We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Boeing’s Multi-Billion Outsourcing Fiasco

by Yves Smith from Naked Capitalism.
 We’ve repeatedly said that offshoring and outsourcing are often not the big cost-savers that the industry promoting them, Wall Street, and the stenographers among the business press would have you believe.
I live near Seattle and thus I hear a lot about Boeing's problems with cost overruns and delays which the author elaborates in this article. She attributes the cause to "hubris". 

I think that their are two main factors that account for dysfunctional outsourcing: the usual anti-union strategy and to develop support for the military-industrial complex's highly profitable wars. I think that the latter is probably the most important factor to account for the weakened state of anti-war opposition in the US. By spreading the jobs around the county, they build up political constituencies for more war spending. See this. Anti-war campaigns are successfully framed in the media as being anti-jobs. Political support for weapons spending continues even when the military establishment doesn't want particular weapons--see this.