A long time associate, Jim Hayes, sent me the following email about outsourcing and he agreed to let me share this with you. (Jim Hayes currently serves as President of The Fiber Optic Association. While developing his fiber optic test equipment company which was acquired by Fluke in 2001, he acted as a mentor for other entrepreneurs in high tech businesses.)

Here's Jim's message about outsourcing:

I think the readers would like to hear your thoughts on solving the problems many companies face with inexperienced and sometimes deceitful executives that we depend upon to protect our job, benefits, and stock prices.

Americans are polarized on many topics and outsourcing of jobs is one of the most controversial. Over the last decade millions of Americans have lost their manufacturing jobs because corporate executives have outsourced them to countries where they can manufacture products or provide services for less. This outsourcing movement is totally based on economics: do the work where the costs are less and, theoretically, you will improve profits. In the same time frame, corporate pay has increased stratospherically while workers are earning less. Therefore, profits may not have improved at all - they've have merely shifted costs, from worker pay and benefits to executive pay and benefits.

At the same time, we have seen many instances of corporate mismanagement or even outright evildoing among American companies. Oil companies are raking in the profits while their lobbyists unravel decades of environmental and conservation efforts. Drug companies, with the help of their paid consultants inside the FDA, lobbyists, confusing direct-to-consumer advertising, and perks paid to doctors, are covering up that many of their drugs are not effective or even harmful but just highly profitable. Auto companies continue to sell unsafe cars that slurp gas, but cry for government help when the market turns against them. A blind survey of corporate executives last year found the majority would rather be playing golf than working, or in the case of James Cayne of Bear Stearns, play bridge while his company folded and nearly brought the whole economy down.

What does this tell us? We're outsourcing the wrong jobs! Rather than outsource millions of manufacturing jobs to save money, we should be outsourcing executive jobs to save companies. Outside the U.S., most business people know the real costs of energy and raw materials and plan accordingly. Environmental rules are problems in some areas, but many are learning fast that living in concert with the earth is the only way to survive. They work long hours for much less pay. And many who emigrate to the U.S. end up running the most successful companies anyway!