Rattle wrote:
] Jeremy meme'd something recently about outsourcing where he
] made suggested that in come cases we are making the choice
] between wealth and security, and there is a balance.

This juxtaposition made me uncomfortable and now I see why.

Are we selecting between wealth and security?

The left says yes. Its either wealth or security. The better off you are, the worse off everyone else must be as a result. The better of the world is, the more you're going to have to sacrifice, because you are western, and your comfortable life is made from the blood of the poor.

The right says no. Its not a zero sum game. Its not an either or. Its a both or neither. The better off everyone else is, the better off you'll be, and the better off you'll be, the better off everyone else is.

Both sides seem to be talking past eachother, and we can't get past the dialog.

RE: Buffet: America's growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us.

] If hiring an American is noble, surely hiring an Indian or a
] Malaysian is even more so. No matter the current state of
] American job opportunities, such opportunities in
] developing countries are far worse.
]
] Ethically enlightened people should applaud, rather than
] jeer, companies that offer employment opportunities to the world's
] neediest people.

[Politech] Don Boudreaux: Why it's moral for firms to outsource overseas

] Forester analyst John McCarthy says jobs that are most at
] risk require fewer skills, are automated or are highly
] portable.
]
] Those include computer programming and software
] engineer jobs, that have long been leaving the country.

This article is entertaining for two reasons. The first is the juxtaposition above. I supposed they meant to indicate that programming is highly portable and not that its a low skill job. The second thing that I find entertaining is how different this is from what you read a few years ago. Someone on Slashdot asked if these researchers just take the slope of the graph from the last two years and draw it out without any consideration for how the situation might change? I reached a point during the .com boom where I mentally counter indicated anything that Jupiter Research published. Maybe I should start ignoring these people all together.

Vanishing Jobs - Dec. 18, 2003

] As solutions to these alleged failures of globalization,
] dissidents frequently appear to favor politically imposed
] systems, employing the power of the state to override the
] outcomes arrived at through voluntary exchange. The
] historical record of such approaches does not offer much
] encouragement. One would be hard pressed to cite examples
] of free and prosperous societies that suppressed the
] marketplace.

[IP] Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan Before the World AffairsCouncil

] We're getting the G.D.P. growth, and by now any recovery
] in the past would be flashing green on the hiring front.
] This one isn't. With all due respect, I don't know what
] you guys are talking about. This is a profoundly
] different relationship between hiring and the business
] cycle.

Good NYT panel on outsourcing.

Who Wins and Who Loses as Jobs Move Overseas?

] Unquestionably, the solutions to many current problems,
] the treatments for many illnesses, and the pathways to
] new businesses have already been invented, but they are
] waiting on the sidelines.

...

] it's not only innovation that
] matters, it's the rate at which innovations are
] improved and brought to market. And this has declined
] precipitously since the bust. The result is a surplus of
] innovations, with vast numbers of potentially important
] advances being warehoused or shelved. This situation is
] alarming enough in itself, but even more worrisome is the
] fact that innovations don't have an unlimited shelf
] life: they are perishable and risk becoming unusable when
] the people associated with them move on to other
] endeavors. Another reason for concern is that warehoused
] innovations remain untested and deprived of the iterative
] improvements so critical to their journey from inception
] to implementation.

you have to register for this, but it's a great article on how innovation has accelerated but the conduit for commercializing it has essentially collapsed. This has validated my thinking on the subject, but changed my perceptions on it quite a bit. Upto now, I had considered it a purely supply-demand problem, but it is more complex than that as the system that transforms innovation into the mainstream has matured and atrophied to some degree. The system is irrevocably changing.

Our Innovation Backlog

] Executives at Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems,
] Hewlett-Packard and Intel say they have reduced their
] building needs by hundreds of thousands of square feet --
] or expect to do so in the near future -- by eliminating
] offices for many of their employees.

I think John Seely Brown would have critical things to say about this trend.

Silicon Valley: Companies eliminate office space

Everyone should be concerned about this fight.

NYT weighs in on one of two ongoing labor disputes in southern California.

The Wal-Martization of America

inignoct wrote:
] [edit] i'll leave my original post below, but take w/ grain of
] salt. this is the NY Post after all, and i've seen no
] corroboration yet. perhaps i got over excited
] [/edit]

That would be the correct answer. NYPOST is sort of like the National Enquirer. I can't beleive Slashdot also picked this up.

Follow the link here for the MCD press release.

Even if there IS a deal between MCD and Apple it will be a cold day in hell before either Pepsi or MCD pays full price at volume 1 billion, or even 100 million. Its not even a matter of why pay full price when a deal could easily be negotiated, its a matter of the numbers being off the chart. This would probably be the most expensive marketing campaign of all time.

We're talking about $990 million dollars here. This would suck up almost all of their free cashflow. Last year the company's total annual advertising expenditures were $647.6 million.

MCD: We have nothing to announce...

] U.S. economic growth surged in the third quarter of 2003
] to the fastest pace in nearly two decades, the government
] said Thursday, in a report that was much stronger than
] most economists expected.

!!!!!!

GDP growth posts strongest growth in nearly 20 years - Oct. 30, 2003