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That was merely an accident of history. The I in IBM doesn't stand for American.

adventured 9y ago
It wasn't merely an accident. The US had a superior context which enabled something like IBM to exist and thrive. Name another country circa 1911 that could have produced IBM and enabled it to acquire such vast global scale at its peak. There are only a handful of nations that can even be considered as possible. IBM came out of the US for the exact same reason Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Silicon Graphics, Motorola, Texas Instruments, HP, Sun, Xerox, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. all did.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >IBM came out of the US for the exact same reason Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Silicon Graphics, Motorola, Texas Instruments, HP, Sun, Xerox, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. all did. By that reasoning, IBM is outsourcing from the US for exactly the same reason virtually all the other companies you listed are. Sure, something about the US helped them to exist and thrive. And something about the US is helping them to outsource. The argument cuts both ways.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > By that reasoning, IBM is outsourcing from the US for exactly the same reason virtually all the other companies you listed are. Of course. Most of the outsourcing has been about labor costs. The US has among the highest labor costs on the the planet, the nations (Vietnam, China, India, Mexico, etc) that the US has heavily outsourced to - whether manufacturing or IT - are or were far lower net cost nations to do those outsourced things in. What's cutting against the US is mostly obvious: incomes are very high, infrastructure costs are far too high (impacts almost everything in the cost structure in the US, from transportation to manufacturing), the effective corporate income tax rate in the US is among the highest (while many developed nations are aggressively lowering their rates), vast & rapid growth in economic regulations over the last 30-40 years, large expansion of general burden on business formation over that time (taxes, regulation, red tape, abusive zoning laws, etc.; leading to far lower dynamism in the US economy, weak productivity growth, perpetually falling new business formation, etc).
    - azinman2 9y ago
      And yet it’s still the top economy. I don’t buy this narrative — if regulations and taxes were such a problem, the US would have never climbed to the position it’s at.
alexasmyths 9y ago
"That was merely an accident of history. " It was no accident.
vram22 9y ago
The I in IBM stands for International (Business Machines) - from 1924, according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM

It wasn't merely an accident. The US had a superior context which enabled something like IBM to exist and thrive. Name another country circa 1911 that could have produced IBM and enabled it to acquire such vast global scale at its peak. There are only a handful of nations that can even be considered as possible. IBM came out of the US for the exact same reason Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Silicon Graphics, Motorola, Texas Instruments, HP, Sun, Xerox, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. all did.

BeetleB 9y ago
>IBM came out of the US for the exact same reason Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Silicon Graphics, Motorola, Texas Instruments, HP, Sun, Xerox, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. all did. By that reasoning, IBM is outsourcing from the US for exactly the same reason virtually all the other companies you listed are. Sure, something about the US helped them to exist and thrive. And something about the US is helping them to outsource. The argument cuts both ways.
- adventured 9y ago
  > By that reasoning, IBM is outsourcing from the US for exactly the same reason virtually all the other companies you listed are. Of course. Most of the outsourcing has been about labor costs. The US has among the highest labor costs on the the planet, the nations (Vietnam, China, India, Mexico, etc) that the US has heavily outsourced to - whether manufacturing or IT - are or were far lower net cost nations to do those outsourced things in. What's cutting against the US is mostly obvious: incomes are very high, infrastructure costs are far too high (impacts almost everything in the cost structure in the US, from transportation to manufacturing), the effective corporate income tax rate in the US is among the highest (while many developed nations are aggressively lowering their rates), vast & rapid growth in economic regulations over the last 30-40 years, large expansion of general burden on business formation over that time (taxes, regulation, red tape, abusive zoning laws, etc.; leading to far lower dynamism in the US economy, weak productivity growth, perpetually falling new business formation, etc).
  - azinman2 9y ago
    And yet it’s still the top economy. I don’t buy this narrative — if regulations and taxes were such a problem, the US would have never climbed to the position it’s at.

alexasmyths 9y ago

"That was merely an accident of history. " It was no accident.

vram22 9y ago

The I in IBM stands for International (Business Machines) - from 1924, according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM