Update: 4/16,20
Critics of corporations that hire foreign workers argue that these corporate managers are acting irresponsibly. I answer as Forrest Gump's mother answered: "Irresponsibility is as irresponsibility does."
To whom, exactly, are senior managers responsible? First and foremost, senior managers have an economic obligation to customers. This is not a legal obligation, assuming they do not commit fraud, but it is an economic obligation. If they violate the moral standards of the customers they serve, they will lose some percentage of these customers. The customers will decide that senior managers are not doing the right thing, and therefore they are going to buy from companies whose managers do the right thing, in the opinions of the customers. The customers make the decision on whether or not to buy from a particular company. This decision has economic impact on the financial status of the companies, and therefore also on the ability of the managers to profit from their position as managers.
If customers decide that the price is right, and the quality is right, then they will buy from a particular company. If they think that the company is violating national moral standards by hiring foreign workers, they will cease buying from this particular company. They will take their business elsewhere. They will decide where to spend their own money. They have legal control over their money, and so they have a legal right to make the decision on what to buy, when to buy, and how much to pay. If they don't like how managers are running the company, they don't have to buy from the company. I think this is a simple principle to understand, but apparently critics of the free market do not understand it.
This principle is sometimes called consumer sovereignty, but I prefer to call it customer authority. It stems from the fact that customers have money, and money is the most marketable commodity. Business owners want to persuade customers to hand over some of their money in exchange for the output of the businesses. Customers have authority; critics who do not buy from the company who do not own corporate shares have no legal stake in the decisions of corporate managers. If they don't like what the managers are doing, they don't have to buy the products produced by the companies the managers run.
If senior managers decide on the best way to make a particular company profitable, that is their decision. Customers can decide if the decisions of the corporate managers are wrong, either economically or morally. In terms of economic analysis, the senior managers are acting as economic agents of customers. They owe nothing to noncustomers, unless these noncustomers are owners of shares in the corporation. In a free society, the rest of the population doesn't have any stake in the outcome.
In other words, the senior managers are making the decisions as agents. They are making decisions as economic agents on behalf of customers. They are making decisions as legal agents in the name of the shareholders. But apart from customers and shareholders, nobody else ought to have any say in the matter. This is the logic of the free market. It is called laissez-faire: let us alone.
There are millions of people who claim to be defenders of the free market, but who in fact are economic interventionists. They believe that they have a right to criticize how other people handle their property. They believe that if other people do not handle their own property in the way that the critics think it ought to be handled, the critics have a legal right to go to politicians and demand that other people change their ways. This is statism, and it is widespread in nations whose citizens regard themselves as defenders of liberty, defenders of economic freedom, and defenders of the capitalist system. They are in fact defenders of mercantilism, the welfare state, and economic regulation.
These people are nannies. They believe in the nanny state. They believe that they have the right to have politicians pass laws, and then have faceless bureaucrats in executive agencies enforce these laws. They believe these administrators, who cannot be fired, have the right to send out people with badges and guns to tell other people what to do. The people with badges and guns insist that companies should not have the right to hire laborers of their own choice, at prices that laborers and employers agree on voluntarily.
This shows a lack of faith in the fundamental principle of private ownership. It shows that voters don't trust customers. In other words, they don't trust themselves. They call upon the state to intervene. They shout: "Stop me, before I spend again!" They know that they buy goods and services from companies that hire foreign workers, and they believe that they literally cannot stop themselves from doing this. They believe that other customers are morally wrong, just as they are morally wrong, and they believe the state should intervene to keep anybody from buying goods and services produced by companies that hire foreign laborers.
All of this is going to come to naught as algorithms begin to expand their influence in our lives. It is politically impossible to organize voters to stop the use of algorithms. Senior managers can decide to use these algorithms to run companies inside a particular nation's borders. There is nothing that voters can do about this, which is a good thing.
We can buy digital goods and services across borders with no intervention. This is a good thing. It keeps the nannies among us from interfering in our lives.
If you want to blame someone for the fact that a particular corporation uses foreign laborers, blame the customers, not senior managers. Senior managers are acting economically on behalf of customers. If customers don't like the policies of a particular corporation, they can legally buy the output of a rival corporation. This is easy. Analytically, it ought to be easy to understand, but it isn't.
Here is the bottom line: if customers are not willing to pay more money to buy the output of another corporation that does not hire foreign workers, then it is none of the rest of our business.
CONCLUSION
Unless we own corporate shares, we should have no say in the matter. To the extent that we attempt to have a say in the matter by asking the government to restrict the use of foreign laborers, we are identifying ourselves as opponents of liberty. We don't like the free market. We don't think customers and sellers have a legal or moral right to work out whatever arrangements they think are best for themselves. Ultimately, we don't trust ourselves as customers. We don't trust ourselves, so we don't trust economic liberty. It is a sad comment on the way we live in that we literally don't trust our own judgment as customers, and insist that politicians and bureaucrats intervene to tell us what to do and what not to do with our money.
© 2022 GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2005-2021 All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.