> I’m not going to talk about the impossibility of competition they offer due to being seriously undercut by those that live in countries with lower costs of li

> I’m not going to talk about the impossibility of competition they offer due to being seriously undercut by those that live in countries with lower costs of living. As a freelancer/contractor working exclusively for customers that have large budgets and pay a lot I'd advise against ever using such platforms. You are going to compete with very cheap labour (and often low quality services) and businesses will expect that and pay accordingly. Even if you have no projects lined up it's better to create your own small service or product which you can use later to advertise effectively what kind of value you could create for prospective customers. (go to local events and get into contact with future customers this way) It's also interesting to note that Globalisation is so heavily pushed on all levels of our society although we can clearly see that it sucks for the majority living in rich countries. Most people here probably do recognise (at least subconsciously) that it's impossible for them to compete with persons doing the same job in a third world country, no matter if they do a worse job. They make up for it by offering their services at such a low rate that they offset this easily. (some of them live in countries where you can easily feed, clothe and house a family with $200 a month - it's impossible to compete with that) You could argue of course that it's great for third world countries (it was) lifting many people out of poverty, but would you want to get poor in the process? (take a look at Detroit, this could be our future) Google, Apple and other large IT corporations (or really any large corp that needs IT services) of course are interested in lowering the cost of labour for them (which is a legitimate interest for them), so make no mistake, what they try to push politically in this case is certainly not in your interest.