How middlemen are gaming the H-1B program

Post by shiroiushi » Mon, Aug 05, 2024, 12:02 AM UTC

bubblethink wrote: post #32

shiroiushi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How did the middlemen get so much power in the US economy? I think it's always been this way. It takes a lot of work and resources to deal with individual customers at scale. >Staffing firms, real estate agents, car dealerships, attorneys, healthcare, etc. Staffing firms, real estate agents, and attorneys are not unique to the US at all. Staffing firms are used by many companies because they don't want to hire full-…

>The thing I see about the US is that it seems to be uniquely bad at actually fixing problems. Yeah, this is the part I'm trying to understand. There is lobbying/corruption, but that can't be the whole story. Perhaps culturally and historically, the US has been a prosperous high-trust society that did not have to worry too much about people skimming a percentage off the top for providing a service. And over time, tha…

>Perhaps culturally and historically, the US has been a prosperous high-trust society that did not have to worry too much about people skimming a percentage off the top for providing a service.

When was the US ever a high-trust society? I don't think it ever was in my lifetime (and I'm not young). I feel like the US sees itself as a high-trust society (or a former one, not so long ago), but the reality is quite different. I'd say, at best, the US was a medium-trust society, with highly variable levels of corruption by locality, and is getting steadily worse.

Post by BobbyJo » Wed, Aug 07, 2024, 1:49 PM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #59

BobbyJo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if you wanted, or needed, a car today, rather than wait 3-6 months? Why would direct delivery take 3-6 months? Also, most dealerships wont give you your car the day you buy it anyway. As far as financing goes, thats totally orthogonal to the process of buying the car. As it stands now, car dealers get kick back from financers and try to steer customers into the highest interest loans they can, so decoupling th…

3-6 months is how long it takes when you custom-order a car, pretty ridiculous that you don't understand this simple fact. It's actually more complicated, factories have specific allocations of builds they distribute to their dealer network. Direct ordering would open the allocation system, especially of popular cars, to be monopolized by independent people or groups, similar to concert ticket scalpers. Every consume…

> 3-6 months is how long it takes when you custom-order a car, pretty ridiculous that you don't understand this simple fact.

That's how long it takes now. Relying on dealerships is part of the reason for that. If manufacturers were allowed to direct deliver, they could do away with dealerships as the only warehousing mechanism, and do their own warehousing to cut down that time. I was trying to point out that the constraints of the current system would not apply to a different system, but you missed that. No biggie.

> Every consumer bank offers auto loan financing and yet somehow, tons of people prefer to go with the dealer.

Again, why is that? Go to a dealership and see what price you can talk them down to with financing, and what price you can talk them down to paying cash. You'll be surprised at the results.

> You still didn't state how the car would get from the factory to your house - would you have to hire a delivery company?

You could pick it up from the warehouse, or have it delivered. Both of those technologies have existed for a long time :)

> Like most of HN, you are choosing to ignore the real-world reasons these companies exist and assume some techno-utopia would solve all problems

What does doing away with dealerships have to do with technology? Im confused by that statement.

Re: How middlemen are gaming the H-1B program

Re: How middlemen are gaming the H-1B program