Sending Jobs Overseas

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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!

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.

...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!

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.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

"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."