Outsourcing Outrage from the Freedom Haters
by Greg Perry by Greg Perry
Labels are nice. I’ve noticed that most LewRockwell.com readers don’t fear labels. They call a neocon a neocon. Many readers call themselves Libertarians and do so proudly. Some devoted LewRockwell.com readers disagree with Libertarians on some issues but agree on most. They often label themselves Christians. Some call themselves Liberals but only in the classic sense of the word.
Labels are good. If someone tells me he is a Libertarian, I know a lot about that person and about how I can frame a conversation. That one word gives me a strong clue on likes, dislikes, agreements, and disagreements. I know from that one label what we have in common. Knowing that label typically makes for a more productive conversation.
That’s why I prefer labels. I like nouns and adjectives. I guess it’s the author inside me. I don’t want to toss nouns and adjectives out of our language. They seem to exist for a good reason.
A Note to Public School English Teachers
I realize there might be public school teachers reading this who teach English. If so, I understand you will be confused. Don’t panic! I’ll explain things here just for you.
A noun is a part of speech that names a person, animal, place, thing, or idea. For any public school English teacher reading this, please note that Libertarian is a noun in the following sentence:
The homeschooled Libertarian easily won the grammar contest between her and the public school English teacher.
An adjective modifies a noun in some way. An adjective is said to quantity, qualify, or describe nouns (and other parts of speech such as pronouns). (What a pronoun is will be left as an exercise to the reader.)
In the following sentence, you need to understand that Libertarian is now used as an adjective:
The Christian used Libertarian and Biblical arguments to prove that the government has neither the right nor the ability to educate children.
Leftists (also known as Democrats and Republicans)
About the only people who hate labels today are today’s liberals — the leftists. They hate labels when applied to themselves. They don’t like being called liberals and leftists. That’s why I call them liberals and leftists.
Micro Outsourcing
Of all the label people I read and listen to, the only label people who sound consistent to me on the subject of outsourcing are the Libertarians (and several Christians).
They seem to understand that the laws of supply and demand are about as difficult to violate as the laws of gravity and velocity.
To all the rest who despise the thought of outsourcing, I have some questions for you. I have a lot to learn from you because I’ve never understood how outsourcing in and of itself is evil.
- Do you buy American-made as often as you can? I’ve heard that this protects American jobs.
- If you buy American-made as often as possible, shouldn’t you voluntarily give money to those who work at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and other stores that primarily sell foreign-made goods? If not, you are taking away from those American workers. Why don’t you really care about American jobs?
- How much do you want to help those in your own state as opposed to those other states, you know, some of the kind-of foreign states such as California and Massachusetts? Sure, we’re all Americans but some are more American than others (like the ones who "only buy American"). If you don’t buy products made in your state, shouldn’t you try harder to help those who live around you? Your close friends will appreciate it if you buy products that help your state’s economy as opposed to sending money outside your great state.
- But what if you live close to a county line as I do? Do I buy inside my own county? Most of my family lives in the other county. So do I help my immediate family by buying within the county I live in or do I help my larger, extended family by purchasing goods and services in their county?
- Almost everybody I interact daily lives in my town. So now that I’m learning more from you about this outsourcing evil, perhaps I should stop buying products that might be made in my county but not made in my specific town. After all, if my friend who lives 2 miles from me will benefit when I hire him to cut down a tree, then I should hire him even though a lawn service that resides in the next town over (still inside our county) does the job much quicker and for far less money. After all, outsourcing is not a money issue it’s a freedom issue, right? Why should I reward people I don’t know if it means friends of mine might need jobs?
- You know, I might agree with you that we should buy on our own soil and get goods and services produced within our own town. Sales tax revenue stays here and isn’t that what really matters? Making as much sales tax revenue as possible to give those in our own town a helping hand? But you need to understand that I am very close to the neighbors in our neighborhood. I don’t know those rascals who live on the other side of the highway. And now that I’m thinking this through, I probably won’t like them very much anyway. I’m sitting here getting steamed because they’re over there trying to take jobs away from my neighbors. Please advise me, I think we should stop sending jobs over to the next neighborhood making them rich when our own neighborhood suffers as a result.
- Of course, then there’s my wife to consider. If I limit my buying to goods and services that only my neighbors can produce, I’m taking opportunity away from my wife. Perhaps if I didn’t outsource that labor to my neighbor, my wife would have work. (When I married her 16 years ago, I rescued her from teaching in the government schools and she’s been a homemaker ever since. Leftists would want her to work. Leftists hate women.) I don’t want to outsource jobs to my neighbor if it means my wife might be left out of the job-bidding process. Shouldn’t I only buy goods and services that my wife provides? Sounds good; I’d love for her to wash my truck.
- If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the outsourcing debate, it’s this: never send a job elsewhere when it can be done right here a lot more expensively, a lot less efficiently, and far less reliably. I shouldn’t hire my wife to wash my truck. Why should SHE benefit when I can do the work? That would ensure that the job doesn’t go elsewhere but remains right here where it benefits Good Ol’ ME.
Thanks for your help! I will perform every service I need and produce every good I need in the future. Perhaps some division of labor issues will rear up at times but how difficult can it be? If the xenophobes (er, I mean enemies of outsourcing) are correct, it means a job stays where it really matters, and that’s right here with ME.
Nuts to those foreigners who live overseas!
Nuts to those who live out of state, some are in a different voting color as my state.
Nuts to those who live in other counties as they take away tax revenue from mine.
Nuts to those who live in my town but steal jobs from my poor neighborhood and give those jobs to less costly workers who might live on the other side of the tracks.
Nuts to those who live in my neighborhood who would take a job that my wife could do.
Nuts to my wife, what about ME?
The Final Solution
The buck starts and stops here. I will only use goods and services that I can produce.
I’ll start with something simple.
Really simple.
