If you've posted in forums you might remember writing some decent responses. I usually spend a lot of time polishing my discussion forum responses depending on the subject or who I am talking to. Often I want to remember what I said about something, but finding the original post can be difficult. So it makes sense to capture the better responses for later review. Welcome to Clint's Reposts.Monday, February 16, 2004
Re: Bush Endorses U.S. Jobs Moving Overseas (rmiug-jobtalk)
Mark, responding to David Beers wrote:
>
> Workers, however, can also act in their own best interests. And that
> can include creating unions and boycotting companies or products.
> It's a two-way street. However, what often happens is that
> propaganda is used to convince citizens or workers that something is
> in their own best interest that isn't.
Well of course you can organize as much as you want but we've got plenty of evidence to show that really isn't as effective as it was when workers were putting in 12 hour days and kids under 16 were toiling hard. The problem is that unions made sense when it was about health and safety issues but
make less sense where job exportation, job security, and import tariffs are topics. Sure, you can buy yourself a bit of job preserving time if you can get some government official to protect your turf for awhile, but politicians come and go (well, some of them), and events have a way of rebalancing political distortions in any case. This isn't a propaganda issue, it's more a law of nature.
I did some soul searching on elance.com today and concluded that we are well into crossing the great water, where internationalism of job diversity is concerned. Spend some time on elance. While it is still rather embryonic you will quickly realize that elance, and others like them, are the ebay of technical work and a force quickly gaining traction. One can see on elance that it won't be long before any enterprising person can outbid almost any status quo American tech job with an equally capable team at much less cost. Not only that, elance, et. al. have introduced a rating system so that purchasers of technical work can shop and compare much more efficiently then previously possible.
I've come to understand from my elance investigation that I can outbid ANY U.S. firm on almost ANY type of technical work if I have the fortitude to pull foreign talent together - and often the foreigners don't need me to do the pulling either. The only thing keeping the U.S. tech work status quo from shriveling away entirely is inertia - the way talent seekers think things are, rather then how they are. As David Beers mentioned, there may be an opportunity to perform a kind of middleman aggregation for those of us in the U.S. technical field regarding bidding opportunities. As it turns out I might even be able to take business away from David if I enter his bidding space using this approach ;-).
I just finished a $20K Tablet PC job that in retrospect I could have outsourced through elance and still done well. While I'm not quite ready to take that plunge due to my own inertia (the extra money was nice), I can certainly see the writing on the wall.
>
> However, there is a third force here, and that's public policy. If I
> understand Suzanne correctly, I believe she is advocating that if
> govt is aware of certain changes occuring that can adversely affect
> citizens, then govt can adapt, change, direct, etc, public policy to
> make the change less painful or dangerous for its citizens. What is
> the purpose of govt? Is it to help large corporations? I would
> argue that the Bush administration's philosophy is to focus on
> helping large business and the wealthy, and then good results will
> trickle down to others. Or maybe most of our leaders don't really
> care what trickles down, and it's just rhetoric or a rationalization.
> Maybe politicians are acting in their own self-interest and our
> political system, at present, gives politicians incentives to raise
> as much money as possible (from the wealthy being the best approach).
> And then it's payback time later.
>
Some of us believe that public policy - which is really another way of saying government policy - is more often than not a net loss for all of us. Public policy, as you mentioned above, is driven by special interests - and likely always has been. Suzanne seems to argue for more government intervention in her posts - at least that's my take so far - but I have to respectfully disagree with many of her points.
And, as you mentioned, the purpose of government is not to help large corporations. In my world view the government is not there to help small businesses either except to provide an infrastructure that includes roads, police, fire protection, national protection, resource protection and ensuring an honest national financial environment. Most importantly, government should level the playing field which is certainly not what protectionism does. You pretty much nailed it in your paragraph above, you just have to bring it home. Let's insist the government not concern themselves with trickle down or any other such theory - that isn't their realm. Let businesses large and small take care of that.
> The answer might not be
> protectionism, but it's also not simply flag waving and false
> rhetoric and promises. Any politician can say "I will not rest until
> every American is working." It's another to take any effective action.
Jefferson said something to the effect that he wasn't a fan of energetic government as it was then always oppressive. I don't see that as flag waving, simply common sense. Effective action is personal action. The angst many of us feel regarding the job market is, in my opinion, a reflection of the many barriers to effective small business fluidity erected by too energetic a body politic. There seems to be someone from government standing at every bend in the small business road with their hand out, or with some strange law that inhibits talent escape velocity. Somehow though, in spite of it all, many small businesses thrive anyway. Perhaps you'll be working at one of those soon if you're not already.
Clint
>
> Workers, however, can also act in their own best interests. And that
> can include creating unions and boycotting companies or products.
> It's a two-way street. However, what often happens is that
> propaganda is used to convince citizens or workers that something is
> in their own best interest that isn't.
Well of course you can organize as much as you want but we've got plenty of evidence to show that really isn't as effective as it was when workers were putting in 12 hour days and kids under 16 were toiling hard. The problem is that unions made sense when it was about health and safety issues but
make less sense where job exportation, job security, and import tariffs are topics. Sure, you can buy yourself a bit of job preserving time if you can get some government official to protect your turf for awhile, but politicians come and go (well, some of them), and events have a way of rebalancing political distortions in any case. This isn't a propaganda issue, it's more a law of nature.
I did some soul searching on elance.com today and concluded that we are well into crossing the great water, where internationalism of job diversity is concerned. Spend some time on elance. While it is still rather embryonic you will quickly realize that elance, and others like them, are the ebay of technical work and a force quickly gaining traction. One can see on elance that it won't be long before any enterprising person can outbid almost any status quo American tech job with an equally capable team at much less cost. Not only that, elance, et. al. have introduced a rating system so that purchasers of technical work can shop and compare much more efficiently then previously possible.
I've come to understand from my elance investigation that I can outbid ANY U.S. firm on almost ANY type of technical work if I have the fortitude to pull foreign talent together - and often the foreigners don't need me to do the pulling either. The only thing keeping the U.S. tech work status quo from shriveling away entirely is inertia - the way talent seekers think things are, rather then how they are. As David Beers mentioned, there may be an opportunity to perform a kind of middleman aggregation for those of us in the U.S. technical field regarding bidding opportunities. As it turns out I might even be able to take business away from David if I enter his bidding space using this approach ;-).
I just finished a $20K Tablet PC job that in retrospect I could have outsourced through elance and still done well. While I'm not quite ready to take that plunge due to my own inertia (the extra money was nice), I can certainly see the writing on the wall.
>
> However, there is a third force here, and that's public policy. If I
> understand Suzanne correctly, I believe she is advocating that if
> govt is aware of certain changes occuring that can adversely affect
> citizens, then govt can adapt, change, direct, etc, public policy to
> make the change less painful or dangerous for its citizens. What is
> the purpose of govt? Is it to help large corporations? I would
> argue that the Bush administration's philosophy is to focus on
> helping large business and the wealthy, and then good results will
> trickle down to others. Or maybe most of our leaders don't really
> care what trickles down, and it's just rhetoric or a rationalization.
> Maybe politicians are acting in their own self-interest and our
> political system, at present, gives politicians incentives to raise
> as much money as possible (from the wealthy being the best approach).
> And then it's payback time later.
>
Some of us believe that public policy - which is really another way of saying government policy - is more often than not a net loss for all of us. Public policy, as you mentioned above, is driven by special interests - and likely always has been. Suzanne seems to argue for more government intervention in her posts - at least that's my take so far - but I have to respectfully disagree with many of her points.
And, as you mentioned, the purpose of government is not to help large corporations. In my world view the government is not there to help small businesses either except to provide an infrastructure that includes roads, police, fire protection, national protection, resource protection and ensuring an honest national financial environment. Most importantly, government should level the playing field which is certainly not what protectionism does. You pretty much nailed it in your paragraph above, you just have to bring it home. Let's insist the government not concern themselves with trickle down or any other such theory - that isn't their realm. Let businesses large and small take care of that.
> The answer might not be
> protectionism, but it's also not simply flag waving and false
> rhetoric and promises. Any politician can say "I will not rest until
> every American is working." It's another to take any effective action.
Jefferson said something to the effect that he wasn't a fan of energetic government as it was then always oppressive. I don't see that as flag waving, simply common sense. Effective action is personal action. The angst many of us feel regarding the job market is, in my opinion, a reflection of the many barriers to effective small business fluidity erected by too energetic a body politic. There seems to be someone from government standing at every bend in the small business road with their hand out, or with some strange law that inhibits talent escape velocity. Somehow though, in spite of it all, many small businesses thrive anyway. Perhaps you'll be working at one of those soon if you're not already.
Clint
