Free Essay On How The Internet Has Changed Business In Three Ways

The Internet has ushered in change so dramatic that it seems impossible to imagine a time when we were without the Internet. Aside from the normal conveniences in communication and access to information that we normally associate with the Internet, it has also changed global trade and the way business is done. This essay looks at three areas in which the Internet has changed the way businesses operate in a global market place, looking at global wage arbitrage, issues of global regulation and oversight. As will be seen, the three of these issues are connected.
The word global wage arbitrage comes from the term global wage arbitrage, which where jobs move to places where there is less of a cost to maintain them. It might be because a certain government has better regulations and therefor it costs less money to pay the wage of a worker.
Global wage arbitrage in relation with the Internet has to do with the fact that business now have access to workers all over the world. In some cases, they do not even need to install an office in another country to benefit from the fact that other countries have lower wages that they can find online.
A good example would be for a website that needed to write content. Maybe it would cost $20 an hour to pay someone in the United States to do the work, but there is someone in India who would do the same work for $4 an hour. The job might be advertised on craigslist, and with both applying and able to deliver the same quality of work, it makes sense that a business would choose to hire the person who could preform the task for $4 an hour rather than $20.
This ties into issues of regulation. With jobs able to cross oceans with only the click of a mouse. It becomes more difficult to implement labor regulation laws. Using the same example of a case in India, the contracted and remote worker would either not be held to the same standards or the US government would have a more difficult time overseeing the working conditions.
What is really needed is an international body to provide oversight since an employee in India would not have the knowledge to file a complaint about an employer based out of the United States.
Regulation is related to oversight. Laws should be passed that do a better job of monitoring companies who hire from the Internet over seas.
The Internet is definitely here to stay. I know plenty of people who would go crazy, literally not know what to do with their time if it were to suddenly disappear. The Internet is not guided by anyone in particular and is basically a free for all. This is why it is not always easy to gauge how it relates to business since the government, which must provide oversight and regulation usually finds itself in a position to react. However, such measure are necessary to ensure just working conditions in new labor markets that the Internet has changed and ushered in.