Manna from China
[Marginal Revolution] This sums up my thoughts on computer software outsourcing/offshoring exactly: ?If cheap goods from China are bad for the United States then surely zero-priced Manna from Heaven must have been terrible for the Israelites.?
The mistake of protectionism is that it focuses only on the potential negative effects, preoccupied with loss prevention, and neglects the upside. Human progress depends on people being motivated by opportunities for gain rather than fear of loss.
This also explains my attitude toward intellectual property laws. Intellectual property laws were created to encourage people to produce and share valuable ideas. Any tool which we can use to enable and amplify knowledge creation and sharing has a positive effect on humanity. IP laws were devised as one such tool. On the other hand, IP laws can be used in a protectionist manner, which actually impedes the production and sharing of knowledge. When the focus of IP laws becomes loss prevention and prevention of ?theft? as defined by opportunity cost of hypothetical demand for a product, it starts to look very similar to anti-offshoring protectionsm, and violates the original spirit of IP laws.