[thelist] rentacoder.com
Geoff Sheridan
web2k2 at premonition.co.uk
Mon Jul 28 13:20:46 CDT 2003
At 9:06 am -0700 28/7/03, bruce wrote:
>what's starting to occur in the world of
>software is no different than what's occured in many other industries
>throughout history...
>
>New things supplant old things,
This is not a case of the new replacing the old. Exactly the same
work is being done, just by people in different places.
The crux of the matter is this. Although there is a global (anything
but 'free', see note [1]) market in capital, goods and services,
there is no corresponding freedom of movement for labour.
In other words the Indian coder does not have the freedom to move to
the US, but the global corporation has the freedom to move the job to
him - and then away from him when it's cheaper in China, say. Apart
from immigration controls, there are other important restrictions in
the mobility of labour - people don't generally want to move and need
to make a lot of arrangements if they do. This stops there being
mobility of labour even ~within~ the UK or US.
Although protectionism is one of its key trade strategies, the US is
unlikely to impose import tariffs on electronic services because the
availability of cheap labour is an advantage to the people who
actually matter when policy is formulated: big business. If the trade
started to hurt important people like Microsoft and IBM stockholders,
we could expect those upstart third world coders to be put straight
back on the bread-line, where they belong.
Just as an aside, the cost of living for the Indian coder is lower,
but a large part of that is in the choice of consumption. Cars,
computers, designer clothing, petrol, processed or branded foods are
similar in price[2]. The Indian coder does not drive an SUV, code on
a brand new dual processor Mac with cinema display, eat pre-washed
salad and wear $150 Nikes.
Well probably not!
Geoff
Note [1]: Important restrictions prevent capital flowing from rich to
poor countries, just as they stop labour flowing from poor to rich
countries. Apart from commenting that this is a gross injustice, this
is not the place to explain these, but interested parties might
consider looking at:
Oxfam's site http://www.maketradefair.com or http://www.oxfam.org/
World Development Movement http://www.wdm.org.uk
War on Want http://www.waronwant.org/
[2] Of course they are not exactly the same, the differences mostly
attributable to retailing expenses
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