alt text: 18 of our 40 employees are located in the Philippines. Insanely competent, great judgement, and $5 per hour. If you run a small business and don't have overseas help you're at a disadvantage
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
601 points (97.9% liked)
LinkedinLunatics
3469 readers
3 users here now
A place to post ridiculous posts from linkedIn.com
(Full transparency.. a mod for this sub happens to work there.. but that doesn't influence his moderation or laughter at a lot of posts.)
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Using your analogy, you can argue that training and work experience provided by a foreign company is like building ports, roads, or other infrastructure that is necessary for trade. Infrastructure, as long as it's used well, is undeniably good for a country.
Also, if wages were based on net revenue generated from a worker, that would 1. be impossible to measure, and 2. remove any incentive for a company to hire Filipino workers.
Another issue is that you really can't build a country efficiently like the way you describe it. Trade is necessary to get good technology, and investment is needed to get said technology within your country's borders. Effectively banning trade is just like shooting yourself in the foot and getting your other 3 limbs chopped off.
That is why it is not a perfect analogy. Training, skills, and information are not specifically a foreign resource. It is not something that is generously provided to 3rd would countries by places like the US. There's why these can't be cultivated domestically. Not to mention most exported labor isn't exactly "skilled labor" (hate that term but it gets the point across).
Wages being based on net revenue generated from a specific worker would be difficult to calculate but it wouldn't be so hard to distribute profits among types of labor based on their value to the company. Though I don't think thats a solution at all, I don't think companies should exist and I don't think the profit motive should exist to be clear; I'm just trying to argue within the bounds of capitalism here.
I never said anything about not trading, trade is incredibly important because not every nation can manufacture everything domestically. Not every nation has every resource etc etc. letting foreign "investors" control your labor force and direct your economy is however, a terrible idea. Its a short term solution to long term problems. Unfortunately not every country has much of a choice though.