US is now threatening direct (even neighboring) allies with military intervention (Canada, Denmark). It is very hard to drain brain which considers the US an enemy country. Meanwhile, China is playing the long game and is building infrastructure projects all over the world, including the EU [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelje%C5%A1ac_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelje%C5%A1ac_Bridge
  - Clubber 2y ago
    >Also consider that the US is now threatening direct (even neighboring) allies with military intervention (Canada, Denmark). You have a source for this? I haven't heard of any threat of military intervention for Canada and/or Denmark.
    - lqet 2y ago
      "Trump has repeatedly spoken of making the neighbouring country the 51st state of America." [0] "Trudeau more recently suggested behind closed doors that Trump’s sustained annexation calls may not be just light talk and appear to be “a real thing.”" [1] "Trump refuses to rule out use of military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal" [2] "US will take Greenland ‘one way or the other,’ Trump says" [3] [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddy2q2z8dzo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddy2q2z8dzo [1] https://apnews.com/article/how-canada-could-become-us-state-42360e10ded96c0046fd11eaaf55ab88 https://apnews.com/article/how-canada-could-become-us-state-... [2] https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-offshore-drilling-gulf-of-america-fa66f8d072eb39c00a8128a8941ede75 https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-offshore-drilling-gul... [3] https://www.politico.eu/article/us-will-take-greenland-one-way-or-the-other-donald-trump-says/ https://www.politico.eu/article/us-will-take-greenland-one-w...
ccppurcell 2y ago
Brain drain happens when the quality of life in a particular country dips below some standard. It's relative to other countries only up to a point. I strongly doubt it is possible to increase quality of life (albeit for a minority) in one country so high to outweigh the utility of staying put in other countries. You certainly can't do it in a democracy: who would vote to increase the quality of life specifically for a small group of immigrants? I'm pro immigration btw but people are not going to vote against their own interests to such an extent.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
energy123 2y ago
This is basically an argument that China should become more like North Korea rather than the other way around. Reality is that remittances and the skills that emigrants eventually bring back to their home country far exceeds any negative effects. Policymakers know this which is why they don't deter this from happening. In many countries they actively encourage it, such as is Philippines. When economists talk about "no free lunch" they are specifically talking about abnormal profits. They are not talking about the fact that voluntary decisions of private actors can lead to positive sum outcomes in utility.
- tomhoward 2y ago
  > This is basically an argument that China should become more like North Korea rather than the other way around. How exactly? I’m no pro-China advocate (I’m Australian and live with the mixed outcomes of our ties with China, and I have no strong feelings about what Australia or the US should do with respect to China or anyone else). But (leaving aside arguments about their “true” motives and assuming good faith), China invests in the economic development of many weaker countries and doesn’t try to brain-drain them. The U.S. and western allies invested heavily in the redevelopment of Germany and Japan after WWII, and all countries involved ended up much stronger. It’s that spirit that I’m talking about.
  - energy123 2y ago
    Because China allows brain drain, seeing it as an eventual source of innovation, but North Korea doesn't. Building walls to keep people in doesn't work. There are many industries in China that only happened because of brain drain. If they followed your argument and stopped people from leaving like North Korea, all those industries wouldn't exist and they'd be a poorer country. Their missile program wouldn't exist or would be much weaker. Many such examples.
    - tomhoward 2y ago
      That’s not my argument at all. You’re responding to a straw man interpretation of what I wrote. I’m saying that for a country like the US, the idea that brain-draining the best from the rest of the world will have unmitigated positive outcomes is false.
rsanek 2y ago
> We need to put as much effort into helping every other country develop and thrive - and by doing that we'll create many more customers for the products/services produced in our own countries, and everyone can end up richer. this was the logic in letting eg China into the WTO and allowing them to become such a big trading partner. turns out, this doesn't necessarily result in liberalization (see Germany's experience with Russia for another example). we should only be seeking to shift trade from repressive regimes to democracies, not working with everyone equally.
- axkdev 2y ago
  I do not disagree with your point, except, given the current state of US, it is hard to describe it as not repressive. I understand it's a spectrum. I checked on Wikipedia - abortion is legal in China. That's one right that many US women don't have. Which does not mean that China is a free country, but just to gain some perspective. The notion of some place being a dictatorship was many times weaponized to launch invasions and economic sanctions that left that place broken and impoverished.
  - stickfigure 2y ago
    This is a false equivalence. Whatever you or I personally feel about abortion, its legality in the United States is set through approximately democratic processes. Not perfect by any means, but it very roughly reflects the will of the people - sharply divided, with many geographic concentrations. The will of the people in China is unknown. There is only the will of the CCP, and increasingly, one person.
- ruszki 2y ago
  Working less with China makes the possibility of a war higher. Obama wanted to have a trading framework which prevents a mutual degradation of trade on America’s term, but Trump didn’t want that, and Americans voted to this again. I think genie is out of the bottle, and it’s too late to prevent it. But the logical step would have been what Obama wanted. Now, we have dark times ahead of us. These forced shifts in trade just make the process to these bad times quicker. Nobody really benefits them, just make the war a possibility sooner. If not a full out war, but a new Cold War at least.
jgilias 2y ago
I wouldn’t worry about this too much. Brain drain, despite the name, is not really a zero-sum game. The people who move rarely lose all contact with the host country. They gain invaluable experience, know-how, and contacts that some of them eventually bring back to the host country. I know of more than one example where someone has been “brain-drained” to the states, who has subsequently moved back to start a successful business. Sometimes leveraging gained contacts directly, sometimes leveraging the newfound experience and knowledge. Whether this works out this way depends on how open the world (or at least the respective countries between each other) is when it comes to movement of people, money, and trade.
- energy123 2y ago
  The only reason the Chinese solar industry exists is because of so called "brain drain" from China to Australia and Germany. The reality is far less zero sum. These Chinese scientists learned about and contributed to solar research overseas, and some of them went back to China and made China wealthier.
  - jgilias 2y ago
    Exactly. And that would be a good thing in a world where super-powers aren’t imperialist, and don’t try to one up each other. Alas.
  - gizmo 2y ago
    Do you actually believe Chinese researchers are incapable of figuring out photovoltaics by themselves? China has first-rate universities and thousands of PhDs in every field imaginable. They can make solar cells without our help. Having access to western research only sped up the inevitable. China has a solar industry today simply because the Chinese government decided that energy production was a top priority. They made it happen.
    - elliotto 2y ago
      The OP was talking about Shi Zhengrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengrong who came to Australia (my country) in the 90s, learned a bunch about photovoltaics, was unable to make a business here due to our failed government policies, then returned to China and made a pv megabusiness. The truth of the matter is that most cutting edge research is spearheaded by the west. The problem is that the west can't build or prioritise anything useful with it.
underdeserver 2y ago
Problem is in these countries there just aren't enough opportunities. There are very, very few places in the world you can get a Stanford PhD - including the atmosphere, colleagues, labs, money. Before you can even invest the immense time and effort needed to build that kind of environment, you need the will of the people, and in most of the world you don't have that.
LeroyRaz 2y ago
Your claim that good economicts "know there is no free lunch" is completely false, unsubstantiated and actively misleading. Many impressive economists believe there are policies that could massively improve the worlds economy, but that implementating these policies is a coordination problem / hard to overcome lobbying / politically intractable, etc... Radical Markets is great book on exactly this topic.
- tomhoward 2y ago
  I’m just saying every perceived benefit has some kind of cost or perverse consequence, eventually. Please feel free to point to a specific example of a policy that has been successfully implemented that contradicts this principle.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  > coordination problem / hard to overcome lobbying / politically intractable, etc... So much for free lunch?
agumonkey 2y ago
But smart people stuck in bad countries would not be able to work and thrive or maybe their ideas would get locked somewhere ?
braiamp 2y ago
> the other countries become less able to trade on good terms, and thus less able to buy US products/services There is a Kurzgezat video a couple of years back [1] that does understand this. They did the same argument that you are making here. Heck, the prisoners dilemma is about how cooperating is the most viable strategy for global benefits. The world isn't really a zero sum game. We get a tons of energy thanks to our star that is usually the thing that most closed systems desperately look for. [1]: https://youtu.be/rvskMHn0sqQ https://youtu.be/rvskMHn0sqQ
keybored 2y ago
> But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? My average IQ (or below) take is that this “brain drain” narrative where absolutely everything collapses—societal decline, war, resentment, aah basically the Apocalypse—because the smart people leave is just the belief here because people put 50% or more of their professional identity into believing they have a high IQ.
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
>That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Societal decline, poverty, resentment etc.: why should functional people bear the burden of it? Brain drain happens for reasons beyond the simple need to earn more money, it also happens because dealing with those dysfunctional people is extremely draining at several levels. On a larger scale when putting smart people together - be it at a country level or even at a company level, one achieves things that are not normally not possible, which is a net benefit for the world at large even if it creates some populations that are dysfunctional.
mdnahas 2y ago
Economist here. You’re not considering agglomeration effects. Smart people near other smart people are more effective. So world GDP growth may be faster. (Economists have pointed out that US growth is slower because SF is so expensive, young smart people cannot agglomerate there and learn tech faster.)

maxerickson 2y ago

That when you drain every smart/productive person away from every other country This is a ridiculous premise.

tomhoward 2y ago
I edited that sentence to be less absolutist, but still, isn't this essentially what this article and many people are advocating? Attracting all the smartest and most productive people in the world to move to the US? How is that a mischaracterisation of the argument?
- gsf_emergency_2 2y ago
  geohot is trying to convince himself not to be drained.. See https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/11/03/high-trust-society.html https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/11/03/high-... >Oh and in the IRL mean time, it’s very nice to be physically in a high trust society. Still working on opening an office in Hong Kong for those who want, salaries higher in person. Personally, I hope he'd flesh out more of that Bretton-Woods vs inflation argument (instead of fixating on gold, build an argument on that energy graph in the middle of it all (blackgold? stargold? hydrogold? datagold? Transmuted silicon ingots?))
- maxerickson 2y ago
  What percentage of people do you think are capable of competence? It would have to be a low number like 10%, with perfect sorting of them into the US, to even start to have the impact you are postulating.

elisharobinson 2y ago

this assumes that a smart person would move to US 100% of the time. given the bipolar nature of US i doubt 100% of smart people would move .

tomhoward 2y ago
I worry that all the replies to my comment will be claims about what percentage of the smartest and most productive people will want to move to the US in practice, thereby avoiding debating the central point. The first reply asserted that my comment was based on a “ridiculous premise” without addressing the principle.
- elisharobinson 2y ago
  we are talking about a pure <hypothetical> scenario which is not related to present day reality . If we are talking about reality "skill" is rarely the deciding factor when individuals decide to migrate. it is about risk tolerance you are taking a huge risk by moving to a different country / culture / social circle the ROIC is not always clear. Its not for everyone ( was my point ). Hypothetically if the success of country is based on how many risk takers ( and not skill ) are there then sure your argument makes sense.

foven 2y ago

More to the point, when you write an article like this foretelling the doom of the american economy, why would you think you are able to brain drain any country? What stops the countries you are trying to drain from offering better incentives to stay?

lqet 2y ago
Also consider that the US is now threatening direct (even neighboring) allies with military intervention (Canada, Denmark). It is very hard to drain brain which considers the US an enemy country. Meanwhile, China is playing the long game and is building infrastructure projects all over the world, including the EU [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelje%C5%A1ac_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelje%C5%A1ac_Bridge
- Clubber 2y ago
  >Also consider that the US is now threatening direct (even neighboring) allies with military intervention (Canada, Denmark). You have a source for this? I haven't heard of any threat of military intervention for Canada and/or Denmark.
  - lqet 2y ago
    "Trump has repeatedly spoken of making the neighbouring country the 51st state of America." [0] "Trudeau more recently suggested behind closed doors that Trump’s sustained annexation calls may not be just light talk and appear to be “a real thing.”" [1] "Trump refuses to rule out use of military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal" [2] "US will take Greenland ‘one way or the other,’ Trump says" [3] [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddy2q2z8dzo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddy2q2z8dzo [1] https://apnews.com/article/how-canada-could-become-us-state-42360e10ded96c0046fd11eaaf55ab88 https://apnews.com/article/how-canada-could-become-us-state-... [2] https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-offshore-drilling-gulf-of-america-fa66f8d072eb39c00a8128a8941ede75 https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-offshore-drilling-gul... [3] https://www.politico.eu/article/us-will-take-greenland-one-way-or-the-other-donald-trump-says/ https://www.politico.eu/article/us-will-take-greenland-one-w...

ccppurcell 2y ago

Brain drain happens when the quality of life in a particular country dips below some standard. It's relative to other countries only up to a point. I strongly doubt it is possible to increase quality of life (albeit for a minority) in one country so high to outweigh the utility of staying put in other countries. You certainly can't do it in a democracy: who would vote to increase the quality of life specifically for a small group of immigrants? I'm pro immigration btw but people are not going to vote against their own interests to such an extent.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

energy123 2y ago

This is basically an argument that China should become more like North Korea rather than the other way around. Reality is that remittances and the skills that emigrants eventually bring back to their home country far exceeds any negative effects. Policymakers know this which is why they don't deter this from happening. In many countries they actively encourage it, such as is Philippines. When economists talk about "no free lunch" they are specifically talking about abnormal profits. They are not talking about the fact that voluntary decisions of private actors can lead to positive sum outcomes in utility.

tomhoward 2y ago
> This is basically an argument that China should become more like North Korea rather than the other way around. How exactly? I’m no pro-China advocate (I’m Australian and live with the mixed outcomes of our ties with China, and I have no strong feelings about what Australia or the US should do with respect to China or anyone else). But (leaving aside arguments about their “true” motives and assuming good faith), China invests in the economic development of many weaker countries and doesn’t try to brain-drain them. The U.S. and western allies invested heavily in the redevelopment of Germany and Japan after WWII, and all countries involved ended up much stronger. It’s that spirit that I’m talking about.
- energy123 2y ago
  Because China allows brain drain, seeing it as an eventual source of innovation, but North Korea doesn't. Building walls to keep people in doesn't work. There are many industries in China that only happened because of brain drain. If they followed your argument and stopped people from leaving like North Korea, all those industries wouldn't exist and they'd be a poorer country. Their missile program wouldn't exist or would be much weaker. Many such examples.
  - tomhoward 2y ago
    That’s not my argument at all. You’re responding to a straw man interpretation of what I wrote. I’m saying that for a country like the US, the idea that brain-draining the best from the rest of the world will have unmitigated positive outcomes is false.

rsanek 2y ago

> We need to put as much effort into helping every other country develop and thrive - and by doing that we'll create many more customers for the products/services produced in our own countries, and everyone can end up richer. this was the logic in letting eg China into the WTO and allowing them to become such a big trading partner. turns out, this doesn't necessarily result in liberalization (see Germany's experience with Russia for another example). we should only be seeking to shift trade from repressive regimes to democracies, not working with everyone equally.

axkdev 2y ago
I do not disagree with your point, except, given the current state of US, it is hard to describe it as not repressive. I understand it's a spectrum. I checked on Wikipedia - abortion is legal in China. That's one right that many US women don't have. Which does not mean that China is a free country, but just to gain some perspective. The notion of some place being a dictatorship was many times weaponized to launch invasions and economic sanctions that left that place broken and impoverished.
- stickfigure 2y ago
  This is a false equivalence. Whatever you or I personally feel about abortion, its legality in the United States is set through approximately democratic processes. Not perfect by any means, but it very roughly reflects the will of the people - sharply divided, with many geographic concentrations. The will of the people in China is unknown. There is only the will of the CCP, and increasingly, one person.
ruszki 2y ago
Working less with China makes the possibility of a war higher. Obama wanted to have a trading framework which prevents a mutual degradation of trade on America’s term, but Trump didn’t want that, and Americans voted to this again. I think genie is out of the bottle, and it’s too late to prevent it. But the logical step would have been what Obama wanted. Now, we have dark times ahead of us. These forced shifts in trade just make the process to these bad times quicker. Nobody really benefits them, just make the war a possibility sooner. If not a full out war, but a new Cold War at least.

jgilias 2y ago

I wouldn’t worry about this too much. Brain drain, despite the name, is not really a zero-sum game. The people who move rarely lose all contact with the host country. They gain invaluable experience, know-how, and contacts that some of them eventually bring back to the host country. I know of more than one example where someone has been “brain-drained” to the states, who has subsequently moved back to start a successful business. Sometimes leveraging gained contacts directly, sometimes leveraging the newfound experience and knowledge. Whether this works out this way depends on how open the world (or at least the respective countries between each other) is when it comes to movement of people, money, and trade.

energy123 2y ago
The only reason the Chinese solar industry exists is because of so called "brain drain" from China to Australia and Germany. The reality is far less zero sum. These Chinese scientists learned about and contributed to solar research overseas, and some of them went back to China and made China wealthier.
- jgilias 2y ago
  Exactly. And that would be a good thing in a world where super-powers aren’t imperialist, and don’t try to one up each other. Alas.
- gizmo 2y ago
  Do you actually believe Chinese researchers are incapable of figuring out photovoltaics by themselves? China has first-rate universities and thousands of PhDs in every field imaginable. They can make solar cells without our help. Having access to western research only sped up the inevitable. China has a solar industry today simply because the Chinese government decided that energy production was a top priority. They made it happen.
  - elliotto 2y ago
    The OP was talking about Shi Zhengrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengrong who came to Australia (my country) in the 90s, learned a bunch about photovoltaics, was unable to make a business here due to our failed government policies, then returned to China and made a pv megabusiness. The truth of the matter is that most cutting edge research is spearheaded by the west. The problem is that the west can't build or prioritise anything useful with it.

underdeserver 2y ago

Problem is in these countries there just aren't enough opportunities. There are very, very few places in the world you can get a Stanford PhD - including the atmosphere, colleagues, labs, money. Before you can even invest the immense time and effort needed to build that kind of environment, you need the will of the people, and in most of the world you don't have that.

LeroyRaz 2y ago

Your claim that good economicts "know there is no free lunch" is completely false, unsubstantiated and actively misleading. Many impressive economists believe there are policies that could massively improve the worlds economy, but that implementating these policies is a coordination problem / hard to overcome lobbying / politically intractable, etc... Radical Markets is great book on exactly this topic.

tomhoward 2y ago
I’m just saying every perceived benefit has some kind of cost or perverse consequence, eventually. Please feel free to point to a specific example of a policy that has been successfully implemented that contradicts this principle.
nuancebydefault 2y ago
> coordination problem / hard to overcome lobbying / politically intractable, etc... So much for free lunch?

agumonkey 2y ago

But smart people stuck in bad countries would not be able to work and thrive or maybe their ideas would get locked somewhere ?

braiamp 2y ago

> the other countries become less able to trade on good terms, and thus less able to buy US products/services There is a Kurzgezat video a couple of years back [1] that does understand this. They did the same argument that you are making here. Heck, the prisoners dilemma is about how cooperating is the most viable strategy for global benefits. The world isn't really a zero sum game. We get a tons of energy thanks to our star that is usually the thing that most closed systems desperately look for. [1]: https://youtu.be/rvskMHn0sqQ https://youtu.be/rvskMHn0sqQ

keybored 2y ago

> But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? My average IQ (or below) take is that this “brain drain” narrative where absolutely everything collapses—societal decline, war, resentment, aah basically the Apocalypse—because the smart people leave is just the belief here because people put 50% or more of their professional identity into believing they have a high IQ.

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago

>That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Societal decline, poverty, resentment etc.: why should functional people bear the burden of it? Brain drain happens for reasons beyond the simple need to earn more money, it also happens because dealing with those dysfunctional people is extremely draining at several levels. On a larger scale when putting smart people together - be it at a country level or even at a company level, one achieves things that are not normally not possible, which is a net benefit for the world at large even if it creates some populations that are dysfunctional.

mdnahas 2y ago

Economist here. You’re not considering agglomeration effects. Smart people near other smart people are more effective. So world GDP growth may be faster. (Economists have pointed out that US growth is slower because SF is so expensive, young smart people cannot agglomerate there and learn tech faster.)