"Smart" (read: greedy, manipulative bastards) management will do as you describe. Middle management and "dumb" (read: ethical, or with some economic sense) management will get screwed just like everyone else. Why? Because their wage-numbers will be the biggest on the corporate budget sheet when it comes time for the Board of Directers (who are most likely "smart management" CEOs from another company) to decide who gets the axe next.
As for professional organizations... Maybe. But are they really going to be able to protect their members when they're the biggest numbers left on the budget?
Well, yes. What it does do well is categorize the factors that could lead to the formation of life. Unfortunately, it usually gets used to argue things like "we must be alone, because according to the Drake Equation, we'd have seen other intelligent life by now!".
Yeah, and by the same logic, there _could_ be GPL'd IP in Microsoft Source, simply because there's a lot of GPL'd IP out there and a lot of source in which it could be embedded.
Actually, trade secrets are NOT protected IP. If they somehow slip out by legal means or if someone outside your organization manages to duplicate them, you're screwed - there's nothing you can do, other than try to prove that they stole it from you. (Which Microsoft might be able to do, even if it was developed by a man who had never seen Windows locked away in a dark hut on the moon) In order for it to be protected by IP law, you have to release it to the public through a patent.
Yeah, the problem with the Drake Equation is that its nigh-useless. All seven of its factors are (for the most part) completely arbitrary. You can use it to prove whatever you want, and people frequently do.
How can anyone prepare for a career when there's a significant chance that the career could be totally obliterated in as short a period as 5 years.
You can't. And there's no career (except for maybe burger-flipping and corporate boards) that can't be outsourced. Expect to see this trend expanding into traditionally safe jobs, like accountants, lawyers, managers, etc. Also expect to see corporate bigwigs relocating to banana republic island nations as the domestic economy crumbles. But hey, everyone's equally miserable, so we're much better off, right?
Do you have evidence of this? I dont believe they would just move off. They have to invest in infrastructure.
Infrastructure? What infrastructure? Computers? Network links? Pocket change! And mobile pocket change at that.
And as other posters have said, its already happening. Prices for coding in India have crept up a little, and suddenly they're loosing contracts left, right, and center to Taiwanese and Chinese companies.
As for self-balancing, what a joke. I've yet to see any evidence of the existance of self-balancing markets, unless your definition of "balancing" is "concentrating money and power in the hands of a few corporations". Local economies and costs of living take time to adjust, and until they do, it is impossible for these people to work for less, unless they "choose" to starve. (Always a choice in good old corporatism!) Most "balanced economies" tend to have substantial government regulation and public oversight, as opposed to secret backroom deals, rampant cronyism, and closed doors.
How would selling a product for a large factor more than the payment to employees be wrong other than arbararily deeming it unfair?
I pay you 10 cents a day to create sneakers and force you to work 24/7. I turn around and sell that sneaker for $150, pocketing the difference as pure profit. How can you arbitrarily deem this fair and just? You're a permanent underclass that can never afford this sneaker, no matter how hard you work.
If those companies werent operating in 3rd world countries, where do you think those people would be working, and for what amount of money? Obviously, the more jobs there are in a country the more expensive labor is there, therefore adding jobs to an economy can only be good. Thats not to say that other effects of these companies arnt bad, i.e. ecological damage, but I cant see how anyone can complain about a company adding jobs.
You're arguing that sweatshops are fair? These people are often forced into working themselves into an early grave for barely enough to feed themselves and their families. The jobs do nothing for local economies. In fact, I'd argue that they hurt local economies by siphoning off local talent/labour and resources that could otherwise be employed for higher wages and under better conditions by local businesses, and using that labour to produce goods that are of no benefit to the local economy. You're not going to see any local innovation or entreprenurial spirit if most of a country's population is working their fingers to the bone for a foreign investor.
What else could they do? Farm. (There's obviously a local demand for food) Start their own business (with a low-interest loan, if necessary). Work for another local business. Work to improve their country and raise their standard of living, instead of making shoes or toys or office software for a multibillion dollar corporation in some other country. Every person working in a sweatshop is one less person that can do this.
Again who decides what is a "good" quality level? It should be the market. All other determiniations are arbitrary.
I'd like to meet this market fellow you keep talking about. People decide the "acceptable" quality level, and when those people are not the ones that actually have to use the products, the products suffer. Its no less arbitrary than any other means.
What about judging by overall contribution to society? Its no harder to quantify than the market, and no more immaterial.
Have you somehow deluded yourself into beliveing that it has ever been different. In a 150 year time line, we are doing pretty well as far as power to the people. If you think it used to be that companies had less power, I would disagree. I think now its just more obvious, and socialy acceptable to speak about it.
Have you even studied history? At all?
Yeah, we're doing so well that the people in what claims to be the world's most free state d
I doubt it'll ever get to court. SCO has no case. Its a 100% PR move to take revenge on Linux for taking over their market and doing a better job than they ever did. Oh, and a stock market scam to line the pockets of those currently in charge. Its character assassination, pure and simple. No software is immune to the charges they fling at Linux, but everyone acts like this is a problem that could only occur in open-source software. And that Linux is corrupted simply because the company formerly known as Caldera has claimed its so.
I sincerely hope IBM drags these guys to court, delivers a solid smackdown, publicizes it to the ends of the earth, and then drags the board of SCO back to stand trial for insider trading and stock market manipulation.
Oooh, generic antiglobalization rhetoric. Lets see, what's globalization done so far? Sweatshops, sweatshops, and... Oh! More sweatshops, only this time with programmers instead of clothing makers. And legislation preventing countries from protecting their environments from destructive exploitation. Yup, a whole load of good there.
I'm all for good globalization. "Globalization" that benefits all the world's population and raises the standard of living to something reasonable. Especially since this might be the only way for us to survive - birth rates in undeveloped countries tend to be much, much higher than those in developed countries (Europe and NA are very close to a decline in total population) and agriculture is more productive and less destructive. Globalization that lets people compete based on talent and ability, not whose country has a lower standard (and thus cost) of living, and move between countries as easily as corporations move jobs. Globalization that encourages international co-operation, especially towards the goal of getting us off this mudball. Globalization that doesn't return us to the good ol' days of Feudalism, with a few rich corporate tycoons lording over nations of poor former-middle-class serfs, desperate for jobs and food.
As for looting, they're paying them a tiny fraction of what they're selling the product for (and what the programmers skills are worth), and pocketing the difference as profit. They're taking advantage of their lower living conditions to make a quick buck. Heck, some of these software houses will develop an entire application for the cost of a handful of PCs ($5000-$10000)! And they're not staying around infuse cash into their economy, they're moving on as soon as prices start to climb. And they don't care about qualified labour, they just want workers who can deliver software, no matter how broken. After all, its more expensive to do it right than to make your employees suffer in silence and use the broken software, for fear of being outsorced.
Yeah, the poor there become middle class and get health care...
Until Monolithic Software Co. decides that they're paying these people too much to stay competitive in a recessed market. So they all get fired, plummetting their domestic economy down the tubes and returning them to third-world-nation status alongside such paragons of stability and wealth as America and Canada. Meanwhile, a bunch of programmers and accountants and analysts in impovrished Fooistan, willing to work for peanuts an hour so they can feed their families, begin the slow climb upwards to middle class and the cycle repeats.
That's not capitalism, its looting and pillaging, pure and simple. The barbarians of the 21st century aren't frothing fur-clad hordes banging on the gates and waving swords. They're rich people in business suits being let through the gates by the mayor and waving money.
I'm all in favour of raising the standard of living of third-world-nations, but exploiting them and looting them of their talent and natural resources isn't the way to do it.
SCO's not even trying to do that. This is a smear campaign and character assassination pure and simple, designed to destroy public confidence in free software. The message is: if you use this software, you will get in legal trouble, because the developers must have stolen code from the only REAL source of innovation (companies like SCO and Microsoft) and these companies will find out about it and sue you.
This will never come to trial. In five years, the entire thing will have disappeared and all that will be left is the idea in little, impressionable PHB minds that "using free software can get you sued". And Microsoft and Sun didn't even have to get their hands dirty.
Not even technology - outdated pricing. CD prices have only risen since they were introduced in the '80s, even though the tech has matured immesurably since then. If they dropped it to anything under $10.00, they'd see a huge drop in piracy. Drop it to anything under $5.00 and watch it disappear.
Of course, this doesn't do anything to help artists who make pennies per CD and get most of the recording/promotion/printing costs taken out of their cut...
My prediction: if, by some legal screw-up, some congressman's (or senator's, or governor's) kid does get put on the list, nothing will come of it. The RIAA will quietly drop the lawsuit, apologize to the good representitive (to the tune of a couple thousand dollars), and fire whatever poor, stupid lawyer put the name on the list.
Unless, of course, the rep in question happens to oppose the RIAA's policies. Then they'll push for maximum sentancing and start hyping up the rep's crimimal connections and funding his/her opponents in the next election.
Yeah. I mean, at least this guy's being creative and enjoying himself! In my book, that's far, far more worthwhile than sitting on Slashdot and mocking other people's hobbies.
China wouldn't have been considered stable thirty years ago. India wouldn't have been fifty years ago. Countries can be stabilized, when it suits interests with money. Besides, under this scheme, they don't need to be stabilized for too long - just five to ten years - before the foreign benefactors move on.
And do you really think there's going to be price normalization between China and India? Indians have the same standard-of-living problems as US citizens, just for lower prices. China can use the high-tech equivalent of prison labour to compete if they have to.
Ah, thanks for the correction. I pulled that number out of my hat, though to someone making $9/hour, is there REALLY any difference between $20,000 and $50,000?
The outsourcing trend isn't just one company. Its every company. (As those that don't go along get crushed by those with cheaper labour) And its not just tech, its anything that doesn't require a physical presence - everything but clerk jobs. Net result: the domestic economy plummets, because the money flow into households (you know, those people that actually buy things?) has been cut.
Now, let's consider the country of Fooistan, where these people are outsourcing to. Assuming that employers don't just move on as quality-of-life and wages in Fooistan rise, they're still looking at reduced profits. Why? Because they're paying the average worker in Fooistan a tiny fraction of what they were paying the average worker back in the good old United Quux. (If they weren't, they'd have moved on) Not only that, but the Fooistan worker's going to be more interested in the basics of survival and cheaper domestic products than a $600 word processor or a $20,000 SUV.
This goes doubly so if Fooistan has a high population density, which means that the populace has less room for luxuries and is paying more for basic living space.
You're assuming that they'll be getting $9/hour. What I ment by that comment is that, as the country's standard of living rises thanks to all this foreign investment, the average wage is going to rise too. Now, while this does mean better conditions for that country's people, its worse for the companies that outsourced things there. They now have to pay the people producing the software fair wages for their experience and the value of the product they produce.
So what's a poor multibillion dollar megacorporation to do? Well, Fooistan's not the only poor country with programming talent. Especially not once others see how that talent's helping it improve. Guess what the megacorporation's going to do? Ditch Fooistan for the next country that's willing to provide it with the expert talent it needs at bargain-basement prices. And meanwhile, the quality of life in Fooistan does a u-turn and plummets back down to where it was before. Or worse.
And guess what? Its already happening. Indian companies are complaining that they aren't able to find as many contracts. Why? Because their prices have gone up a little and they're now being undercut by shops in (IIRC) China, Taiwan, etc. that can produce software that isn't too much worse for much less.
Nice theory. But most people don't own enough shares to be able to exert any real control. Most of the power's in the hands of the shareholder-elected board of directors, and most shareholders either don't bother to vote or proxy their vote to someone on the board. Most of the big stockholders are either corporations or CEOs.
Oooh, thanks for the book reference. I'll have to dig up a copy of that.
This is obvious to anyone looking at the tech sector. Innovation didn't come from corporate giants like IBM, (modern) Microsoft, Adobe, etc. It came from ('80s)Microsoft, Apple, (again, at the time) Borland, Xerox PARC, and other small, struggling startups and spinoffs of the 1980s and early '90s. But sometime in the mid/late-90s, all these companies disappeared, Microsoft cemented its hold, and real innovation slowed down and, finally, stopped. The environment is stifling - even the open source movement isn't producing many real innovations these days.
Though there is some hope... In the entertainment industry, for example, we're starting to see real indie publishers challenge the big boys. (Not fake indie labels and movie houses that're really owned and operated by the big cartels to create the appearance of competition)
Not only that, but when they are well enough off (thanks to all this foreign investment) to spend the equivalent of $600 on a word processor, you can bet that they're not going to buy Word. They're going to buy something from a domestic startup (probably owned by an old co-worker or manager) that does what they need, not what some American design expert thought was useful.
Of course, that's assuming that "globalization" doesn't keep outsourcing jobs to low-cost areas, reducing the entire planet to a giant slum.
There are many places in IT where someone from a distant country might try compete with local talent, but they'll get their butts kicked every time because business sees an advantage to hiring more expensive, local, knowledgeable workers.
But if everyone hires out to a distant country, its not an issue. Anyone who doesn't outsource will be facing a larger short-term investment, and will be crushed before they can reap the advantages of those local, knowledgeable, and expensive workers. They'll be crushed in the stock market too, because the other companies will have better next-quarter financials, and everyone knows that's all that matters.
Who wants to trust their business to someone they've never met, 3,000 miles away, who barely shares their language?
And the answer is... Management! Sure, he's 3,000 miles away, but he's their kind of people - the sort that manages people and cash flow, and doesn't think too hard (or really care) about what exactly his company's making. He owns people that take care of all that confusing tech stuff for a miniscule sum. And to top it off, they don't actually have to get too close to any techies - who are not their kind of people, and think about things like "justice" and "rights" far too much for their own good.
The thing is, businesses aren't interested in innovation. As far as they're concerned, innovation is a done thing. Systems now are "good enough", and "there's nothing new anyway". Innovation is scary - it means they have to adapt and change instead of sitting back and raking in the profits. They're much happier with the current state of affairs, where a few huge software and media companies crush any sign of innovation before it can start making waves.
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"Smart" (read: greedy, manipulative bastards) management will do as you describe. Middle management and "dumb" (read: ethical, or with some economic sense) management will get screwed just like everyone else. Why? Because their wage-numbers will be the biggest on the corporate budget sheet when it comes time for the Board of Directers (who are most likely "smart management" CEOs from another company) to decide who gets the axe next.
As for professional organizations... Maybe. But are they really going to be able to protect their members when they're the biggest numbers left on the budget?
Well, yes. What it does do well is categorize the factors that could lead to the formation of life. Unfortunately, it usually gets used to argue things like "we must be alone, because according to the Drake Equation, we'd have seen other intelligent life by now!".
Hello World? How naively optimistic. The empty program violates Microsoft's IP. They've been writing software that does nothing for years. *baching*
Yeah, and by the same logic, there _could_ be GPL'd IP in Microsoft Source, simply because there's a lot of GPL'd IP out there and a lot of source in which it could be embedded.
Actually, trade secrets are NOT protected IP. If they somehow slip out by legal means or if someone outside your organization manages to duplicate them, you're screwed - there's nothing you can do, other than try to prove that they stole it from you. (Which Microsoft might be able to do, even if it was developed by a man who had never seen Windows locked away in a dark hut on the moon) In order for it to be protected by IP law, you have to release it to the public through a patent.
Yeah, the problem with the Drake Equation is that its nigh-useless. All seven of its factors are (for the most part) completely arbitrary. You can use it to prove whatever you want, and people frequently do.
How can anyone prepare for a career when there's a significant chance that the career could be totally obliterated in as short a period as 5 years.
You can't. And there's no career (except for maybe burger-flipping and corporate boards) that can't be outsourced. Expect to see this trend expanding into traditionally safe jobs, like accountants, lawyers, managers, etc. Also expect to see corporate bigwigs relocating to banana republic island nations as the domestic economy crumbles. But hey, everyone's equally miserable, so we're much better off, right?
Do you have evidence of this? I dont believe they would just move off. They have to invest in infrastructure.
Infrastructure? What infrastructure? Computers? Network links? Pocket change! And mobile pocket change at that.
And as other posters have said, its already happening. Prices for coding in India have crept up a little, and suddenly they're loosing contracts left, right, and center to Taiwanese and Chinese companies.
As for self-balancing, what a joke. I've yet to see any evidence of the existance of self-balancing markets, unless your definition of "balancing" is "concentrating money and power in the hands of a few corporations". Local economies and costs of living take time to adjust, and until they do, it is impossible for these people to work for less, unless they "choose" to starve. (Always a choice in good old corporatism!) Most "balanced economies" tend to have substantial government regulation and public oversight, as opposed to secret backroom deals, rampant cronyism, and closed doors.
How would selling a product for a large factor more than the payment to employees be wrong other than arbararily deeming it unfair?
I pay you 10 cents a day to create sneakers and force you to work 24/7. I turn around and sell that sneaker for $150, pocketing the difference as pure profit. How can you arbitrarily deem this fair and just? You're a permanent underclass that can never afford this sneaker, no matter how hard you work.
If those companies werent operating in 3rd world countries, where do you think those people would be working, and for what amount of money? Obviously, the more jobs there are in a country the more expensive labor is there, therefore adding jobs to an economy can only be good. Thats not to say that other effects of these companies arnt bad, i.e. ecological damage, but I cant see how anyone can complain about a company adding jobs.
You're arguing that sweatshops are fair? These people are often forced into working themselves into an early grave for barely enough to feed themselves and their families. The jobs do nothing for local economies. In fact, I'd argue that they hurt local economies by siphoning off local talent/labour and resources that could otherwise be employed for higher wages and under better conditions by local businesses, and using that labour to produce goods that are of no benefit to the local economy. You're not going to see any local innovation or entreprenurial spirit if most of a country's population is working their fingers to the bone for a foreign investor.
What else could they do? Farm. (There's obviously a local demand for food) Start their own business (with a low-interest loan, if necessary). Work for another local business. Work to improve their country and raise their standard of living, instead of making shoes or toys or office software for a multibillion dollar corporation in some other country. Every person working in a sweatshop is one less person that can do this.
Again who decides what is a "good" quality level? It should be the market. All other determiniations are arbitrary.
I'd like to meet this market fellow you keep talking about. People decide the "acceptable" quality level, and when those people are not the ones that actually have to use the products, the products suffer. Its no less arbitrary than any other means.
What about judging by overall contribution to society? Its no harder to quantify than the market, and no more immaterial.
Have you somehow deluded yourself into beliveing that it has ever been different. In a 150 year time line, we are doing pretty well as far as power to the people. If you think it used to be that companies had less power, I would disagree. I think now its just more obvious, and socialy acceptable to speak about it.
Have you even studied history? At all?
Yeah, we're doing so well that the people in what claims to be the world's most free state d
I doubt it'll ever get to court. SCO has no case. Its a 100% PR move to take revenge on Linux for taking over their market and doing a better job than they ever did. Oh, and a stock market scam to line the pockets of those currently in charge. Its character assassination, pure and simple. No software is immune to the charges they fling at Linux, but everyone acts like this is a problem that could only occur in open-source software. And that Linux is corrupted simply because the company formerly known as Caldera has claimed its so.
I sincerely hope IBM drags these guys to court, delivers a solid smackdown, publicizes it to the ends of the earth, and then drags the board of SCO back to stand trial for insider trading and stock market manipulation.
Oooh, generic antiglobalization rhetoric. Lets see, what's globalization done so far? Sweatshops, sweatshops, and... Oh! More sweatshops, only this time with programmers instead of clothing makers. And legislation preventing countries from protecting their environments from destructive exploitation. Yup, a whole load of good there.
I'm all for good globalization. "Globalization" that benefits all the world's population and raises the standard of living to something reasonable. Especially since this might be the only way for us to survive - birth rates in undeveloped countries tend to be much, much higher than those in developed countries (Europe and NA are very close to a decline in total population) and agriculture is more productive and less destructive. Globalization that lets people compete based on talent and ability, not whose country has a lower standard (and thus cost) of living, and move between countries as easily as corporations move jobs. Globalization that encourages international co-operation, especially towards the goal of getting us off this mudball. Globalization that doesn't return us to the good ol' days of Feudalism, with a few rich corporate tycoons lording over nations of poor former-middle-class serfs, desperate for jobs and food.
As for looting, they're paying them a tiny fraction of what they're selling the product for (and what the programmers skills are worth), and pocketing the difference as profit. They're taking advantage of their lower living conditions to make a quick buck. Heck, some of these software houses will develop an entire application for the cost of a handful of PCs ($5000-$10000)! And they're not staying around infuse cash into their economy, they're moving on as soon as prices start to climb. And they don't care about qualified labour, they just want workers who can deliver software, no matter how broken. After all, its more expensive to do it right than to make your employees suffer in silence and use the broken software, for fear of being outsorced.
Yeah, the poor there become middle class and get health care...
Until Monolithic Software Co. decides that they're paying these people too much to stay competitive in a recessed market. So they all get fired, plummetting their domestic economy down the tubes and returning them to third-world-nation status alongside such paragons of stability and wealth as America and Canada. Meanwhile, a bunch of programmers and accountants and analysts in impovrished Fooistan, willing to work for peanuts an hour so they can feed their families, begin the slow climb upwards to middle class and the cycle repeats.
That's not capitalism, its looting and pillaging, pure and simple. The barbarians of the 21st century aren't frothing fur-clad hordes banging on the gates and waving swords. They're rich people in business suits being let through the gates by the mayor and waving money.
I'm all in favour of raising the standard of living of third-world-nations, but exploiting them and looting them of their talent and natural resources isn't the way to do it.
SCO's not even trying to do that. This is a smear campaign and character assassination pure and simple, designed to destroy public confidence in free software. The message is: if you use this software, you will get in legal trouble, because the developers must have stolen code from the only REAL source of innovation (companies like SCO and Microsoft) and these companies will find out about it and sue you.
This will never come to trial. In five years, the entire thing will have disappeared and all that will be left is the idea in little, impressionable PHB minds that "using free software can get you sued". And Microsoft and Sun didn't even have to get their hands dirty.
Has anyone taken America seriously since the 2000 elections? I know I haven't.
Not even technology - outdated pricing. CD prices have only risen since they were introduced in the '80s, even though the tech has matured immesurably since then. If they dropped it to anything under $10.00, they'd see a huge drop in piracy. Drop it to anything under $5.00 and watch it disappear.
Of course, this doesn't do anything to help artists who make pennies per CD and get most of the recording/promotion/printing costs taken out of their cut...
My prediction: if, by some legal screw-up, some congressman's (or senator's, or governor's) kid does get put on the list, nothing will come of it. The RIAA will quietly drop the lawsuit, apologize to the good representitive (to the tune of a couple thousand dollars), and fire whatever poor, stupid lawyer put the name on the list.
Unless, of course, the rep in question happens to oppose the RIAA's policies. Then they'll push for maximum sentancing and start hyping up the rep's crimimal connections and funding his/her opponents in the next election.
Yeah. I mean, at least this guy's being creative and enjoying himself! In my book, that's far, far more worthwhile than sitting on Slashdot and mocking other people's hobbies.
China wouldn't have been considered stable thirty years ago. India wouldn't have been fifty years ago. Countries can be stabilized, when it suits interests with money. Besides, under this scheme, they don't need to be stabilized for too long - just five to ten years - before the foreign benefactors move on.
And do you really think there's going to be price normalization between China and India? Indians have the same standard-of-living problems as US citizens, just for lower prices. China can use the high-tech equivalent of prison labour to compete if they have to.
Ah, thanks for the correction. I pulled that number out of my hat, though to someone making $9/hour, is there REALLY any difference between $20,000 and $50,000?
The outsourcing trend isn't just one company. Its every company. (As those that don't go along get crushed by those with cheaper labour) And its not just tech, its anything that doesn't require a physical presence - everything but clerk jobs. Net result: the domestic economy plummets, because the money flow into households (you know, those people that actually buy things?) has been cut.
Now, let's consider the country of Fooistan, where these people are outsourcing to. Assuming that employers don't just move on as quality-of-life and wages in Fooistan rise, they're still looking at reduced profits. Why? Because they're paying the average worker in Fooistan a tiny fraction of what they were paying the average worker back in the good old United Quux. (If they weren't, they'd have moved on) Not only that, but the Fooistan worker's going to be more interested in the basics of survival and cheaper domestic products than a $600 word processor or a $20,000 SUV.
This goes doubly so if Fooistan has a high population density, which means that the populace has less room for luxuries and is paying more for basic living space.
You're assuming that they'll be getting $9/hour. What I ment by that comment is that, as the country's standard of living rises thanks to all this foreign investment, the average wage is going to rise too. Now, while this does mean better conditions for that country's people, its worse for the companies that outsourced things there. They now have to pay the people producing the software fair wages for their experience and the value of the product they produce.
So what's a poor multibillion dollar megacorporation to do? Well, Fooistan's not the only poor country with programming talent. Especially not once others see how that talent's helping it improve. Guess what the megacorporation's going to do? Ditch Fooistan for the next country that's willing to provide it with the expert talent it needs at bargain-basement prices. And meanwhile, the quality of life in Fooistan does a u-turn and plummets back down to where it was before. Or worse.
And guess what? Its already happening. Indian companies are complaining that they aren't able to find as many contracts. Why? Because their prices have gone up a little and they're now being undercut by shops in (IIRC) China, Taiwan, etc. that can produce software that isn't too much worse for much less.
Nice theory. But most people don't own enough shares to be able to exert any real control. Most of the power's in the hands of the shareholder-elected board of directors, and most shareholders either don't bother to vote or proxy their vote to someone on the board. Most of the big stockholders are either corporations or CEOs.
Oooh, thanks for the book reference. I'll have to dig up a copy of that.
This is obvious to anyone looking at the tech sector. Innovation didn't come from corporate giants like IBM, (modern) Microsoft, Adobe, etc. It came from ('80s)Microsoft, Apple, (again, at the time) Borland, Xerox PARC, and other small, struggling startups and spinoffs of the 1980s and early '90s. But sometime in the mid/late-90s, all these companies disappeared, Microsoft cemented its hold, and real innovation slowed down and, finally, stopped. The environment is stifling - even the open source movement isn't producing many real innovations these days.
Though there is some hope... In the entertainment industry, for example, we're starting to see real indie publishers challenge the big boys. (Not fake indie labels and movie houses that're really owned and operated by the big cartels to create the appearance of competition)
Not only that, but when they are well enough off (thanks to all this foreign investment) to spend the equivalent of $600 on a word processor, you can bet that they're not going to buy Word. They're going to buy something from a domestic startup (probably owned by an old co-worker or manager) that does what they need, not what some American design expert thought was useful.
Of course, that's assuming that "globalization" doesn't keep outsourcing jobs to low-cost areas, reducing the entire planet to a giant slum.
There are many places in IT where someone from a distant country might try compete with local talent, but they'll get their butts kicked every time because business sees an advantage to hiring more expensive, local, knowledgeable workers.
But if everyone hires out to a distant country, its not an issue. Anyone who doesn't outsource will be facing a larger short-term investment, and will be crushed before they can reap the advantages of those local, knowledgeable, and expensive workers. They'll be crushed in the stock market too, because the other companies will have better next-quarter financials, and everyone knows that's all that matters.Who wants to trust their business to someone they've never met, 3,000 miles away, who barely shares their language?
And the answer is... Management! Sure, he's 3,000 miles away, but he's their kind of people - the sort that manages people and cash flow, and doesn't think too hard (or really care) about what exactly his company's making. He owns people that take care of all that confusing tech stuff for a miniscule sum. And to top it off, they don't actually have to get too close to any techies - who are not their kind of people, and think about things like "justice" and "rights" far too much for their own good.
The thing is, businesses aren't interested in innovation. As far as they're concerned, innovation is a done thing. Systems now are "good enough", and "there's nothing new anyway". Innovation is scary - it means they have to adapt and change instead of sitting back and raking in the profits. They're much happier with the current state of affairs, where a few huge software and media companies crush any sign of innovation before it can start making waves.