On 1/15/08, Darren New <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Bob La Quey wrote:
> > One needs only look at the high percentages of immigrants
> > and the immediate children of immigrants in science and
> > engineering to see what a large advantage this is. It is
> > ironic in a way that so many immigrants see an advantage
> > to a career in science or engineering as compared to the
> > native born Americans.
>
> You need to ask yourself why those immigrants chose to come to the USA
> instead of any of the many other places they could have gone, including
> China and India.
Two reasons:
1) Historically economic opportunity has been better in the USA
2) The USA has had relatively liberal immigration policies.
Very few of these immigrants come here for political or ideological reasons.
It is quite mistaken to suggest otherwise.
> I would also ask myself why ASCII is so ubiquitous. :-)
Because English is the second language of choice for most
of the world and the first language of economics. It started
with the British Empire, which along with the rest of the
colonial empires the USA replaced after WW II.
ASCII does a pretty good job with English and is
simpler than the alternatives, eh?
> > While I agree about the fact of a rich and thriving
> > entrepreneurial market I am not sure this makes an
> > important contribution to this being a good place for
> > software engineering. Perhaps you would elaborate.
>
> Because being good at what you do is rewarded. When you're one of the
> best, and you can go anywhere you want, where do you go? Likely to the
> place where excellence is best rewarded and many other excellent people
> already are.
That is a pretty simple minded view of entrepreneurship. :)
You may go on believing that if you want to. But I have a life
experience that has embraced both success and failure,
and more importantly seen that of many other people.
I see a much more complex reality. The USA is very hard
on its most creative people. The pioneers are as likely to get
arrows in their backs as to be rewarded. I would, for instance,
much rather be a poet in almost any of the Spanish speaking
countries to the south of us.
> >> - The USA has a declining currency (makes local labor cheaper)
> >
> > Yes but that may well be cyclic.
>
> Especially since the US has never thrown away all their money and
> started over. We still have the same currencies we started with 200
> years ago. (Well, other than that they're now fiat scrip instead of
> actual gold or something - I mean we still have pennies and dollars,
> rather than having the smallest coin being 1000 lira or having "new
> pesos" because the old pesos were worthless.)
A good observation. And if you think about it a remarkable achievment.
> > Generally the USA has for decades benefited from the brain drain
> > of talent from poorer countries, i.e. many of those immigrants. But
> > as those countries move up the economic ladder the USA becomes
> > less attractive.
>
> This is true.
>
> > I wonder what the numbers for educated Indians look like
> > now that better opportunities are opening up in India?
>
> I understand that India isn't getting nearly as much outsourcing from
> the US at this point either, because the overhead is no longer offset by
> the cheap prices.
But increasingly they can develop their own markets and those of the rest
of Asia so that outsourcing from the USA becomes less important.
I do believe that there is much more than economics in operation
here. National chuvanism and simple class phenomena still count for
a lot.
Further I see any serious software project is naturally divisible
into two parts: Definition and Implementation. Definition is hard
to outsource depending as it does on the "customer" who often
must be worked with face to face. Implementation OTOH is
realtively easy to outsource if one has a good solid definition,
which is, of course, a _big_ if.
BobLQ
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