Outsourcing--In Defense of Free Trade
March 8, 2004

IRVINE, CA--American businesses have the moral right to outsource to whomever they like, says Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Condemning businesses--like Microsoft, for example, which outsources its customer support services to a company in India--for somehow shirking their alleged patriotic or social duty to keep jobs in America is morally outrageous and economically wrong, says Dr. Brook, a former finance professor who taught business ethics.

"The moral justification for outsourcing," says Dr. Brook, "is individual rights. It is the right, and indeed the moral obligation, of an American businessman to run his company in the most profitable way possible. If that includes outsourcing, so be it. Outsourcing violates no one's rights, and there is no such thing--in a free, private-property country--as a social 'duty' to keep jobs in America. In this country, which recognizes the rights to life, liberty and property, it should be unnecessary to point out that such alleged social 'duties' originated with fascist states."

The history of the American economy over the last 150 years clearly demonstrates that money saved by outsourcing gets reallocated and flows back into the creation of better and higher paying jobs in this country. This economic justification of outsourcing is consistent with the moral justification, individual rights.

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Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

For more articles by Yaron Brook, and his bio, click here.