The 4-Hour Workweek (Plus The Extra Hours the Brown Guy Works)

I just got back from Borders, where I read the first third of Reading Lolita in Tehran (starts out with so much promise, but then... sort of forces and fills things to make a single idea expand into book-length) as well as the newest economic-theory sensation, Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek.

(Abi, if you haven't yet looked into/blogged this, you should. I think it would be a very interesting book for you to read.)

The thesis of the book is the same as the best-selling Rich Dad, Poor Dad: if you pay other people to do your work for you at a lower total cost than the amount of revenue their work can generate... you can earn money without having to physically labor at it.

(Note to S. and other economists: this is rather the fundamental principle of all businesses, yes?)

Unlike Mr. "Rich Dad" Kiyosaki, Ferriss is less about "accumulating as much cash so you can buy wicked cool stuff like summer homes and jet skis" and more about "living simply so you can make your income stretch as far as it can, and traveling and doing good in other parts of the world." (One bonus -- which Ferriss notes -- is that living in most "other parts of the world" is much cheaper than living in the U.S., so the money stretches farther. )

Kiyosaki was all about employing those close to you (his first employee was his sister, whom he paid 25 cents/hour). Ferriss does him one better. Forget those close to you, he writes. You have to pay them in dollars, which are worth too much. Go hire some Indians instead!

Which is exactly what Ferriss does, hiring a small cadre of desis to market his product, secure contacts with influential people, and even manage correspondence with his wife. She may think that sweet email is from her beloved husband, but it was written by some guy in Bangalore.

"They work while you sleep!" Ferriss writes, over and over, as if he had just discovered that India has a different time zone than America. "They work while you sleep!"

Let's take a moment to examine this seriously. Perhaps it is, after all, a win-win situation. Ferriss gets his money, and so do his Indian employees. Sure, Ferriss gets considerably more money and does much less work, but he's the visionary and those poor desis are probably really happy to have any kind of a job at all, given the Indian economy and the blah-blah.

But there's something just a bit icky about a book which spends its first half saying "don't you hate being a working schmuck, having to do what some boss tells you to do" and then its second half saying that the way out is by becoming a boss yourself and hiring your own schmucks. But it's different, y'know, because you'll be a benevolent boss. Um... yeah.

(Question for Team Readers: what are the various Indian-language words for schmuck? Knowing my readership, I am expecting responses in at least Hindi, Telugu, and Punjabi. Very curious to find out how this word translates.)

After reading the book, I am curious to know your thoughts on this particular issue.

Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or an inevitable thing for young American entrepreneurs to outsource to India? Is this an idea that should be promoted, or dreaded?

I guess (it's probably my white liberal guilt showing through) the thing that feels weird to me is this sense of entitlement (and icky racial politics) it implies. The sort of "look how smart of a guy I am, because I found this country full of poor brown people who will do all my work for me, and I hardly have to pay them anything!"

I mean, we did that -- didn't we? -- about a century ago, and here we are doing it again.

I leave the debate up to you.