
Sending Jobs Overseas - akakievich
http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/sending-jobs-overseas/
======
mistermann
I thought this article was very good - not perfect, but a fairly reasonable
high level description of what possibly is, or may come to be an extremely
large problem for western nations.

The interesting thing to me is, whenever an article of any kind on this topic
comes up (on HN and elsewhere), those who disagree seem to disagree _entirely_
, as if the entire premise is completely wrong, and there is literally no
negative effects of globalization.

To me, simple thought experiments show several areas of risk both short and
long term, and if you look at actual on the ground reality, there sure seems
to be a lot of visible damage as well as a large increase in risk and
"precariousness" where there used to be security. I don't by any means believe
that globalization is a complete disaster or the end of the world, indeed it
has been beneficial in many ways to both sides. But this seemingly very
popular opinion that there is _literally nothing at all_ to worry about, that
when China with a combination of technical sophistication, developed local
economy, and sheer population reaches parity and then surpasses the US as the
new leader of the world, that all will be well. I think there are many good
reasons to believe that China might be a better steward of the world, but
there are also many reasons to think otherwise.

As it is now, "the west" enjoys world leadership, a high standard of living,
and control their own destiny. I would rather pay a little more for
manufactured goods and retain at least that last item.

I probably didn't communicate this very well, but this accelerating new world
order seems at least worthy of public discussion, rather than being dismissed
as racist conspiracy theory. If more people could at least even consider some
of the mentioned risks as _plausible_ it would make me feel better, but even
that seems unlikely.

~~~
throwaway0477
You think China, an authoritarian government run by a dictator and billionaire
party members, that farm its own people out for cheap wages and horrendous
pollution, and suppresses free speech, silences reporters and jails people
without trials, is A BETTER STEWARD OF THE WORLD???!!

My god, what has this world become

~~~
mistermann
Actually yes, I think they very well might be a better steward of the world. I
don't think it would be terribly difficult to put their historical behavior on
the world stage up against that of others and conclude that they are a more
~moral culture.

Indeed, they are in many ways sacrificing (working to death and discarding) a
couple generations of people in exchange for world dominance, but they are
doing an incredible job of it in my opinion.

During the last election in /r/the_donald there was this recurring them of
Donald playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers. Whether or not
that was true (he did win the election), I feel the very same thing is playing
out on the world stage. But really, it isn't that complicated when everything
in the west is run by corporations that have no concern for anything but
themselves, and a typical time horizon of a few quarters. Western society
seems to me to have the tendency to completely ignore long term ramifications
in exchange for short term benefits (see: the environment). Meanwhile, "racial
guilt" from past transgressions is such that it's near impossible _to even
have a conversation_ about some of these issues.

Despite what the majority of the west believes, the people running China are
_fucking smart_ , but you don't even need that when you're taking candy from a
baby.

~~~
throwaway0477
yeah people running China are so smart. SO SMART that they

\- have destroyed their water/air/land for money that was printed out of thin
air by other countries, and those money are now fleeing China to US, Canada,
Australia, etc.

\- have leveraged their debt level to 300+%. not including shadow lending

\- have built rails to nowhere or barely used, built cities that are not
lived, or barely lived, and have to maintain them all

\- have managed to piss off most of their neighbors (Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, Vietnam, India, etc)

\- have a crashing economy that needs capital outflow restrictions just to
barely survive

\- have not managed to create any global brands

\- have managed to not create any innovations

\- encourage its members to flee to US, Canada, Australia

~~~
mistermann
\- have destroyed their water/air/land for money that was printed out of thin
air by other countries, and those money are now fleeing China to US, Canada,
Australia, etc.

Everyone "destroys" their environment while they develop. The earth is
incredibly resilient.

\- have leveraged their debt level to 300+%. not including shadow lending

Yawn.

\- have built rails to nowhere or barely used, built cities that are not
lived, or barely lived, and have to maintain them all

Let's see how it turns out, I suspect they know what they're doing.

\- have managed to piss off most of their neighbors (Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, Vietnam, India, etc)

Because they don't have to care what they think, they only have to manage
opinions of Americans. Managing others would be polite but inefficient.

\- have a crashing economy that needs capital outflow restrictions just to
barely survive

Where have I heard this before?

\- have not managed to create any global brands

Let's revisit this in 10 years.

\- have managed to not create any innovations

True, but why innovate when 90% of the innovators deliver their technology
directly to you?

\- encourage its members to flee to US, Canada, Australia

Wouldn't you? Even if I move to China, I am going to retain a _very_ strong
allegiance to Canada. Despite what the PC crowd tells you, this is natural and
normal. China's leadership acts quickly, but also thinks very long term.

One of us will be proven right in the end, your extreme confidence to me
suggests you perhaps don't have a terribly open mind on the topic, which tends
not to be beneficial when predicting how the future unfolds.

~~~
ionised
I'm not taking sides here, but when people respond with stuff like this

> Yawn.

It makes _you_ look bad, not the person you're debating, because while you
might be bored of hearing what they have to say, to observers it just looks
like you have no argument.

------
guelo
The great betrayal of the unions by the Democrats starting with NAFTA by Bill
Clinton, and the national unions acquiesence in this is made more dramatic by
the populist right's take up of the anti free trade cause. Clinton's and
Obama's business friendly "third way" has ended up completely flipping
American politics.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
NAFTA was begun as a Bush 1.0 initiative. Clinton just signed off on it.

~~~
guelo
NAFTA was a big issue in the 1992 election with Ross Perot basing his 3rd
party run on it. Clinton stood with HW Bush as pro-NAFTA. In 1988 Dukakis had
been much more protectionist. But since Dukakis and Mondale before him had
lost badly Clinton was espousing himself as a New Democrat moving to the right
and taking some of Reagan's positions such as tax cuts, welfare cuts and free
trade.

~~~
TheCowboy
If the political environment was shifting right, and Democrats were forced to
make compromises, how is that considered a hyperbolic "great betrayal" instead
of acknowledging political reality? Additionally, globalism was well under way
before either Clinton/Obama held office.

As far betraying unions, statistics for union membership are first available
starting in 1983. The biggest declines for recorded data in private union
membership happened before Clinton, and held steady under Clinton until Bush
took office where it declined again. In summary, Republicans have consistently
tried to undermine the political influence of unions, while Democrats tried to
prevent that.

[https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2016/union-membership-in-
the-u...](https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2016/union-membership-in-the-united-
states/pdf/union-membership-in-the-united-states.pdf)

This is just one tiny part of a complicated issue. Boiling it down to
"Democrats betrayed unions" isn't a useful contribution and is more of a rant
in terms of how honest it is.

Protectionism isn't a solution either. Manufacturing output has increased
under Obama, but it has largely been increased through use of automation
instead of blue collar labor. Manufacturing is coming back in the form of
robotics.

~~~
guelo
The point is that by shifting to the right they moved away from being the
defenders of unions and the working class and that has now come around to bite
them in the rear as the electorate is shifting against free trade. Whether
that was politically expedient at the time is neither here nor there. I'm sure
the union's calculations at the time were also short-sighted political self
interest.

~~~
TheCowboy
It's a little too pat as "Democrats got what they deserved". It also ignores
the shift of the political landscape toward the right and dismissing it as
"whether it was politically expedient etc." is just flat out ignoring
political history. It also ignores that there are net economic gains that
could benefit everyone in society.

You don't get to look at economic history and ignore political history because
it fits your narrative. It's not honest and is only done to score political
argument points.

The problem isn't free trade itself, it's how the benefits should be
distributed.

~~~
guelo
You don't know if your cause and effect is backwards, maybe the electorate
shifted to the right because the Democrats shifted to the right, no one was
advocating the ideas of the left anymore.

As far as how the benefits should be distributed, the Democrats completely
gave up on trying to do any redistribution of wealth, Clinton pushed through
the biggest welfare cuts in a generation and criminalized the poor. It didn't
take a magic ball to figure out who was going to benefit from free trade.

~~~
dragonwriter
> As far as how the benefits should be distributed, the Democrats completely
> gave up on trying to do any redistribution of wealth

The neoliberal faction (Clinton's Third Way) has never been the whole of the
party (even in government—many of the neoliberal policies Clinton pushed
through or followed Congress on were opposed by most Democrats in Congress but
supported by Republicans.)

And the neoliberal faction's dominance of the party has been waning over the
last several years.

------
Animats
It wasn't computers and information that fueled globalization in goods trade.
It was containers and fax machines.

Containers made trade both cheap and reliable. It costs about $1000 to move a
container from China to the US. (Yes, port charges, trucking, etc. add to
that. But that's true of any transport. The long-distance transport is not
expensive.)

Fax machines made it much easier to do business across language barriers.
Purchase orders and invoices on forms can usually be puzzled out by both
parties. The paperwork now preceded the merchandise, so you knew the shipment
was coming when it started transit. It used to take weeks to track missing
rail and ship shipments.

------
denzil_correa
There are two points in the article which placed next to each other might seem
contradictory but they aren't.

First,

> Globalization seems to have delivered up to private parties hard-won
> competitive advantages that were really the common property of American
> society.

Second,

> In order to work, free-trade systems must be frictionless and immune to
> interruption, forever. This means a program of intellectual property
> protection, zero tariffs, and cross-border traffic in everything, including
> migrants. This can be assured only in a system that is veto-proof and non-
> consultative—in short, undemocratic. That is why it is those who have
> benefited most from globalization who have been leading the counterattack
> against the democracy movements arising all over the West.

Most people I've heard from or met accept one of these two points but not
both.

~~~
Fireflite
Why is asymmetric intellectual property protection a form of friction here?

~~~
smitherfield
Suppose an American company spends $2 billion developing a new drug (or
microchip, etc) and an Indian (Chinese, Brazilian...) company starts selling
unauthorized copies at a 95% discount. (And then, the news media and
politicians cite that price differential as evidence for how extremely evil
your company is).

------
rrggrr
Most serious issue facing the US - period.

Why? Because without economic growth, serious economic growth, the near
insurmountable entitlement debts facing Municipalities, States and the Federal
Government will result in massive tax increases, huge cuts in services, social
unrest, and perhaps the largest sale of public assets to foreign investors -
ever.

While Democrats and Republicans in Congress allocate 99% of their time to
undermining each other, the new President, and infighting in their party, the
US hanging by an economic thread. They do this because its the divisions that
stimulate campaign donations, not common ground.

Our political-economic system is broken because the short and medium term
incentives are aligned to rhetoric and action that tears people apart - on
both sides of the isle.

------
afpx
There is great risk of 'creative' and 'knowledge worker' type jobs leaving the
rich countries. But, that wave won't appear for another 5-10 years.

Why? Because there's just too much free capital floating around.

It's the same reason why a upper-end software engineer can ask for $175k in
salary and get dozens of job offers, but if that same engineer asks for $200k
or to work remotely, most companies will look away. Or, in other words,
there's an imbalance of capital to competition. Currently, most companies can
get away with shunning financial analysis.

There are many weak, unserious products out there that are still making lots
of money. There are lots of mediocre companies that are worth $150M. That
demonstrates that there is too much floating capital in the system. But,
eventually, things will bounce the opposite way, and it's gonna HURT, HURT,
HURT.

------
tapmap
The only Chinese company that is managing its own future is DJI, the drone
company. DJI designs, manufactures and sells its own drones for a global
market. They even have their own store in downtown SF. Its a sign of the times
when middlemen (US designers and marketers) are taken out of the equation. The
same will happen with more Chinese made goods.

~~~
otoburb
As Western wages collapse further, wouldn't this then become the kick in the
pants developed countries need to motivate the rebuilding and reseeding of
their decrepit and aging industrial bases?

~~~
slapshot
> decrepit and aging industrial base

This is such a common canard that seems to lack any foundation. The United
States manufacturers more "stuff" than at any point in history, for any
reasonable definition of "stuff" (dollar value, inflation-adjusted dollar
value, number of items, etc). Employment in manufacturing is way down, in
large part because of automation -- for example, high-technology production
lines replaced hand-welding with welding robots.

By contrast, developing markets tend to employ a lot of people doing manual
tasks that would be automated in the United States (or Germany, Japan, etc.).
A Foxconn assembly factory is far from high-tech; it's usually a long line of
people in matching uniforms using tweezers to put parts together.

Sources, among many: [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-
outpu...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-output-has-
doubled-in-three-decades-2016-03-28)

~~~
phil21
I hate this counterpoint quite a bit. It's vastly different in terms of
employment and who is able to be employed selling 1,000,000 widgets for $10 or
1 widget for $1 million dollars.

It's simply not interesting to me to know we've increased the total dollar
amount of production - largely based around extremely large ticket items to
the detriment of everything else. This is even without getting into the fact
rent-seeking is much more profitable the larger the deals get. A single 737
sold for $50M is not equivalent to $50M spread around 10 small manufacturing
suppliers building tens of thousands of devices. I would argue anyone saying
otherwise is missing the forest through the trees.

It's in-your-face obvious if you actually try to manufacturer or design/build
anything as a small company in the US. The velocity and simple ability to do
so is an order of magnitude better in China - where design shops can literally
run down the street to have a custom part made for deliver that afternoon. If
you are directly competing with anyone from China in such a space - you simply
are going to lose. The competitive advantages this gives cannot be overstated
- and HN should really understand the network effect here.

Simply put I think manufacturing base is something you either build up, keep,
and continue to think is important - or it's something you lose. As you lose
that base, you also slowly bleed the design talent that went along with it, as
it naturally migrates to where the manufacturing happens. I just don't find it
interesting that the US can assemble components made in china into high-margin
complex devices. It's simply a matter of time until other economies move up
the value chain. And there aren't many places for the US to move even further
up - we're already at the top and have completely lost our ability to compete
any lower. I would posit this is an extremely dangerous place to be, and if it
continues makes the US existing largely at the sufferance of others.

~~~
idiot900
> A single 737 sold for $50M is not equivalent to $50M spread around 10 small
> manufacturing suppliers building tens of thousands of devices.

Correct - it's many more than 10 suppliers:
[http://www.b737.org.uk/suppliers.htm](http://www.b737.org.uk/suppliers.htm)

------
11thEarlOfMar
Several issues with statements in this article. Example:

"In all Western societies, the new formula for prosperity is inconsistent with
the old formula for democracy."

This statement is not explained, just made as a de facto truth. It's a pretty
sweeping statement that I find difficult to accept based on what I understand
it to mean. So I am thinking I don't understand it, but there is no
explanation.

"Once a complex manufacturing process could be supervised from afar"

true one can 'order up' a production run of a million units, however, many
small and mid-sized companies have failed simply because they could not make
this work. Pleo being the first example that comes to mind: The CEO flew
between the US and their Asian mfr 20 times in a year, couldn't get the
product built and wound up selling the company to the manufacturer. Apple
successfully operates with distributed manufacturing, but still requires many
(thousands?) of engineers to shuttle between the US and Asia-based factories
in order to ensure that base materials, components, quality, design, lead
time, and many other aspects of manufacturing are done per their requirements.
It turns out that the dance between design engineers and the manufacturing
team is much more involved than companies realized and the challenges of
communicating all of that across an ocean has been the death of many products.

"A lot of what Americans think of as valuable service-sector know-how is
actually mere prestige."

It's not know-how. It's 'know customer'. Americans are great consumers but to
sell to them you have to know what they want and how they want it delivered.
The non-US companies that succeed are the ones that tap into US-based design
for things like, um, cars. Many foreign products are designed in LA.

Moreover, innovation is the true source of value. Nations that are more
innovative will ultimately prevail. That is where one should focus in order to
understand where the threats and opportunities are.

~~~
abandonliberty
Our democratic structure doesn't work in a society with vast wealth
differences. Over the last 10 years, has the prosperity and freedom of average
Americans increased or decreased? Increasing wealth inequality in the long
term is almost a guarantee of a broken democracy because who wants to be less
prosperous?

That statement does expect some background in this. Potential resources
include the Iron Law of Oligarchy on wikipedia, rules for rulers, or google :)

~~~
Denzel
Is that a rhetorical question with a foregone conclusion?

As an average American, whether prosperity increased or decreased, I feel
grateful and prosperous every day. I can walk outside without fear of bombs
dropping from overhead; I can run, bike, drive, or fly anywhere within this
vast, beautiful land without encumbrance; I have uncensored access to the
internet at-large; I get to watch some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the
world build amazing things; I can communicate and interact with any one of the
300 million+ people here; and I can make money as I please when I please
without anyone blocking me. And I can start doing all this with a minimum wage
job (like I did).

That's just to name a few things.

No one is owed anything except for equality of opportunity. Are we wishing for
equality of outcome? On its face, I can't understand why that would ever make
sense.

Do I think we're fully at equality of opportunity yet? No. But I feel that's
what we should be working on. That's what we should be protecting. I don't
give a hoot who made $10B as long as I have the opportunity to as well.

~~~
BenchRouter
> No one is owed anything except for equality of opportunity. Are we wishing
> for equality of outcome? On its face, I can't understand why that would ever
> make sense.

I hear this frequently, but it's sorta missing the point.

Nearly all people want equality of opportunity, and not outcome.

What people are concerned about is:

1) The bad outcomes don't need to be Kafkaesque or medieval (e.g. "too poor to
be sick" doesn't need to be a thing).

2) If bad outcomes are becoming more and more frequent (as we see with e.g.
wealth inequality becoming more pronounced), it's a smell that something
systemically bad is happening. It's probably a sign that equality of
opportunity is being reduced over time.

> Do I think we're fully at equality of opportunity yet? No. But I feel that's
> what we should be working on. That's what we should be protecting.

As I noted above, if outcomes are becoming more and more polarized over time,
it's a likely sign that equality of opportunity is ceasing to exist.

Outcomes are the dependent variable we kinda have to use for measuring
equality of opportunity, because we don't really have anything else to
measure.

~~~
jaggederest
I think the key thing people miss when they go on about 'equality of
opportunity not equality of outcome' is that by making some of the outcomes
intolerable (dying of cancer because you can't afford care, for example), you
actually deny opportunity.

If the route to wealth and satisfaction in life was russian roulette, would
that be considered 'equality of opportunity' and thus fine? I doubt it.

------
shriphani
I wonder if the sort of people who produce these sorts of thought-pieces have
ever considered the societal consequences of tossing out entire skillsets.
Pre-colonization, an Indian craftsman could carve an entire complicated scene
in a single elephant tusk with his bare hands. Who can do that now? What about
the sense of pride one feels when they see their output admired by others - a
major part of the human condition.

Nah, the world's proto-bureaucrats have decided that the world's middle class
must buy Ikea, iPhones, drink Starbucks and drive to and from a white-collar
job in a Toyota.

Everything and everyone must be assimilated!

~~~
expertentipp
> an Indian craftsman could carve an entire complicated scene in a single
> elephant tusk with his bare hands

The carved elephant tusks you see nowadays in museums were created by top
craftsman, or his entire workshop, was ordered by the king or a noble and cost
a fortune. There were plenty of average or poor craftsmen whose work simply
didn't survive. Most likely, most craftsmen had poor skills or average at
most.

------
xenadu02
He's right about one thing:

The global trading economy is one revolution away from collapse. Imagine a
military coup in China. Imagine protectionism makes a dramatic rise across the
west.

I also wonder how long western consumers can sustain this shell game.

------
stickfigure
You can sum up this whole article with this quote:

 _...which is more likely? That Asian manufacturing powerhouses will learn to
market their own products, or that Western P.R. spivs and window-treatment
consultants and professional espresso-tasters will learn to rebuild an
industrial base from scratch?_

A lot of emotional invective around a fundamentally faulty premise. Which is
harder, building a successful brand or building a clothing factory? The
_brand_ , unquestionably.

EDIT: /s/easier/harder. Somehow my fingers typed the exact opposite of what my
brain instructed. Sorry!

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>Which is easier, building a successful brand or building a clothing factory?
The _brand_ , unquestionably.

I'd question that. To me, convincing tens of millions of people that your
products have certain qualities seems much more difficult than physically
manipulating some cloth.

~~~
api
You are largely correct. Brands are very hard, especially in established
markets. But brands don't employ people.

------
bambax
> _The U.S. contribution, however well compensated, seems like the most
> inessential part of this setup. The global economy is a fair-weather
> economy. If there is a slight rise in tariffs, a subtle judicial
> reinterpretation of regulation, a tiny change of attitude — in short, if
> there is any exercise of what we think of as normal democracy anywhere along
> the supply chain — the model that links companies like Hilfiger and Li &
> Fung to producers will fall apart. Should that happen, which is more likely?
> That Asian manufacturing powerhouses will learn to market their own
> products, or that Western P.R. spivs and window-treatment consultants and
> professional espresso-tasters will learn to rebuild an industrial base from
> scratch?_

This is well put and funny, but there are other options. It seems in fact more
likely that Western designers would find other suppliers, than manufacturers
would be able to market and sell directly to consumers.

Good design needs proximity - cultural, geographical proximity - with the end
user.

------
jpollock
Any argument against free trade also applies to internal trade between
individual the individual states which make up the USA.

Why is trade between China and the USA different to trade between Virginia and
California?

~~~
shwouchk
Perhaps because they share more common values, as well as highly intertwined
financially, e.g. via the government?

------
apexalpha
>"The most shocking statistic in Baldwin’s book is that almost all of the
manufacturing uptake and poverty reduction has gone on in just six countries
emerging from either Communism or post-revolutionary authoritarianism: China,
Korea, India, Poland, Indonesia, and Thailand."

These 'just six countries' make up the majority of the world population. 2 of
these countries are continents by any measure.

Other than these bending of statistics the article is pretty decent.

------
IOT_Apprentice
What an excellent article. Now combine Clinton's 7 careers over your lifetime
with the cost of education in the US...Say $65,000 base to get a masters in
Product management from CMU and multiply that x 7 over the course of a career.
Eternal debt. And age discrimination after your age and salary peak.

------
mozumder
Right now the U.S. still has the best universities in the world, which is the
heart of the non-manufacturing IP economy.

If the U.S. cuts off their universities by following the lead of the anti-
knowledge conservatives, and if Asian countries decide to develop their
universities to compete fully - not just in tech (which they are doing), but
in things like the arts and business - the U.S. is completely fucked over the
long-term.

Another comparative advantage that the U.S. has is that the U.S. still
attracts migrants. During the 90's economic boom, immigration was wide open,
bringing in millions of people. Each immigrant drives demand. For example,
they need a place to live, which causes someone else to sell their house to
them for a nice profit, leading to further economic activity.

If the U.S. follows the lead of the dumb working-class Trump/Bernie voter that
incorrectly thinks migrants are a bad thing, and therefore reduces
immigration, then that turns into another massive economic loss.

A good way to be poor is to close your borders.

~~~
rrggrr
None of this is what the article is about. The article, as it relates to your
comment, is about imbalances in GDP growth between the developed and almost-
developed world, and how the expected upside for the developed world hasn't
materialized. the non-manufacturing IP economy, as you put it, hasn't
generated enough well paying jobs or enough domestic product, to offset
massive export of domestic wealth, capacity and assets. If your argument is
that an influx of unskilled immigrant labor and an army of college professors
can correct this imbalance then I'm speechless.

~~~
mozumder
> If your argument is that an influx of unskilled immigrant labor and an army
> of college professors can correct this imbalance then I'm speechless.

Then try harder to formulate a response, because that's the proper argument
for globalization: an influx of unskilled immigrant labor and an army of
college professors is what will save the world.

The article itself describes how globalization has benefitted the world, in
particular, the massive reduction in of poverty in China, Korea, India,
Poland, Indonesia, and Thailand after they opened up for globalization. It
even says China went from 2% to 20% of the world's share of manufacturing, in
line with it's share of world population.

How is that a bad thing?

Did you think the world was supposed to be static? That the third-world was
supposed to be poor and suffering forever?

------
cr0sh
This article was great to read up until I got to this point near the bottom:

> One of the alarming innovations of the Obama years was the way the
> president’s aides enlisted corporations of various kinds—from Wal-Mart to
> the NCAA—to discipline recalcitrant American states in the same way. Indiana
> was going to have gay marriage and North Carolina was going to let
> conflicted males use ladies’ restrooms, or the administration would rally
> corporate friends to destroy their economies.

I'm not sure what the author was trying to imply here - obviously something
about Obama getting help from corporations in an effort to force a couple of
states to - gasp - treat humans with dignity and respect.

I guess I can understand the whole "goverments and corporate working hand-in-
hand" fear thing; perhaps the author would have rather had the government
withhold highway funds or something in that manner, and not get the
corporations involved?

Or maybe the author doesn't like that citizens all over the United States are
largely in support of gay marriage and LGBTQ rights - and that perhaps these
companies, knowing this, knew that it was in their better marketing and brand
interest to use their economic might against those states to change those
laws?

Does the author think less of LGBTQ people? Should they not have the right to
be married, or to use the bathroom of their gender identity? Does the author
even understand what gender identity is, and how it is apart and separate from
sexual orientation and physical gender?

I can't fault the author if they are simply ignorant on these topics, but I
can fault them if they are and haven't taken the time to rectify that
ignorance. Understanding these issues isn't difficult. For some, though, being
empathetic and supportive of those who are different, yet still human, is.

I'm not sure where the author's bias lies, but that one section seems to
indicate that it lies against that of basic human rights, dignity, and respect
towards LGBTQ. This made the piece lesser than it could have been; it's
arguments (whether you agree with them or not) were made solid and some other
example than what was given to show a similar means of globalization on a
local scale could have been illustrated.

Other than that, it was a great piece of writing; I only wish it could have
offered or suggested potential solutions, or had explored more in-depth the
consequences of the current status-quo; though one could say "look around you;
these are the consequences" \- and I would have to agree.

~~~
jchmbrln
> I'm not sure what the author was trying to imply here - obviously something
> about Obama getting help from corporations in an effort to force a couple of
> states to - gasp - treat humans with dignity and respect.

I believe the author's point was broader than that, more about the dangerous
power that corporations wield over their supply chains. From further up in the
paragraph you quoted:

> International corporations are constantly threatening and laying down the
> law to backward societies.

And from the previous paragraph:

> If the English people were better, they could have had those jobs, but they
> have proved unworthy—they have failed the global supply chain. Any sense
> that the economy should serve the citizenry and not vice-versa tends to get
> lost.

In other words, the citizenry are only a link in the chain that can be
replaced at will, and have thus become subservient to the corporations, for
good or ill. Thus the author closes by saying,

> It is hard to say whether we were right to go down this road.

Even if the ring is used for good, it might not end well.

------
netheril96
The article holds that computer has reduced the need for people to cluster in
the same building or the same city. If that is true, Silicon Valley is such an
irony.

~~~
thewhitetulip
The network is what makes the Valley and the network effect happens because
they live in a concentrated place.

------
Futurebot
The idea that it's a choice between low-skill American workers and ones in
Bangladesh has always been a clever false choice caused by both self-interest
from those that benefit from it, and completely muddled thinking. There's no
conflict between someone in Ohio making a decent living, and someone in Dhaka
doing the same. Profits are hoarded at the top, and those doing most of the
benefitting are the owners of capital. Deboer explains in "Outsource Brad
deLong":

"We have entered another phase of journalists, raised in affluence and
currently enjoying at least middle class incomes — who are thus, according to
their own moral calculus, very economically privileged — telling Americans
devastated by the collapse of the uneducated labor market that their poverty,
marginalization, and hopelessness is Actually Good, because people in
Bangladesh can now move from absolutely abject poverty to slightly-less-abject
poverty. Provided the sweatshop where they work doesn’t collapse on them. And
provided they are willing to endure a nightmare of nonexistent labor power,
terrible health and safety standards, total impunity from their bosses, and
for the women, an atmosphere of near-constant sexual threat and exploitation.

The first thing to say is that this is transparently bogus, a complete false
choice propagated in order to preserve the class hierarchy of this country and
this planet. “Help poor people in Bangladesh” or “help poor people in Yuma” is
a false binary. Yes, as the working class in America have suffered, the
incomes of some of the poorest people in the world have risen. You know who
else have seen their incomes rise? The world’s wealthiest, by vast margins.
Pretending that globalization is a simple matter of siphoning from the poor-
but-less-poor to the more-poor is a willful deception. It completely ignores
the vast explosion in the income and wealth of those at the top. So if you
want to know where we can get the money to help poor people in China and India
and Mexico, we know where to look.

Now the actual numbers of such distributions are often debated. But you don’t
have to accept UNICEF’s exact numbers to acknowledge that there is a vast
ocean of income that is controlled by a tiny portion of the world’s people.
There is more than enough money being generated in the global economy to
ensure a decent standard of living for a Bangladeshi factory worker and an out
of work Ohio iron worker with a bad knee and two kids. To constantly frame
this as a zero-sum game between the global poor and the American poor is an
act of basic dishonesty. It’s just another example of capital’s favorite
tactic: playing poor people against each other to prevent them from working
together against their natural class enemies, the rich. All it takes is a
willingness by the people to take by force that which the wealthy refuse to
give up by choice.

But suppose you’re a journo, writer, or academic who really does think that
outsourcing is the only way to help the world’s poorest. Isn’t your own moral
path then clear? Shouldn’t you be outsourcing your own job to people from the
poorest parts of the earth? There are many talented and ambitious writers and
scholars in China, India, Pakistan, Nigeria…. If you make, say, $80K a year as
a pundit, isn’t your moral duty to work with your employee to outsource your
work to a poorer country? Punditry, after all, is very easy to conduct via
telecommunications, unlike being a waiter, an orchard worker, or a yoga
instructor. And isn’t it very possible that you could get at least a large
majority of the value of your work from a team of people in India at a
fraction of the cost, while providing all of them with wages far higher than
the median income of their home country? You could have your employer pay five
Indian writers $10K/year to replicate what you provide for the company. The
Indian writers would make better than six times the Indian median annual
income. And your employer gets to pocket that extra $30K — which, after all,
is why outsourcing actually exists, to improve the profits of our corporate
overlords. Everyone wins! Well, not you. But this is precisely the bargain
that you think America’s uneducated labor force should make. It is, in fact, a
condition that you have loudly argued is morally necessary."

