[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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