Worse, the gains-from-trade that economists say ought to occur are allocated entirely to the owners of firms and equities, rather than being redistributed to the former workers to help smooth out economic transitions.
>This weird entitlement around jobs in America is strange to me.
That's because America's not willing to spend any resources on retraining workers or redistributing wealth away from the owning class, so "jobs" are the one thing people absolutely need to stay alive.
Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty") is the normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on rules. It is sometimes described as "duty-" or "obligation-" or "rule-" based ethics, because rules "bind you to your duty."
Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.
As you wrote, did you not notice that your second sentence (especially its final clause) answered your own question?
> That's because America's not willing to spend any resources on retraining workers or redistributing wealth away from the owning class, so "jobs" are the one thing people absolutely need to stay alive.
I kinda agree with you here, however the alternatives to jobs seem to be some kind of UBI which seems too radical just right now (may change in the future though). Universal medical coverage and higher minimum wage is definitely not as radical.
Minimum wage in the USA is still higher than Asia, but you'd be surprised how many high end retailers use US based businesses to produce textiles. Time to market is much shorter (you avoid sea freight 3 weeks) and the iterative process when make changes occur at a faster rate when you're in the same time zone.
If you've ever worked with a IT development shop in India or China, maybe you understand the problems caused by the time difference and sometimes cultural differences.
I think that this statement ignores the savings that consumers get as a result of this process.The use of international labor has absolutely reduced the prices of goods in the US.
I agree with most of the rest of what you said.
I may not be disagreeing (it is hard to see if you are concluding in favor of the outsourcing actually being immoral), but some things to consider based on the economics that I do understand:
The country which "pays for the goods" didn't achieve the wealth to pay for the goods in a vacuum. There are some substantial economic forces at play here isn't it? E.g. Let us consider the dollar. Why exactly do people have faith in the dollar? It looks like it is being strengthened based on assumptions about the safety of the capital in "more developed" countries than the ones which cede this position. In general, "more developed" is equated with two things from what I have observed: "rule of law" and "productivity of capital". This intuition among countries ceding the position is probably based on historical observations, and there was certainly a point when a lot of capital took flight into a developed country because it had a good mix of capital productivity (an assumption that the money will multiply) plus rule of law (and another assumption that the government won't steal it). I am not suggesting the developed country "owes" anything back to folks who trust their capital with them, but you can bet that the people who sent their money to be exploited fully didn't do so out of the goodness of their hearts towards the folks in (in this case) USA. Particularly, the primacy of the dollar as a reserve currency probably has a lot to do with the (real and imagined) beliefs around its ability to clear out the economic deadwood by itself. In fact, the argument around morality here is a bit weird because it looks a little Tom Sawyer-ish - other countries are not really interested in paying for the privilege of painting the American fence if the only benefit is the approval of Tom Sawyer.
"Deskills the country which pays for the goods" - let us consider a thought experiment where somehow the output of the entire outsourced division could be turned into a SaaS, except the SaaS is headquartered in a different country. Is the deskilling nothing more than the progression of automation then? Doesn't it mean the real issue is with more and more technical and non-technical work getting submerged into the ocean of automation, leaving a smaller and smaller tip of the iceberg at the top? While technically this is deskilling, isn't it also merely a step towards an irreversible automation? Did the arrival of the automobile lead to a loss of horse driving skills in the overall economy? Or did the horse driving skills just become implicitly value-less?
Found the philosopher
* The "cheaper" country has fewer regulations. e.g. sweatshop labor that the local workforce can't compete with.
* The organization profits from the local community, its regulations, and populace but doesn't "give back" through jobs, etc.
* The notion of patriotism: as a community, we should put our interests first (and other countries will do the same). Obviously this is a waaaay bigger topic than can be addressed in a bullet point.
The simple truth is that without laws explicitly forbidding businesses from engaging in such practices, the market WILL force them to engage in them. So we change the market using regulations to prevent such sort of a thing.
Or are you talking about work culture?
Worker rights are overall very weak in most industries across the US.
* The "cheaper" country has super cheap healthcare options, where employer is not required to subsidize the premiums.
Could that be the reason why they dont lay off older employees in these "cheaper" countries with fewer regulations?
Because the work conditions in other countries are driven by practices we see as immoral.
A developer job in India isn't likely a job that is considered immoral, but what they demand for compensation is largely drive by all the other jobs and the wages for those jobs, many of which are at least illegal in the US (below minimum wage, illegal work conditions, many regulation violations).
For an exact example, the minimum wage in India is a little over 2 dollars per day. If I could hire people in the US for that price, I could definitely lower the price I would need to be compensated to achieve a certain quality of life. But people would argue me hiring people for $2 a day would be immoral.
Yet the developer in India can do that, and as such, commands a lower price. By paying them, these such practices are supported.
(Now to be exact, I don't mean to suggest that every developer has an army of minimum wage workers at their beck and call. Instead, their entire lower cost of liven is driven by many things we consider immoral.)
It is like paying a supplier who is violating both laws and morals to give you a cheaper price for the product. You could try to say that technically you aren't violating the law and just buying the cheapest product, but many would not consider such actions to be moral.
I'm not trying to pass judgement here, simply trying to point out that a lot of what we take for granted is already built on the back of people working in bad conditions. (Not even starting to talk about Foxconn and stuff here...)
That we as a society tolerate this is something I've wondered about for a long time. If I buy something cheap made by child labor, people just say I'm price savvy. If I use child labor, and not just the kid working for a little pocket money, people see me as a monster. Yet by funding it I support it comparable to engaging directly in the action.
Yes, and for as long as this has been happening, there have been people saying we need to stop doing it. Why should our consumption support labor standards that exploit people and grind them down, rather than lifting them up?
US govt (a proxy for US community) cares for US citizens and US citizens have a mechanism to ensure that it continues to care for them. Indian govt (a proxy for Indian community) doesn't care about US citizens and they do not have any mechanism to make it care.
So until we all truly believe in "global community" and have mechanisms to ensure that there is a legitimate proxy for global community to care for everyone, its better to stick to your own community.
p.s. Even US might be a very big entity to have any sense of cohesion (and hence the polarization we see). Probably, we need smaller regional entities having bulk of the duties/responsibilities/powers, with federal govt performing only a minimal set of functions. But thats a separate political debate.
On paper. But it seems like over decades it's become "US govt supporting businesses" which is ok as long as business leaders are somewhat altruistic, which is clearly not the case.
All companies at the end of the day look at their bottom line and see employees as a liability rather than an asset and this eventually hurts the middle class.
The business can go anywhere to look for employees, an employee can't move to SE Asia and work at Foxconn.
This is not outsourcing, its geographical arbitrage. Barriers to the current employees make this possible.
So long as we have countries as political units, this will be the reason. Countries are by and large semi-closed systems in terms of economics, do it would make sense we protect our own economy, just like the majority of big economies do.
It's odd that people complain about US "protectionism" but on the other hand complain about US imperialism while also ignoring how protectionist and nationalist a place like India is.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news to you. But US itself pursued globalization policies to cut the influence of USSR during the cold war. Globalization was a US political project gone crazy during the internet years.
In fact no one reaped more benefits at the world stage than US.
Even as we speaking now. US has more to benefit from H1-B and other Visa systems. You don't really want all these highly trained brains from India to go to other places.
>>how protectionist and nationalist a place like India is.
India has let in far more foreign business in the recent past than US ever will.
If you are a US business making insane tens of billions worth profits selling stuff in India. Its really not a lot to ask the company in question to hire a few Indians to run their operations in India.
My point is that software development requires both the creator and the customer to share an appropriate context in order to produce the desired results without error or miscommunication. You can't simply plug in development like a USB stick and expect the same results every time.
One caveat: our college town is in a very rural area, and housing costs outside of town are dirt cheap. I cannot imagine the financial burden to support staff in a horrendously expensive city like San Francisco. Because of this, we can afford a larger headcount, and provide an excellent service.
My financial stability doesn't come from my job, it comes from my skill set and my network that allows me to relatively quickly get another job. I work hard to keep my skill set from being easily commoditizable.
It's about money.
If I'm an American developer, I want as few developers to be available so that my wages rise.
If I'm BigCo, I want as few competitors selling the same products so that my prices can rise.
What's hard to understand about why people would support these types of movements?
It's as simple as "I want more money and I don't really care about other people who's lives I'm not experiencing."
The door for this has closed quite a while ago. These days with a laptop and a internet connection there are a lot of things you can learn and do.
Basically we lowered the barrier to entry big time.
In fact many of us have a job today because of this low barrier to entry.
Now to expect the door be shut right behind us is in a way morally wrong. Nor the way how things work.
It took me a while, but I think I've developed enough architectural and soft skills to not be lumped in the pool of easily outsource code slingers.
It is always a question of price and achievable quality. One works against the other, partly.
This is somewhat beside the point, however. The people my hypothetical steel-industry manager is based on failed to imagine how the world was going to change and could not imagine that people in less-developed countries could be as competent as themselves.
Then there is AI. It has taken a long time, but it is coming.
People have to finally learn that it is not the message that is important, but the result.
Article didn't seem to suggest this is an issue of morality. Where did you make that connection?
Let me start with the concept of free participation in labor markets. I think there's a strong moral case to be made that people should be free to choose what they wish to study, and how and where they wish to work, in response to market signals. Nobody owes you a job, nobody owes you an employee. If you aren't paying enough to entice people to work for you, you need to pay more or improve working conditions. If you aren't able to entice people to pay you what you want, you need to improve your skills, accept worse working conditions, or change fields.
We tend to frame this in economic terms - it's best when workers are free to choose higher value jobs, but sure, I see it as a moral issue. Telling people that they must work as software developers in the valley as a condition of living and working in the US is a moral issue. If that person would prefer to open a sandwich shop, sell real estate, write novels, or clean teeth, that's that person's business. To me, if they prefer to do this over writing software for Facebook - or UCSF - that is a sign that the market is working just fine. Economically, I don't like the idea that corporations would gain control over the immigration system to coerce would-be immigrants into certain jobs. But morally, absolutely, it's a violation of basic human rights and dignity to tell them they aren't allowed to quit their jobs and do something else in response to their personal interests and market signals.
I've framed this in terms of immigrant rights, but yes, of course, it absolutely hurts US citizens and permanent residents who currently work as software developers or other IT role, when the government creates a parallel immigration system, run and controlled by corporations specifically designed to bring in workers from overseas who are allowed to work as IT specialists but not in other fields. And again, yes, I think there's a moral case to be made that it is wrong to single out IT workers for this sort of marketplace disadvantage.
I don't really think American IT workers are asking for special government protections. They're just asking for the ordinary protections that cover every other field - that the conditions for coming to the US as an IT worker be the same as a drywall installer or dental hygienist. Immigrants come to the US and decide what to study and what professions to pursue. Some may go into IT, some will go into other fields. So far, I see no problem at all.
But a system controlled by corporations that can be used to force would-be immigrants to work in IT or software development as a condition of living in the US, that can be revoked by the corporation and result in deportation for the worker?
Sure, I can make a moral case against that quite easily.
From an economic perspective, much of international economic growth is based on confidence rather than rational analysis of economic situations. Credit markets underpin everything we do, and we have seen what happens when a lack of confidence undermines an entire global credit system (e.g. It causes a global economic crisis). A steady outflow of jobs from a currently wealthy country could potentially undermine consumer confidence in that country, which would in turn decrease consume spending and the tolerance for risk in that country, which could prompt a credit shrink in the short- to medium-term, meaning that in aggregate, everyone might be worse off. Now, in the long-term, things would generally even out, but it stands to reason that achieving that globalization without such a rock to confidence in wealthy countries (perhaps in a slower or government-assisted way) immediate negative effects might be mitigated and the ride might be smoother for everyone.
On the moral side of things, one could make the argument that it's morally inconsistent to allow manufacturing and services to move to countries where labor laws and political/societal conditions are sufficiently transgressive in the eyes of the public. This is kind of a tricky idea to pick apart and is a bit fuzzy but I'll try to give an example. Consider a company that makes shoes in a country with strong labor protections for children and low corruption in government. If that company were to move operations to a country where children are regularly exploited to drive down manufacturing costs (and the company makes use of this cultural/societal condition), a resident of the former country could make a strong moral case that this company should not be allowed to continue selling its goods in that country, because the supply chain is tainted. This is a very common situation (Nestle, for instance, is notorious for these kinds of ethical violations). Once again, in the long term increased industrial economic activity in a region will generally cause it to become wealthier and improve labor protections, but in the short- to medium-term it is not unreasonable to oppose the transfer of manufacturing and service operations to places where workers are not entitled to rights that people in a wealthier/more-protected country might consider fundamental. This is unlikely to be the case for offshoring IT jobs to Bangalore (although one could potentially find gripes with systemic corruption in India), but is more common in textile-exporting countries in South-East Asia.
I'm right there with you in thinking that one human being is no more entitled to a job than another just by the section of ground he happened to be born on, but we live in a complicated world that is in a suboptimal configuration, and unbridled globalization might not be the most effective way to achieve more equity universally.
Can you explain to me why where you geographically located needs to matter? Or why Americans should be or feel entitled to jobs? If someone is willing to do it cheaper, than a business is dumb to pay more just to reinforce nationalism.
This weird entitlement around jobs in America is strange to me. I appreciate the living hell out of my job, because I know it could be done by someone outside the US for cheaper (and my Company has a tech office in Bangalore). You can't appreciate something and expect it/be entitled to it at the same time.
Regardless of the rest though, that moral question is what matters - what is immoral about hiring people outside of your country? Why is nationalism considered a virtue?