Re:(OT) Outsourcing developer to India and China - As an Oracle developer I am miffed

> I think you're just getting wildly speculative now, Noons. If I charge $4000
> per day for my consultancy services, I have 1 customer. If I charge $400 I
> have 10. That's supply and demand, just like it is for Mars bars. They
> didn't have them then, either. But the law still holds true.
>

Unfortunately, that is not how the real world operates. The notion that a cheaper product will attract more sales is not necessarily true with services. Try to sell your services to a company that is outsourcing overseas. Even if you lower your rates BELOW the rate they are getting, you STILL will not get them to change over. Not without a few other incentives. It's not as linear as that.

> Then you are using the word secular with some strange meaning that I'm not
> aware of. It means 'non-religious', and has nothing to do with absolutist
> monarchies, who in any case frequently defended their absolutism on the
> grounds of *divine* right.

Where I learned, a secular society meant a society where the structures of power and decision are held by a rigid, non-elected and non-religious hierarchy. Of which most 17th century absolutist monarchies were a perfect example. Hence the use of the expression. And why economic theories emanating from such societies IMO are highly suspect when applied to our times. Regardless of whatever the fads may be with modern economic theories.

> Come off it. If I offered to shoe your horses, that was a service, of which
> the cost of the horse-shoe was but a part. Barbers existed back then. Farm
> labourers had nothing but their labour to offer. Chimney sweeps. Lamp
> lighters. Piss-pot emptiers. The list goes on and on. Of course they had
> services back then.

Narh, sorry. The whole reason why there was so much change in society since those days is precisely because most of those "services" were provided not from a free market available choice but from an imposed rigid social structure, mostly comprised of "caste" systems. Which have got nothing to do with the modern concept of services. And why social and economic theory from such abhorrent times should not be translated to modern society. No matter how attractive they may sound from the "bottom-line" perspective.

> You've taken a trip on the wild side with this one. Services did exist, and
> have always existed. And I don't supply more of my services the more I
> charge, so supply and demand still hold perfectly true for me as much as
> they do for a widget maker.

Let's talk once you've been supplying the services for a while. I'm sure you'll modify your apparently logical point of view. In theory it should work. In practice you have to compete with pimps, not logical people. Been there done that for 13 years, it just doesn't pay off.

>
> Some things are self-evident. Comparative advantage is one of them.
>

> I'm not sure what you are arguing here. Do we simply feather-bed those who
> can't change (Sure we do to an extent. That's what unemployment benefit is
> for, along with Medicare (Australia))?

Ever tried to raise a family on social security? Of course we don't feather-bed them.

> inevitable? Yes. No-one is entitled to expect their working skill set to
> remain in demand for ever, without change or development.

What? Mind explaining that to doctors, lawyers and in general most liberal professions?
Do not confuse evolving a skill set within an area of competence with taking the ENTIRE are of competence and throwing it out the window. Those are two totally different things.

> automated at much better quality and much lower cost. Violence in the
> 1700s. Violence in the 2000's. It didn't work then, because the economic
> case was unarguable. And it won't work now, for very much the same reasons.

And nevertheless it will be violent. Which is a MAJOR point: It WILL be violent, it always was, vide your own examples. Of course "it won't work", from the point of view of the holders of power. But wasn't the purpose of governments to also ensure social stability? Rather than just defend the interests of the almighty profit?

What do I care if in 50 years time someone will turn back and say: anti-globalisation protests and anti-outsourcing protests achieved nothing. If RIGHT NOW I have social upheaval, like it or not, asked for it or not?

We can all reduce society to a few equations. Unfortunately, human behaviour has never conformed to those of free will. Hence social unrest. Dunno about you, but I don't like it: that was one of the main reasons I became a migrant. Don't need it all over again in my life, thank you very much. And nowadays I vote.

> > Heck. It worked to stop the Nam war, what can you say?
>
> Did it really? I suppose that's some new meaning of the word 'worked'.
> 500,000 troops, countless billions, 40,000 US lives, Vietnam wrecked,
> Cambodia ruined and heading for a genocide. The US got much the same terms
> in 73 that they could have had in 69: Nixon fought on, and all the protests
> on all the campuses did nothing to stop him.

Yes they did. Due to the protests. I didn't say they were supposed to win the war. Stop the war was the purpose, stuff the winning bit. And they succeeded. Nixon was just a temporary aberration. As was proven by his impeachment.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au.nospam