Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

CALL CENTER JOBS II

—

by

James A. Bacon
in ,

(This is a repeat of a prior post that was contaminated by a spammer.)

It seems that more and more one must deal with tired and incompetent call center workers.

On the web yesterday and in WaPo today (“Indians Trade Health for Jobs: Disease, Weight Gain Likelier for Outsourced Workers” page D-11 behind Spots) there is an interesting perspective on what is happening among the 1.6 million call center workers in India.

This data may provide insight into the future of Balanced Communities on an ever more Flat Earth.

If these trends continue more and more in India will seek other ways to use their education and language skills and as the quality level declines Enterprises in the US of A will find it less and less effective to outsource across time zones. The falling value of the Dollar will accelerate this trend.

It may turn out that only sustainable alternative is Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions, here or there.

EMR

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6 responses to “CALL CENTER JOBS II”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    There are incompetent and tiresome “information” providers in every field, it seems.

    Last call center worker I spoke to was in the Phillipines. After we transacted our business, i had a nice (but short) chat with her about her business, weather, Phillipine politics, and economy.

    She seemed pleased that anyone was interested. Try it sometime. Its like saying hello to someone on the Metro, or in an elevator.

    First they clutch their purse and give you a wierd look, then they smile, maybe, if they aren’t too jaded.

    RH

  2. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I’m going to take another run at this.

    With respect to Balanced Communities and NURs … is the GOAL to have ALL goods and services produced within those boundaries?

    In other words, would such a thing be the ultimate optimization of NUR/BCs?

    If not.. then what is the CRITERIA for goods/services that SHOULD be within the NUR/BC and those that can be done outside and “imported”?

  3. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Larry:

    There you go asking questions again :>)

    I believe you can answer this for yourself:

    Recall that Balanced Communites are components of NURs.

    As you move from Dooryard, to Cluster, … to Community to NUR there is more Balance in each component and less crosses the component boundary.

    At the Community scale it is “reletive” Balance.

    There is no “absolute” balance even at the NUR scale.

    The objective of import replacement is to replace as much as makes sense.

    For the Community, what makes sense in the NUR.

    For the NUR what make sense in the Global Marketplace.

    We argue that if costs are fairly allocated, much more can be replaced than is now.

    Every component and every NUR is different depending on the location, scale, resources, etc.

    So: What is the “CRITERIA”?

    EMR

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    It is never going to be possible to have ALL goods and services produced within those boundaries.

    EMR is right. All you can do is what makes sense, given what you have to work with.

    One of the things we have to work with is a pretty good transportation system. Trucks aren’t paying their full costs, and gas is too cheap, otherwise its a pretty good system.

    Given what we have, if it makes more sense to produce elsewhere and then transport, so be it. The other option is to bring in all the stuff you need to produce it here, and then you have to transport even more stuff.

    Then, when you try to transport in the cheap labor to build it here, you are likely to have political opposition.

    We could do more here (and in other places) than we do. If we did we would have more variety, because you would still have the option of transporting in.

    RH

  5. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    isn’t there a point at which “what makes sense” essentially defaults back to a dysfunctional pattern?

    That’s why I was asking for a criteria.

    Any developer could propose something and claim that it meets the criteria of “it makes sense” and it could still be dysfunctional.

    so what criteria should be used as guidelines for developers and the public to understand what the benchmarks should be?

  6. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    At 5:20 Larry asked:

    “isn’t there a point at which “what makes sense” essentially defaults back to a dysfunctional pattern?”

    Not if the location variable costs are fairly allocated.

    That answers the secon question because each NUR needs to evolve a strategy to create Balanced Communites.

    Did we not say that the CRITERIA depend on the location, scale and resources of each NUR?

    The evolution of the strategy requires and informed, democratic process.

    To achieve that citizens need a Conceptual Framework and a robust Vocabulary. With those tools citizens can achieve the Fundamental Change in governance structure needed to establish that process.

    There is no Silver Bullet and no one is going to decree the CRITERIA.

    EMR

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