Your Local News – Dateline Delhi

The world may be flat, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has written, but I always liked to think I was standing on a hill. Now comes the news that pasadenanow.com, a local news site, is recruiting reporters in India. The website’s editor points out that he can get two Indian reporters for a mere $20,800 a year – and no, they won’t be commuting from New Delhi. Since Pasadena’s city council meetings can be observed on the web, the Indian reporters will be able to cover local politics from half the planet away. And if they ever feel a need to see the potholes of Pasadena, there’s always Google Earth.

Excuse me, but isn’t this more or less what former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was fired for – pretending to report from sites around the country while he was actually holed up in his Brooklyn apartment? Or will pasadenanow.com be honest enough to give its new reporters datelines in Delhi (or wherever they live)?

I should have seen it coming. In the eighties, US companies began outsourcing the manufacturing of everything from garments to steel, leaving whole cities to die. Education was the recommended solution for the unemployed, because in the globalized future, Americans would be world’s brains, while Mexicans and Malaysians would provide the hands. Let the low-end, repetitive jobs scatter to the ends of the earth, we were told -- the intellectual and creative work would stay right here.

So no one really complained when the back office and call center jobs migrated to India in the nineties: Who needed them? We would still be the brains of global business. When the IT jobs started drifting away, we were at first assured that only the more “routine” ones were outsourceable. As for all the laid-off techies, they were smart enough to develop new skills, right?

But no one can pretend any longer that we have a global monopoly on intellect and innovation. Look at the “telemedicine” trend, which has radiologists in India and Lebanon reading CT scans for hospitals in Altoona and Chicago. Or – and this was never supposed to happen – the growing outsourcing of R&D, with scores of companies opening labs in India or China – “Chindia,” as they are known in the biz lit. In 2005, a Microsoft manager told the Financial Times that “The question is how you make [the Chinese] truly creative, truly innovative.” Whoops – weren’t we supposed to be the innovators?

Still, writing was believed to be safe – the last stronghold of Western creativity. Explaining the outsourcing of almost every newspaper function, including copy-editing, the billionaire CEO of a consortium of Irish newspapers wrote: ''With the exception of the magic of writing and editing news ... almost every other function, except printing, is location-indifferent.” But the magic has clearly been fading, starting two years ago when Reuters started outsourcing its Wall Street coverage to Bangalore. Is there nothing an actual, on-site, American can’t do better than anyone else?

In the Pasadena case, I can’t even complain, as US-based Reuters’ workers did when their jobs were outsourced, that the quality of journalism will suffer as a result. One of the Indian reporters just hired by pasadenanow.com has a degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, which is one of the three or four best j-schools in the country. I have taught there myself, and know that the students are scarily smart. Too bad that they these reporters couldn’t get real journalism jobs, at normal American wages, but American newspapers are axing good journalists even as I write.

No, I don’t resent the Indians for moving in on the kind of work I do. I just wish the next time some managers get the idea of cost-saving through outsourcing they’d go for the CEO’s job. That’s where the big bucks are, and there’s no reason to think a Chinese or Indian person couldn’t do a CEO’s work, whatever it may be, perfectly adequately, and at less than a tenth of the price. As for me, I’m retraining as a massage therapist, at least until they figure out how to do that from Mumbai.

Comments

[Chris]

So if nearly everything is outsourced, what will be left? Catering to retirees and the idle rich?

[Hattie]

That's the way it is already around where I live.

[Heather]

As a part-time freelance writer, I can actually see both sides of the story -- and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with either one of them.

Over the past four years, I've done numerous jobs for various people and organizations that I know only through Internet contact. I've also been writing for a magazine in Vermont from my home in Central Virginia for the last few years, sometimes covering events or profiling people that I'll never actually see in person. It is *slightly* different in the sense that I lived in Vermont for 27 of my 36 years, and it's not like I don't know the potholes (so to speak).

But I'm also out there fighting with those same people for my jobs. For a couple of years, I got most of my work through a site called Elance.com. I paid a hefty subscription fee and a cut of any profits for the chance to "bid" on open positions. I quickly learned that I would be under-bid by Indian firms that could do the work for pennies on the dollar. About the only jobs I got through that site were those that were open to Americans ("native English speakers") only. It helped me build a portfolio and learn some of the mechanics of freelancing, but I'm just as happy to be out of it.

So from a purely mechanical standpoint, I understand that it's not really all that difficult to aggregate the information a writer would need to do a story, send a few files over the web, and a few days later, receive crisp, professional copy that is really no different that what a local writer would turn out...I've done it myself. At the same time, I know how it cheapens all writing, and robs all writers.

*Breaking news* I just read that the editor of the Pasadena site has decided to put the outsourcing plan "on hold" for the time being. At least until the furor dies down.

[guest]

Catering to the retirees and the idle rich?

I've been downsized and outsourced, twice in five years.

I just hope my back can hold up while I change sheets, wash cars, serve burgers, etc. while I try to save $$ to go back to school.

[barbsright]

Truth is that it is easier to offshore intellectual jobs than manufacturing jobs. A computer file is so much cheaper to send than a car is to ship. The USA techies have made themselves redundant, and many of us with them. As for going back to school, you might as well use the money to start a bonfire.

[Tim Worstall]

"Is there nothing an actual, on-site, American can’t do better than anyone else?"

Ouch, a slight (actually large) misunderstanding of comparative advantage there. What you are describing is absolute advantage and the case for trade does not rest upon that, rather upon comparative. It is not "what can Americans do better than anyone else" it is "we should all do what we're least bad at" and then swap the results. This makes us all richer.

Try reading the wikipedia entry on David Ricardo if you don't get this point.

"I just wish the next time some managers get the idea of cost-saving through outsourcing they’d go for the CEO’s job. That’s where the big bucks are, and there’s no reason to think a Chinese or Indian person couldn’t do a CEO’s work, whatever it may be, perfectly adequately, and at less than a tenth of the price."

Which of course they already have done Arun Sarin is the CEO of Vodaphone, one of the largest companies in hte world. Born in India.

[fajensen]

It is obvious to the casual, non-US, observer that the outsourcing of the entire US foreign policy to Saudi Arabia has not been an astounding succes.

A few more of those and the pendulum will swing back.

[Maureen Rogers]

As the unfortunate saying goes, "if you can do your job from anywhere, anyone can do it from anywhere." That said, you'd think that local journalism would be just a bit more colorful and interesting if the reporters actually knew something about the locale, the local characters, etc.

And don't be too sure about massage therapist. With some surgeries now being performed robotically and remotely, why not a massage therapist operating robotic hands from Bangalore?

What I find curiously and depressingly missing from the political conversations about globalization is an honest discussion about exactly what Americans ARE going to do in this brave new world, other than sell each other cheap junk at WalMart and work as croupiers in casinos. (You may have seen the disheartening news that the old Bethlehem Steel plant is being torn down and the site turned into a casino.) Where the rolls of quarters for the slot machines will come from if no one has a job is another story.

Globalization may work in the macro sense, but at the micro level it invariably means that there will be individuals who lose big time. How we plan to deal with a society in which fewer and fewer are able to sustain a middle class existence, however, seems to be a taboo topic (other than with John Edwards).

[Anarcissie]

In the pure Adam-Smithian, Ricardian world, the ability of everyone to do everything everywhere should lead to an increase in aggregate prosperity, not a decline. In the present situation, wages should be rising sharply in China and India to the point where an equilibrium with Europe and America is reached, and China and India should be consuming more of their own products (thus becoming not only sources of labor, but markets as well). If that is not happening, something else is going on which needs to be explained.

[Steven Knipp]

Last month I was sitting at the bar of the Foreign Correspondent's Club in Hong Kong (where I used to live and work as a reporter for many years) when I bumped into a British journalist friend. And we discussed this very topic - the wholesale outsourcing of American jobs. At the end of the conversation he said to me: "Well mate, the only thing you Yanks seem to make any more, that no one else can, are movies and hamburgers."

He's not wrong.

[Monica]

I bought two Shiatsu massaging cushions. One was not very good, because it won't allow me to insist on the lower back area that tends to hurt. The other one is better, because I can do that. So why would I pay extra, not to speak of the trouble of making appointments and getting undressed, when I can use the massage cushion in my own home or office? Not everybody wants to pay for the extra quality of real massage.

But I can think of a way to create employment, although not in journalism or writing. The government or businesses could create a need for special clothes and clothing accessories (rarely found in peoples' closets nowadays) and for using lots of fabric by making normal business attire much more elaborate. An example would be the clothing that was used during the Elizabethan period. That would also create a need for extra workers to compensate for the reduction in productivity (it's hard to work wearing a farthingale and a neck ruff).

We could also make it normal and possible again to have servants in most well-to-do households, even for things like fetching objects or helping women get dressed. In fact, getting rid of welfare benefits but helping moderately well-off people afford servants (even if that means giving them the welfare money so that they can pay servants) would be a good idea.

[Jonathan Drummey]

I am a massage therapist, and one question I have is that in the brave new world of outsourced jobs at most every level, who *are* the people who will have the money to pay me for my services? It seems to me that the economists and analysts who do the hand-waving about job retraining and people finding their "comparative advantage" in cases of outsourcing are generally speaking from places of "comparative privilege" in their steel & glass & ivory towers and are relatively immune from outsourcing (so far, at least). They'll be able to pay for my services, but I worry that relatively fewer people will be able to in the future.

From the standpoint of my own values, an economy that casts off workers and minimizes or denies them benefits is not an economy that generates community, and careers like mine depend on an interwoven community and the economies that support them.

[Monica]

Maybe the government should give tax breaks to rich individuals or corporations who would then provide free housing, even if it's just a one-room apartment in the basement and access to a building's facilities like the pool, and a very low salary. Basically, the massage therapist would be a kind of servant for that company or individual, and possibly for their tenants or other employees, for visiting friends, etc. More of that kind of employment should be created for other professions as well. It's better than unemployment and welfare, and those who get such services, even if they themselves are little more than better-paid employees, would be happy to have such servants. That would improve the standard of living for the very poor hired as servants or live-in professionals, for the middle class who would be served by them and possibly even for the rich, who would get more services or at least pay less and order those servants around.

[Dave]

Sleeper. Woody Allen. "Orgasmitron." Massage may well be on its way.

[Monica]

You Americans have a strange way of life that for some reason (probably because it provides some success stories and material things) find desirable. But you do things like neglecting your own children and making them move out or pay rent once they grow up, won't share with relatives and hardly have any time for friends, since you are busy at work and family, as it is, comes before friends.

Maybe losing the opportunity to waste away your lives working for somebody else (or even for yourselves, but too much) is actually a good thing. You may also lose your sense of superiority that you have for some reason, as if your way of life, your country and your language were superior to anybody else's.

I'm not saying that you are bad people and that all of you push these cultural features to an extreme, but many of you would actually benefit from the new perspective you would have once you stop living for your jobs instead of just doing the work that needs to be done.

Besides, as I have pointed out above, you could create some jobs by inventing all kinds of busywork, such as making very elaborate clothing that is hard to make and takes lots of fabric (you would have to wear that), and hiring servants. In fact, that would increase the standard of living, even for workers. Being a servant with a monthly wage is less stressful than being a low-paid employee who is expected to be very productive. Many servants used to be paid for availability more than for productivity, and the salary was not lower when there was less work to do.

You could also institute a system akin to feudalism to make the rich responsible for employing or supporting the poor. Naturally, the rich would get various advantages, such as being noble (or whatever it would be called), always having a pool of potential servants and cheap employees, administrating justice in their area (with some limitations, such as not being able to impose the death penalty) and so on. The poor would get free housing and food (I did not say that it would have to be great), and possibly a few other basic necessities.

[Tina Miller]

Are you kidding about the becoming a massage therapist part???

How ironic, because *I* am a message therapist!

[diogenes]

Have sent you email through your website's contact form. Please reply when you get that. Thanks.

[Barbara E]

Thanks for the corrections, Tim, and good to hear from some massage therapists -- guess I'll have to find another line of work.

But Monica, I disagree about the busy work, fun as it would be to wear those Elizabethan ruffs. It's not like there isn't enough to DO in this world, from teaching to caring for the elderly and reclaiming the environment. Just that nobody wants to pay us to do it.

[Perry]

Jayson Blair was fired for fabricating his articles. These reporters would watch meetings on web-cast and summarize them. It may be more difficult to do that without local knowledge, but how is that making anything up? I have always like your books, but I find myself troubled by this kind of lazy thinking, equating two things that have little to do with each other, presumably to evoke a negative response. Is this really how your mind works?

[resimler]

Thanks for the post.

[Justin K.]

hmmm...........

[Barbara E]

That was supposed to be funny, Perry.

[jukkou]

and for the jobs that cannot be outsourced: (exploitable) Guest Workers!
Yeah we all get to be peasants again!
(wasn't there a war somewhere about all of that...)

[Antigone]

I really hope Monica is joking.

[no_slappz]

Chronicle to cut 25% of jobs in newsroom
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, May 19, 2007

To cut costs and try to adapt to a changing media marketplace, The Chronicle will trim 25 percent of its newsroom staff by the end of the summer.

"This is one of the biggest one-time hits we've heard about anywhere in the country," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, in Washington.

Eighty reporters, photographers, copy editors and others, as well as 20 employees in management positions are expected to be laid off by end of the summer. Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega said Friday that voluntary buyouts are likely to be offered.

Vega declined to say whether the paper is continuing to lose $1 million a week, as Hearst attorney Daniel Wall stated in court in November during a hearing on an antitrust suit filed by San Francisco businessman Clint Reilly.

"We're not getting into any specifics at this point," Vega said. "It's fairly common knowledge that we have had a tough financial row here for several years. As we continue to evaluate our situation, unfortunately continued belt-tightening is necessary."

Some of The Chronicle's production and other non-news departments have been reduced during the past few years, but until now the newsroom has been spared deep cuts.

Analysts predicted the reductions at The Chronicle could have repercussions for readers. While an increasing number of people get news from online aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo, those stories are most often originally reported by print journalists.

"That's not just trimming fat, that's an amputation. That's losing a limb," said Rosenstiel, who grew up in the Bay Area.

He said the effect, even for people who don't read the paper, "is that 25 percent of what goes on in the Bay Area won't be covered. It will happen in the dark. ... Our research shows that there is a lot of information that appears in a daily newspaper that doesn't get covered by TV stations or citizen journalists or bloggers when a newspaper's staff is cut."

With all the free online places to find information, analysts say, it's a great time to be a consumer of news, but a lousy time to be selling a print publication.

While The Chronicle isn't subject to the same quarterly profit pressures from Wall Street investors as publicly held publications -- the paper is owned by the privately held Hearst Corp. -- it is on the precipice of changes in the news business, largely because of its location.

"We're here in the birthplace of (the free online classified site) Craigslist and in the cradle of Silicon Valley, where everyone is wired," said Peter Appert, a media analyst at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco.

Historically, Rosenstiel said, the paper has been hurt by its inability to penetrate its marketplace as much as other major metropolitan papers.

Until Hearst bought The Chronicle in 2000, readers may have been turned off by the paper, Rosenstiel said. "It was underserving its marketplace. That's changed, and it's a lot better now," he said. "But Hearst bought it in 2000, which was a very difficult time to buy a newspaper."

Vega said the layoffs have nothing to do with the cost of Hearst's purchase of The Chronicle seven years ago, nor has the paper felt any impact from the recent purchase of the San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times by MediaNews, which gave the Denver corporation control of most other large daily papers in the Bay Area.

Instead, Vega said, the layoffs reflect that revenue from advertising and other sources isn't keeping pace with the cost of running the paper.

But most newspapers are still making money, analysts said, albeit not the average 20 percent profit margins they once enjoyed. In most major cities, Appert said, newspapers are still operating as a monopoly business at a time of myriad competition.

While times may be tough now, "not many papers are losing money," said John Murray, vice president of circulation marketing for the Newspaper Association of America.

Despite possessing one of the nation's most widely read newspaper Web sites -- SFGate.com -- The Chronicle, like its print brethren, hasn't been able to monetize online eyeballs.

"Although online usage is gaining, no one has monetized it on a newspaper basis to the point that equalizes what is happening on the print side," Vega said.

The Chronicle does not charge people to visit SFGate, nor does it ask them to register. Vega declined to say whether that would change.

In a recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman Jr. said newspapers create $500 to $900 in revenue per subscriber annually, according to the Inland Cost and Revenue Study. But, Hussman wrote, a newspaper's Web site "typically generates $5 to $10 per unique visitor."

"I actually think it is very progressive and astute of The Chronicle not to charge people or make them register," said Barry Parr, a media analyst with Jupiter Research. "It can't. There's too much competition out there."

[chris]

barbsright, you asked:

Chris, you said in your May 3, 2007 9:59 AM post that you were a graduate of an engineering school. But,in your May 5,2007 4:41PM post you said you never got a degree. I assume both these posts are yours. Please explain. Thanks.

You assumed incorrectly. Another poster identifies himself as Chris, with an upper-case "C". I have taken the e.e. cummings approach of starting my name with a lower-case "c".

My undergraduate degree is in mechanical engineering.

[Monica]

I'm not joking. In fact, older economic systems had some advantages, such as the ability for many people to have servants and, even better, to have servants while the wife did not have to work outside the home. Also, being a servant could also mean being helped by benevolent masters and gaining social advantages such as access to important people, overhearing or seeing things, learning better manners and upper-class accents and vocabulary, becoming almost like one of the family after a long time, etc. It also strengthens social ties and improves communication and understanding between the well-to-do and the lower classes, and provides opportunities for saving money because of the free housing and food. It's not necessarily that bad.

[chris]

barbara wrote:

"I just wish the next time some managers get the idea of cost-saving through outsourcing they’d go for the CEO’s job. That’s where the big bucks are, and there’s no reason to think a Chinese or Indian person couldn’t do a CEO’s work, whatever it may be, perfectly adequately, and at less than a tenth of the price."

Really. Well, foreign CEOs lead many US companies. Chrysler is one example of a large well known American firm fitting that form.

Daimler, the people who manufacture Mercedes, bought Chrysler in 1999 for about $36 billion.

But a week ago the Daimler people sold Chrysler. It was bought by an American private-equity firm. Based on the structure of the deal, the Germans sold Chrysler for about $1 billion.

Though the price tag was about $7 billion, most of that capital will go into Chrysler to repair its problems. Daimler walks off with about $1 billion. That should tell you something about running large union-bound American manufacturers. Even the Germans, who know all about union employment, failed with Chrysler.

DaimlerChrysler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche said the future Daimler AG aims to concentrate more on the premium segment of the market, challenging competitors like BMW AG unit. "We want to be the leading and most profitable premium car maker," Zetsche told the paper.

Zetsche said Daimler will standardize processes and manufacture several models on one assembly line. "We still have considerable reserves" that we can lift, he said.

He said no low-price model below the current entry model, the A-class, is planned.

Zetsche said there are no acquisition targets for Mercedes at present, but Daimler's truck unit will look for partnerships and cooperation on a regional level, for example in China and India.

In a separate interview with Sunday paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Zetsche said Daimler will set itself clear margin goals for the future after this year.

In the interview with the Frankfurt paper, Zetsche also reiterated he believes a strong performance and a high share price and market capitalization are the best guards against a takeover attempt.

Last Monday, DaimlerChrysler said it has sold 80.1% of its struggling U.S. arm, Chrysler, to Cerberus Capital Management LP.

Analysts have speculated that Daimler alone, which will drop to sixth place among the world's carmakers, could become a takeover target.

[chris]

barbara wrote:

"Since Pasadena’s city council meetings can be observed on the web, the Indian reporters will be able to cover local politics from half the planet away."

The plan to cover local politics with "reporters" in India is Dead On Arrival.

Posting notices about public meetings, the topics for discussion, names of speakers and other prepared information is easy from India.

But there isn't a chance in hell that anyone located IN another country can cover the "politics" of Pasadena or any other municipality.

News venues will outsource what they can, but that won't include true journalism. Real journalism includes asking the right questions of the right people and following leads. It includes understanding the local scene. Following a beat. None of the real work of covering local politics can occur in India. Utterly impossible.

However, politicians may like it. Coverage from India would relieve Pasadena politicians of worry about aggressive reporters snooping through their garbage. Their private lives would remain private. A boon for corruption. So despite the loss of a few local jobs, privately, they're all for it.

[paperpusher666]

Monica, we already have a sort of feudalism. It's called employment. Granted, we lack the certainty that one's place in society will not change that the serfs had, but that's because we are offered the carrot of one day being "the man". We accept that risk in exchange for the POTENTIAL of upward mobility.

More seriously, when was the last time that you did something with your hands, like fix your sink or repair an appliance? Most people bought into the idea that education would help them advance economically. In a lot of cases, it has, but mostly for those who got their degrees in the sciences and engineering. I'm old enough to remember when vocational school was billed as something for the stupid kids only. Wrong! You needed a B+ average in the late 1970's to make it into most of the skilled trade programs.You had to satisfy the graduation requirements for high school PLUS take the classes that you needed to start your apprenticeship.

Manufacturing is somewhere between dying and dead. Look at the takeover of Chrysler for pennies on the dollar. We traded cheap goods for our national industrial base. Even the modem that I installed in my computer the other day was "Made in China".

[paperpusher666]

Maureen Rogers: The conversion of most slot machines to "ticket-in, ticket-out", where you get whatever you cash out as a slip of paper, which is then fed into another machine to be cashed out as currency, will solve the problem of where to get the quarters. The need for quarters will drop to about 1% of the level previously required, and you don't get what I call "coin hand" (black stains from handling lots of change).

Casinos love the ticket-in, ticket-out system for several reasons: it cuts down on the number of people needed to do "hard count" (check the slots to see which ones need a refill, usually around 2 a.m.) and service the slot machines by "doing fills" (at least once a day per machine on average), and they can invalidate the slip after so many days. I've been in casinos where the payout slip becomes void in as little as SIX hours after it is printed out. It keeps the money in cirulation and encourages people to gamble longer, much as changing money into chips for the table games does.

Here's some trivia: when the MGM Grand was opened, they needed dozens of armored cars over several nights just to bring the quarters needed to fill the slot machines. If the average "fill" is $200, a casino with 4000 machines like Charles Town in WV would need somewhere around $400K in quarters because they are recirculating between the machines and cage to be redeemed, with some stored in the cage to await the next fill.

[Monica]

Isn't taking people's money for something that becomes void unreasonably soon akin to stealing? After all, the casino owes them that money, whereas if people owe money, their debt won't be forgiven in six hours, or much longer as a matter of fact.

I can think of reasons why someone may prefer to have payout slips around, if they don't expire too soon. It could be a way to arrange for oneself or for a spendthrift relative to have money for gambling, but only within a reasonable limit, and to make sure that money can't be used for anything else.

[paperpusher666]

Monica, most casinos have much more reasonable redemption policies for the cash-out tickets. Based on observations in Las Vegas, Oregon, Idaho, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, I estimate that the average time allowed to redeem a cash-out ticket before it becomes void is at least 14 days from the time that the ticket is issued, with as much as 30 days to redeem in some cases. The casino with the six hour redemption policy was in rural Idaho (a redundancy, I know) that catered to day trippers who came via bus or car. It was the first all-slot casino that I ever encountered. Suppose that you put a cash-out ticket into a slot machine that you received 4 hours previously. You are on a new redemption period and have another six hours from the time that you receive the next cash-out ticket. The lesson is to read the fine print on the ticket.

The game that the casinos are playing is that they hope that people will choose not to wait on line to redeem tickets for small amounts of money or mail back a ticket for a small amount of money to request that it be redeemed when someone discovers that they stuffed it in their wallet or purse by mistake.

I haven't encountered a cash-out ticket that couldn't be redeemed for cash. The offer that you want for your spendthrift relative to ensure that they can't redeem the ticket (of sorts) is free slot play. You have to play through the credit at least once to be able to cash out what is left. Free play is being offered much more frequently than cash back on bus trips to Atlantic City. It's cheaper for the casinos and helps keep people in the casino of arrival. Many people just take the $20 (or whatever the cash back is) and go to the casino of their choice. Another offer is $40 of nonnegotiable chips for $30, which I've seen at the Sahara and Excalibur casinos in Las Vegas. One bets the nonnegotiable chips, but any winnings are paid in "real" chips. Suppose that I bet $5 on blackjack and win my hand. They will give me a $5 "real" chip, and leave the nonegotiable chip in place, much as one does when paying a bet with negotiable chips. Sometimes you run into a more generous house policy that redeems the nonegotiable chip for a real one when you win, plus pays whatever you won. The nonegotiable chip is placed in the drop box in either case so that it can be reissued. I'd prefer that policy, because they don't hesitate to pick up your chips when you lose.

[Ron Davison]

I've stopped fighting this trend. I've outsourced my blog and I'm currently reviewing proposals from people who can take over my conversations.

[JP Merzetti]

seems to me - it's become a kind of crapshoot...anything and everything that can be outsourced and offshored eventually could be -
However, rising energy costs will eventually wind up placing a kind of "tarrif" on anything not produced locally. Rising costs as a result of this - could price a lot of things right out of foreign markets.
When western credit bubbles burst (as I imagine they will inexorably do shortly) then where will the resources come from to pay for the kind of consumption that keeps the whole game humming?
The fascinating thing - is how inter-dependent we still all actually are.
Ever-cheaper stuff makes nobody any money at all, if no-one's buying.

Personally, I think the future will contract into regional economies - (unless Walmart goods arrive by sailing ship, or move across Asia via Marco Polo - style camel caravan.)

As has been pointed out incessantly - high-priced educations that produce over-qualified service industry workers is a ridiculous waste of money and resources. (the equivalent of junk bonds on the market, I suppose.)
I think this equivalent of a stock crash would be the supreme collective frustration of a large group of people whose debt level, combined with their accumulated skills and abilities gone begging - something has to give.

A true globalist is free to play the entire planet like a giant board game...however, I think the planet itself will wind becoming the real dark horse contestant...(holding the most interesting of trump cards) while all other major players just whistle past the cemetary.....

[Dan Mortenson]

This may be the modus mori of the traditional newspaper, years ahead of expectations. Publishers bemoan the decreasing relevance of their rags, so they let bean-squeezers remove every last vestige of meaning from the medium by outsourcing the echo effect.

There will have to be some feed left in place to funnel raw content to the sweatshop reporters, but one channel owned by Robert Murdock would be enough for that, wouldn't it?

Given such a situation, anyone with half a brain left will just chuck the print media outright, for the nested commentary of the internet, which will still have local bases; and with the expanded demand for real news, the papers will just fritter away.

People will one day cry for the sound of presses; as some Oregon towns do now, for the sound of buzz-saws.

[Corvid]

Here's one sad aspect of this: Visit any newsroom and you'll find it chock full of supposedly sophisticated journos who are all whoopee in favor of globalization. A few aren't, but many, many think it's inevitable and a good thing.
.
These journos are all very enlightened and compassionate, too, and have great sympathy for illegal immigrants. Of course, if, say, a million of the Latin American illegals had excellent English skills and degrees in journalism and were willing and perfectly able to do the American journos' jobs for a quarter of the going wage with no benefits, these journos' cheap compassion would evaporate like the morning dew. But as things stand, only OTHER Americans' jobs and wages and schools and hospitals are threatened by the influx, so the journos can rest easy.
.
Look, this has absolutely nothing to do with free trade and a genuine immigration by people longing to slough off the tyranny of the old country to breathe free on these shores. It's strictly labor arbitrage. Did the Chinese invent computers? Did India invent radiology? Did Mexico invent the washing machine? No. Do Mexican illegals really long to become Americans and renounce any loyalty to Old Mexico to become rock-ribbed, flag-waving Americans? Most apparently don't. (And, you could argue, maybe we're better off because of this. But that's not the point, and that's not supposed to be the deal when immigrants become Americans and forswear loyalty to all other nations.)
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These countries have no native-developed industries that churn out products superior to ours that our consumers hunger for. And these illegal immigrants are flooding in for the dollars, not because of some longing for truth, justice and the American way--however abstract and unrealized those ideas are. (Granted, previous waves of immigrants have gone for the gold, too. But they've also become very loyal and grateful Americans. I don't see a hell of a lot of that now.)
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This is pure LABOR ARBITRAGE. Remember those words the next time someone brings up the utterly phony subject of "free trade."

[Monica]

Didn't some of the ancestors of modern Americans come "illegally" a long time ago simply because the immigration process was not as complicated and legalistic at the time, and because there was more willingness to accept whoever happened to exist as being part of the population? And what makes you think that you deserve jobs, of better pay for those jobs, if the better quality of your work, your education, your language skills, or any other advantages you may have don't put you at a competitive advantage that makes employers prefer you to immigrants? Why are Americans even in a position to compete for jobs that can so easily be taken by somebody else instead of being qualified for jobs only they can do?

[Corvid]

Actually, American workers are better educated, more creative and more solutions-oriented than almost any other workers in the world (with the exception of France). One hears repeatedly that Indian, Chinese and other Asian tech workers have only very rigid, technical educations that leave them unable to think on their feet. You need 2 or 3 of them to replace one American. The only advantage that these workers have is that can be paid less, largely due to the fact that millions in their countries are desperately poor and provide food and other items necessary to sustain even this rather poorly educated elite because they are basically enslaved. So support for globalization amounts to support for the continued enslavement of hundreds of millions of the most miserable human beings mankind has ever known. And let me ask you this, Monica: Aren't you the least bit uncomfortable with the fact that your reasoning conforms so closely with that of American business over the decades, which has slapped down unions because, we're told, non-union workers can do the same work better?
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Having said all that, however, I will amend my earlier remarks. So-called free trade is not about just labor arbitrage. It's also about slavery.

[Corvid]

By the way, Monica, re immigration: The sad fact is that immigration in the early part of the 20th Century was used as a means to depress wages (it's called supply and demand; check it out) and trample all over worker rights. The fact that some of us are descended from such workers doesn't in any way cancel the perfidy of the businessmen and politicians who collaborated to open the floodgates, both legally and illegally. The blame lies not with the immigrants but with the people who let them in and employed them, the same as today. We have easily enforceable laws against employing illegals that we simply refuse to enforce.
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But to get back to the early 20th Century, Paul Krugman points out that recent studies have shown that those immigrants did indeed have the wage- and democracy- and rights-depressing effect desired by big business. Studies also show that when the gates were finally closed in the 1920s and we had a chance to actually Americanize the immigrants who had come in (who, incidentally, were a good deal less attached to their old countries than the current wave of immigrants), it laid the political foundation for the New Deal.
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Among sociologists and economists, it is widely acknowledged now that the more ethnically and racially "diverse" a country is, the more likely it is to have poor government and a poor and thinly provided social safety net. It's just a fact of life. The more diversity, the more distrust, the poorer the quality of life, the less freedom we all must suffer.
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If you think that just because the American working class got beat over the head with a 2-by-4 (unrestricted immigration) in the early 20th Century we should repeat that and beat our poorest working Americans with the same 2-by-4 today, go right ahead. But I'd bet if your job were directly threatened by an illegal immigrant--or even an H1-B visa holder--who was willing to do your job for a quarter of what you make, with no benefits, you'd be singing a different tune.

[Monica]

There are studies, such as this http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050202004.html where the level of achievement of students in different countries is compared, and the Americans do NOT seem to be the best. What makes you think that American workers are better educated, and that, despite others having a sound technical education? Are you sure this idea that Americans are better is not based on a belief that is not necessarily true? Could it also have anything to do with the way Americans are taught to be fast talkers who are very confident and optimistic even in situations that are not sure and may not last for a long time? Someone from another country may have been taught to think carefully before acting, to consider long-term consequences and not to say very confidently that everything is great when he doesn't know what he's talking about or what will happen. But of course, you tend to like people who are like you. And some advantages may in fact be the perceived result of following common business practices you are familiar with, or taking advantage of an infrastructure such as knowing where to order something quickly without necessarily understanding how the product works or being able to make it from scratch or repair it. Without the infrastructure and the buttons to push, some North-Americans wouldn't even know how to make coffee without a coffee machine. I actually met a person who thought that the metal coffee pot I was about to buy might melt (it did not). Another one did not know that cheese can be obtained from milk that goes bad (without adding any substance: just by draining it through cheesecloth, as the solid white stuff is the cheese).

[Culloden]

As a freelancer, I was shocked by the Pasadena outsourcing news to India idea, but then I sat back and considered what I do, covering news events hundreds or even thousands of miles away, via phone, email or Webcasts of Congressional hearings. Further, I produce more copy at one publication I sell stories to, than full-time staffers! That's great for that particular publication, but I find myself in a trap of my own making, because that publication gets what it wants (great copy, lots of it from an experienced journalist with a specialized degree) and pays minimally for it. I avoid minimum wage income because I am so productive.

[numen]

Yes, let's outsource the CEO...

http://news.com.com/Chinas+new+weapon+Low+executive+pay/2100-1022_3-6188306.html?tag=nefd.top
China's new weapon: Low executive pay

[Acinom]

Monica-

"Also, being a servant could also mean being helped by benevolent masters and gaining social advantages such as access to important people, overhearing or seeing things, learning better manners and upper-class accents and vocabulary, becoming almost like one of the family after a long time, etc."

Really? I like your idea and am keen to see you put your money where your mouth is.

I offer you a job as my servant. Please report to work at 6:30am sharp.

While you're at it, we'll work on your language skills, what with me being your liege lord and all.

[Gxzkiea]

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[Gxzkiea]

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[Gxzkiea]

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