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

[Max M]

Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> Max M wrote:
>
>> A cannot really see anything good about outsourcing. Shure we can get 
>> stuff cheaper. But it is acheived by people working for less money. 
>> Not by people working more efficiently. So it is a net loss.
>>
>> Furthermore if we "rationalise" by using cheaper labor we will not 
>> get the benefits of automation, as there will be less motivation to 
>> automate.
>
> ### If this was the wta-talk, saying that free trade is a "net loss" 
> would be more excusable but here on exi-chat an at least elementary 
> knowledge of economics is de rigeur.


Well if you want to pound me for having no economical understanding you 
need to come up with better economic arguments than you do here.

> Obviously, as any voluntary contractual relationship between humans, 
> free trade in labor (derisively referred to as "outsourcing") results 
> in net gains for both parties involved the trade. 


Actually there are three parties here. You are forgetting the loss for 
the person loosing his job. If the job goes to somebody else because he 
is willing to work cheaper, then I don't see the gain.

I am all for people loosing their jobs if there is a smarter way to do 
the same thing, or they are lazy/inefficient. But outsourcing is based 
on cheap labor, and that results in no net gain.

We have seen it throughout history, farming, crafts etc. being 
automated. But in those cases labor where moved to other places because 
the same things could be produced more efficiently.

> Of course, the lazy, and the inefficient might have to mend their 
> ways, or temporarily accept lower standard of living (until the 
> increased productivity trickles down even to them in the form of 
> welfare and charity) - but I see it as a gain, too.


You getting fired, and your job being overtaken by somebody working for 
peanuts in a developed country has *nothing* to do with lazyness or 
inefficiency. I cannot see how you can argue that.

The jobs being transfered now does not result in a better efficiency in 
producing the same products.

I actually read an article just today, in the leading danish bussiness 
mag, that managers outsourcing should reconsidder the use of robots in 
production, as it was often cheaper to do it by manual labour in a 
developing country.


-- 

hilsen/regards Max M, Denmark

http://www.mxm.dk/
IT's Mad Science