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Tony Rubolotta

Another View of Outsourcing
October 24, 2009

Until several years ago, I was fortunate to have several people working for me who were talented, intelligent, creative and energetic. They also appreciated the limits of their knowledge and strived constantly to maintain and improve their skills. What they didn’t know about the core business we worked in they learned. They were all American citizens by choice, not by accident of birth. Most importantly, they were not the product of the American education system. In other words, they did not suffer from inflated estimates of their importance, intelligence or self-esteem.

Unfortunately, most college graduates today are unsuitable for productive employment yet expect exorbitant salaries. Many that I have interviewed have extraordinarily deep but exceedingly narrow knowledge. One thing no employer wants to do is waste time training an employee who requires perpetual training because they don’t assume the responsibility to expand their knowledge beyond what they know. Many of these graduates expect to be paid just to keep their limited skill sets up to date. They are essentially students in perpetuity without the ability to reason or desire to improve of their own accord. There are of course exceptions, but far too few to be of any consequence.

The company I worked for up until a few years ago made a strategic decision that software would no longer be developed in house. All development would be outsourced to India. There would be no exceptions no matter the nature of the development or the requirements for technical knowledge of the industry for which the software was being developed. I thought then and still believe now this was an extremely narrow sighted policy but I fully understand how a company could reach this decision. America’s resource of people with initiative, critical thinking skills, energy and a strong work ethic is shrinking while the liability of students in perpetuity is growing. America’s competitive spirit, spurred by capitalism is being squeezed out by the anti-competitive spirit spurred by socialism.

Outsourcing is not being driven by lower salaries alone but by a number of other factors that make doing business in the USA less desirable. Among them is the quality of the human resource itself, but this leads to other problems that businesses would just as soon not confront. When the qualitative difference of the human resource is marginal, say between India and America, other factors become predominant. The American college campus community, who are tomorrow’s workers, are by and large anti-capitalist, anti-business and anti-intellectual. There isn’t a business leader alive today who can’t see where this is leading. When the next generation expresses a clear preference for the big government, all consuming welfare state over the productivity of private enterprise, it’s time to look elsewhere for a better future.

Another factor that makes outsourcing American jobs more desirable is minimizing the counter-productive practice of diversity and political correctness. Merit has become secondary to skin color, gender, ethnic origin and similar superficial differences that have nothing to do with creativity or productivity. These superficial differences have everything to do with avoiding government prosecution and harassment by politically correct activists. Where the difference is not superficial, such as religion, only one religion is being accommodated, and that religion is not known for encouraging creativity or productivity. Outsourcing may not eliminate the problems associated with diversity or political correctness, but it does minimize them and transfers the problem to countries where these are not issues. You can find the best people for the job; you just can’t do it here.

Finally, businesses get the privilege of paying the greatest share of the burden for government at every level. They pay for a government run education system that doesn’t educate but does produce inferior employees. They pay for enforcement bureaucracies that enforce counter-productive employment policies and attack private property rights. They are forced to hire lobbyists to placate politicians constantly threatening additional regulation if campaign contributions are not forthcoming. They pay the burden of national and state debts growing to a point where that debt must trigger national and state bankruptcies.

It is no wonder that big business joins in league with big labor and big government to survive in the increasingly hostile business environment know as the USA. The multi-national corporation is the evolutionary product of that hostile environment and always on the lookout for greener pastures. The problem is not exclusively American but appears to infect any country that embraces socialism and creates a hostile business environment.

To bring jobs back to America requires wresting control of government and institutions that have driven those jobs out from the hands of the dominant leftists. Condemning businesses for seeking more productive places for doing business won’t turn things around. Increased regulation, political extortion, diversity, political correctness, higher taxes, diminished property rights, government spending and a work force of prima donnas won’t turn things around.

About Tony Rubolotta
Tony Rubolotta works in the technology industry.