[extropy-chat] 'Unskilled jobs to go in 10 years'

[Emlyn]

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 00:58:17 -0600, Damien Broderick
<thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> At 05:10 PM 11/11/2004 +1030, Emmers wrote:
> 
> >If global labour could move with less restriction, this interim period
> >should be less painful (eg: you or I could easily move to India if so
> >inclined, and take up a job there, where, relative to their local
> >economy, the job pays pretty well).
> 
> There's not a lot stopping you from doing this kind of thing right now
> (well, aside from the kids). Have notepad, will travel. Move to Mexico or
> India or Sri Lanka or Russia, etc. But that assumes you'd manage the
> culture-shock, language gap, and perhaps more importantly that the locals
> accept your presence, your wicked Western ways, your godlessness, the job
> you've filched from their own bright kid, etc. And perhaps the health
> services aren't too crash-hot.

Aw, yer spoilsport, there I was thinking I might get a little flat
near the taj-mahal. Seriously, could I just up and move to one of
those countries? Or am I going to meet the same kinds of barriers
that, say, Russians would meet (or Afghanis, more to the point) trying
to move here?

> 
> And of course folks like Emlyn and me can live in Oz, equivalent in most
> respects to the States but safer, while earning US$$ worth 1/3 more than
> AU$$. Better to spend a currency even more degraded, but WestCiv has its
> appeal.
> 
> 
> 
> Damien Broderick
> 

Well, western civ is great. However, it does seem to have been
supported for some time by siphoning resources out of poor countries;
you know, the whole dis-integrated economy gig, with multinational
making super cheap stuff in poor countries with sweatshop workers,
selling them into rich countries for big profits and still providing
us with stuff cheaper than we could make here. It's a step beyond
slavery in most cases (in some it has been quite explicitly slavery,
of course), but not far beyond.

We'll continue to suffer in the west (well, people who don't do work
far out to the right of the capability curve, as you've said
previously), but I can't help thinking that in the long term it's for
the best. Can iti be that, in the end, globalism and the world free
market will actually put things right in the world?

Funny times. I'm continually surprised that it's "conservatives" that
advocate globalism. I guess it benefits big capital in the short term,
even if it does help to kill it in the long term.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *