This
mini essay concludes my observations on Daniel Pink's A Whole New
Mind, which were expressed in my previous blog entry "Third World on the Conceptual Age".
Right-brain
jobs, in addition to left-brain jobs, can also be outsourced from the
first world to the third world, especially to Latin America and
perhaps Africa, because of a lower labor cost and perhaps better
quality in selected cases. This is due to the fact that, unlike in
the first world, our right-brain qualities have not become
attrophiated by an excess of left-brain labor for centuries. I would
imagine that there is much such right-brain outsourcing already
occurring with Mexico. Therefore outsourcing from the first world to
the third would continue for ANY kind of job, not just menial
left-brain jobs; however, specific niches can be kept safely in the
first world at first world wages requiring specific combinations of
both sides of brain activity.
One
clear example are doctors. Lots of California patients go to Mexico
for visits to doctors who have great right-brain training from the
University and have completed specialized left-brain specializations
in the US, at a fraction of the US cost. Vemezuelan doctors who seek
a better living in the US also have that profle.
Workers
in India are highly motivated to excel in outsourced left-brain jobs.
I do not know much on Indian culture, but my guess is that they
concluded that millenia of emphasis in the right brain failed to
provide the abundance they yearn, so Indians are slowly finding the
way to overcome that lack.
Daniel
Pink's A Whole New Mind establishes a left-brain kind of routine
questionnaire for any new business endeavor, I will attempt to reply
to it based on my specific Venezuelan environment:
Question
1) The question on "Can it be produced abroad more cheaply?"
is yes for pretty much every single Venezuelan industry but oil. We
suffer an exchange control regime that forces exporters to convert
their dollars at the official rate of 2.15 bolivars, while the market
exchange rate approximately triples this value. That is, Venezuelan
products are competitive worldwide only if they can be produced
locally at below 30% of the production cost for that item in any
single other country. We are even becoming coffee importers! We are
importing most foodstuffs for that reason. Local manufacturing
industries are migrating to Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Brazil.
On these grounds, we are quite hopeless until there is an exogenous
change of government regulation systems.
Question
2) In the Venezuelan case only the question on "Can a computer
do it cheaper?" can be replied similarly as when asked to a US
citizen.
Question
3) The question on "Will my product satisfy the needs on an age
of abundance?" must be reversed in my country. GDP per capita
has substantially decreased during my lifetime. In the 60s and 70s
any college graduate landed a job and could buy a comfortable home on
credit. Today, lots of middle-aged people continue living with their
parents. Grocery shopping consumes about half of most people's
income, due to one of the greatest inflation rates of the world. I
remember when I was a kid it was an age of abundance, but now this is
no doubt an age of scarcity. I do not know what, in my local
situation, would be an appropriate rephrasing of that question number
3.
In
short, Venezuelans need to apply a lot of right-brain creativity in
order to come up with a similar "recipe questionnaire for
success" specific for our situation. Maybe we won't come up with
such a recipe yet.
The
fresh emphasis on right-brain qualities is appropriate to the US
situation. I am just not sure on how that Conceptual Age can take a
general hold in the developed world, on the current
globalization/illegal immigration climate, with so many other
countries still living under scarcity. I do not think, seriously,
that the abundance assumption is valid. The world is still quite far
from being a place of abundance. It will be interesting to see what
Cubans within Cuba, if they had the right to speak freely, would add
to this respect.
A
topic for further research would be to find out if there are any
left-brain activities that may be needed worldwide in order to
achieve the abundance prerequisite for the Conceptual Age overturn of
the Information Age.
Rubén
Rivero Capriles, Rivero & Cooper, Inc.
Caracas,
September 15, 2009
