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IBM Ditches Outsourcing Patent
Xenographic writes "IBM has dropped their controversial outsourcing patent, both withdrawing the application and placing it into the public domain. Apparently, it was filed eight months before they implemented more stringent reviews of their patent applications so as to avoid filing for obvious patents, especially business method patents. The notice also says that they would like to thank the community for bringing it to their attention."
I always wonder about things like this.
For a multinational corporation as big as IBM, is it "evil" for them to outsource jobs to India, China, etc? What if they outsourced jobs to the U.S. Would that be considered evil as well?
By moving jobs to where the labor is cheaper, they are proping up those economies. The more money the people have in poorer nations, the more companies will flourish there, providing more customers for services & products produced by IBM.
It's a long-term plan for a company that plans to be around decades from now. Should it be labeled evil?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
It's hard, and one could argue, irrational, not to be concerned about one's own financial well-being. You don't hear many people saying, "I lost my job, but by golly, free trade will work it all out in the end!"
So while it may be true that free trade is better for the world, in aggregate, it does not change the fact that it is worse for many individuals. Considering that the individual is almost always powerless in the employer-employee relationship, especially in the case of a multinational corporation, I find it hard to have sympathy for the corporation. I won't even get into comparing the expense accounts of the highest-paid employees to the wages of the lowest-paid.