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JOBS, MICROSOFT & THE NET - Recently on "Talk of the Nation," Juan Williams had a panel of experts speaking on the future of jobs in America. Among them was, of course, Tom Peters. They went on and on about the future of high-tech jobs, employment related to the Internet, the economics and business potential of the Web, and on and on. They spoke disparagingly of the old Soviet Union, of traditional industries, of unions and of people who were not educated beyond high school. And they spoke with metaphysical certainty about the next ten, fifteen, twenty, even fifty years.
The owner of Microsoft spoke to a congressional committee about jobs and about the scarcity of good people to fill the empty slots throughout the high-tech world. He wants to import foreign workers with the Microsoft style "personal services contract," whereby he would pay them as little as he could, for performance and production that could only be achieved through sweatshop working conditions.
The owner of Microsoft went on to describe how excited the young engineers and technicians and programmers were as they came on board at Microsoft, to contribute to the successes of the company. If these engineers, technicians and programmers were so bright, why would they allow this hollow, shallow man to pay them a small fraction of what their efforts are worth - pay them $65,000 a year for work that he turns into tens of millions of dollars worth of profit?
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This man has exploited every contact he has made, starting with the "disk operating system" (DOS) for which he paid a pittance and added only a few cosmetics and reaped (that's "reaped") billions; extending to his "graphic user interface" (GUI) which he reverse-engineered from successful competitors; and including that oxymoron or all oxymorons, "Microsoft Works."
Well, this may all come to an end with the decision of Justice Thomas Penfield Jackson. But it need not. If the owner of Microsoft were smart enough to realize that he needs those programmers from India and Indonesia and put them through his sweatshop policies, he should also be smart enough to move all of Microsoft to India. You know, I even like the look of it: the owner of Microsoft in a Nehru jacket, surrounded by sari-clad secretaries, contemplating the many levels of reality. What is the word for "gate" in Hindi?
And those job predictors, the business futurologists: They ridicule the old Soviet style of work and reward, yet the Soviet Union had universal health care when the U.S. of A. had [and has] none.
There is a yearning in the old Soviet Union for the good old days of pensions paid on time, apartment rentals at twelve percent of earnings, subsidized food.
It was not the President of the U.S. of A. that brought down the Communist leadership of Moscow, Warsaw and Berlin: it was their brave citizens who thought that a change to the Western styles would make them prosperous - as the West was prosperous.
Now they are finding out that most of the people in the West are not prosperous: large numbers live in the streets, honest laboring folks must get by with food stamps, most people live from paycheck to paycheck.
When the citizens of this country begin to find out to what extent their political leadership is bought and sold by the financial and industrial leaders of the world, they might also set them aside - the politicans AND the financial and industrial leaders.
Successful government is built on the consent of the governed, right? So what happens when fewer than one half of the eligible voters register to vote, and when thirty percent of the registered voters actually vote, and when fifteen percent of the adults in this country are electing our politicians? Is that sufficient consent of the governed? (A recent run-off in North Carolina marked a twenty percent participation by the electorate - so we are now down to about ten percent doing the electing.)
Such confidence in predicting the future! by experts, none of whom predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, etc.
There is too much poverty, too little health care, too little wealth in the hand of the common worker, in the U.S. of A. to believe that this can continue indefinitely or as is, or for even another twenty or fifty years.
The U.S. of A. came together some two hundred plus years ago through a series of circumstances, happenstances and luck. Another series of circumstances, happenstances and luck could undo it all and result in an altogether different configuration: several countries, multiple capitols, economic and social chaos. When and how could this happen? Don't ask me.
Ask those professional futurologists who missed the fall of the Soviet Union. They must have learned by now.
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