From: vagans@eanna.net
On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, j3r wrote:
>
>
> In Sourcerer
wrote:
> > On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, j3r wrote:
> >> Alternately, we just wait for our wealth to spread throughout the
> >> world, at which point the living standards differential between
> >> countries becomes pretty small. Of course, this sucks for everyone
> >> in the 1st world.
> >
> > I would not characterize what is happening as 'spreading our wealth
> > throughout the world', unless you mean 'advancing' or 'investing' our
> > wealth. Such "spreading" produces a return on investment for the 1st
> > world, which beggars the folks who live where it is invested, no
> > matter the wealth-effects displayed in a few 3rd world port cities.
>
> Eh, I mean, for example, that my job and moves it to India. Thus
> moving my future wealth to another place in the world. And, for the
> Indian who's doing my job, it's a good job, one that will put them
> in a similar economic bracket in India that I am in now. They'll
> work harder than me, and probably produce worse code, but it won't
> be much worse, and they'll get far fewer dollars. More than they
> would making Nikes or farming wheat, though. And I'll have to get a
> job that requires face to face contact and unaccented English,
> probably producing specs for the Indian who replaced me. Or perhaps
> subsistence farming :-/
Ok. Consider it this way: the price for your labor ("future wealth")
absent offshoring is subsistence, given the rate of technological
development, along with growing competition for jobs, which suppresses
wages. Offshoring defers into the future a bit, maybe a generation,
maybe less, the social consequences; it also shifts the consequences
onto others, or at least spreads the consequences across populations, as
well as over time.
> > It beggars, as well, workers in the 1st world, but the differential
> > may remain constant, since the 3rd world workers have to work for
> > wages that permits the production of commodities for 1st world workers
> > who have less money to spend on things.
>
> Except that their countrymen are dirt farmers, so the wages the IT
> workers are getting are sufficient to make them relatively wealthy.
> This game ends pretty quickly, though. The IT lowballing trade is
> already moving to southeastern Europe. Once they start to demand
> decent wages, there'll be nowhere that has the right combination of
> poverty and education. Oh, well, it was "fun" while it lasted.
Yes, the game will end (the game's condition is "terminal") quickly.
Deferral, shifting and spreading has its limits.
> > I have no problem with levelling the differential, if that would help.
> > I don't see Chinese steelworkers' conditions rising, though, anymore
> > than I saw them rising for Mexicans in the 80s when steel left
> > Pittsburgh for the Maquilidora. Someone got the 'differential' and it
> > wasn't steelworkers in either country.
> Again, eh. The 1st generation with the crap jobs in the 3rd world
> doesn't do noticeably better, but after a few generations in the
> sweatshops, you've got enough saved to give one child an education.
> Hence Indian IT outsourcing. Don't get me wrong, the megacorps are
> viciously exploiting everyone and using their gains to rule the
> world. The whole "moving jobs overseas" thing is them merely taking
> advantage of the cost of living differential between rich and poor
> countries. It's really bad for us, and kinda good for the poor
> folks, and really, really good for the CEOs.
The game will end in a generation or two in the 3rd world, due to the
mass labor competition alone. What makes the 3rd world an attractive
labor market is not low wages as just a fact of life, but lower level
technology generally, which requires lower skill workers which makes it
a wage suppressing competitive labor market already. Competition among
capitals will inevitably upgrade technologies leading to more
unemployment and more labor competition, further suppressing wages. The
3rd surely, if not already the 2nd generation, will not do as well as
the 1st.
> The default case is that the 1st world continues to decline, India
> and the rest continue to rise, and the true 3rd world stays mired in
> petty wars. The workers of the world would presumably prefer to step
> outside the box, and enter the leisurely getting-by of Distraction,
> but inertia is not on their side, and they find themselves without
> resources, while the Man has more than ever.
The plan, if there is any, is to profit from the mass consumer potential
in Asia. As you note above, if this plan is to work, it needs
impoverished and educated populations to do the producing, so that
others can do the consuming, in order for capital to have a differential
(profit) to pocket (maybe the factories will come back to a 3rdworldized
US, except the educated part is iffy).
But technological development argues against this scenario, in which
case for the plan to work technology will have to stagnate, be
deliberately suppressed. We may yet end up equalized, leveled,
world-wageized -- differentialized -- the entire planet living with the
technology of Brazil.
Ducts, anyone?
--
(__) Sourcerer
/(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O When you're looking for something that doesn't exist,
\../ |OO|||O|||O|O it makes you crazier the closer you get to it.
|| OO|||OO||O||O -- R. Ebert
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
