From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Jun 27 2001 - 14:56:46 MDT
On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Brian D Williams wrote:
> Nonsense, capital maybe, but corporations almost never miss the
> opportunity to move production/labor to the least competitive
> environments they can find.
Nonsense. It is probably inversely proportional to the level of
education the production/labor requires. The biotech and legal
industries aren't outsourcing everything to offshore labor for
example. Its also tied directly to the infrastructure requirements.
I can't move my house to Vietnam to get someone to weed my garden.
There are also locality of contact issues. Financial centers
like New York, London, Tokyo don't move all their back room
operations offshore, though they probably could easily do so.
> "Compared to conditions for many casual workers, employment in a
> foreign company is close to paradise"
>
> You have got to be kidding me...
I can state from personal experience this is true in Russia for example
with the possible exception of some very rich companies like Gazprom.
> And attempting to redefine exploiting third world labor pools as
> "assisting unsuccessful developing countries" had me spitting water
> through my nose.
The use of "unsuccessful" is a poor choice. I'd simply describe
their systems as "uneducated". Western civilizations have had
much more time (and the need) to develop more complex machinery,
legal systems, business practices, etc. I think you could
certainly cite Taiwan, Malaysia and Korea (at least in the
technology industries) where companies went there for the
cheap labor, but over a 20-30 year period they have developed
into robust economic powers. It all involves the transfer of
knowledge.
Robert
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