It's not the White House, but the Brown House

Apparently, in Albert Brooks' last film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World there's someone in a call center in Delhi who answers the phone by saying: "This is the White House. How may I direct your call?"

Timothy Noah, a Slate columnist, writes that

According to a study released in March by the Government Accountability Office, 48 states "offshore" at least some administration of federally funded, state-administered government programs, most of it in India and most of it involving welfare benefits. The GAO also found that states were offshoring some administration of child support enforcement and—in what seems like a cruel joke at the expense of American workers displaced by cheap foreign labor—unemployment insurance!

That is ironic, indeed. But this also means that the call center business in India is booming. I'm quite skeptical about the long-term feasibility of the whole thing, though. Let me explain: Just the other day, I had a problem with my newly acquired Sony Vaio. The laptop was not detecting any wireless LAN. So I log in to chat with "Ricardo" who tells me (right off the bat) that I need to format my hard drive. I had just formatted it three days previously. To make a long story short, Ricardo didn't help at all. I figured out (through playing around) that the Vaio has its own Wireless Management Software and you have to activate the Wireless LAN using that software. That was my experience, but it's not just me. Apparently, a study performed to estimate people's satisfaction with telephone customer service found that 4% fewer people were satisfied than people given the same survey in 1976.

Maybe I'm just bitter, but I know that when I will be able to afford it, I'll pay for some quality customer support. Perhaps the call center phenom will subside for jobs which require some skill and knowledge (like computer support). Or perhaps the market will rise to the challenge. That remains to be seen. But right now, I'm pretty skeptical...

On the other hand, one thing that I'm certain about is that no matter how angry the American people get, THAT is definitely not going to be a factor in reducing outsourcing. Tibor Machan, a philosophy professor at Auburn University in Alabama writes:

One thing that underlies the complaints about globalization and capitalism is that these upset the status quo. Just after one has moved into a neighborhood, settled into a new home and placed one's kids into schools, joined a church, all of this can be turned upside down by an economic transition—the firm one works for is downsizing, is moving abroad, is outsourcing one's work, or something else akin to these. Not that this happens a lot but it can and that is scary to most folks.

Yet, at the same time, few people really prefer stagnation. When computers replaced typewriters, few protested. When CDs replaced cassettes, again there was but the faintest protest, mostly from those involved in manufacturing the obsolete product. ~And this has been going on for generations—the consuming public welcomes innovation, improvements on products and services that come from the encouraging conditions of free markets, while in some industries there is panic.

A clear-headed view of outsourcing and why its upsetting so many people here.