Remember the technotopian promises of the late 1990s? Technologists promised an end to the office, as 21st century telecommunications would enable everyone to work from home.
They had the right hunch, but drew the wrong conclusions.
Indeed, many soon found themselves at home, but only because their job had commuted without them to Bangalore or Delhi.
In the ‘90s, the ascension of the “temp” proved that labor, meaning people, was no more than a commodity. Just another resource to be plotted on a spreadsheet.
Now we see it can even be traded like cotton, steel or pork bellies.
Globalization. Ain’t it a bitch?
With the rhetoric machines already pegging 11 in the run-up to November’s general election, the Left consistently cites the loss of 3 million jobs under Bush’s stewardship.
Democrats uncomfortably skirt xenophobia while lamenting the loss of “American jobs” to overseas workers.
They should rally behind this enlightened change.
After all, isn’t it time to start thinking about things such as unemployment, medical care and poverty on a global scale?
We will never live in a world where every person can burn through the amount of resources that Americans take for granted. There won’t be a Cadillac Age for China.
For liberal humanists, the global redistribution of wealth should be something to triumph.
Those concerned about economic equity must realize we cannot have our cake and share it too.
We possess the world’s wealth and sharing it would mean giving some back. Living with less.
But, as is typical, NIMBY idealists abandon principle the moment they smell a threat to their bottom line.
While I’m sure the administration’s motives are anything but altruistic, it matters little to the impoverished majority of Earthlings. Karl Rove’s, I mean George Bush’s contention that outsourcing is good for the economy (economy being a euphemism for corporate, not individual wealth) is based on the same bad mojo as Reaganomics.
Certainly the widening reach of globalism is more a net than an umbrella – an expansion of the wage-slave feudalism we have grown to love. Consumer choice and mortgages for all.
But again, that distinction means little to an emergent middle class in poor countries.
I’ve spent four months in India, and it is nice to think that some of the hard working young men and women I met might find the opportunities they want.
Imagine a country one third the size of the United States with more than three times the population, about 1.1 billion today.
They want jobs as much as anyone, and thanks to Western cultural influences, DVD libraries and self-cleaning kitty litter boxes.
People are no longer just making your tennis shoes and digital watches, but writing software and manning call centers. Even journalism is being outsourced, with overseas workers doing research for several large media outlets.
We’ve had our run, we’ve had a good time. There are limits to growth. If we are going to be responsible world citizens, it might be time to grow up and stop hogging the lifeboat.
And for those who want to oust Bush, hasn’t he provided enough, less morally ambiguous, ammunition? What with the compulsive lying and all?
Kenneth Todd Ruiz, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at kruiz@ulv.edu.
