This is a reply to David Sirota's diary decrying foreign aid going to train Sri Lankan workers in technology fields
(due to its length I decided to put it in its own diary)
I've worked as a software engineer for almost 15 years now, and have lived with the constant "threat" of outsourcing for most of that time. Once, I actually did lose my job to outsourcing. I could be angry and afraid at this state of affairs, but I'm not... (more below fold)
The thing is, in my 15 year career I've also had the opportunity to work with many South Asian colleagues, both ones that were "off the boat" on H1-B visas, and ones that were U.S. permanent residents or citizens. Working with these frequently brilliant colleagues dispelled whatever illusions I had that I was entitled to a cushy six-figure salary even based on my elite education and experience. How can I look someone in the eye of equal talent and ability and say that my well-being is more important than theirs, or my hopes and dreams more important than theirs, just based on nationality?
I basically came to the conclusion that the only morally tenable position was that anyone in any country had as much right to prosperity as me. If someone is willing to do the same work as me for less money and can do it with comparable quality, then that is a reality that I have to face. As long as the worker in question is subject to comparable workplace and environmental standards, they should have every right to compete with me for work.
Now, this particular case referenced in the article is a little bit trickier because a government is of course obligated to work on behalf if its citizens. I can see why some would be upset that our government is providing job training to foreign citizens in industries where they will be competing with us. But then by a similar rationale we shouldn't be providing any foreign aid, because every dollar that we spend on foreign aid could be spent bettering the lives of U.S. citizens instead.
One could say that this case is different because they are providing job training, but I think that is a shallow argument. The best kind of foreign aid we could give is "Capacity Development", which is helping countries to become economically self-sufficient rather than depending on food aid, etc. If we are helping countries with capacity development, I think it is a morally untenable position to give any consideration to factors other than what will do the country that we are helping the most economic good. For Sri Lanka, developing the tech sector is an obvious choice, just as is was for their neighbors across the water in southern India. And once you've developed this tech capacity, who are the Sri Lankans going to sell their services to? Are we going to bar them from the U.S. market, or are we going to continue to foster goodwill by partnering them with U.S. companies that would just have outsourced to India or Eastern Europe anyway?
So basically, I don't subscribe to the provincialism that says that U.S. citizens' lives are inherently worth more than those in other countries. I take the globalist view that helping someone in another country gain hope and self-sufficiency is a good in absolute terms, and that we don't have to think of it as a zero-sum game where someone else's prosperity is necessarily at our expense.