Over at Modeled Behavior at Forbes, there’s a recent post on “Is Outsourcing American Jobs Wrong?”, and it caught my eye. I’m not precisely sure why I subscribe to Modeled Behavior, but it might have something to do with watching the thinking of economists at work. Anyway, this post caught my eye because it sounds like it’s going to be about ethics or morality, and I guess it was, though in a very economistic “let’s just add up all the utils and call it a day” kind of moral theorizing.
So, the argument is presented as a dialogue, and the meat of the thing looks like this:
[After a short discussion of how an American with disposable income is not morally blameworthy for choosing to donate the money to poor Chinese peasants instead of spending it on American-made goods and services] Mr. Ricardo: And neither is outsourcing. But more importantly, rich world charitable donations to China also aren?t lifting hundreds of millions out of desperate poverty like our willingness to trade with them and outsource to them is. If charitable donations to China were driving as much of an improvement in lives as trade, would you be arguing I am morally obliged to stop these charitable donations? Mr. Gephardt: No, I suppose I wouldn?t, but charity isn?t stealing jobs. Mr. Ricardo: So let me get this straight, if I shut down a factory, sell the parts, and donate the money to China is that stealing American jobs? Mr. Gephardt: Um? well, kind of. Mr. Ricardo: What if instead of the factor owner I am just a large consumer of the goods made there and I stop buying the stuff and donate the money instead to China, and as a result the factory must shut down and be sold for parts. Is that stealing American jobs? Mr. Gephardt: Well? I?m not really sure. Mr. Ricardo: Then I think you?ve accepted my point that outsourcing is not wrong.
Okay. There’s several things going on in this little post, and they’re all interesting.
First, we’re waving the magic wand of economics and turning every relationship between humans into a market interaction. It’s all arms-length — there are no special moral obligations in this scenario. So, we’re free to ignore any distracting little details like whether employers owe any moral duties to their employees; whether business owners owe any special moral duties to the locations where they site factories or shops; or whether citizens of one town, state, or country have any special moral obligations to citizens of the same place. That’s all clearly off the table as the sort of thing that impedes the proper working of markets. We sweep all that up as inefficient, distortionary, and irrational.
Second, even though all sorts of potential sources of moral obligation are out of bounds in this scenario, there’s this ghostly fiction floating over the whole thing that someone, somewhere might be motivated or inspired or influenced by the fact that offshoring American jobs might be good for Chinese peasants. Which, if it’s true, would be totally amazing. I would love to see some video of all these Bain guys sitting around a boardroom talking about how much good they’re going to do for the Chinese. “Mitt, I get that your plan will make the business 3% more profitable, but will it improve the living standards of Chinese peasants?”
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Here they are, celebrating another successful charitable effort on behalf of the Shandon province. (I should note that this picture is embarrassing and objectionable not because all these guys are white and have nice haircuts and suits, but because they’re posing with all this money but nothing else fun. Lingerie models, bottles of expensive booze, fancy cars — heck, even just poker cards and chips — that would make sense to America. This picture looks like these guys are excited about money as an end in itself, which is disgusting and creepy.)
Third, we’re characterizing the objections to offshoring as simply “stealing American jobs”. So we get to poke and prod at the “theft” notion, and obliquely make the argument that if anyone really deserves the job, it’s not the American in this scenario. Which is a pretty fun argument to use in a defense of capitalism, since we’re getting awfully close to conceding the point that it might even be morally right to take things from people and give them to people who need or deserve them more.
You’d think that saying:
Mr. Ricardo: So let me get this straight, if I shut down a factory, sell the parts, and donate the money to China is that stealing American jobs? Mr. Gephardt: Um? well, kind of.
…would open us up to “Well, what if the government came and took the factory, retained the American employees, and donated the profits to China — wouldn’t that be a morally superior outcome?”
And of course, the answer is “No, the factory owner has property rights in the factory that the government is obligated to respect.” Which means that the converse must also be true: the American job holder doesn’t have any rights to their job that the factory owner is obligated to respect. Also, the American city in which the factory is located doesn’t have any rights which the factory owner is obligated to respect.
And, having thrown that on the table, all of this Chinese peasant stuff can just go away — it’s not doing any work at all. The job doesn’t belong to the worker, it belongs to the employer, and he can do with it whatever he pleases. (How can he possibly steal his own job?) Move it, end it, pay more, pay less, pay nothing. Whether the outcome is morally preferable is completely irrelevant — after all, it’s not as if the owners of these factories are Bill Gates, trying to decide between buying another yacht for himself or mosquito nets for sub-Saharan Africa.
But maybe it suits their interest to think of themselves that way. And maybe that’s why logic like this appears in a blog at Forbes.
Hey guys, that thing you’ve chosen to do for your own self interest? Yeah, the one that’s really painful and wrenching for a bunch of the people you’re in existing, long-term relationships with? It turns out it’s pretty okay for a bunch of other people you don’t know. So, don’t feel so bad about it, okay? You’re doing the right thing.
On the other hand, we have that noted trade-unionist and radical Pope John Paul II, writing (in Latin!) things like:
When a firm makes a profit, this means that productive factors have been properly employed and corresponding human needs have been duly satisfied. But profitability is not the only indicator of a firm’s condition. It is possible for the financial accounts to be in order, and yet for the people ? who make up the firm’s most valuable asset ? to be humiliated and their dignity offended. Besides being morally inadmissible, this will eventually have negative repercussions on the firm’s economic efficiency. In fact, the purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons who in various ways are endeavouring to satisfy their basic needs, and who form a particular group at the service of the whole of society. Profit is a regulator of the life of a business, but it is not the only one; other human and moral factors must also be considered which, in the long term, are at least equally important for the life of a business.
The historical experience of the West, for its part, shows that even if the Marxist analysis and its foundation of alienation are false, nevertheless alienation ? and the loss of the authentic meaning of life ? is a reality in Western societies too. This happens in consumerism, when people are ensnared in a web of false and superficial gratifications rather than being helped to experience their personhood in an authentic and concrete way. Alienation is found also in work, when it is organized so as to ensure maximum returns and profits with no concern whether the worker, through his own labour, grows or diminishes as a person, either through increased sharing in a genuinely supportive community or through increased isolation in a maze of relationships marked by destructive competitiveness and estrangement, in which he is considered only a means and not an end.
This sort of thing wouldn’t fly at Forbes. Might make money seem less fun.