Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19970222152527.00678110@tmn.com> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 09:25:27 -0600 From: Tom Abeles <mailto:tabeles@TMN.COM> Subject: Johnson's outsourcing problems To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
At 11:12 PM 2/21/97 -0800, David Johnson said: >A man I met in Guadalajara said that he had moved the
>manufacturing facility of his business to Mexico to take advantage of the
>cheap labor available there.
> He made and sold a specific type of paint. He said that it didn't
>work out as well as he expected. He said that when his customers saw
>"Hecho en Mexico" on the jars of paint, they either refused to buy it
>because they felt that the quality wouldn't be as good as in the US or,
>they demanded big discounts because they knew that it was costing him
>less to make than it did with US labor. Dave Johnson
>
>
Hmm, I wonder if the large corporations demand a deep discount on the engineering and architectural fees on their new plants here in the US because the large A&E firm is outsourcing the engineering work to their subsidiary in India?!
While we are focusing on overseas manufacturing in developing countries and worried about job loss in in the manufacturing industry, we are busy training foreign nationals who then return home only to receive contracts from corps for their highly skilled knowledge which was subsidized by the US government.
The issue goes even deeper. The US publishes large amounts of highly technical information on the most recent research developments. These are used to the fullest by foreign businesses and governments while us industry lets much go unread. Lack of foreign language skills doesn't allow us business to track the equivalent literature overseas. Additionally, the number of graduate students of foreign nationalities in the US graduate schools, in science and technology, is growing while technical graduates from US institutions do their engineering on Wall Street
Now lets see what this might mean. NGO's are busy working with the world's disenfranchised making energy efficient wood burning stoves and hand oil presses while the high tech foreign nationals are extracting information and knowledge jobs from the US furthering the spread between the wealthy and the economically disenfranchised. And, in some countries which don't have the capabilities and have large social inequalities, the wealthy are attracting industries to further enrich and disenfranchise.
What is more ironical is that I just met a person from India who is manufacturing low tech solar thermal systems. The US government paid for him to come over to the US and help train inner city folks to make these systems as a micro enterprise venture. The technology was originally from the US, developed in the 60's and 70's.
We are currently working with a low income housing project which is building a learning center. They found the monies to buy state of the art multimedia machines and an ISDN connection and threw out all the gifts of 386 and 486 technology, for obvious reasons.
A friend just returned from Taiwan where he was traveling in a luxury car. Three persons in the vehicle were talking on cellular phones in three different languages. Another colleague is doing manufacturing in the PRC and watching them put in cellular phoone booths, leaping over the twisted pairs and fiber. In the US during the height of the sweatshops in the mills in the South, the mill owners would hire ministers to preach to the poor "see the rich on the hill? they are going to hell, while you righteous folks will be getting your reward in heaven!"
So the issue is that capital knows no national borders, anymore. The enfranchised are highly mobile creating a global economic division which is widening at some relative spread. As Bruce Sterling said in his novella, Green Days in Brunei: "The technical elite were errand boys. They didn't decide how to study what to work on...Money decided that...(they) were owned by the abstract ones and zeros in the bankers microchips...." Or to paraphrase, "the development organizations............ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------