Page 42 - Like No Business I Know

The Outsourcer’s Apprentice

owners of capital, as is implicit in the structure of capitalism. Marx
understood that, but only from the viewpoint of his utopian dialectic.
But when labor is contracted for at the lowest wage offered (or the
highest that can be demanded), then supply and demand economics
operate unimpeded; when everyone contracts for anything—food,
medical aid, housing—it will be on the same basis; the equality of the
marketplace at last will be established. No more artificial demand
distorting wages and prices. That is the ultimate end of outsourcing;
no unions, no guaranteed medical coverage, no government controls
of working conditions; no loyalty to anything but one’s own skills,
including, of course, bare-knuckle manipulation of everything
possible—formerly known as socialism for the rich: subsidies, tax
loopholes, lobbying, influence peddling, graft and corruption—all
extensions of one’s skill at getting the most for your labor.”
A couple of the more highly-educated members of the group
began frowning. This was taking the vessel of their mentation into
uncharted and choppy waters very quickly. Was this a brave new
world or the old one seen through a cracked lens? But Tommy was
getting into his subject, a fine sheen of perspiration anointing his
brow.
“It is merely ironic that the goal of all that individual effort, of
course, is to end one’s own self-reliance by outsourcing every aspect
of one’s own physical support, the traditional goal of the wealthy, at
the lowest possible cost. The post-World War II equity in real
income increases across all classes of American society was an
aberration leading to the excesses of the Sixties and the crisis in
‘values.’ But resurgent capitalism is leading us out of the swamp.
Everyone self-reliant again! Great fortunes to be made! Servants once
more affordable! The scales will fall from our eyes, and before us will
stand the new corporation: multi-national—answerable to no
government’s bureaucratic regulations—with a minimum number of
traditional employees. The ideal, according to the theory, is an
outsourced cyber/virtual management consultant dealing with other
outsourcers, reporting directly to shareholders—who are represented
in proxy by an outsourced board of directors, whose members are
themselves outsourcers outsourcing their participation.”
Robin Steele felt his head spinning.

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