NYCPHP Meetup

[Jayesh Sheth]

Hello all,

I know this has evolved into something not directly related to PHP, but 
I would like the opportunity to respond.

John wrote:

 >I won't argue that we have done *enough*, but
 >the average American knowledge worker can justify going to work and
 >living a decent life, and many of them feel guilty about less fortunates
 >and do try to help them with donations and support. Now when we see
 >India and we see "knowledge workers" zipping along on motorbikes to good
 >jobs, and outsourcing entrepreneur millionaires boasting of their
 >castle-like compounds, with *extreme* poverty widespread, and many, many
 >living with the relative equivalent of slaves in their families' homes,
 >we judge them for their values. Golddiggers come to mind, and the
 >Goldrush mentality. People who behave like that are often scorned. They
 >are choosing to shop for Prada on the streets of a city world famous for
 >street poverty. We are choosing to shop for Prada on streets famous for
 >entrepreneurial opportunity (so famous, it is a target for anti-American
 >and anti-capitalist terrorism).

I grew up in a city where children would beg on the street, where many 
had not enough to eat. But many of the poor and the lower-middle class 
did dream of a better life, and many of them succeeded. My grandfather 
was not born into a rich family. His family was not poor, but they were 
not rich either. He established himself as an honest businessmen, and 
refused to buy into the speculation and mania that often visited the 
Indian stock markets. His honesty and hard work paid off, and today, it 
should suffice to say that my uncles are carrying on well in his shoes.

In the middle ages, and even until seventy five years ago, there was 
much scorn for Jews. For it was Jews who ruled the world, or so people 
claimed. In Germany, in 1938, the caricature of the Jew as the thieving, 
greedy businessman is what justified the destruction that occurred on 
Kristallnacht ("night of the broken glass").

If one is living in poverty and misery, should not one attempt to rise 
above it? Is it not the common desire that binds all of us humans - 
regardless of faith or ethnicity - the desire to improve our own lot?

If one is surrounded by poverty, then it would seem out of place to 
drive around in a big car, or with fine clothes on. But are you saying 
that just because India is poor it should stay poor? Should the Indian 
government mandate that people who gain wealth be forced to give it all 
up in a redistribution of it so that everyone is equally poor? The 
history of capitalism has shown us that it produces a world that is not 
perfect - but it has also shown that socialism is not the answer either.

It is a moral obligation to help those less fortunate than oneself - but 
that obligation cannot be mandated by the government. The best the 
government can do in such a case is to collective risks, by taxing the 
rich more, and by using the money gained from that tax to provide health 
insurance and job-loss insurance to all.

It is true that child-labor is prevalent in India. But does that mean 
that the cloud of child labor should obstruct a more educated or 
fortunate child from using skills to sell credit cards to Hummer-driving 
Americans in New York?

It is easy to write off India as a country with a few rich people who 
use the rest of the country as slave labor; it is easy to write off the 
desire for gaining profit as a corrupt and morally reprehensible act. 
But in the human desire to survive, the act of offering something of 
value - a service of good - in exchange for money is perhaps one of the 
noblest ways to survive. We should rise beyond the typical condemnation 
of profit-seeking as being only good enough for those who live in a 
society that can afford it. Profit-seeking which is carried out in an 
honest fashion, and which is driven by honest, hard work cannot be a bad 
thing.

 >
 >Of course we similarly scorn our corporate theiven, overpaid CEOs and
 >monpolistic robber-barrons. It is argued that theose people are not the
 >norm, and many argue they are a necessary evil for a hierarcical system.
 >How many stories can India produce where street poor from the lowest
 >caste became jet-set millionaires based on their cunning, luck,
 >ingenuity, and hard work? We can count hundreds of thousands at least...
 >too many to try and count. If you say it is too soon, ok. But do we have
 >faith that the Indian social system will encourage such equal
 >opportunity? Our system is biased by corruption, and we had our
 >robber-barrons, but our system is not (yet) systematic corruption.

In the recent embarrassing (bumbling) interview with Carole Coleman (of 
RTE), Bush had a single good thing to say: "I should not be talking 
about the speck in your eye, when I have a log in mine". Behind the 
veneer of the most perfect economy and society of the world, America has 
its problems. It is both dangerous and self-deluding to assume that 
America is the perfect example for the world to follow. America has one 
of the most unequal economies of the Western world. If you look at some 
statistics ( 
http://www.worldrevolution.org/Projects/Features/Inequality/USInequality.htm 
), the top 1% of American own as much wealth as the bottom 95% Does this 
inequality give American less of a right to improve their lot?

 >You call it "the bright light of the Indian spring" and we know it as a
 >spark. Unless nurtured carefully and with respect, it ain't gonne be a
 >bright light of spring for long. When I see (and I do see) Indian
 >outsourcing entrepreneurs hawking their cheap labor at every network
 >meeting in high-tech North Jersey, I dislike them for their agressive
 >gold-rush demeanor, and their detachment from the social issues. It is
 >all about money for them. Will I do business with them? Yeah, the next
 >time I want to do business that is all about money (PS: I never do
 >business that is all about money).

Again - one has to be careful with the stereotype of the Indian 
businessman here. It is easy to assume that the work done in India 
cannot be good as the work done here. There are constraints that make it 
harder for companies providing outsourced services to compete well: 
there is an enormous demand for skilled technology and knowledge workers 
in India, making retaining people very hard. Secondly, the fact that 
they have to rely on the phone, email and IM rather than a quick 
face-to-face chat makes things harder. But presenting a stereotype of 
the typical Indian as being the same as that of the greedy Jew (as 
present in Germany in 1938) hawking sub-standard wares with the singular 
drive toward profit and profit alone is both unsettling and dangerous.

I hope that outsourcing does not bring on the (much anticipated) clash 
of civilizations.


 >And I went to graduate school with Indian students who already had 4 and
 >5 Master's degrees, working on their next. I went with Taiwanese
 >students of "Environmental Engineering" who earned top grades yet had no
 >interest at all in anything but the computer business. Would I hire
 >someone who had 5 Master Degrees? Nope. Would I hire the guy with a
 >passion for the computer business, if I needed an environmental
 >engineer? Nope. What's the point? I don't know many managers who would
 >hire someone off Craig's List. If that's where you compete, good for
 >you. But do you really expect to find top people advertising on Craig's
 >list for $500 internships?

I personally know of people (friends, family members) being hired by 
small businesses who advertised on Craiglist. My point is that the 
current unemployment and economy statistics being bandied about the Bush 
administration do not reflect reality; most of the growth in the current 
and past quarter can be attributed to company profit growth (about 50%, 
I think) rather than workers' wage growth (1%, I think).


 >It's not the market (yet). It's an entrepreneurial experiment on a large
 >scale, feeding the low end of demand for anonymous workers. It will
 >correct, and then we will see what fits where.

While technology outsourcing does not necessarily work for all 
companies, it has been going on in full force for at least eight years 
now. While some companies have not been successful with it, some clearly 
have. It is unfair, I think, to define any kind of outsourced work as 
being of poor quality. It is harder to provide outsourced labor at a 
very level of quality for the reasons that I outlined above, but still I 
am sure there are some companies in America which are happy with the 
outsourced services they have received. If companies continually lost 
money on it, they would stop doing it.

 >>> For the last one hundred years, America has seen a dramatic growth in
 >>> prosperity. Perhaps now it is time for other nations to stake their
 >>> claim at the same thing.
 >
 >Yawn.
 >
 >It's not a serial game, and America has not the monopoly. Now if you
 >want to adjust your culture and >1 billion person consumer markets to
 >mirror ours (I think they call it "westernizing") then hey, guess what?
 >Your  consumer market starts to look just like ours, and we can sell
 >into it and perhaps even dominate it! Woohoo! But are consumer markets
 >everything? What about ancient Greece and Rome, Egyptia, other former
 >leading civilizations? Are they remembered for their Coke's, their Big
 >Mac's, and their Chia Pets?

One can talk about the last impact of great cultures, or of how great 
societies should be defined by their great works of art and towering 
museums. But all those great institutions would not be fundable without 
a society grounded on relative equality and prosperity. One has to stop 
viewing the acquisition of material wealth as being inherently evil. It 
is not a sin to be well fed, to have a home that one can call one's own, 
and to have a bit of money saved under the bed for the time when one is 
no longer able to work. What one has to be wary of is societies that on 
the surface appear to be vibrant, but underneath possess foundations 
that are rotting from the slow drip of diversion of public money into 
neo-fascist military expansion at the expense of health care and shared 
risks for all. No society is perfect, but please: let us applaud those 
who want to make a better life for themselves through hard work and honest.

 >Very interesting stuff for a PHP talk list, for sure. I've got a
 >free-as-in-software beer for Jay any time he wants to claim it.

Thanks for the offer, I might take you up on it.



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