From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Thu Jun 28 2001 - 07:36:09 MDT
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>
>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.
Actually I expect the biotech industry to follow the pharmaceutical
industry offshore.
The reason lawyers haven't is the same reason Union communication
electricians in Chicago haven't, location,location,location. In
other words the work is required to be done here.
I know there are those on the list who are fond of union bashing,
but there are two completely different types of unions. I belong to
a craft union, where you have to serve an apprenticeship and go to
school and actually pass tests, in other words know something.
You don't pick up TCP/IP, packet switching or dense wavelength
division multiplexing (DWDM) in an afternoon.
Such union jobs will remain here.
I agree with you on the importance of the other issues.
>>> "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.
I understand what you're saying, but lets not throw the starving
our day old bread and pretend we're generous.
The woman in the article Noreena Hertz also spent time in Russia
and has a book on that, "Russian Business Relationships in the Wake
of Reform" I'd be very curious as to your opinions on it.
>> 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.
I just think the reviewer in the article got overly dramatic, I did
some searching on the web about the book and the author, the book
isn't published here but I am probably intrigued enough to try and
order it from Amazon UK.
I agree that building factories in the third world does help these
people, but let's keep it honest, the primary reason companies went
and continue to go to these places is not to be beneficial to the
local populace.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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