Economic Lessons Learned

One of the fun things about some of the doom and gloomers in many fields is every once in a while they get called into account. The classic example was the famous bet between Paul Ehrlich (the only projection he has ever been close to right on was his projection of how many suckers would buy his doom and gloom books) versus Julian Simon. Simon bet Ehrlich that he could more accurately project the price of a marketbasket of commodities ten years hence - and he did. Simon had the gall to then try to get Ehrlich to double down on his bet for another decade - of course Ehrlich chickened out.

But there is an even better on that was in Wired in the last few days. It seems that Wired had a programmer who was upset about programming being moved offshore. In an article about four years ago, he yammered that gloablization would take away the livelihood of American programmers. He started a group called Information Technology Professionals Association of America whose job it was to protect against these supposed evils. He was the Lou Dobbs of programmers. But then something happened he found even more rewarding work as an analyst and software architect. His pay went up. So not he says "I don't view outsourcing as the big threat it was."

Ultimately the strength of the American system rests in its ability to train people who can do more than write code, or for that matter do all sorts of other tasks that require some creativity and ingenuity. That may not mean that the current moves toward standardized tests will help us continue to compete. But it should also be a caution to those who would immediately leap to protectionist measures to protect our way of life. Our way of life is based on a competitive model - where risk takers are rewarded. Kirwin concludes that "America may be stronger for" the competition that we have been forced to live with.