There has been a lot of debate about outsourcing recently, especially in the programming community. Naturally, I'm against it because it directly affects me and friends of mine in a negative way.
I'm not necessarily against the concept of outsourcing. I think the idea of outsourcing parts of a project to developers with more expertise in a particular area is a great idea, even if it happens to be overseas. The problem that I see, is that the way the game is played. Management acts as if it is zero sum. They see outsourcing as simply a way reduce costs instead of add value. I see that as backwards.
The main reason it is backwards is because you aren't creating wealth for consumers of your market. Ford recognized his workers as consumers and paid them enough so they could afford the cars that they make. This is a very fundamental idea. It is the thing that makes captialism work. You pay somebody over in India or China pennies on the dollar compared to the American worker. Guess what, they don't end up with the spending power that an American worker would have had, which kills the market for higher-end products like computers and software. The problem is that locally management isn't likely to see an effect. They will see the immediate postive feedback of reduced costs. Unfortunately, if this permeates and becomes a global policy through-out the economy the money just gets sucked out, leaving everyone worse off.
The other problem that I have is with the people that are doing the outsourcing. I don't begrudge rich people for being rich. People like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Rush Limbaugh, Madonna and the like worth every penny the get paid. Why? Because they create products and services that people find worthwhile and add value to their lives. But, I don't find the majority of CEO's and upper management like that. They seem to be a bunch of no talent hacks that were born rich and got into the elite group of being a CEO. The majority of them are grossly overcompensated and extract value from companies or at least keep the status quo while providing no strategic vision past the next quarter.
But, much of the blame lies on investors too. The stock market isn't like gambling. Long time maturity and making sure the company is stable should take precedence over short-term profits. There is nothing wrong with being Ford. A car company that continues to produce good quality products at reasonable prices. They are not as big as GM, but they don't need to be to survive.
The last thing I'd like to talk about is business morality. I think it is just plain wrong to make obscene profits for profits sake. If you have a product that costs you pennies to make and you've already made 10x what it cost you to make it. Drop the friggin' price. This has nothing to do with economy and maximizing profits, but it has a lot to do with just making people's lives better. If you drop the price, you create more volume. More people will own your product and you've contributed to making life better for someone.
Corporations do not exist in a vacuum. They exist within society. Corporations need to act better and be better citizens of their community. A symptom of a corporation being bad citizen is a high reliance on out-sourcing. Which is not so much a matter of outsourcing as it is a matter of companies truly understanding the ramifications of what they do to their markets and their community of employees. But, what I can't stand is watching the displaced workers and the people getting the work go into a pissing contest over it. We are fighting over the feeble droppings of misers. We need to educate corporate america about exactly what they are doing, because this isn't just about business. It is about how people are able to live their lives and the world we are creating.