Creator of Netscape praises 'offshoring'

http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/business/2066196.html

(snip)

Andreessen then developed a commercial version of Mosaic, called Netscape, and quickly became a wealthy wunderkind. Now he is focused on his new software firm, Opsware Inc., a Silicon Valley-based provider of data-center automation and utility computing software. His products make it easier for U.S. companies to use workers in other countries -- a practice known as offshoring.

(snip)

Q: Why is it so great?

A: It fundamentally reduces the cost of goods and services for Americans. If I can get my tax return prepared for less money because the offshore labor is cheaper than the domestic labor, then as an American consumer, I'm better off.

At the same time, when American companies engage in offshoring, they increase their own competitiveness worldwide -- delivering the same product or service at a lower cost. That increases their ability to win in the world market.

(snip)

A: It goes both ways. We are offshoring jobs because of the labor cost differential, but on the other hand, they are offshoring jobs to the U.S. because of the skills that are here. A full 6.5 million Americans are currently employed by foreign companies.

Services exports from the U.S. are running right now at $131 billion a year. Services coming into the U.S. are at $77 billion a year. We're doing really, really well in services. We get nearly twice as much as we give out.

(snip)

Like so many of his ilk, he thinks little of the homeless, the dying and the hungry, as he is driven to his job in a large Mercedes by his chauffeur.

With regard to the consumer benefits, has the cost of software gone down in the past 5 years? The cost of health care? The cost of insurance?
Companies charge as much as they can.

The reason the dollar figure for service-exports exceeds service-imports is that workers in India are paid less.

That doesn't mean it good for our country when an American computer programmer is replaced with an Indian computer programmer.

He's part of the Right-Wing Big Money VC crowd now. Yes, I'm over-generalizing to make a point. Marc has been around the Sequoia crowd, specifically Mark Kvamme, whose father is Floyd Kvamme, one of the true pioneers of Silicon Valley. Floyd is now a special technology advisor to Shrub.

These people are very Right-Wing, and the Kvammes also have serious ties to faith-based (Christian, natch) businesses involved with the prison industry.

Looks like Marc wanted to play with big boys. As such, he needs to toe the line. To be fair, I could be wrong about Marc's intentions. I'm basing my thoughts on appearances and what I know of the crowd he's in (or at least partially in).

-- on edit: hit the wrong reply-to link. I just meant to respond to the thread in general. Not enough coffee yet. --

If I'm among the long-term unemployed because my job was offshored, and I don't have an income to pay taxes on, what do I care if an accountant in India would charge me less to do my tax return? </sarcasm>

I could care less about this supposed privilege of shopping at Walmart and buying cheap plastic goods that were made in a sweatshop. Not everything in life can be boiled down to "buying cheaper stuff." Plus, my cost of living hasn't gone down - it goes up every year. You can't call this a free market unless workers here can actually make a living wage and compete on merit rather than cost alone. This whole situation sickens me anyhow - it reduces human beings to commodities, regardless of their nationality.

Andressen has money to burn. It's more than a little ironic that all of the praise for offshoing comes from the wealthy elite who profit from it.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I have worked only 6 months in the last three years, and if things don't get better by the end of the year, I'm f**ked. Part of the reason for this is that I foolishly believed in the old American myth about starting your own business. Being an ex-entrepreneur qualifies you for... well squat unless the labor market is tight. And actually I am holding my breath on this one. I've been saying since bush started the recession that the job market won't pick up until the second quarter of 2004. Why? Because only then does it have a political impact. A tight job market is a serious boon to US companies (read the real * constituency).

While running my own business (a cyber cafe/restaurant/art gallery) for 5 years from 1996 until 2001, I was on the wrong end of the hiring stick. It was impossible to get folks to take their job seriously. There simply was too much opportunity elsewhere for them to really care. Great for the country and it's citizens, but bad for big business, which had to ratchet up its offers to employees.

I'm looking for a wave of hiring to begin any time now, so * can tout his economic 'plan' as working (unlike so many of us). I've waxed my board and I'm ready catch that wave; I just hope it's a long ride. Something tells me that the wave will peter out sometime around January of 2005 unless Kerry is elected.

As for outsourcing, I have become a big opponent of completely open markets. They will trash the G7 economies for the benefit of a few international corporation's, which have no allegiances to anything except profit. I find it the height of arrogance that people who hold intellectual jobs in this country (ie, lawyers, writers, developers, accountants, managers, etc, etc) think that they will be spared hardships due to their superiority to the world market. What a bunch of bull. There are over 150 million well educated people in India alone. That may be more than the entire labor pool in the US for what once were white collar jobs. They can exist quite comfortably on 1/5th of what an American can. Five years from now, the Indians (et all) will be taking many , if not most of our livable wage jobs.

Am I playing the part of Chicken Little? I don't think so. Put yourself in the shoes of big business. If they can lower their costs by 30% or more and maintain the value of their product or services, then why the hell not? Particularly when their competition is doing it, then it almost becomes a business priority (which is where we are headed).

This issues is like the fight against cancer. The US govt got involved with that decades ago, because they were the only institution with the resources to take on the fight. Now the cancer is economic, and the pugs don't care (I'm rich, what does it matter to me?). One sick consolation: We will have the last laugh, either by stopping the insatiable greed, or welcoming former pugs into the ranks of poverty. If I had any money, I'm not sure which way I'd bet.

BTW, I used to be married to a millionaire (Democrat, believe it or not). Funny how the world turns...

...yet who was consistently unable to turn a profit.

Another demonstration of the New American Business Acumen, pioneered by Bush at Arbusto.

they outsource - our dental insurance is worse this year, they outsource.

Aside from clothing, including my new Converse jacket made in Swaiziland, which I only paid $9.00 for at Ross - those white collar jobs being sent to India and other places are not bringing down the price of my services.

Any child could realize that if people don't have jobs, they don't have money to purchase things. It won't matter if they are cheaper if you have no money.
They are destroying their own futures too but they are too greedy to even see it.

"Billionaire Pays Workers $1 an Hour"

Take this into consideration. According to the Washington Post Planeloads of injured soldiers return to the U.S. via Andrews Air Force Base nearly every day. Hundreds of soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and their bodies are all handled by the Pentagon's morgue in at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware-in fact, morticians are said to be in high demand by the National Guard across the country. How often do you hear about these stories? Almost never. The military has blocked press access to these locations because dead soldiers don't help election-year politics. Analysts, like Duke University Political Science professor Peter D. Feaver, predict that the death toll could eventually reach a tipping point. Public sentiments will turn against the war, and the current administration. More dead U.S. service people push us closer to the tipping point. No news about casualties in Iraq is good news.

Still, the Pentagon is beholden to the families of the dead and injured. Casualties must be reported, even if there is debate over the circumstances of a death or injury. So take the soldier out of the equation. Replace him with an Indian willing to risk his life for $20,000 per year. When the Indian dies, no voter in the United States will ever know.

We outsource our call centers, our computer programming, our manufacturing and even our medicine. Our lowest wage jobs are scraped up by immigrants and foreigners, willing to do what Americans are not. Outsourcing, blamed for stealing away millions of U.S. jobs, will be one of the hot-button topics in the Presidential election, yet there is still one bigger hot button topic: Death. Death trumps outsourcing when it comes to losing votes. Otherwise, we wouldn't pay mercenaries to die for our country in our frivolous wars -- we'd be willing to do it ourselves.
http://knotmag.com/?article=1145

June 2, 2000

Marc Andreessen faced a skeptical reception and a troupe of singing protesters in his address to Democratic lawmakers here today.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-241404.html?legacy=cnet

This article gives some insight into his political views before the 2000 election. He was a Gore supporter in 2000, I don't know who he's supporting in 2004 - hopefully Kerry.

This is all shockingly shortsighted, and nobody seems to call people on it. What needs to be addressed is the engine of our economy: people making decent wages that they spend and upon which they're taxed. This is like saying the best way to lose weight is to simply not eat; sure, it DOES work, in fact, you'll lose all your weight.

Maybe it's all some twisted and misguided attempt to stem the trade imbalance: since Americans won't be able to afford anything, we'll have to sell abroad...

Hey, it's as logical as any other explanation.

When will the White House and Greenspan make this connection?

More and more, my spirits dampen in the notion that all is part of the bottom line. I would like to believe my life meant more in this world than a mere cog in a wheel. Think of it, most people go to work 9-5, (sometimes more without overtime pay) to make just enough to pay for rent and all other living expenses, while spending a minuscule amount of their time on the more important things in life. It's no wonder people are so mentally unstable. We are literally breeding disaster and terrorism. Corporatism and its abuse of power in this world has been destroying us for too long.

they'd be offshoring the CEO and other top management jobs because it would "reduce the cost of goods and services for Americans". What a joke.

What do we do then?

MONEY!