It distributes more wealth to you by taking opportunities from those with less than you and giving them to someone desperate. Ethical actions are "rising tide lifts all boats" situations where either you help everyone make more money, or instead of taking from others, to make an extra buck, give of yourself. Within reason, of course.

Then there are the second order effects, such as the dissolution of the middle class in your own country that everyone who outsources and automates is/will be partially responsible for.

So as one of those people living in a 3rd world country, let me say we aren’t particularly desperate. Relative purchasing power of money means that even a small amount goes a long way. Ubiquitous poverty means that no one feels particularly downtrodden in comparison to their peers.

Also culturally, we tend to share the wealth, so what is one job in America will become 6 jobs here.

From what I can see, outsourcing deprives one American of a job, makes one American desperate, and lifts 10 of us into the local middle class.

Sounds like a good deal for you. It doesn't really help here or change anything that I said about the ethics of the situation.

This is a zero-sum view.. just because you benefit doesn’t mean the other side suffers. You get the service you wanted, the other person gets the money they wanted. They wouldn’t be doing the job if they had a better option.

It cannot be a zero sum view by definition, since I said that "rising tide lifts all boats" situations are ethical. I'm sure you know, such situations aren't possible in zero-sum.

What can be zero-sum is if no new value is added, but you shuffle around who gets what. If Peter has a way to make $100 himself if someone else helps, and he decides to go from paying Mary $30 to paying Paul $5, he has enriched himself by taking from Mary.

I'm saying it's ethical for Peter to enrich himself as long as he enriches everyone, and it is unethical to take from others to give to himself.

$5 in Thailand might go as far as $20 in Dallas, which goes as far as $30 in New York. So if you take $30 from Mary in NY and give the equivalent of $20 to Jane in Dallas, is that unethical too? Or give $5 to someone in Thailand? At worst you could call it unpatriotic if you hire outside your country, but on a humanity scale its very hard to say its unethical or even truly understand the consequences.

It is not outsourcing that is unethical but to advertise it like a magical way of working less.

The title of the book makes it sound like you can accomplish more by working less, while in fact the remaining 36 hours worth of work is done by someone else every week.

Think of it that way: How would someone from one of the developing countries the book mentions would benefit from what's written in that book?

Easy. He would see that there is a business opportunity for him to sell outsourcing services to a developed country, which he would not have thought so before.

Fair enough, but that's an unintentional side effect. He can't do that by working 4 hours a day, at least not by following the recommendations in that book.

Just answer this question:in a world with no poor countries, would outsourcing be possible? If the answer is no, then outsourcing is based on exploiting poverty and no, it's not ethical.

Giving a poor person a job is not “exploiting poverty”, it’s alleviating poverty.

Giving a poor person an underpaid job is not helping them. Is making them "an offer they can't refuse". You want to alleviate poverty? Pay for their education, healthcare, give them a house. They'll pull themselves out of poverty without need for your exploitative job offer.

So the north Korea model? Free housing, education and Healthcare. Let's see how this will work out with the pulling out of poverty.

I don’t think it’s unethical