Fundamentally, the problem is that the buyer doesn't have enough information. If I see person X, javascript, country A, $5 person Y, javascript, country B, $15

Fundamentally, the problem is that the buyer doesn't have enough information. If I see person X, javascript, country A, $5 person Y, javascript, country B, $15 all I see is that person X is $10 cheaper. I want to know if person X does better work than person Y, and I can't tell that from this. People will tend to use country as a proxy for quality, or perhaps assess purchasing power or something. Can you imagine a situation where people have to say "Russian programmers are better/worse than chinese programmers?" Its absurd as a criterion but it is driven by fact that that is one of the main pieces of information we get.