They’re edgy and authentic, because they cuss: the son of Jim Bakker and a programmer with messy hair want to know how it’s all gone so terribly wrong:

What the hell happened? Where did we go wrong? How was Christianity co-opted by a political party? Why are Christians supporting laws that force others to live by their standards? The answers to these questions are integral to the survival of Christianity.

I bet you’ve never heard this one before: it seems that Conservative Christianity has been co-opted by the Republican party, which has drained it of the pure, unadorned Message of Jesus. No, for real:

His parables and lessons were focused on love and forgiveness, a message of “come as you are, not as you should be.” The bulk of his time was spent preaching about helping the poor and those who are unable to help themselves. At the very least, Christians should be counted on to lend a helping hand to the poor and others in need.

This brings us to the big issues of American Christianity: Abortion and gay marriage. These two highly debatable topics will not be going away anytime soon. Obviously, the discussion centers around whether they are right or wrong, but is the screaming really necessary? After years of witnessing the dark side of religion, Marc and I think not.

So Christians—by which I mean the dorky, untattooed, Republican kind—can’t be counted on to lend a helping hand to the poor. This would come as a surprise to Syracuse University professor of public administration Arthur Brooks, whose recent book argued at length that religious conservatives are in every measure more generous than secular liberals. Perhaps Jay means they can’t be counted on to disburse public funds for the benefit of the poor, which is much closer to the truth. I suppose if they were cool, tattooed, Democrat Christians, this failing would be remedied.

Moving on, surely we can agree that “the screaming” about abortion and gay marriage isn’t necessary. Surely Jay and Marc mean we should engage key aspects of Christian ethical orthodoxy in respectful, rational dialog, rather than the strident garbage that too often infects our discourse. Either that or they mean “Christians should be able to look past their differences and agree to disagree.” Which I take to mean keep abortion legal and enact marriage rights for all, just like you had coolness and tattoos of your own.

It is becoming a tired emergent trope that American Christianity (or Christ-following, or whatever you want to call it) has been wedded to conservative politics, and the answer, rather than dissolve that unholy union, is to get it hitched to liberal American politics. If they would merely say that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the United States are two separate entities never to be conflated, I would cheer them and their dangerous haircuts and their scary tattoos all day long. Many an American evangelical needs to hear this message. But they don’t stop there. When they say God isn’t a Republican, they really seem to mean that he is, in fact, a Democrat.

And it’s not just disaffected emergent youths. I’ll never forget a sermon I heard by a well-known and deservedly very respected leader in American urban ministry. He was talking about where we could expect to find the locus of truth, and ticking off various institutions that could be expected to turn up empty. “You won’t find it in the Republican Party!” he thundered at one point. “You won’t find it in the Dem—in the liberal Democratic party!”

Uh-huh. I guess that tells me where to look. Bakker and Brown seem to be pointing me there too. Thanks for disabusing me of my reactionary and unthoughtful politics, boys!

Check out Bakker’s church if you’re interested. The decade in which my son enters his teens will see television ministry by a man named Bakker, just like his old man.

I’ll leave you with this: RevolutionNYC.com uses table-based layout again, just like the Christ Follower people. Plus the DOCTYPE is jacked, so it renders in quirks mode. Hipness has a price, guys. The piper will invoice you, guaranteed.

Yesterday afternoon we had the distinct pleasure of having lunch with some friends from The Netherlands. It’s always a treat for me to talk to people from other countries—a double treat, in the case of the warm hospitality of this particular family—if for no other reason than to have direct access to an outsider’s perspective on the affairs of my own people. Fortunately the man of that house is fairly astute in matters of public policy, so we had a good talk about politics.

The topic turned to the American system of public education. They expressed some surprise at the lack of stratification in our system: everybody is labeled a winner no matter what, and distinctions between high achievers and low achievers are considered embarrassing and improper to admit in polite company. You need outsiders to point this out to you? you’re wondering. Isn’t that a rather obvious pathology of American society? Well, no and yes, respectively. But point being that it’s painfully obvious to other parts of the world that in this department we’re not quite right in the head.

Then they went on to talk about their school experience in the 1980s. They said something about a “Reformed school” (meaning a parochial school of the Reformed theological tradition, not a Reform school), which led me to believe they meant a private school.

“No,” the man of the house explained. “In The Netherlands, there are all kinds of different schools, all paid for by tax dollars. Some are religious, some are not.”

“Ah,” I said, assuming he meant a school run by the state church. “We could never do that here because of the First Amendment.”

“No,” he said matter-of-factly. “It has nothing to do with freedom of religion.” He went on to explain that all you need to start a Dutch school is a certain number of students willing to attend the new institution, and you’ll get public funding for it. In his brief account, there was no single authority or central bureaucracy for administering education. Sure, the government imposes minimum requirements on what schools must do, but other than that there is substantial diversity. He was talking about this the way one would talk about having free elections or a publicly funded police force: like it was just the sensible way to organize this particular part of a free society.

This in a country where the left and center-left combined just won 62.4% of the popular vote and 96 of 150 seats in Parliament. And mind you, when I advocate vouchers here, I’m a Friedmanite zealot, probably a theocrat, and maybe even a racist.

So you’ll pardon me if I’m feeling just a bit off today.

Via Instapundit, we find a very interesting piece of post-election analysis on TCS. The author’s primary concern was not so much Red Statism vs. Blue Statism as it was the relationship between population density and political beliefs. After considering the trend towards urbanization and the higher probability that city-dwellers will be liberal, he concludes:

The statistician’s perennial caveat is that “correlation is not causation,” but there is little doubt that there is connection, largely unexplained, between ideology and demography. Depressingly deterministic as it is, this correlation, if it continues, may mean that future elections will be decided by immigration patterns, reproductive rates and technologies that allow more businesses and workers to locate in suburban and rural locations.

I would be happy to be proven wrong.

The outcome of these trends seems less than certain; Americans are certainly urbanizing, but those of the Red disposition tend to have more children than do the Blue. I don’t know where the numbers really point when all is said and done. In any event, the most interesting part of the article was a bit of data visualization work done by Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan. I have mirrored their graphics here in compliance with their Creative Commons License, but by all means check out their analysis firsthand.

By now we’re all quite familiar with this picture showing the electoral college results. It perfectly captures the data it is intended to capture, but it quite misleading if it is pressed into service as an icon of the Great Divide that has suddenly gripped America. After all, the current vote tally is 60,607,335 to 57,286,778 (51.4% to 48.6%), and this map looks a whole lot redder than that.

My kids are even more impressed with the same map by counties. Look at all the red! Bush is triumphant! We need never fear the election of another Democrat in our whole lives! Well, maybe.

Everyone–even my kids, at least those older than five–knows that the Blue States have higher population densities, which is why this adjusted map of the states is close to the coolest thing you’ve seen all day. It’s called a “cartogram,” and it features state shapes that are distored such that their area is proportional to their population. Much more helpful. The same image by counties gets us somewhat closer to the 51/49% near-parity we see in the aggregate popular vote tally.

But no need to stop there! We are still coloring the counties either Bush Red or Kerry Blue based on who won 50% + 1 of the votes. This will produce quantization error that may well be more systematic than random; indeed, a glance at the county cartogram still tells you it’s a win for Bush, which still doesn’t jibe with the relatively narrow margin of the raw tally. What to do? Well, refine the coloring algorithm, of course!

This map by counties starts to get you there. It’s a much purpler country than you may have thought, given the more strident forms of sore-loser moonbattery we’ve seen. The whole excercise culimates in this linearly-colored cartogram by counties. That image is a purple smear–you can’t take a quick glance at it and say who won. And rightly so; a quick peek at 51 Junior Mints mixed in with 49 Raisenettes would reveal nothing about the relatively narrow edge the edible candy held over the pre-packaged human rights violations.

And don’t get me wrong here: a 3.3 million-vote victory is downright vehement compared to the squeaker four years ago. Still, the hyperventilating about the painful rending of the Republic in our day may be a bit overstated. If you start to think civil war is imminent, just remember the linear county cartogram. It’s not so bad.

And hey, four more years. Smile.

UNFORMED FURTHER THOUGHT: This is not to deny that we have a fairly profound divide between the emerging stakeholders in the Democratic party and the Red State Consensus. The people crying “Jesusland!” are not make believe, and they are not altogether off target. Maybe more on this later, maybe not. Let me know if you’re interested.

5:41pm

News is on. Homebrew is not poured yet, which is lamentable, but coverage has begun nonetheless. FNC, CNN, NBC, and presumably others are calling IN, WV, KY, and GA for Bush, VT for Kerry. The fun hasn’t begun yet.

5:48pm

Oh, I dunno…there’s some fun over at PowerLine. It means nothing, but it feels good to say.

NOTE: I have disabled the PowerLine link to avoid stinking up their Trackbacks with my refreshes. Sorry, guys.

5:52pm
A quick 9 News break-in. They aren’t calling anything yet, since the polls don’t close for more than another hour here. Seeing a story now about emergency late registrations–people standing in line for hours at a local mall. People for whom I have very little sympathy. (I guess databases do have quality problems sometimes–I oughtta know–so late registrations may not all be the voters’ fault. But other than that, follow the rules, okay, folks? They are not exactly written in Sanskrit on a parchment locked in a file cabinet in a room at the end of a dank stone corridor with a sign on the door that says “Beware of the Leopard.”)

6:00pm
NBC is calling MA, NJ, MD, CT, ME (3), DC, DE, and IL for Kerry, TN, OK and AL for Bush. Graphics to come…

6:03pm
NBC guys are preening about how they can’t call NC and VA yet, which should be GOP lock-ups. Also NJ was a walk for Kerry. Bad sign? We’ll see…

6:07pm
Relief! FNC has started broadcasting on the local Fox affiliate. Remember, no cable here at Berglund manor, so this is a rare treat. Off to grab dinner. Back in 15…

6:25pm
Back. Mrs. Berglund did an excellent job with the Spaghetti. The American Wheat is a-okay.

6:49pm
Still no major breaks in anything, but the map above is updated. Keep refreshing Jay Cost for better coverage than you get here.

6:58pm
What, the Illinois Senate seat called for Barak Obama? When did this happen? I’m shocked!

Oh, wait, not I’m not.

7:03pm
The Fox guys are talking about gay marriage. It seems the eleven state constitutional amenments banning it are doing very well.

7:35pm
ESB is on. Florida is looking awfully good. Ohio is technically ahead, and Jay is saying he’s polling better precinct-on-precinct, but there still aren’t many returns in yet. I remind the reader that Bush can win with FL, WI, and IA while losing OH. Just something to keep in mind.

7:54pm
9 News is reporting that it’s been quiet at Democratic headquarters in Denver. I don’t blame them. They gave a loud cheer when the Salazar numbers came in, and justifiably so: with 1% reporting, Bush is up 10%, yet Salazar is also up 10%. If 1% of the precincts could mean anything, this means something. And I fear it’s not good for Pete Coors.

8:19pm
I’m sorry, but did Hugh Hewitt just say there is no room for confidence? Hugh “Bush Wins 40 States” Hewitt? Finally, some humility on election night.

(For the record, I do believe there is method to his seeming madness of late. He’s been an order of magnitude more confident than I am, but at least he’s been encouraging the troops.

8:22pm
Fox 31 is covering some local stuff. With 7% of precincts reporting:
Amendment 34 (full employment for lawyers vis-a-vis home improvement lawsuits): FAILING
Amendment 35 (tax mostly poor smokers to pay for healthcare for poor people): PASSING
Amendment 36 (idiotic proportional allocation of electoral votes): FAILING
Amendment 37 (mandate renewable energy sources in the state constitution): 50% yes, 49% no. Too close to call.

8:26pm
Fox has added AK and MO to the Red part of the map.

8:52pm
With 12% reporting, Fox 31 says:

Bush 52/47
Salazar 50/47
Amendment 34: 75/24 NO
Amendment 35: 63/36 YES
Amendment 36: 66/33 NO
Amendment 37: 52/47 YES
Fastracks: 60/39 YES

Amendment 37 is a bit of an unpleasant surprise, but otherwise all of this is as expected.

8:56pm
Fox is calling PA for Kerry, which is no surprise. They were waiting for lines of voters to clear out, apparently.

9:44pm
It seems ABC is calling Florida for Bush. We have a word for this. We call it “money.”

10:28pm
NBC has just piled on the Florida call. I should say it’s about time.

I’ve added a few other calls to the map that various networks are making. Any sensible way you game it at this point, it’s all down to Ohio. If Bush wins it and loses every other state yet uncalled, it’s 269-269. I’d tell you to do the math, but the math is already done. Given reasonable assumptions of where we go from here, Ohio decides this election.

10:32pm
NBC is calling the Colorado Senate race for Ken Salazar with 70% of precincts reporting (51% to 47%). Unfortunate, but not surprising.

10:43pm
What is this? Jay says that Fox is calling Ohio for Bush! I knew I should have bought cable for the year! Dan Rather is blathering away on the CBS affiliate, and the Fox affiliate is being worthless.

10:47pm
A few minutes ago I said Bush could lose all states not yet called as long as he had Ohio in his column. Of course this didn’t include Alaska, which Bush isn’t going to lose anyway. If Fox’s call stands, this election is over.

11:00pm
Fox is calling Alaska now. It’s over, considering the political realities of the tie-breaking procedure. George W. Bush is the next President of the United States of America.

Oh, not counting lawsuits in Ohio.

11:39pm
Pete Coors is giving his concession speech on the local channels. Farewell, Pete.

11:48pm
Ken Salazar’s acceptance speech now. Oh, how I wish I had cable. Imagine flipping between four news networks that wouldn’t snow any of this. Just imagine…

12:00am
Fox just called Minnesota for Kerry. Not a big shocker, but it makes Lileks sad.

12:01am
Sounds like the Kerry campaign is going to work the provisional ballots in Ohio. I somehow doubt we’ll have a concession speech tonight.

12:15am
NBC is reporting that Kerry won’t concede tonight. The Kerry campaign is distancing itself from any 2000-style legal challenges, instead claiming that we’re just not done counting ballots. Fie, I say. We’re done enough.

12:28am
Hair Boy is on. He looks tired.

“It’s been a long nayt,” he says, which explains the eyes. He’s promising that every vote would count, and every vote would be counted. Uh, then thanking the crowd. I guess that’s all I’m gonna get for a concession speech tonight. Darn it.

12:33am
NBC just called Hawaii for Kerry. CNN says it’s 55%/44% with 65% of precincts reporting–not so close as we would have enjoyed, but still not a part of our victory plan. Which at this point is just John Kerry conceding.

12:59am
Gonna hit the sack now. Bush has 269 electoral votes if Ohio stands, and the GOP has picked up between zero and three Senate seats, and seemingly one House seat. Kerry will want to see the vote counting be completed in the morning, but I think he’ll concede after that. He can have no motivation to litigate this thing to death, especially considering that the aggregate nationwide vote is 54,354,714 to 50,552,157–a 3% lead, and a clear majority for Bush. This will not drag on long.

Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, and Nevada have not been called yet. NM is pretty clearly Bush country, as I expect Nevada to be. Iowa is even money, but I’ll be surprised if Wisconsin is colored red by tomorrow night.

Looks like at least one more day of fun. We’ll have a loser by Friday, tops.

7:39am
After a restful–if short–night’s sleep, it looks like we have a 286-252 Bush victory. The networks are reluctant to call everything, but I’m giving NV, NM, and IA to Bush and WI to Kerry. They’re all close, but the outcomes seem clear enough.

Whose prediction was right? If you recall, I made maps on Sunday night based on the numbers given by Tradesports, RealClearPolitics, and Horserace Blog. The result is Efficient Markets Hypothesis: 1, Kerry: 0. Tradesports called it perfectly, before they succumed to the Drudge/Corner exit poll madness of early yesterday afternoon. I will definitely have my eye on the gamblers in the next election.

So we have a winner, but what we don’t have at this point is a loser. Elections end when the loser concedes, and Kerry has not yet done that. The early buzz is that the provisional ballots are breaking heavily pro-Bush, and that Kerry won’t make a statement until after 10am EST. That’s in about 10 minutes, so stay tuned.

And finally, the race draws to a close. I’ll be dropping by my precinct mid-morning tomorrow to pull some touchscreen levers, children in tow. Call it a homeschool civics lesson, or call it madness if the lines are long. I’ll let you know if the kids intimidate any voters while they’re there.

The outstanding Horserace Blog–whose methodology has given me an idea for a fairly simple web app that I should prototype in the midterms–is feeling very optimistic tonight. He’s calling it 317-221 for Bush, notably including Pennsylvania as a red state:

RealClearPolitics’ state averages also got a bit better today. They don’t give Pennsylvania to Bush, but they do color Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin red. Overall, it’s a 296-242 night for the President:

Finally, Tradesports is unchanged from yesterday. It’s a Bush win by 286-252, giving Ohio, Iowa, and Florida to Bush, but Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to Kerry:

This ends the guessing. I’ll be more or less liveblogging tomorrow night, God willing. Oh, and for some insight into Colorado, Boulder County (one of our two Democratic bastions) is saying they may not be able to declare results until Wednesday night. If this is any indication of the other untested voting procedures in equipment we’ll be shaking down in the morning, we might have a lot more than 24 hours to go. May it not be so.

Iowahawk has a reasonably brilliant contribution to the election season discussion. A sample:

VOICE OVER: Saddle up, buckaroos! Now you too can be an old west diplomat with the Johnny Nuance Deluxe Junior Negotiator Kit. It comes complete with authentic letters of reprimand, humanitarian aid resolutions, an official Johnny Nuance golden fountain pen and attache case!

BOY #1: Sign the cease-fire, Deadeye Dan… I’ve got you economically sanctioned!

BOY #2: Says who?

BOY #1: Says my broad multilateral coalition, that’s who!

CROWD OF BOYS: We pledge our support!

BOY #2: Grrr! I’m peacefully boxed in!

VOICE OVER: The Johnny Nuance Deluxe Junior Negotiator Kit from Plastico – now at Woolworths and wherever fine toys are sold.

It gets better. Read it all.

Via a post at Tulip Girl’s, I found this particularly depraved op-ed on homeschooling. Originally posted an the Holland [Michigan] Sentinel, it can no longer be found there. I have therefore reproduced it here for posterity.

I don’t have the time to give it the fisking it so richly deserves, but I’ll let you take a few swings in the comments.

Home-schooling robs children
By MARGARET W. BOYCE

I read with interest the recent article in The Sentinel about home-school families. I find it strange that we send our young men and women to help assure that children can go to school in Afghanistan, yet we allow parents in Michigan to keep their children at home.

One of the best and brightest moves that our Founding Fathers made was to make it possible for all children in America, not just the rich, to be educated. Eventually, all children were expected to attend. If they did not, they were considered “truant” and parents were held responsible and could go to jail. This public education still is the very cornerstone of democracy.

This strange phenomenon called “home schooling” at best undermines these principles. For many children, it is far worse. Who is monitoring these families? Many a child of abusive parents has an observant teacher to thank for a rescue, some for their very lives. To whom can these children turn when they are kept at home? They are being denied a basic right, which has been fought for all the way to the Supreme Court — the right to attend school.

We don’t allow people to play doctor or nurse without a license, nor can one play lawyer without passing some rather rigorous tests. But today, anyone who wants to “play school” can do so, regardless of their educational background. Recently, some parents have been jailed for withholding medical treatment for their children, yet we are almost making heroes of these parents who do the same with their children’s education.

Some parents of home-schooled children speak glowingly of the “wonderful imaginations” developed by their lonely child, who, being surrounded always by adults, has little opportunities to develop friendships with real children. Others associate only with small groups of like-minded people. What happens when they enter the world and cannot control everything, as they do in their sheltered home environment?

What an ego trip for a parent — to be all things to your children, to control every thought, every concept that enters their world. Is this education, or programming? To deny them the stimulation of working and playing with their peers is unfair. It’s far better to send them out into the world for brief forays, such as the school day, and then discuss the day’s adventure while they are still young enough to want to work out values with their parents.

There are other losses, such as never being “on the team,” never cheering for “our school,” never being in a class where the interaction of ideas is more important than the text, or doing any of the myriad of things that make up the process of “belonging,” from the first day of school to the 50th class reunion. There is far more to an education than a curriculum — it includes summer break, Friday nights and graduation.

I have met and talked with a variety of home-schoolers, both children and parents. Many have great gaps in their knowledge. Many are incredibly naive. Some do quite well — they would have been superstars in school. Others can’t wait to leave home, knowing full well that they have been cheated.

Parents often believe that they are protecting their children from the “evils” of life. However, children cannot be brought up in a bell jar. Remember that the school day is only six hours long, five days a week. That leaves many hours during the week and summer for the parent.

Give your child the wings needed to grow outside of that jar. If parents wish to be involved in the education of their children, there are many opportunities to be part of the school day. Volunteer to be a lunch or recess monitor. Offer to tutor children in reading or math. Help the art teacher. Be a part of the process of building your community, not a member of the opposition.

A recent Harvard study following home-schooled children over many years found that these children did not do better at the college level than traditionally educated children. The real trip was for the mothers, who received the big emotional rewards. My response is: Mothers, get a life. How unfair it is for you to take away your own child’s life in order to gratify yours? Is this what we must expect from the “me first” generation as it raises their families?

The role of a parent is vital in a child’s education. However, without all four of the pillars provided by home, school, church and community working together, we have a precarious foundation for the next generation. The public school system is the very cornerstone of democracy in America. We need to cherish it and nurture it.

Margaret W. “Peggy” Boyce is a resident of Saugatuck.

Nothing quite like a cup of coffee, an English muffin, some whole grain cereal, and this:

John Kerry and John Edwards, who are not speaking under oath and who know that economic illiteracy has never been a disqualification for high office, have led the scrum against the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, who said the arguments for free trade apply to trade in services as well as manufactured goods. But the prize for the pithiest nonsense went to [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert: “An economy suffers when jobs disappear.”

So the economy suffered when automobiles caused the disappearance of the jobs of most blacksmiths, buggy makers, operators of livery stables, etc.? The economy did not seem to be suffering in 1999, when 33 million jobs were wiped out - by an economic dynamism that created 35.7 million jobs. How many of the 4,500 U.S jobs that IBM is planning to create this year will be made possible by sending 3,000 jobs overseas?

Hastert’s ideal economy, where jobs do not disappear, existed almost everywhere for almost everyone through almost all of human history. In, say, 12th-century France, the ox behind which a man plowed a field changed, but otherwise the plowman was doing what generations of his ancestors had done and what generations of his descendants would do. Those were the good old days, before economic growth.

As I’ve said before, I am potentially putting my money where my mouth is on this. This isn’t some abstraction like “the textile industry” that conjures up Dickensian images of ten-year-olds scurring under huge looms to pick pennies’ worth of lint off the floor, that couldn’t possibly be connected to my life. It’s, like, my job.

Read it all.

UPDATE: a friend IMed me this morning to tell me, among other things, that I was less than clear in this post. I was assuming knowledge on the part of the reader of my previous endorsements of the general idea of offshoring of U.S. tech jobs. There is an ironic constrast here with the fact that I happen to hold a U.S. tech job myself (when I’m not blogging). My brief comments in the original post were probably overly hasty and insufficiently clear.

My friend went on to tell me that he is seeing other essentially conservative IT professionals getting angry at Bush over this issue, possibly to the point of not voting for him in November. Now I tend to put this in the same bin as the rest of the conservative bellyaching over Bush–yeah, fine, there are things to complain about, but come on: are you really going to put Kerry in the Whitehouse because of it? Well, on this issue, maybe they will. These guys are afraid for their jobs, and the Democrat is much more likely to give them the protection they seek.

But let’s look at the real options here. Suppose for a moment that falling communication costs and rising education levels in third-world countries open up authentically lower-cost labor markets to compete with American IT professionals. We can:

1. Elect politicians who will use the force of law to prevent American industry from following cheaper labor resources.
2. Unionize and try to use the power of collective bargaining to achieve the same end as (1).
3. Let stewards of capital make free decisions about how to trade goods and services, recognizing that some technological developments (e.g., communication) may be disruptive to the present order from time to time to the point that I, personally, might even have to make a career change.

Call me Austrian, but I think you see where I’m going. Options (1) and (2) cannot succeed in the long term, despite whatever short-term gain I might personally realize under protectionist regimes. If the laws or labor unions (which operate under the protection of the laws) of the United States deny businesses the ability to operate efficiently, the businesses will be at a competitive disadvantage globally. At best, this means Americans shareholders earn smaller dividends. At worst, it means technological innovation ceases to be a defining American idiom. Entrepreneurial smart people will set up their whole shops elsewhere, instead of just sending some of their coding there.

And besides that, do you really want to have a job just because the guys with the guns are forcing your boss to keep you on the payroll? Wouldn’t you rather be carving out your own little sphere of value in an entropic creation? You can sign me up for the latter.

Note that this assumes that offshoring is actually going to produce cost savings in the long haul. Personally, I believe the jury is still out on this, but I am willing to accept the practice as an economic, social, and moral good if the jury comes back and says it does. There is a fertile debate to be had among IT professionals about the details of running cross-cultural, trans-global development teams, and I wouldn’t mind talking about that if anyone is interested. If you have relevant experience, or just want to cuss me out, the comments are open.