[davidw]

Markets and auctions are often good ways of allocating things, but a big flaw with this is that there is still some arbitrary, "magic number" of H1B visas to auction. The current number is not derived from anything empirical, it's just a number some politicians picked.

[koolba]

> The current number is not derived from anything empirical, it's just a number some politicians picked.

That’s fine too. If it’s too low, companies can lobby to have it increased. If it’s too high, workers can lobby to have it reduced.

[davidw]

That's thinking of it like some kind of optimal number though, which really isn't the case anyway.

There is no fixed sized pie. How many big tech companies were founded or run by immigrants or their children?

[koolba]

There’s absolutely an optimal number. It’s whatever number the citizen’s as a whole decide that number to be. That’s the de facto optimal number.

The auction system to maximize the fees collected would apply regardless of the number of visas.

[davidw]

That's not really how these kinds of things are decided in the US.