On Negative Externalities And Suchlike

The bottom line is this:  The software companies AND the companies in other industries are all consumers for the SAME product. They are all competing to buy the same product – the engineer’s brains. The software company happens to value it more than the other industries and thus gets to hire the engineers.

This isn’t an externality, it’s EVERYDAY LIFE!

Phoenix critiques an article at How The Other Half Lives, which talks about some sort of sociological study of the IT industry which apparently suggests that IT inflict negative externalities on other industries and public sector research and development institutes by hiring Engineers (who would have worked in those industries, had not IT drawn them away)