I asked myself this question last night while I was assessing the situation in Moldova… which has nothing amusing in it. However, I made this reflection, namely that all offshore countries without exception were dictatorships and that nearshore countries were already, almost all, democratic. You may think I satirize, but the following short list gives me reason:

- Nearshore: all countries in Central and Eastern Europe, that are EU members, are democratic; they don’t dislike those who only know what a dictatorship is. Argentina, Chile, Uruguay are nearshore US countries and pose few problems to their inhabitants. In Europe, the exceptions have all the same characteristic; they are the former RSS (Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine). Happiness does not return quickly where the imperialism of Moscow has passed through. The prize goes without doubt to Belarus, which always has a leader of the Cretaceous era (the era of morons?). Morocco is not a democratic country and it is quite possible that France has contributed to this situation. Tunisia is not a democratic country either and wants to play the nearshore card as well.

- Offshore: Madagascar has one for a while now, but is India a democratic country when 80% of its population lives an unspeakable fate that nobody wants to improve? China, Indonesia, Malaysia, my dear Vietnam are not examples of respect for human rights either. Finally, I find no democracy in the offshore area.

So does this mean that democracy is too expensive for our industry? In fact it is not impossible, although simplistic yet. As recently as last week, one of our competitors in human resources in Moldova, wanted the Communists to win the election “so that nothing would change.” I will not give my opinion on the Moldovan election because I’m not legitimate. Indeed, for me, the problem is not that the Communists win or lose this election. The real question is what the regime will be, which, by its policy, will ensure the country’s economic development and respect for basic rights to education, health, vote with respect of democratic procedures. Here are the real issues. I explained to these people, that we, the software companies, would have to pay our payroll taxes, as true corporate citizens, if they were going to ask for fiscal measures for us and our employees.

I then explained what everybody knows, including themselves, that people would leave this type of country for the living conditions rather than for the wage (what most of the time, leaders do not know). I’M REFERING HERE TO OUR BUSINESS ONLY. But this guy refused to understand me and explained the benefit of his wage system, based on the use of a tax heaven to pay its employees. I will return to this topic one day.

I believe that, in fact, it is not democracy that it is costly in itself. Nobody questions the strength of Canadian democracy and yet the work is much cheaper in Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany and even France.

I am not absolutely looking to fall on my feet at the end of this difficult exercise, but I would say that these countries need the revenues that we generate. I would also say that we are demanding companies, in terms of educational and technical infrastructure. Our companies are, by nature, open to the outside world through their customers. I fully felt the emotion of those who shared this difficult week with us. They were interested in what was going on and discussed with the teams. The employees of offshore companies, either Moldovan, Belarusian or Moroccans are often at the democratic forefront of these countries and often share much higher expectations than the rest of the population. We often offer them the only solution to put their knowledge to use while remaining in their country.

In conclusion, I would say that no one, for these reasons, could settle in the worst dictatorships, regardless of the wage cost. Who offshores in North Korea or nearshores in Libya? Thus, the presence of IT offshore activity could be used to measure the degree of hardness of a dictatorship! Isn’t this amazing?