Another diary re outsourcing (in the line of diaries by
tyronen and
ColdFusion04):
I have my own perspective on this. Recently traveling to India and knowing many throughout America and Asia, I have a view from all sides. I know those losing jobs here. I know those living well abroad because of the global economy. And I know those who living in squalor regardless.
Despite the great engine of globalization, it is made to pour dollars into the pockets of corporations (and their flesh & blood officers and owners), and the majority of the world is just lucky to live on its fringes.
more after the jump...
Obviously, you can argue that some people in India and elsewhere are much better off because of globalization. I know someone in South India who has gotten a good sales job for a German company, and is making a great life for his wife and daughter.
But a few good stories don't justify an economic global movement. Seeing the endless supply of beggars and street peddlers dreaming for a few tourists, the workers struggling to get by on a few rupees a day, the everyday world citizen choking on the air and dying from the water, it's clear that globalization as it now exists does little to improve most people's lives, and actually does much to keep people in poverty and pollution.
What is globalization? Simply put, it's the creation of one global economy. While those who like to put a pretty face on globalization talk about uniting cultures and what-not, the primary engine involves the uniting of global trading markets and services. Outsourcing American jobs to Asia is but one aspect of this system. Jet airplanes, international communications, huge oceangoing vessels, instant capital flows, multinational corporations, importing and exporting, etc. etc. are all part of this new economic system.
So what's the big deal? This new economic global system is largely lawless. In fact, countries with the fewest laws are where the most capital flows (cheap labor, easy resources, simply waste disposal, etc.), so there is simply little incentive to safeguard the lives of your citizens if it'll keep away another Nike factory. In effect, the blessed rules of corporate responsibility we have in this country - because lord knows the companies won't police themselves - do not exist outside of America and Europe. Labor and wage standards, pollution regulations, bans on toxic materials, and other life saving and opportunity creating rules don't exist.
What's the effect? Billions of people living on the fringes of globalization. Grasping at the threads on the edges of the global quilt for a rupee here or a dinar there, with little or no rules to protect them. And for a larger group, the global market has no use for them, and they are just hoping for handouts from a few kind tourists. And for the pleasure of being on the boot end of the globalization, these people have to suffer with horrific pollution. Nice bonus.
Of course, this is exactly why we have outsourcing here. We know the story - why deal with an American worker, protected by laws and unions, when you can toss a couple of coins at someone in Asia to make your shoes and answer your calls? That's when we start caring about globalization - sure you Air Jordans are cheaper, but you can't but 'em if your job just got shipped off to Malaysia.
Without a set of standards or regulations for those corporations that interact with the bulk of our world, globalization (including outsourcing and all the other ills) is a flawed system that is perhaps one of the single most destructive forces on our world today.
I know that demanding such rules is next to impossible with the current government we have in America, but let's at least get the framing right. The pennies-a-day worker in Vietnam and the laid-off worker in Ohio aren't enemies in this battle. They are allies. Let's remember who the real enemy is: lawless globalization and all of its billioniares.