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Subject:Re: Offshoring: San Jose Mercury News article From:Chris Despopoulos <cud -at- telecable -dot- es> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 12 Nov 2003 09:30:19 +0100
Here's a different take on this. How much of this stuff you own was made
by exploited labor? Let me guess:
* your cell phone
* the shirt
* your wrist watch/clock
* parts of your TV
* parts of your car
And let me add:
* shoes
* all your kids' toys
* your keyboard
* the tailpiece of the last airplane you flew on
(Chinese workers shot for not completing on schedule)
* And (as they say on TV) much Much MORE!
And let's look at the resulting quality. Take a wrist watch for example.
I had a $90.00 watch I got as a gift. It looked swell, but it stopped
running after a few years. I took it to the shop, and the guy pointed
out that the insides were crap - basically the same movement in every
watch made today. Plastic, a battery, a chip, and some posts for the
hands. It would cost more to fix than it's worth. (How often have you
heard that?). I'm lucky to live in a European city where the watchmaker
is a watchmaker. He happened to have a wind-up from the '70s laying
around that he sold me for $30.00. It works, it's Swiss, it's made by a
human, it can be repaired (by a human - cranky, sometimes slower than
I'd like, makes me listen to stories about his kids, but a human).
I'm not saying outsourcing tech writing is a matter of exploitation. But
I side with Soros on this... you can't count on the market to maintain a
just and reasonable world. It simply isn't equipped for that. The jungle
*might* be a free-market system (perhaps the only one - I challange you
to name a human free-market system that existed... EVER). We like to
think civilization raises us above that - maybe it does and maybe it
doesn't, but it's only human (and humane) to try. And when you remove
the humanity from the product, you get a commodity and the quality goes
down. But hey, if that's what you want to buy, that's your business. Me,
I'll stick with my Swiss watch, and try to keep it going for the rest of
my life. I don't like a world full of disposable crap.
KK - here's a survey. Look at the following five objects:
. your car
. your TV
. your cell phone
. the shirt or blouse you're wearing
. your wristwatch (or the nearest clock)
How many were made in your country? In my case, I don't think any of them
were. So I'm definitely part of the problem - are you?
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