That being said, I don't find the book overly ethical. It simply suggests outsourcing most of the work to developing countries, where people work for less.
I don't care if their alternative is a worse job, I'm asking why you, citizen of a first world country who lives daily on more than they live on average in a month, should feel ok paying them miserable wages for work that in your country would be paid 10x. Especially when the return you get is exactly the same, as you sell your product in a first world country by first world prices.
It is possible to outsource work tho third countries for less money, why everybody does not do that and there are still work in developed countries? Because it has some costs that may or may not be apparent. Therefore if you require to pay the same wage, you discourage anybody to give work to people in developing countries.
At a macro level, I’d also like to point at the China - US outsourcing story, and how it’s going regarding hollowing out of industries, IP and know-how transfer, and plain old money transfer. It’s not going too bad for China for the moment...
I can believe the exploitation part. There is certainly corruption everywhere which is often part of the cause.
But citation needed for the western part please.
What makes us exploitative is the fact that we go in poor countries and buy their best resources/workforce for the cheapest price possible, without caring if the money we pay even goes to benefit the population, (as often it only goes to benefit a few corrupt politicans/corporations). It's exploitation because we don't really help them get out of poverty but rather condemn them to a vicious circle of being dependent from us.
Then there are the second order effects, such as the dissolution of the middle class in your own country that everyone who outsources and automates is/will be partially responsible for.
Also culturally, we tend to share the wealth, so what is one job in America will become 6 jobs here.
From what I can see, outsourcing deprives one American of a job, makes one American desperate, and lifts 10 of us into the local middle class.
What can be zero-sum is if no new value is added, but you shuffle around who gets what. If Peter has a way to make $100 himself if someone else helps, and he decides to go from paying Mary $30 to paying Paul $5, he has enriched himself by taking from Mary.
I'm saying it's ethical for Peter to enrich himself as long as he enriches everyone, and it is unethical to take from others to give to himself.
The title of the book makes it sound like you can accomplish more by working less, while in fact the remaining 36 hours worth of work is done by someone else every week.
Think of it that way: How would someone from one of the developing countries the book mentions would benefit from what's written in that book?