{"id":2751,"date":"2003-05-13T14:25:07","date_gmt":"2003-05-13T08:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alpha.ravikiran.com\/blog\/2003\/05\/13\/more-weird-arguments\/"},"modified":"2003-05-13T14:25:07","modified_gmt":"2003-05-13T08:55:07","slug":"more-weird-arguments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/vintage\/200305\/more-weird-arguments\/","title":{"rendered":"More weird arguments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read this<\/a> and cringe. The author is a Professor at IIM Bangalore. <\/p>\n

When the dissent globaliser rants, she faces a slight disadvantage – she convinces no one<\/i> who isn’t already a convert to her cause. But articles like the one above give the superficial impression of actually making sense, because the author has put in a lot of tables and diagrams, and argues using what looks like logic.<\/p>\n

He starts off by citing the famous New Jersey law which forbi?s (public?) companies from outsourcing their call center operations outside US. He ends by accusing the US of wanting to balkanize India. In between he performs a large number of logical somersaults.
Such resistence to opening up markets is not new. There was similar whining when factories shifted out of the US. There is similar whining about global financial integration. But he obfuscates the issue by saying that “Product Market globalisation is fine” and “Financial Integration is fine”, implying that there is something unique about what is happening in New Jersey. Of course, he never actually takes a stand on whether globalisation as such is good for India or not. He only sneers at “US hypocrisy”*.<\/p>\n

So now the trend of outsourcing is picking up. Why? Because the demographics of the US and Europe are changing. Population growth has slowed, so now they have a shortage of young people who are willing to work, and this trend is likely to continue. Valid point. So why is there a resistance? <\/p>\n

Remember that the unemployment rates for the below-25 age group are 30% for Italy, 21% for France, 9% for USA and 12% for UK during 2000. Hence this would make nation states in the west unhappy with the global corporations.<\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He doen’t notice the contradiction at all!<\/i> If there is a shortage of young people, why is there such high unemployment? There might be some explanations (hint: normal business cycles, bad government policies, etc.) which explain the contradiction, but not noticing it is inexcusable. <\/p>\n

Then comes this:<\/p>\n

USA has been traditionally unwilling to be dependant on any others, be it for oil or wheat or cotton or milk or silver. They would not like to be significantly and critically dependent on other countries even at a cheap price. Plus the ageing Europe, are unattractive partners to them particularly after the fall of Russia. <\/p>\n

This gives raise to the following possibilities. One possibility is to create huge “Offshore” labour centres like financial centres. But these may not be within the “control” of the USA as a nation state. One possibility is to encourage a large inflow of such skilled professionals into USA from India, but the events following 9\/11 are proving that it is not going to be a solution adopted by USA. <\/p>\n

As of now, USA is not very good in differentiating between unwanted Jihadis and desirable coding coolies. In other words, USA is trying to adopt “restrictive” migratory policies particularly from brown and black countries. Maybe the “melting pot” really melted along with the World Trade Centre! <\/p>\n

Another way for the USA to deal with this issue is to create smaller “nation states” with which it will be easier to deal with. Look at the fate of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. India is a “good candidate” to be split up. That would also be in the interest of large corporations since smaller length of arms to twist and lesser palms to grease.
<\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the omnipotent US broke up the USSR and Yugoslavia, and is trying to break up India so that it can gain access to cheap labour it does not want. It is willing to gain control of and administer entire countries because it is finding it difficult to properly screen immigrants at its borders.
Wow. <\/p>\n

*This is a common tactic. Accuse the US of “hypocrisy” and you don’t need to take a stand. So if the US accuses you of violating human rights, turn around and point out that the US isn’t perfect. That way you don’t have to answer the question of whether you are torturing and killing your own people.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read this and cringe. The author is a Professor at IIM Bangalore. When the dissent globaliser rants, she faces a slight disadvantage – she convinces no one who isn’t already a convert to her cause. But articles like the one above give the superficial impression of actually making sense, because the author has put in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}