Protectionism for IT jobs? I think that it is a bad idea
There is InfoWorld article on movements in the US and Europe to set up protectionist laws to keep IT/computer jobs from being done in countries like India and Russia. This is fairly old news, but I must say that even though I find a few aspects of globalization onerous (mainly, not following environmental protection best practices), I have been saying for decades that the world is one big market (more or less).As a computer programmer and software designer who works remotely (I live in the mountains of Northern Arizona), I find myself very much in competition with much cheaper over seas labor (this is even after I have reduced my hourly rate to $20/hour). It woulld be easy for me to start contacting my Congresional representatives to express a desire for protectionist legislation, but that goes against my beliefs. I prefer trying to be competitive (with a lower rate, great writing skills for documentation, decades of experience, and no time zone problems).
In a global market, customers expect low cost and high quality. Fortunately, the Open Source software movement (if I can call it that :-) allows developers to drastically cut costs for infrastructure software.
One thing that this article points out is that some countries like India do not have consumer data privacy protection laws. This is certainly a concern; a few years ago, US companies were threatened with loss of European business because the US has relatively weak consumer privacy laws (large corporations make quite a bit of money slamming around consumer data). Other countries have even weaker laws than the US, or none at all.
10:48:00 AM 
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