From the NYT, a short blurb on an aspect of offshoring that has always troubled me: over the long run, can invention and design be separated from production? As I’ve understood the theory, the answer was supposed to be yes – industrialized economies would remain the brains of the operation, and the brawn would be moved to lower cost locations. But creativity, it has always seemed to me, first requires an intensive familiarity with the nuts and bolts. Only then can one abstract oneself to the degree required to see the bigger picture and innovate. And so I’ve often wondered; by offshoring production, are we inevitably offshoring innovation too? (Ghastly realization: if we do, what’s left will be bankers, advertisers, lawyers and masseurs. Is this a world worth living in?).
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The basic assumption of offshoring that you cite – “us” is the brains and “them” is the brawn – comes from a deeply rooted combination of colonialist and Taylorist thinking. This is far from surprising, since it is a theme that permeates contemporary business management schools and training. North American business could have taken a lesson from the Japanese experience over the past five decades in which “Made in Japan” was originally understood to mean “cheaply manufactured goods” but now conveys “highest quality engineering and innovation,” (although, arguably, “Made in South Korea” conveys a similar quality). But North American business is very slow to learn, it seems, and are facing a similar lesson in much greater scale with China and India. Chinese manufacturing technologies are now equal to or beyond the capabilities of North American, and we are hearing reports in some of the business journals of innovative Chinese engineering and design that did not come from the order-placers in North America.
Your ghastly realization is worse than the vision you portray: We in North America will also be left with clueless politicians who live in reality-resistant bubbles.