Why Outsource?

You can't listen to a political debate anymore without hearing about outsourcing, and rightly so. Job outsourcing is a major topic in today's politics because it affects us both individually and as a a nation. It seems that there are two sides pitted against one another -- the companies who outsource their work and fight for policies to make it easier to do so, and workers who fight against outsourcing.

So why do we outsource? We are in a global economy where we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. To stay competitive in the global markets, and even at home, outsourcing is a part of cost-effective product development and manufacturing. The issue and cause for debate is that outsourcing has become less of a method of increasing productivity and more of a method for maximizing profits at the expense of workers here at home. Outsourcing isn't practiced for the good of the workers; it's practiced for the good of the companies in order to maximize their profit margins, and it transfers economic wealth to other nations. Some motives may be articulated so that they seem to be beneficial to consumers, but by and large they are corporate-driven.

Some argue that outsourcing allows for inexpensive goods in higher volume, making our lives easier because we can save money at the cash register. I argue against this assertion, seeing the economic system as a carefully balanced ecosystem. Resources flow back and forth between consumer and producer. Consumers give money to producers in trade for goods, then producers pay that money back to consumers for their labor in producing more goods. When labor is outsourced, the money that would normally be fed back to the consumer instead leaves the system, restricting the purchasing power of the consumer. So, yes, products may be cheaper, but the consumer also has less money to spend.

Because the direction of our economy is driven by the motives of producers rather than by the motives of consumers, there has been a devaluing of skilled labor in many sectors. This is most notable when looking at immigration labor. We outsource much of our labor, we make it difficult for highly educated persons to immigrate to our country, and then we exploit the cheap labor of illegal and/or unskilled immigrants. Meanwhile, it is becoming more and more difficult for educated college students to find jobs. Perhaps this trend in our economy is part of the fuel for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Instead of exploiting the global market for driving higher profit margins at the cost of skilled laborers, we should use the global market to increase productivity globally and also locally while reaping the rewards without having to make detrimental sacrifices. Concepts such as global teaming and taking advantage of the 24-hour clock, or sharing resources across multiple locations could yield enormous gains for companies while also maintaining a solid workforce both at home and abroad. Such a shift isn't impossible, and for some competitive and on-the-edge companies may already be occurring. It will, however, require changes in our relationships with other nations and in our rather stingy intellectual property system.

Engineering Challenges

Great engineering comes out of great challenges. Difficult, interesting problems are what drive us to creative solutions and innovation that change our world beyond the scope of just a single instance. From commercial flight to personal computers, the last few decades have produced so many engineering achievements that we now rely upon.

One of the most important challenges right now, voted highest by visitors to Grand Challenges for Engineering, is the development of solar energy into a economical source of power. Solar energy is such an important resource because it is a freely available clean resource that could easily meet the demands of Earth's entire population. This is surprisingly lower than other resources, like offshore wind turbines. It can also continue to meet our demands far into the future for any conceivable demands, and unlike the fossil fuels and nuclear fuels we use now, it does not produce any pollutants. To further the viability of solar energy, the technology needs further development to increase cell efficiencies and reduce costs.

Viability does not stem only from the solar cells themselves, but also from surrounding technologies that support and enable the resource extraction and usage. For one, "current solar cell designs require high-purity, and therefore expensive, materials..." However, developments in nanotechnology may make that problem obsolete, allowing cells to be produced with more inexpensive materials. Also, energy storage is an expensive support infrastructure, especially when implementing at-home solar energy. Several technological and infrastructure changes may help this issue, such as better batteries, mechanical energy storage, or smart power grids that can accept excess power during the day and supply power at night.

The reason for the lack of solar energy implementation in the United States is not due to a lack of feasibility, but rather a lack of direction and push for its widespread use. Several other countries have substantial solar energy infrastructures, and Germany produces 6,000% more solar energy than the U.S. despite the U.S. having 4,000% more available sun light. The amount of money spent in the U.S. on solar energy subsidies is miniscule compared to those on fossil fuels, hindering its growth.

Fun infographic on the growth of solar energy vs growth of facebook.

Gambling with Nature

Natural disasters are a fickle opponent because there is no completely predictable process or enemy to counter. Instead, we rely upon historical information, intuition, and a sense of risk. Before we can even address good or bad design issues, we can look at how we even choose what level of disaster to design for. A great example is the recent catastrophe in Japan when a large earthquake wrecked some regions, but perhaps the greatest damage came from the resultant tsunami spilling over the sea walls and causing the nuclear reactors to dump radiation onto the surrounding civilians.

Why weren't the sea walls designed to withstand such a tsunami? The answer is in cost/benefit and risk analysis during the designing of the sea wall. Sure, engineers could have designed an impressively robust sea wall that could withstand the entire ocean hurling at it, but such an undertaking would be costly. Engineers must balance the cost of the measure with the benefit of it succeeding. If a disaster causes $5 billion in damage, and there's a 1/1000 change of the disaster occurring, then it makes sense to spend about ($5B/1000) or $5 million dollars to assure that event is mitigated. This damage prediction also includes the loss of life -- and yes, you can place a dollar value on a life; after all, that's what insurance companies do. There is also the matter of risk. Looking at historical data, engineers can extrapolate the likelihood of certain size events. Using that probability curve, they choose an event size to design for. Of course, a larger event may happen that has never occurred previously, and that is a risk that comes with gambling with nature.

A popular area of engineering R&D is in earthquake proof buildings. There are many systems out there, such as the one currently being developed at Stanford to absorb the energy of a building's motion during quakes. Unfortunately, like many other systems, it is not in wide spread use because of the relative youth of these designs, and thus not many buildings are equipped to handle earthquakes. The systems are more common, and necessary, in new skyscrapers where the building can sway even during normal days yet alone during an earthquake. For example, Taipei 101 contains a tuned mass damper to stabilize oscillatory motion in the structure. These sorts of designs and technologies are mitigation techniques being employed prior to the natural disaster to minimize the effects of such disasters.

Some of the worst aspects to natural disaster design is not in a physical design, such as a structure or device, but in the policy and response. We may not think about policy and social regimes as associated with design, but they really are -- there is a lot of engineering and creative thinking involved. These responses also employ technological devices and scientific knowledge which may directly affect the policies or which may aid in executing the response. The key is to find a synergy between engineering and policy. Of course, the solution to this problem can come on several fronts. First, engineering could help to shape the policy response directly, though this is often problematic because of the disconnect between engineers and politicians. Second, engineering solutions can aid in the response through technological means. Emergency communications, rescue vehicles, and other routes can all provide post-disaster relief.

Countering natural disasters entails both a pre-disaster effort to mitigate problems and also a post-disaster effort to recover from problems that were not mitigated. Unfortunately, the later is largely driven by government response which may or may not be dependable in any given situation, but engineering design solutions can certainly aid in the response. As for mitigation, engineering can play a much more active role in strengthening our world against natural threats.

We All Depend on Water

Water is one of the basic necessities for life for almost all living creatures. For humans and many aquatic species, fresh water is specifically required, but that precious resource is degrading in many parts of the world. The result is trying for both aquatic life and civilization in some parts of the world. We need to take a critical look at this problem, however, because jumping on the bandwagon at home may not always be the right solution.

The problem is hitting the hardest in northern Africa and some parts of Asia where both access to safe water and fish diversity suffer. There are a multitude of organizations whose purpose is to bring safe water to some of these regions, and the Clinton Global Initiative and WASH Advocacy Initiative, backed by companies such as Proctor & Gamble, have recently committed to bring water to 2 million people in Africa. Stories like this are common, which may be due to the public outcries for assistance and the transparency of these issues and the number of people involved. Simply providing ways to clean water, however, may not be enough. The availability of fresh water in these regions is indeed low, but that availability is only part of the issue, and solar stills and desalination cannot solve the entire demand. The other factor is that water is heavily used in agriculture, and very little or virtually none is left or used for domestic needs. The situation in those regions -- limited water resources and a highly agricultural economy -- is inherently problematic. It is even more so problematic when you look at booming population densities and also pollution generated by unsustainable agricultural practices.

We like to think we are resource conscious here in the United States, often so we can feel good about ourselves for "saving the environment" or so that we can save a few dollars on our utility bills. Aside from droughts in some parts of the southwest, the U.S. is pretty good on water supplies, so putting a low-flow flush valve on your toilet won't likely make a big difference in saving lives. I am by no means arguing that being resource-conscious isn't a bad thing. Saving a little bit of water here and there saves money, saves energy, and can help the environment. All-in-all though, we are pretty efficient at drawing water and cleaning our sewage. The places that really need help are those that are developing and who are stuck using unsustainable practices to maintain their populace.

Innovations like the aquacone and desalination techniques can certainly have a major impact on regions where safe water is scarce, but if we are to address the problem of water supplies on a global scale, we need to step back and look at the big picture. This isn't something that we can just engineer our way out of with a clever piece of plastic. It needs to be addressed at the level of the global societal system. As we become more aware of our environment and how we must sustain it so that it can sustain us, we must change the way we operate. This requires some pretty major innovation as a civilization.