Rate/Hour = $1.00????????? It's unfair!

I don't agree with implementing protectionism to support the first world providers. The superficial cause of this, if one is paying attention, is the exchange rate, but the underlying cause of the exchange rate is the economic inequality in the world, due to the global economic structure, and the empowerment the disadvantaged are finding through communications technology.

A portion of the world can't engage in economic imperialism for decades, and not set up conditions in which work is available overseas that's incredibly inexpensive, effective, and scalable by that culture's standards. You can't say, "please create us thousands and thousands of consumables and commodities, and we will pay you in beads and pennies" and then when they make an engine that can do it, complain that their consumables and commodities are too cheap and local bakers and candlestick makers can't compete. Services are no different in that way.

We didn't see this before, because there was no internet. You could have an empire (call it a "superpower" or "global force for good" or "leadshership with power") and colonies (call them "client states" or "economic partners"), and you could enforce tarrifs so they couldn't compete with the homeland in the tea trade. But the moment you let them on the internet, and they have their own lines of communication and trade, they throw the tea in the harbor. If one remembers, it was the world's largest "Superpower" that did this 200 years ago. It set up its own trade routes, ports, and mail system, and broke the mercantile system, ultimately leading to its independence and rise as the economic force of the factory and farm.

But then it became the empire, and created factory and farm colonies. It invaded (by economics or by force) and it outsourced and restructured the world. And now the internet represents the colonists' new trade routes, ports, and mail system. Just like the early US colonists skirted the empire and sold their wares to the Dutch and the French and Spain, so these new economic "colonists" are skirting the West, and selling their wares on an open market.

And from my view, more power to them. May their tribe increase.

Personally, the moment there's a minimum wage implemented, I'm gone - out of principle.  It would be enforcing an economic inequality through a controlled global economy translated into yet another corporate club; it would be implementing a localized economic imperialism. And Odesk is an economy, just like Everquest is an economy (see the famous economics doctoral dissertation on this subject). What you change has significant impact but, here, it's on people's lives, not characters' accounts.

What we're experiencing is a painful historical shift that has been brought about by generations of specific patterns of behavior. The shift is that the economic engines of labor created by the first world are now competing with the first world to the degree they are empowered to communicate, connect, and collaborate to do so.

A colleague of mine puts is candidly. The US is f*cked, and doesn't know it yet. Countries like India and China are creating a fundamental economic shift. This is history. In 100 years, we will look back and our children will think it obvious that such empires give way to forces they helped create but can't control. For now, there's wailing and moaning and discomfort.

Japan wiped the floor with the US automotive industry in the 70s. They could produce impeccably-designed and manufactured cars with tighter tolerances, less maintenance, lower cost, and more reliability and the US response was a combination of cries for protectionism and the K-car (buckets on wheels with no a/c or cigarette lighter and often no seatbelts). They were about $500 more expensive, but they said GM on them. And people threw a fit.

Some people bought US out of a commitment to local labor, and some of us bought Japanese out of a commitment to the world as a whole, to quality work, and to economic justice. This is not a new set of arguments, but this is a massive historical wave coming when compared to that little tremor.

A culture can't oursource all its accounting to "client states" and then expect the local accounts to be able to compete in a global market. They were supposed to become Eloi, not Moorlocks. The Moorlocks are wonderful people. I like them. I like working with them. I consider them no less my kin and colleagues than the Eloi - maybe moreso sometimes, because they're committed to values that my ancestors once espoused, before they grew fat on partially hydrogenated everything, and ate and ate more cars, more steel, more trees, more clothes, more more more everything, until the world became their manufacturing warehouse and their shopping mall. I identify with the guy that just did a job for me in Bengal, because he negotiates, he doesn't make shrill demands for controls to protect him - he makes a trade not a demand - he doesn't carry the club of "we'll make rules to ensure we get preference on this contract". He doesn't cry for an affirmative action of labour, or an inside deal, or a good old boy arrangement. He bids. He's an entrepreneur, like me. I respect him. I find him among my people.

In this day and age, with the Internet, if I knew that Pharoah had slaves, and the slaves were the best brickworkers in the world, I wouldn't go to Pharoah for a brick contract. I'd hire the slaves and treat them as free men. I'd do it out of principle, as well as cost. I'd do it, too, because having a middle man just to have a middle man is called a "racket". True, Egypt had a few brickworkers that probable went belly up when they captured the slaves, but that's on Pharoah - he's the one that promised a world of prosperity for his people, if they would only put the foreigners to work. He promised them a world order governed by Egyptian leadership and values. But even in Pharoah's land among Pharoah's people there are inequalities, and some of us can't afford to hire Pharoah's own servants when there's a world of people who don't partake of those economic realities, who don't get those protections, and they're willing to trade.

What are you going to do, crack the whip and take the food out of their mouths, because you'd prefer it were in your own? There should be enough for everyone, but you have to talk with Pharoah about that.

I realize this will infuriate some people. I can live with that. However, to talk about "fairness" and protectionism in the same breath is a mockery of ethical discussion. And frankly, you lose people like me when that double-tongued gospel comes out. I like tea, but when coffee is 1/10 the price per ounce, and I like the grower, and he doesn't scream that some guy is selling apple cider even cheaper, I'll go with the coffee. Call me a patriot of the world, but that's how I feel.

I agree with this one.

Fact is a lot of beginners would like to get their feet wet with easy jobs, and paying $1 an hour or $0.10 per line for Data Entry is pretty fair.  It's easy stuff.  I refuse to do a lot of work for a low wage; it's not fair to me, but I know there are plenty people who would love the opportunity just to get work.  So, they can have those jobs.  Now, I realize to get to higher paying jobs and better fixed rates, I will have to take the worse jobs, so I will probably do that. 

I am deleting the bulk of your comments because I'd like to focus on a few things that you said not the entire thing.... 

I think that there is some clarification that I'd like to make to some of your points. 

First most other freelance sites that I've reviewed tend to focus on 'one stop wonder' jobs (that's what I call them - the one timer who's looking to get a project done and move on).  These sites do not encourage you to develop a long working relationship with buyers.

Second: I've been on oDesk as long as you have.  We both got started at about the same time.  Here's the contrast: you have 37 hours while I have nearly 1,000.  If you look at my profile, you won't really see that because from September until March I did strictly freelancing and now I'm an affiliate company (which I did to accommodate my clients). I've closed out more jobs as an affiliate since March than you've actually worked since September. Yes, I do take the 'one shot' deals (as you can see in my history), but the fact of the matter is that my longer term assignments are my bread and butter.   They pay my bills and they keep my other team members working as well.

My understanding of oDesk was not necessarily to promote the 'one shot' deals but rather to develop long term working relationships with buyers.  When you are able to do that you can collect hours with a single buyer over time. 

My rates are not the lowest in my category - I have different clients I charge different rates for reasons I won't bore you with - but the fact of the matter  is that for longer term relationships oDesk, buyers and providers all win.

I will concede one thing: Because I write content/articles etc., chances are that I have a better chance of developing longer term relationships than perhaps a programmer or a graphics person does so perhaps that has an effect as well.

I strongly disagree with your assessment that at some point we'll all be making lower wages because the buyers are demanding to pay less. I also am a buyer - In fact I make a point of reviewing the work of the team members at least once a month and making an increase if it's appropriate based on their work, effort and time put in.

Remember: broad statements paint false pictures.

Doreen