Jobs, stasis, and dynamism (was Re: Offshoring Tracker Launched)

["Richard G. Combs" <richard -dot- combs -at- polycom -dot- com>]

Eric Dunn wrote an excellent response to the most recent "sky is falling"
thread, including:

> There's a bit of xenophobia and class bigotry involved in these
> discussions. Xenophobia because the discussion is always vehemently
> focussed on jobs going to foreign overseas locations like India or China
> while ignoring outsourcing/contracting to Europe or North America, or for
> that matter internally to other regions.

The "view with alarm" crowd also notices only the job shifts from here to
there, while oblivious to other job shifts from there to here. For instance,
they never mention the manufacturing jobs that Nissan, Toyota, and BMW
"offshored" *to* the United States in recent years.

> Competition hurts regardless of where it's from.
<snip>
> When you purchase product, do you make sure that what you're buying keeps
> everyone in the industry local and fully employed? Or do you not care and
> buy the item with the best acceptable cost to quality ratio? The competing
> products may be local competitors located across the street from one
> another or global entities located a world apart. Either way, your
> decision to buy one product over the other may contribute to the loss of
> jobs somewhere.

My state government spends tax dollars on a program called "ABC" -- "Always
Buy Colorado" -- to discourage us from buying stuff "imported" from other
states. Any day now, I expect to hear about an "Always Buy Denver" campaign
to discourage us from "exporting" city jobs to the suburban malls.

<snip>
> > The number of jobs that pay high wages and are open to
> > Americans is shrinking while the population is
> > increasing. This can't be good in the long run.
>
> That's been the mantra/worry for decades/eons. Ever since people stopped
> hunting/gathering for their own subsistence the economy has evolved and
> changed. Yet for some reason, the economy continues to grow and prosper.

Yep. The refrain hasn't really changed since before Ned Ludd and the boys
smashed the power looms in Britain's textile plants. "We're losing our jobs
to <pick one: machines / robots / those damn furriners>! If this doesn't
stop, we'll all be <pick one: dead / begging in the streets / flipping
burgers>!"

This "Offshoring Tracker" is co-sponsored by the CWA. If that union had its
way, your long-distance calls would still be placed through an operator and
would cost you three or four dollars a minute.

Human progress consists of people finding ways to produce more of a good or
service with the same or fewer inputs (capital, labor, and materials). Over
time, this process leads to more of everything -- food, medicine,
information, toys, leisure time, etc. -- for the same effort, making the
world wealthier and everyone better off.

In the short run, every such change "hurts" someone. Think of all the jobs
"lost" because we're writing things on computers (full of "offshored"
components) instead of on Remington typewriters -- or by dictating to
someone with a pad and pencil.

The conflict between those of us who embrace such changes and those who view
them with alarm is the fundamental conflict of our age, according to
Virginia Postrel. In her book, _The Future and Its Enemies_, she writes:

"How we feel about the evolving future tells us who we are as individuals
and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis-a regulated, engineered
world? Or do we embrace dynamism-a world of constant creation, discovery,
and competition? Do we value stability and control, or evolution and
learning? ... Do we think that progress requires a central blueprint, or do
we see it as a decentralized, evolutionary process? Do we consider mistakes
permanent disasters, or the correctable by-products of experimentation? Do
we crave predictability, or relish surprise? These two poles, stasis and
dynamism, increasingly define our political, intellectual, and cultural
landscape."

I highly recommend _The Future and Its Enemies_. For a synopsis and
excerpts, go to:

http://www.dynamist.com/tfaie/index.html

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Voyant, a division of Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
richardDOTcombs AT voyanttechDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT freeDASHmarketDOTnet
303-777-0436
------







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