6 ms·

People who are against outsourcing of jobs because it hurts workers have what appears to me to be a small view of the set of humanity that matters. I don't see

by readams 11y ago

People who are against outsourcing of jobs because it hurts workers have what appears to me to be a small view of the set of humanity that matters. I don't see any particular reason why workers in the US are more entitled to good jobs than workers in other countries. There is no force more powerful for improving the quality of life and well-being of _billions_ of people than economic development, of which foreign investment is one of the best sources. I want to see a world where there aren't poor countries and rich countries, but rather a global economy where someone born in (e.g.) Africa has opportunity and education similar to someone born in the US. Once this is accomplished (and the challenges in front of us for doing so are enormous!), outsourced jobs won't be a problem. Rather than being opposed to trade and globalization (which are, frankly, unstoppable) we should be focused on mitigating losses for those affected. Erecting barriers to trade will only make US industry uncompetitive, our economy smaller, and those same workers, ultimately, worse off.

p4wnc6 11y ago
You are arguing against Last Place Aversion [0] and even if your argument makes sense, I think it simply will not succeed. If you imagine everyone in the world has a "quality of life" score and this is distributed normally, then outsourcing jobs tends to help people in the bottom quartile, at the expense of people in the second quartile. It is like pinching up a little bit of the probability mass living way out in the left tail, and folding it over into the second quartile region. Some of the people in the second quartile have to be displaced (in an ordinal sense) to the left, thus losing status. We'd like to pretend like material well-being of, say, impoverished third-worlders, matters more than social pecking order status of poor-but-mostly-OK first worlders. Would you like to go first? Would you like to ensure your children have no access to decent education or a college with a social network that could raise their social status? Yeah, sure, you'll have acceptable food and someone will throw you some afterthough scraps in terms of feigned medical care. You'll have a middling life, mostly unpleasant, lots of mental health issues and lots of risk to you and your family of getting caught up in substance abuse or drugs, but you'll live into your 60s or 70s before you die. Status really impacts health. Status affects your attitude about your own health, your willingness and access to seek help. It's not solely about material resource. So I certainly sympathize. Why aren't we extracting wealth from the top quartile as a means for delivering aid to third world workers? Why instead are we extracting wealth from the second quartile to pay for the first quartile? In this sense, your comment comes off as a little bit naive and insensitive. I'm sure down to brass tacks that people living in the second quartile understand what you are saying and feel compassion for people who have it even worse. But how can you ask them to lay down and agree to be the lowest status group willingly? Yes, please outsource my already-degrading-and-menial job, reducing me into the bottom quartile of a slightly right-translated distribution. We're all slightly better off in absolute material terms, but now I'm worse off in relative status terms (which really, physically, affects my health and opportunity). It's ... complicated. [0] < http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234 http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234 >
- readams 11y ago
  That's the small view of humanity again. Nobody in the US is in the bottom quartile. You also see this as a zero-sum game: a process of extracting wealth from someone and handing it to someone else. Trade increases the overall amount of wealth. It's important for policy to recognize, as I said, that there are winners and losers and mitigate the negative effects for the losers. But this can come from the new wealth generated by the trade. Remember: this is new wealth, created entirely from nothing, that did not exist before.
  - p4wnc6 11y ago
    > Nobody in the US is in the bottom quartile. Did you read my comment? I said they are in the second quartile, and they foot the bill for a lot of the ways that wealth improvement reaches people in the first quartile. Although, across the part of the country where I am from, Appalachia, there actually are people in the bottom quartile, especially after you take addiction-related QALY metrics into account. I'd argue your knee-jerk "just cause they are inside America's borders means they don't have it comparably bad" attitude, which sounds like you're just regurgitating some Giving What We Can blog post or something, is more of the small view. > You also see this as a zero-sum game: a process of extracting wealth from someone and handing it to someone else. Trade increases the overall amount of wealth. You really did not read my comment. I said that we translate the whole distribution to the right (that is the part about making everyone materially better off) but by doing so we shuffle some people from the second quartile into the first quartile, or at least shuffle them to lowered status within the second quartile. In terms of ordinal status, it is, by definition, a zero-sum game. If, no matter how much total wealth there is, the thing people care about is where they rank in wealth, then it is zero sum. You can't manufacture more ranks. And, the evidence (which you don't seem interested in) really does suggest that it is the rank that people care about (especially when you are ranked second-to-last), even if preserving your rank means denying yourself better overall conditions from a material point of view.
    - idanoeman 11y ago
      But people don't only care about rank in wealth. I think you're focusing too much on that one aspect. A rising tide lifting all boats has a lot more impact to how nice it is to live in the world than a short-term shuffling of social status.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> I don't see any particular reason why workers in the US are more entitled to good jobs than workers in other countries. There are things you can only do in the presence of inequality because inequality is necessary for specialization. If we require everyone in the world to have the same education then it averages out to something less than a high school education, which means we have no scientists or engineers or doctors. Once you allow specialization it becomes advantageous to have geographic concentrations. This happens naturally -- Silicon Valley (computers), Detroit (cars), New York (finance), etc. Exporting jobs increases inefficiency. People working on the same projects have to contend with timezone differences, people waste more time traveling, it's harder for the engineers to talk to the factory workers, etc. The thing that makes more sense is to give US citizenship to promising engineers in other countries and let them move here, and let other countries specialize in other things (like agriculture or mining).
- jessaustin 11y ago
  ...let other countries specialize in other things (like agriculture or mining). What if USA has more comparative advantage in agriculture and mineral resource extraction than in the industries you favor? Everywhere I go in Asia, restaurants brag about beef from USA, and many commodities are exported. Saudi is more concerned about frackers on the Great Plains than about the state oil ministries of Russia or Venezuela, which is why they crashed the petro market last year rather than e.g. five years ago.
- idanoeman 11y ago
  If exporting jobs is inefficient, let people try to do it and fail - of course they will get outcompeted by the people who aren't exporting jobs, right? Your comment gives an extremely weak argument in favor of regulation - paraphrased, it seems like you're saying "companies are stupid and don't know how to make money, so we should regulate them to force them to be more profitable". It's hard to say that sentence with a straight face :-)
  - coupdetaco 11y ago
    Businesses, in particular corporations, only operate in the context of some government. Plenty of folks who think competition is the best and that competition brings out the best in everything still believe that you still have to first organize markets and make sure they are competitive, i.e. It is not the natural state of things in each and every realm of life. We do not force companies to be profitable, we force them to play by a set of rules that we agree allows society to extract the most value from the companies rather than the other way around.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
>People who are against outsourcing of jobs because it hurts workers have what appears to me to be a small view of the set of humanity that matters. Then get rid of nation states, allow complete freedom of movement, eliminate all the world's militaries, and use the money saved to improve living and working conditions for everyone on the planet. >There is no force more powerful for improving the quality of life and well-being of _billions_ of people than economic development And no force more likely to destroy quality of life and well-being of everyone than predatory nationalist capitalism. You can't have this one both ways. Oh - and the US economy is already incredibly uncompetitive, with vast surplus capacity. Why is moving that capacity to China and India better than using the full economic capacities of both China, India, and the US?
wwweston 11y ago
> People who are against outsourcing of jobs because it hurts workers have what appears to me to be a small view of the set of humanity that matters. Or, alternatively, they have a right-sized vision of what the size of their stewardship is. While I certainly think a state as powerful as the US should consider the impacts of its actions elsewhere carefully, and even act benevolently outside its borders where it can, on principle the idea that societies focus on managing general welfare within seems like a pretty good one. > I want to see a world where there aren't poor countries and rich countries, but rather a global economy where someone born in (e.g.) Africa has opportunity and education similar to someone born in the US. I'm interested in that too. Whether barrier-free global-focus trade is the way doesn't seem to me to be a settled question. https://books.google.com/books?id=xEmKBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192#v=onepage https://books.google.com/books?id=xEmKBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA192&lpg=... > Rather than being opposed to trade and globalization Almost nobody is "opposed to trade." Some people may be in favor limits on trade (if you don't believe that there should be assassination markets, you're one of them). Similarly, when it comes to globalization, few people want to make any border entirely non-porous (except as a weapon, as the US has with Cuba), but there's arguments such as Schweitzer's that are compelling. > (which are, frankly, unstoppable) It's certainly not possible to absolutely ban any activity humans might want to engage in for any reason. It's entirely possible to discourage many things substantially enough that the scope/frequency becomes limited. > we should be focused on mitigating losses for those affected. This is a grand idea. > Erecting barriers to trade will only make US industry uncompetitive, our economy smaller, and those same workers, ultimately, worse off. Any barrier? Or just some?
nbb 11y ago
Frankly, to a representative elected by a certain set of humanity, only one set of humanity should matter.
- idanoeman 11y ago
  Not if that set of humanity's interests extend to the rest of humanity. A politician elected by a country consisting of purely rational altruists should be very interested in global trade, because it serves the interests of his constituents.
leepowers 11y ago
> I don't see any particular reason why workers in the US are more entitled to good jobs than workers in other countries. They aren't. But the primary concern of U.S. government policy should be the well-being of U.S. citizens. Otherwise why have a country? In the same vein: citizens of other countries are just as entitled to health care as U.S. citizens. That doesn't mean the U.S. government should expand Medicaid/Medicare to non-citizens.

by readams 11y ago

p4wnc6 11y ago

You are arguing against Last Place Aversion [0] and even if your argument makes sense, I think it simply will not succeed. If you imagine everyone in the world has a "quality of life" score and this is distributed normally, then outsourcing jobs tends to help people in the bottom quartile, at the expense of people in the second quartile. It is like pinching up a little bit of the probability mass living way out in the left tail, and folding it over into the second quartile region. Some of the people in the second quartile have to be displaced (in an ordinal sense) to the left, thus losing status. We'd like to pretend like material well-being of, say, impoverished third-worlders, matters more than social pecking order status of poor-but-mostly-OK first worlders. Would you like to go first? Would you like to ensure your children have no access to decent education or a college with a social network that could raise their social status? Yeah, sure, you'll have acceptable food and someone will throw you some afterthough scraps in terms of feigned medical care. You'll have a middling life, mostly unpleasant, lots of mental health issues and lots of risk to you and your family of getting caught up in substance abuse or drugs, but you'll live into your 60s or 70s before you die. Status really impacts health. Status affects your attitude about your own health, your willingness and access to seek help. It's not solely about material resource. So I certainly sympathize. Why aren't we extracting wealth from the top quartile as a means for delivering aid to third world workers? Why instead are we extracting wealth from the second quartile to pay for the first quartile? In this sense, your comment comes off as a little bit naive and insensitive. I'm sure down to brass tacks that people living in the second quartile understand what you are saying and feel compassion for people who have it even worse. But how can you ask them to lay down and agree to be the lowest status group willingly? Yes, please outsource my already-degrading-and-menial job, reducing me into the bottom quartile of a slightly right-translated distribution. We're all slightly better off in absolute material terms, but now I'm worse off in relative status terms (which really, physically, affects my health and opportunity). It's ... complicated. [0] < http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234 http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234 >

readams 11y ago
That's the small view of humanity again. Nobody in the US is in the bottom quartile. You also see this as a zero-sum game: a process of extracting wealth from someone and handing it to someone else. Trade increases the overall amount of wealth. It's important for policy to recognize, as I said, that there are winners and losers and mitigate the negative effects for the losers. But this can come from the new wealth generated by the trade. Remember: this is new wealth, created entirely from nothing, that did not exist before.
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  > Nobody in the US is in the bottom quartile. Did you read my comment? I said they are in the second quartile, and they foot the bill for a lot of the ways that wealth improvement reaches people in the first quartile. Although, across the part of the country where I am from, Appalachia, there actually are people in the bottom quartile, especially after you take addiction-related QALY metrics into account. I'd argue your knee-jerk "just cause they are inside America's borders means they don't have it comparably bad" attitude, which sounds like you're just regurgitating some Giving What We Can blog post or something, is more of the small view. > You also see this as a zero-sum game: a process of extracting wealth from someone and handing it to someone else. Trade increases the overall amount of wealth. You really did not read my comment. I said that we translate the whole distribution to the right (that is the part about making everyone materially better off) but by doing so we shuffle some people from the second quartile into the first quartile, or at least shuffle them to lowered status within the second quartile. In terms of ordinal status, it is, by definition, a zero-sum game. If, no matter how much total wealth there is, the thing people care about is where they rank in wealth, then it is zero sum. You can't manufacture more ranks. And, the evidence (which you don't seem interested in) really does suggest that it is the rank that people care about (especially when you are ranked second-to-last), even if preserving your rank means denying yourself better overall conditions from a material point of view.
  - idanoeman 11y ago
    But people don't only care about rank in wealth. I think you're focusing too much on that one aspect. A rising tide lifting all boats has a lot more impact to how nice it is to live in the world than a short-term shuffling of social status.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> I don't see any particular reason why workers in the US are more entitled to good jobs than workers in other countries. There are things you can only do in the presence of inequality because inequality is necessary for specialization. If we require everyone in the world to have the same education then it averages out to something less than a high school education, which means we have no scientists or engineers or doctors. Once you allow specialization it becomes advantageous to have geographic concentrations. This happens naturally -- Silicon Valley (computers), Detroit (cars), New York (finance), etc. Exporting jobs increases inefficiency. People working on the same projects have to contend with timezone differences, people waste more time traveling, it's harder for the engineers to talk to the factory workers, etc. The thing that makes more sense is to give US citizenship to promising engineers in other countries and let them move here, and let other countries specialize in other things (like agriculture or mining).

jessaustin 11y ago
...let other countries specialize in other things (like agriculture or mining). What if USA has more comparative advantage in agriculture and mineral resource extraction than in the industries you favor? Everywhere I go in Asia, restaurants brag about beef from USA, and many commodities are exported. Saudi is more concerned about frackers on the Great Plains than about the state oil ministries of Russia or Venezuela, which is why they crashed the petro market last year rather than e.g. five years ago.
idanoeman 11y ago
If exporting jobs is inefficient, let people try to do it and fail - of course they will get outcompeted by the people who aren't exporting jobs, right? Your comment gives an extremely weak argument in favor of regulation - paraphrased, it seems like you're saying "companies are stupid and don't know how to make money, so we should regulate them to force them to be more profitable". It's hard to say that sentence with a straight face :-)
- coupdetaco 11y ago
  Businesses, in particular corporations, only operate in the context of some government. Plenty of folks who think competition is the best and that competition brings out the best in everything still believe that you still have to first organize markets and make sure they are competitive, i.e. It is not the natural state of things in each and every realm of life. We do not force companies to be profitable, we force them to play by a set of rules that we agree allows society to extract the most value from the companies rather than the other way around.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

>People who are against outsourcing of jobs because it hurts workers have what appears to me to be a small view of the set of humanity that matters. Then get rid of nation states, allow complete freedom of movement, eliminate all the world's militaries, and use the money saved to improve living and working conditions for everyone on the planet. >There is no force more powerful for improving the quality of life and well-being of _billions_ of people than economic development And no force more likely to destroy quality of life and well-being of everyone than predatory nationalist capitalism. You can't have this one both ways. Oh - and the US economy is already incredibly uncompetitive, with vast surplus capacity. Why is moving that capacity to China and India better than using the full economic capacities of both China, India, and the US?

wwweston 11y ago

> People who are against outsourcing of jobs because it hurts workers have what appears to me to be a small view of the set of humanity that matters. Or, alternatively, they have a right-sized vision of what the size of their stewardship is. While I certainly think a state as powerful as the US should consider the impacts of its actions elsewhere carefully, and even act benevolently outside its borders where it can, on principle the idea that societies focus on managing general welfare within seems like a pretty good one. > I want to see a world where there aren't poor countries and rich countries, but rather a global economy where someone born in (e.g.) Africa has opportunity and education similar to someone born in the US. I'm interested in that too. Whether barrier-free global-focus trade is the way doesn't seem to me to be a settled question. https://books.google.com/books?id=xEmKBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192#v=onepage https://books.google.com/books?id=xEmKBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA192&lpg=... > Rather than being opposed to trade and globalization Almost nobody is "opposed to trade." Some people may be in favor limits on trade (if you don't believe that there should be assassination markets, you're one of them). Similarly, when it comes to globalization, few people want to make any border entirely non-porous (except as a weapon, as the US has with Cuba), but there's arguments such as Schweitzer's that are compelling. > (which are, frankly, unstoppable) It's certainly not possible to absolutely ban any activity humans might want to engage in for any reason. It's entirely possible to discourage many things substantially enough that the scope/frequency becomes limited. > we should be focused on mitigating losses for those affected. This is a grand idea. > Erecting barriers to trade will only make US industry uncompetitive, our economy smaller, and those same workers, ultimately, worse off. Any barrier? Or just some?

nbb 11y ago

Frankly, to a representative elected by a certain set of humanity, only one set of humanity should matter.

idanoeman 11y ago
Not if that set of humanity's interests extend to the rest of humanity. A politician elected by a country consisting of purely rational altruists should be very interested in global trade, because it serves the interests of his constituents.

leepowers 11y ago

> I don't see any particular reason why workers in the US are more entitled to good jobs than workers in other countries. They aren't. But the primary concern of U.S. government policy should be the well-being of U.S. citizens. Otherwise why have a country? In the same vein: citizens of other countries are just as entitled to health care as U.S. citizens. That doesn't mean the U.S. government should expand Medicaid/Medicare to non-citizens.