In defence of outsourcing

Lastly, large economies are often their own biggest markets. Exports account for 10 percent of GDP in the United States (which is currently the world's largest economy), compared to 43 percent in South Korea and Switzerland, 36 percent in New Zealand and 28 percent in France. This position is mostly a function of America's size, at 300 million people, and its wealth, with a GDP of $10tn. As China's 1.3 billion citizens grow in affluence, Chinese companies are bound to find that China is its biggest market.

As Asian economies grow, programmers are going to be too busy serving their own markets to offer much competition for American or European software projects. It is in the interest of Western programmers, therefore, that Asian economies develop as fast as possible.

Company competitiveness matters
Many who oppose outsourcing offer no alternative means to make up for the cost savings missed by a refusal to outsource. This matters, because modern companies compete on a global stage. Unless every company in the world decides to forego use of lower-cost software developers, companies that fail to outsource will make themselves less competitive.

Furthermore, consider the importance of software within modern business. Software is critical to the efficiency of even small companies, irrespective of industry. By forcing companies to pay more for Information Technology solutions, countries make their companies that much weaker.

One of the problems with America's recent steel tariffs (now removed) was that it benefited 0.5 percent of the economy (steel production industries) at the expense of 13.1 percent (steel consuming industries, such as automobile manufacturing). The cost of forcing companies to pay more for software would be even greater, as far more industry uses software than consumes steel. This leads to a weaker economy that produces fewer jobs overall.

In short, preventing companies from outsourcing merely impoverishes the many to benefit the few.