The conditions are different now. Infrastructure is better, foreign workers are better trained, American company culture is different (ceos of Microsoft and Google both Indian), and the possibility of American workers creating political friction is becoming non-negligible.
> Pretty quickly, many companies will discover the pitfalls to outsourcing.
Probably true, however by then they will already have made the decision and it will be priced in to the company’s stock. The System is replete with the consequences of bad short-term decisions that have become more or less locked in.
$200k vs $<20k. It’s an extremely large gap to be filled. Surely the people who spend their days looking at numbers on spreadsheets will see this gap and try to take as much advantage of it as they possibly can, and surely the market will reward the massive cuts in operating costs.
Removing geography from the hiring equation is going to fuck American tech workers. Once you’ve gone digital, there’s no (on paper) difference between a programmer in the Philippines or in Iowa except the one in Iowa is much more expensive.
I think you overestimate the degree to which Americans would care. In order to move Americans you’d need to propagandize through media, but all current media has a vested interest in perpetuating the military industrial complex.
Any attempt to withdraw and dismantle the MIC would lead to thousands of sad stories of the people hurt by its loss. Workers in the weapons factories, rebel groups we’ve propped up, entire economies who depend on the subsidies, etc. the final result would be apathy and finally more of the same. The only thing America can do is continue down the path it’s set for itself, and the only thing intelligent people can do is remove themselves from it to the extent that they can, wait for it to finally devour itself, and hope it doesn’t destroy the rest of the world in its death throes.
Introduce income tax. Use the tax money to build infrastructure that allows for concentrated mega growth which kills off traditional economies and destroys thousands of years of crafting knowledge, and then introduce increasingly severe policies in order to manage the unexpected side-effects. The new policies create more side-effects and lead to more policies. Repeat Until you have so many laws and taxes are so high that the majority of people can’t compete in the economy because they can’t afford lawyers to navigate the law in the way the entrenched can, so they either start living off the government, or if their mental state didn’t survive the humiliating degradation of the whole process, they live on the street. New policies are introduced etc...
The situation can’t continue. How does it end?
1) It will take away the only social outlet many people have. Someone may reply that work was never the appropriate place for that anyways but the real world has never worked that way. Humans have always combined work and social life since the beginning of time. And there won’t be some spontaneous rise in people joining social clubs or anything like that. It will only result in further isolation, further mental problems, further strange behaviors.
2) This will make hiring even more parameterized. Employers will count even more on pieces of paper and LinkedIn connections to gauge whether or not to hire someone. No ability to gauge someone’s presence.
3) This further enables corporations to have no concern for geography. No skin in the game. No loyalty to a place. No loyalty to people. You are now competing with people who are willing to work for a fraction of the price you do, and on paper you both have the same credentials.