Where the Western worker can really only shine is in advancing on the tech forefront and helping keep that tech within Western borders. Stuff like defence or cybersecurity or some advanced new product/tool development. Anything else is free to be arbitraged away.
Lets say there are 1,000 decent engineers in a country and they get hired by various western companies and it's all a great success. They're very happy, obviously offshoring there works well, other companies pile in and hire 10,000 engineers. Ok, are there another 10,000 decent engineers in the country? Probably not, but maybe you can poach some of the 1,000 and use them to train up the other 10,000. But soon there are openings for 100,000 offshored jobs, then 500,000. How many well trained engineers are there again?
That ramp up takes time, and it's not just a matter of smart people, it's relevant experience. If you have two countries with the same number of competent trained people, but in one of them 5% have directly relevant experience, and in the other 50% of them do, that's a massive advantage that cannot even be solved with money.
Then there's the fact the the most talented and experienced people move out of the country. So for every 10 engineers that get to top tier, 3-4 of them move to Europe or the US. So, not only are these countries losing those people, but also they're losing out on all the juniors they could lead and train up. Hiring there is like trying to fill a leaky bucket.
None of which is to say this is impossible, or that it isn't worth doing, or that it won't work. I've seen it work, and the company I'm at now has reaped huge benefits from offshoring. You just need to go into it clear eyed and with the understanding that it has to work for the people you're offshoring to, and that country as well, and you need to be adaptable as the situation changes.
Almost forgot India is the fastest growing economy, built entirely on taking advantage of ours. Don’t worry it will totally work out!!!
> Maybe one day India will be able to afford the products we’re building for them!!!!
Actually they already do. Only there's so much glaring inequality in the country that wealth is concentrated in the hands of about 50 million people or so.
My point was that offshoring is inevitable. If it's not India, it will be Brazil or Poland or Africa. The best folks hired in these countries have zero interest in relocating to the West when they can live like royalty in their own home countries. They will gladly take 25% of the Western worker's paycheck and do an on par or better job. For the more mundane tasks, companies can hire Indian BPOs for cheap, who will then work their Indian employees to the bone for peanuts. At the end of the day, both results give a profitable outcome to the outsourcing company. The issues arise only when the company decides to outsource actual knowledge work to Indian sweatshops.
Yes, markets work. But people insist on ignoring attrition against all the evidence. It's an almost religious belief.
The big tech monopolists can literally buy off any emerging competition. They have massive political influence that they can leverage to shape the market based on their needs. Not that there would be any political appetite to challenge national "champions" in times of rising international tension anyway. They are too big to fail.
don't discount the possibility of a total rout for those who put all eggs in such a shoddy basket.
interesting to note the limits of political influence now that the megabill stripped the ai moratorium nonsense.
i suspect that the brick and mortar politicos are a bit like "thanks for the money, now bugg off, kid, before i beat you up"
it will be interesting to see what sort of revenge the worlds richest man is cooking for his uppity fixer dude.