Kiss Your Cubicle Goodbye
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india.html
Kiss it goodbye? Or good riddance?

Meet the United States’ newest faux victim in its long line of faux victims – the American programmer and information technology employee. Ever since this month’s Wired Magazine placed an attractive Indian female on the cover along with the words “Kiss Your Cubicle Goodbye,” the idea that American high tech workers are facing desolation as more and more of their jobs are outsourced to Indian “IT Farms,” has been granted a degree of undeserved legitimacy. Expect to hear more and more about this as the year progresses and millions of more Indian workers and American businesses benefit from these cost saving initiatives.

In fact, I know some of those facing this desolation. My old company, CIENA, recently laid off a significant number of engineers and replaced the team with an Indian outsourcing company at 25% of the cost. And while there is undoubtedly a short-term discomfort with any layoff, the word is, almost all of those employees have found new and improved employment.

Just like Mexican workers who come to the United States to “steal our jobs,” the cost savings afforded to American businesses make us “leaner and meaner,” freeing up American capital and talent to create ever more interesting opportunities for all of us. There are currently a billion people in India and a billion more in China who will continue to “steal” our jobs. I wish there were a trillion of them.

At the dawn of the computer age, many intelligent people preached gloom and doom; altruistically warning us to beware of a future race of supercomputers which would obsolete human beings and drive the entire world’s wealth into the fewer and fewer hands that could still afford them. This notion was (and remains) derived from Marxist economic theory which states that the end game of capitalism is a greater concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands while every day, more and more people are left by the wayside. That millions of people still cling to this theory is pure blasphemy to reality. Rather than being left by the wayside, millions are getting in on this good action ($).

These sorts of people said the same thing about industrial machinery replacing farm labor. Raise your hand if you would rather be tilling the soil right now or reading my blog.

Trade and new technology has always freed us up to lead more and more interesting lives. If you want to spend your time degrading the very freedom that has given you the time to contemplate and share your disfigured view of reality, that is your prerogative.

Throughout history, there have been certain subversive individuals chiefly responsible for creating, cultivating and finally manipulating particular groups of people to achieve their own ends – and one of the most effective tools for cultivating masses behind a would-be dictator’s cause is to paint that person as a victim. A victim of “the system,” a victim of “race,” of “the Jews,” of “the almighty dollar,” of “religious persecution,” of “technology,” of your “parents,” of “men,” of “gun manufacturers,” “a fast food culture,” and on and on.

This latest uproar over Asian labor simply needs to be identified for what it is. The manipulators desire to curb the individuality out of some of the most individualistic members of the new economy – the computer geeks. I am not falling for it.

This nonsense will eventually cease. I look forward to seeing this culture of victimization becoming the final victim.