It’s an interesting question. First it’s wrong to assume there cannot exist multiple sets of laws in the same physical place, which reduces to effectively the

It’s an interesting question. First it’s wrong to assume there cannot exist multiple sets of laws in the same physical place, which reduces to effectively the economics of offshoring. Amazon delivery contractors deploy undocumented workers or people with unlicensed driving skills, paying them $7/hr and charging Amazon $15/hr. It’s economically positive for sure. The drivers live here. Is it really the same country or the same laws? It’s also wrong to assume people have tried or will document the consequences of their try. Apple already earns more than $1m per retail employee. The gulf between Apple and BestBuy’s revenue per employee is much bigger than the savings due to offshoring anywhere in the world. I personally don’t think it’s obvious why Apple Retail stores are so successful, it is multifactorial and very difficult to reproduce, so even basic service jobs may never be worth trying to offshore (whatever that means) if there’s absolutely no way it could really matter. Another way of looking at it is that retail store bankruptcies occurring today were inevitable, the economics of what they were doing never made sense, so even if offshoring could save them money they were still doomed. This is a much harder conversation to have about IBM or Accenture, who have made offshoring a consistent economic positive for someone, we just can’t be sure it is for their clients or for them. However, it seems pretty obvious that a robot (or an abstraction thereof, like an automated warehouse) can do a lot of what retail workers do. So I still think it’s all about the mechanics of the job, and it’s definitely a signal if you can WFH.