> It means that I get a lower quality service as I believe my people can do it better.
It's hard to argue nationalistic beliefs.
Maybe "your people can do it better" but they won't because they do it for the lowest possible salary. The only difference is what's the lowest possible salary the company can get away with, because the lowest possible service quality they can get away with is the same no matter where they deliver from. Some nationalists will even tolerate a worse quality of service as long as it comes from "their own".
You wanted a cheaper and cheaper service so the companies offer it to you. When a company advertises "services delivered locally" none of the big mouth nationalists reach in their pocket to pay for it. Part of their values no doubt.
> If I remote work from China, I am still American. Changing my location on planet earth didn't change who I am, nor does it change my values and work ethic.
You think you and "your people" must deliver a better service and have better values because you are "American" (US citizen or literally anyone in the Americas?), or any country for that matter. Is that a part of that work ethic and values? To everyone else in the world that just sounds like very unfounded exceptionalism.
>but they won't because they do it for the lowest possible salary
And that lowest possible salary is so low because we allow for wage suppression tactics such as this. My grandma tells with pride of the work they used to do and they did quite well for themselves.
It was things like rolling cigars and soldering on an assembly line. Stuff that now would be described as sweatshop work that nobody would expect to happen locally.
I now do far "higher status" work in the eyes of the classists that think all of this is fine but still don't get close to their wealth.
> And that lowest possible salary is so low because we allow for wage suppression tactics such as this.
When you're talking about better paid jobs you're right to point that out.
But for the bottom of the barrel jobs this doesn't hold and you can check by looking at the salaries for these jobs in the countries that can't offshore further. They're still dismal.
The real reason is that the people looking at these jobs have no negotiating power whatsoever. They have no essential irreplaceable skills or experience, nothing that's hard to find on the market. All they have usually is the desperation to do any job to make a living. They need that salary now while the company can beat around the bush with the service, throw AI chatbots at it, allow longer call queues, and so on.
If anything, a the offshore employees have more leverage with their employer because they need to speak some foreign languages to interact with customers. They can differentiate themselves from the sea of other people in their own country. A US employee in a US call center serving US customers doesn't even have that. Not that much different in Canada despite the bilingualism situation.
>But for the bottom of the barrel jobs this doesn't hold and you can check by looking at the salaries for these jobs in the countries that can't offshore further. They're still dismal.
No. It absolutely holds and the lowest common denominator is not some argument that it can't be better. Supressing wages in higher income countries does not mean that the lowest income countries somehow get pulled up proportionally.
>The real reason is that the people looking at these jobs have no negotiating power whatsoever. They have no essential irreplaceable skills or experience, nothing that's hard to find on the market. All they have usually is the desperation to do any job to make a living.
My grandparents on one side of the family had jobs that required no (At least not after a good amount of training) essential irreplaceable skills or experience and had plenty of purchasing power. Glass cutting at a glass factory, rolling cigars, soldering on an assembly line. Their negotiating power existed based on the fact that they were good workers and would fuck off to a different factory or pressure trough a union. They did very well for themselves.
Now that negotiating power is gone. They wouldn't go to philips or so because philips doesn't manufacture here anymore. The equivalent jobs that can't be outsourced run from my experience mostly on imported workers from poorer countries who will be replaced the moment they demand better conditions. The effects of that supression on "bottom of the barrel" job leeches upwards into jobs that people perceive as higher status without many people noticing. After all those people that would have done them still go for a different job.
> had jobs that required no (At least not after a good amount of training) essential irreplaceable skills or experience and had plenty of purchasing power.
The world changed. The skill pool was expanded significantly and skills are distributed differently. It used to be that no formal education was needed for some things, now everyone expects a PhD.
> would fuck off to a different factory or pressure trough a union. They did very well for themselves.
You still don't get it do you? You wanted stuff so cheap that every "factory" now pays the same shitty salary, and there are no unions because they drive wages and by extension prices up.
You want more proof? Amazon drivers are safe from offshoring, you can't deliver a package in the US while being physically in India. So why are they still paid a pittance and have to pee in bottles while driving? Because they have no leverage and you wanted everything dirt cheap. Offshoring had little to do with it in real life, only in the heads of nationalists.
> You wanted stuff so cheap
No, I don't decide shit. Shareholders wanted profit margins so wide.
Funny how good you are at understanding bargaining power in labor markets and how dogshit you are at understanding it in consumer goods.
> No, I don't decide shit.
Shareholders can't force you to make them money. Blame is probably shared but it's your pressure to have super fast deliveries for anything because you can't wait or walk to a store that shareholders are exploiting for profit. It's your demands and expectations that make those Amazon drivers pee in bottles.
You can always boycott Amazon and the shareholders can't do anything to force you back. But you don't, you keep buying from them with fast delivery.
Same applies to everything else. Do you ever factor in the people’s pay when you select a service? Do you pick the companies that pay the best salaries even if the price is higher? If someone offers you a service from a guy who's paid more, you balk and go to another provider who gives the same service from a guy who's paid less.
The cop-out is always "but what can I do, I'm just one person?" so you keep perpetrating this.
Never the fault of owners, always the fault of consumers or labor. Always. Responsibility!
>The world changed. The skill pool was expanded significantly and skills are distributed differently.
For a lot of the jobs described that really isn't the big factor.
>It used to be that no formal education was needed for some things, now everyone expects a PhD.
Again more of a consequence of the "elite overproduction" and policy than anything else. I'm sure that earlier mentioned callcenter job could happen without a social sciences degree as can myriads of jobs i supported in factories.
>You still don't get it do you? You wanted stuff so cheap >Because they have no leverage and you wanted everything dirt cheap.
a) Stop projecting
b) I'm not arguing against what individuals want when spending. Americans such as you wanted cheaper and better cars and electronics and..... Japan provided those but not because japan was a libertarian paradise. America strongarmed them out of that position not because it is some kind of libertarian paradise. Same with the new competition in some fields from China.
> So why are they still paid a pittance and have to pee in bottles while driving? Because they have no leverage and you wanted everything dirt cheap.
PS They have better conditions and pay in my country. It still isn't great. Again due to lack of leverage since a lot of them are migrants. I'm sure you're supportive of that eroded lack of leverage but don't project it onto me. At some point you'll just end up arguing for the relative competitive advantage of places with slavery.
> PS They have better conditions and pay in my country. It still isn't great. Again due to lack of leverage since a lot of them are migrants.
Took a while to guide to horse to water. We circled back to what I said from the first comment [0]: the lowest end jobs have very low salaries because these people have no leverage (multitude of factors, some of which I listed), not because of offshoring. This situation holds true even from jobs that are safe from offshoring.
> a) Stop projecting
> I'm sure you're supportive of that eroded lack of leverage but don't project it onto me.
The old "You don't project onto me! I project onto you!". But somehow you managed to screw up even your diss at me. Supporting the "eroded lack of leverage" means supporting the leverage. Maybe you wanted to say I "support the lack of leverage". I'm a strong supporter of everyone being able to have a good life, whether they do a job locally or from offshore. I won't get into that discussion because I don't think you care that much for anything more complex than grandparent stories.
So I'm sorry Mario but your reasoning skills are in another castle.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033641