Land of the FREE

This afternoon found me speaking on the phone with a gentleman regarding his need of some marketing data specific to insurance institutions throughout the US. He sounded as though he was just another typical American entrepreneur, looking to make some money in an active vertical market until he disclosed the fact he was overseas in India. I asked him if he was in Hyderabad specifically; the epicenter of the overseas technical outsourcing crisis. He confirmed that indeed he was in Hyderabad (Cyber-a-bad as it's been dubbed by geeks on this side of the world who find themselves in an increasingly limited job market), and assumed in the form of a question that the company I work for outsourced programming in the region. At the very moment of this point in the conversation I happened to be listening to Jimi Hendrix's eternally infamous rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, and couldn't help but give the patriotic answer of "No! The owner of the company is determined to keep all such development in-house.". Our conversation had obviously struck a sour note, and I wasn't about to budge from my sudden distaste at why he was inquiring about such data in the first place. The conversation ended soon thereafter, and I began to formulate some significance to the conversation and the now finished modern anthem that had seeped through my speakers just moments before. In an instant I suddenly realized that I was just one more guilty American for wanting something for nothing or next to nothing, in this case the P2P music streaming across the network through iTunes. What a crook I was, listening to the masterpieces of a modern legend without paying a dime to the pocketbook of Al Hendrix (Jimi's father; now deceased I believe), just as this apparently crooked man on the other end of the phone had been preying on the alien economy of India (where a master programmer makes less than what a burger-flipping 16 year old makes in this country) to cater to corporate America's tight wallets, who in turn are able to cater to the tight wallets of us consumers. I could draw no moral conclusion on the matter, and it left a lasting bad taste in my mouth.



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