Why the USA is unsuitable for offshoring

There is much talk about the dangers of offshoring.

A classic recent example is CIO Magazine going on about dangerous foreign places. To see Bangkok at number two on that list is to know these people haven't been past the shores of the shining seas. I'm safer doing business there than in Atlanta. I was there (Bangkok, not Atlanta) during the recent uprising, with the media full of tanks in the streets. An ITIL author and I went within a few blocks of the action, viewing tourist attractions and having a nice cold beer. I'd have been more nervous in Los Angeles. (I have been to LA and Atlanta. Atlanta is one of the only places I've been in a bar brawl when I wasn't a barman - it turned out to be off-duty drunk white cops beating up a black guy. Ironically the other one was tourists vs. lady-boys in a beach-disco in southern Thailand - the same place where a cop offered me a lift home one night on his scooter.)

I'd love to see a ranking of cities that included American cities judged by the same criteria: violent crime, hurricanes, rioting, power failures, terrorist attacks, dangerous police, civic and commercial corruption, overloaded infrastructure, pollution, power wastage... Miami, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington DC...

Anyone who reads the papers knows what an unsuitable country the USA is for doing business:

  • the citizens are armed
  • most cities have no-go zones
  • crime rates are high, gangs run rampant and engage in running gun battles, drugs are a serious problem
  • it has one of the highest murder rates in the world and certainly the highest "going postal" mass murder rate in the world
  • it is the world headquarters of corrupt private enterprise, so much so they recently had to introduce Sarbanes-Oxley to try to limit it
  • both parties of its government are captive of the business power-base - there is no working class representation
  • it has an unofficial caste system of oppressed underclasses who riot violently making whole cities unsafe. Until recently (in world terms) slavery was legal
  • the people are into weird cults and beliefs
  • it has been subject to some of the biggest terrorist attacks of modern times (World Trade, Murrah Federal Building)
  • its government attacks its own citizens with tanks (Waco) and soldiers (Kent State)
  • it attacked more other countries in the last hundred years than anyone but the Germans, the Japs and the Russians (the USA might exceed the Russians?) - the probability of the USA being at war with someone is higher than any other country right now
  • it fought one of the biggest civil wars in history once already
  • its largest states regularly call for succession
  • it can't control its own borders and is overrun with millions of economic refugees
  • it allows cities and states to maintain their own armed police forces outside government control
  • its police forces regularly use violence, gas, guns, electric shock weapons and paramilitary tactics
  • it all but exterminated its indigenous population
  • it tortures and illegally imprisons foreign prisoners (Guantanamo)
  • it has the world's highest rate of incarceration and state execution (yes amazingly they still kill people)
  • its civil emergency services are unreliable and completely failed in a recent devastation of New Orleans
  • the country is peppered with aging nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage
  • it publicly acknowledges its increasing exposure to hurricane danger in all Eastern seaboard cities and the entire West coast is a hotbed of volcanic and earthquake activity

It is unstable, dangerous, violent, corrupt and wacko.

[2017 update:]
The nation is ruled by a corrupt regime that accepts multimillion dollar bribes from terrorist Islamist nations in return for arms deals.
Many of the states do not even qualify as functioning democracies.
There is an increasing terrorist threat from disaffected right-wing legally-permitted militias amongst the majority.
Antiscience conspiritards are dangerous. A chemtrails nutter shot a TV weatherman.
The most objective journalism comes from late-night comedians.
The armed thugs of foreign rulers (Turkey) assault protestors in the streets of the capital with impunity.
The government actively shuts down scientific research and denies scientific fact.]

And don't even get me started on those Europeans. War breaks out there at the drop of a hat...

Of course I do work with the USA. My servers are offshored there. I know it is a reasonable place to offshore to because I am not ignorant enough to decide solely on the entirely true list of facts above.

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Comments

Memorial Day

Moved to a post

Please don't forget foisting

Please don't forget foisting Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears upon the world.

All very good points, but here in the USA at least the sheep are safe :-)

Sheep are safe

...in every state? Not what I hear

Don't worry, no reasonable person holds any nation accountable for its teenage tarts

Embellishing

And if something called "swine" flu comes around, the US media blow things all out of all proportion. Got to sell papers and TV ads: whether the story is real or not. And then the people make their own cause and effect mistakes, such as we shouldn't buy pork! Egad.

swine flu hysteria

There is nothing unique to the USA in swine flu hysteria. All media are having a field day. And look at all the countries banning pork imports: Russia, China, Switzerland, Croatia, Indonesia, Thailand, Ecuador... There is no scientific support for this - it is either sneaky protectionism or pandering to mass ingorance.

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