In December of 1998, my college debating team went to the see the World Debate Tournament being held at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Standing at the halls of the Yellow Building, I remember feeling a little surreal as my coach handed us a list of the best schools to observe, and their room assignments.

After discussing which teams to see first, me and my partner set off to watch two debate powerhouses: Monash University A, and Glassgow University A, hash it out in one round (with Brown and one other school thrown in).

I remember sinking down my chair, flipping open my binder to take notes,  while lazily admiring Glassgow’s rebuttal speaker, a gorgeous Crispian Mills look-alike. At 18, I cared more about the competition than the topics we were debating. Except for this proposition.

At the time, it was the proposition to have in terms of economics. Everyone had prepared for it, and it was guaranteed to yield a very interesting debate. Other rooms had vetoed for the same proposition, which later came up in the ESL (English as A Second Language) Competition.

It was a topic that I had debated myself in practice sparrings, and even discussed with my parents over dinner. One that made all Asian students, who were already basking in imported goods, to stop and think of how our respective countries would survive in a world of hyped up free trade agreements.

The proposition, as Glasgow’s first speaker ominously put it, was “That Globalization Marginalizes the Poor”.

The poor being us, citizens of the emerging economies of Asia.

Back then, China was just a mild threat and India was just another country where people went for exotic vacations. Never mind ASEAN: if it didn’t involve a joke about a Thai girl or a tropical island, no one paid attention to it. If there was any financial news, it was how the region got socked by a terrible recession. Which, unless you were Asian, in finance, a debater, or an avid watcher of international news (most people aren’t) you probably wouldn’t have been aware of at the time. That countries that were emerging from dictatorships, and seeing profit for the first time had just been set back by at least five years, just as the European Union was beginning to bloom.

There were the usual arguments: unfair tax advantages for wealthy nations. The ability to compete on a level playing field for developing countries. Techonology exchange. Technological disadvantages. The crappy lending practices of the IMF. And on, and on.

It was interesting to see how these teams from OECD countries were duking it out, detailing how the rich were going to swallow the poor, while we—people from the afformentioned poor countries—watched, and took notes.

Based on the topic, and the quality of the teams competiting, it made out to be quite a riveting debate. But looking back, there was one argument that none of the teams ever touched on.

The Human Capital.

Everything mentioned was centered largely on manufacturing. It was all tariffs, and trade relations. How Levi’s was going to drop it’s prices and kill the local jean companies. As one Filipino debater put it, the fight was microchips versus pineapple fiber cloth, and we all knew who was on the losing end.

But that was “before”. When everyone was still on dial-up and 24/7 internet cafes still ruled. When the dotcom bubble still hadn’t burst. Before 9/11, when people worried more about the Y2K bug and not this mornings terrorist alert.

It was before the world was struck by a sweeping recession, where people lost their jobs, their homes, and suddenly: the world is different.

Back then, few thought much about intellectual migration. How a programmer in India could outsource his knowledge to half a world away. Or how a housewife could suddenly find herself back in the labor force, while never leaving the front door of her house.

This is the new face of globalization, where the debate isn’t about microchips and some natural fiber, but who can make both of them cheaper, faster, and (although it’s not always true) better.

The face of globalization is knowledge and people. And like it or not, outsourcing is globalization’s new dirty word.

The View from The Middle

The day I took the entrance test to my university, I hung around with a bunch of girls in front of the exam room.

It was a hot summer morning, and we all nervously discussed what majors we were applying for, before they opened the doors.

“I’m trying to get in the computer science program” this one girl told me

“Oh” the wannabe geek in me replied “You really like techie stuff?”

“Kind of.” she shrugged “I was considering applying for the physical therapist program, but it’s hard to get into in this school. Plus, I think there’s more demand for programmers than therapists abroad.”

I thought it was sad that at sixteen years old, she was already planning a future that would take her far away from home. She probably didn’t know what she wanted to study, but like most Asian kids, gravitated towards courses that would assure them of a job right out school.

(Case in point: liberal arts majors are mostly divided into two groups: academics, and pre-law students. The first is usually by accident, the later is overwhelmingly by choice.)

Of the 150 kids in that computer science program, more than half are employed abroad. Those that stayed to be programmers, are considering on leaving. Others have started their own businesses, and are taking on clients from around the globe.

These individual consultants probably charge half of what their western counterparts make. At a time where business owners are short on cash, but in dire need of a programmer, their talents are desperately needed.

These people are “outsourcers”. And post 2006, they aren’t just in demand, but they are also shunned.

Can they honestly do what I do?

“It’s frustrating” an architect I knew complained once “There’s a great difference in price, and with all the business that they get, I’m sure they don’t need a project this small. I’m just as good, if not better. But they come in here and steal our business anyway. It’s unfair.”

I hear that a lot nowadays, especially in bidding sites. After the financial meltdown, when people started losing their jobs and flocked to the internet to find new sources of income, the echoes on the forums almost sounded like a lynching.

I get it.

But the architect isn’t a westerner on some job board, complaining. He was a Filipino, venting his frustration at my cousin’s 18th birthday party, after his small company lost a bid to an American firm.

This was all pre-2006, but it was a taste of what globalization in the Philippines is like. Where colonial mentality rules, and anything foreign is presumed to be better.

At my local supermarket, there’s an aisle that still sells Chips Ahoy and Oreo cookies with the “Made in the USA” stamp on it. And people still buy it, even when there’s a cheaper pack of Oreos and Chips Ahoy that’s made in Thailand a couple of aisles down.

“Can they honestly do what I do?” a US based transcriptionist wrote on a job board once “How can someone from halfway around the world do what I can I do for that price? How can they be better?”

The answer is simple: they receive the exact same training, get the same amount of experience, in a country where labor prices are low, and English happens to be an official language.

There’s no accent needed in typing words. When that transcription comes in, you can hardly ever tell that it was typed by someone thousands of miles away. It’s essentially the same Oreos, the same Chips Ahoy.

There’s no emotion attached to the process: an order is placed, and someone fills it. Someone craves a cookie, they buy one.

The emotion lies more on the buyer: a friend of mine swears that the imported cookies tastes better. I admit, there’s a subtle difference, but it’s all a matter of preference. For someone who just wants something sweet, the difference is negligible.

Someone who had less to spend, but really wanted a cookie, would be more inclined to buy the pack made in Thailand. And he is no less happier with his purchase than the former.

Whose job is it anyway?

I’ve been in outsourcing since I left college in 2001. When the meltdown hit in 2007, I and several others in the industry who live in Asia, also took a hit.

We lost projects. Salaries were renegotiated, if not cut, and some of my clients companies went under.

In 2008, I lost what was essentially my bread and butter project. They retrenched half of their company, and after three years of working with them, they laid-off all but one of their freelancers.

It’s true that cheaper labor costs in Asia created a mini-outsourcing boom, which in recent years has been criticized for robbing peoples jobs and slowing down the economic recovery.

But that boom also ushered in new contractors who offered ridiculous rates and did shoddy work. It also brought out buyers who thought paying $1-2 an hour was a godsend.

In one of the most profitable times for ASEAN, both freelancers and employers are losing money due to unsustainable and unethical outsourcing practices.

Yours, Mine, Ours

Outsourcing, as one former client told me, is a zero-sum market. If one contractor loses their job to you, then it’s their problem because they haven’t stayed competitive: in price, in skill, or in the quality of their service.

After years of being blamed in international job boards for stealing jobs, and everything else that went bad after the Great Recession, it’s easy to adopt a “fuck you” attitude. This is, after all, a dog eat dog world. In a free market, the strong survive and the weak get mauled. Several times.

But being selfish is never helpful in any situation. And the jobs lost? That was my job. And my friends jobs. Even closer to home, is that it’s also my husband’s job: as a surveyor in San Diego, he’s seen his whole industry disintegrate before the recession officially started.

How could I say “fuck you” to that?

It’s hard to imagine that it’s been 12 years. Going through my notes from that day in December, I realized that we’re still having the same debate. The arguments are a bit different, and the fight is a bit more aggressive, but the proposition still stands: That globalization marginalizes the poor.

Only this time, my definition of poor has changed. It’s no longer the developed vs. the developing country. Like the key element that was missing from that debate long ago, the key element is not countries, or products, or taxes but people.

There are people who are suffering because of bad practices resulting from globalization, particularly in outsourcing. The problem also isn’t in just one particular country, or concentrated to one region, but it is everywhere. It affects everyone. And by everyone, I mean those working in the corporate world, the outsourcing world, and every lifestyle designer crawling out of the woodwork.

There is no yours, or mine, only ours.

The world as we now know it is still pretty big, but is also a lot flatter than it used to be. Let’s take this chance to finally see each other eye to eye.

I’ve taken the first step by getting rid of that “fuck you” attitude, and flipped it to one that says “how may I help you?”.

What are you doing to help others deal in this more globalized world?