Wipro's Azim Premji - 'The man who wants to take your jobs'

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Mike Small wrote:
| I understand the concern - it would be nice to be assured a living
| programming for the foreseeable futue - it's a fun way to make your
| money.  So if someone came along and made some kind of law to keep
| computer jobs in the U.S. somehow, that would be fine by me, as I'd like
| to stay in this business and in this country a little longer.  Do we
| who live here (or you who were born here) somehow deserve this special
| treatment?  I don't know.

This does remind me of a perspective I've seen on the issue from some
labor historians. One way to explain the internationalization is that
most of the previous limitations on location have been  removed  from
business.   Not entirely, as transportation and communications aren't
free, but they are becoming much cheaper.  And,  most  significantly,
legal and political barriers to trade have been mostly removed.

However,  this  is  not  true  for labor.  Workers are still strongly
constrained by  the  many  political  borders,  and  require  special
permissions  to cross those borders.  Attempting to "move your labor"
as manufacturers have moved the jobs is mostly illegal, and  subjects
you  to  imprisonment  and/or deportation in most of the world.  What
little cross-border labor movement is permitted is mostly  controlled
by the employers.

This  gives  employers  a lot of economic power that is denied to the
workers.  It doesn't take very sophisticated reasoning ability to see
the effect that this will have.

It's interesting to watch the IT tech workers' response.  We  have  a
rather strong tendency towards libertarian views, and along with this
tends to come a strong ethic of personal responsibility.   There  are
many  admirable  things  about  this.  But it does put us at a strong
disadvantage with respect to employers,  who  mostly  have  a  rather
different ethic (and aren't shy about taking advantage of ours ;-).