The caller was angry. Very angry.

“You (he was referring to me, Ron Morris – primary host of The American Entrepreneur Radio Show [TAE]) are the son-of-a-(blank) that prevented me from getting a job for more than five years.”

Hell of an opening line.

“Can you put a little meat on that bone for me,” I asked, “I don’t even think I know you?”

He went on to say that while he didn’t know me, he did know my “type.” I was in fact the “type” who was (and this is a direct quote) “born with a sliver spoon in (my) mouth, and a guy who climbed the success ladder and then pulled it up behind him so that no one else could follow.”

Keep in mind the fact that all I had said to him up to this point was, “Hello, I’m Ron Morris.”

Let me fill in some blanks:

• First, this was a caller to the fourth show that we had done on FM radio --- FM NewsTalk 104.7, WPGB Pittsburgh.
• We had just expanded our broadcasts to the FM side because we wanted to use that wavelength to not only grow our audience, but also to promote the fact that we’re on Monday through Saturday on Money Talk 1360 AM.
• When we purchased the FM air time (heard Sundays from 10:00 am until 12:30 pm, by the way) we were told by their program manager that the constituency of their audience was primarily, “angry white men and baseball fans.” (They also carry Pirates baseball.)
• Prior to expanding to FM, The American Entrepreneur Radio Show had experienced an eleven-year run on AM 1360, a 5,000 watt AM station.
• Finally, the program manager for the FM station warned us that “certain members” of his listening audience might be somewhat bitter, due either to job loss or loss of faith in the American way.

So this gentleman’s call (and I cannot remember his name to save my life but for sake of this column I will call him “Joe”) was not wholly unexpected.

When I was finally able to speak, I asked enough questions to determine the following about Joe and his life:

• First, he only spoke to me because he had “tuned in for the Pirates game,” but instead had heard, and roughly, the very last hour of our show.
• During that hour, I was speaking to another caller, a gentleman who went by the handle of “Kosher.” Kosher was an immigrant from Hungary. Kosher’s main point was that, and when compared to Hungarians, Americans are “not nearly appreciative enough of the bounty they have at their fingertips.”
• Also during that conversation with Kosher, I talked about one of my start-up companies. A company that brought Indian, Korean, and Philippino programmers to the U.S. This was in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and we imported these programmers primarily to solve the Y2K software shortage problem.
• And it was this company that had primarily generated Joe’s ire.

“You and guys like you brought all these foreign programmers in and so guys like me couldn’t compete. I was out of work for five years even though I had a computer science degree. When I finally did get hired, that company sent me to Europe and I saw firsthand how the Europeans took care of their employees. They would never allow a contract programmer to take one of their people’s jobs.”

I asked Joe, “So do you think that we paid foreign programmers less money than we paid the Americans?”

“Of course,” he practically screamed, “that’s the game!”

“I hate to tell you this, Joe,” I replied, “but by law we were compelled to pay any imported contractor the exact prevailing wage paid to an American. I believe this is a criminal offense, not civil.”

He blew right by that one. Instead, he focused on the fact that, “the game is rigged” and that there was some sort of conspiracy to keep Americans from working while bringing in foreigners.

And on and on.

The point of all this is that there is a general hysteria going on in this country. There has been for quite some time. People are unemployed and they’re looking for scapegoats. And foreign workers are certainly an easy target.

There is a wonderful company out there by the name of Elance. Elance is an online employment platform that connects qualified professionals with prospective buyers to create anything from computer software to marketing/business plans.

David Iwinski, another host on The American Entrepreneur, started a company for which the entire marketing and communications package was provided by workers found through Elance. Dave not only saved tens of thousands of dollars, but he also had the opportunity to look at almost a dozen work samples before choosing his vendor.

(David is perhaps best known for starting a Pittsburgh-based company named Acusis. Basically, Acusis takes medical transcriptions and sends them to India and other English-speaking countries where they are transcribed.)

Acusis grew to be a $30-plus million dollar company when it was sold.

Last year at a Duquesne University event we call E-Day, Dave was one of two speakers to talk about the issue of societal and economic upheaval brought about by the Internet. Dave told this same wonderful story about starting a business and using Elance to produce a complete communications/logo/marketing portfolio at a fraction of what it would have cost had he worked through a traditional American company.

David marveled at the Elance approach. (Elance puts your work definition out to dozens of prospective candidates who submit their proposals and their work history, skill test scores, feedback from other clients and samples of their work before you decide whether or not you wish to use them.)

It’s a whole new ballgame. And it is giving start-ups advantages previously only available to major corporations.

So this is the new normal. And this is just as it should be, because electrons knoweth no borders. Electrons flow to the lowest cost center and, if properly prosecuted, the highest quality center.

Best of all worlds.

And it’s a world that everyone had better get used to. Because this world is not changing and this world is not going away.

Free market capitalism, and in its purest form, is essentially nature. It is Darwin. It is survival of the fittest.

The Internet is merely a vehicle. It is the railroad track that carries each vendor and each customer. They meet at the appropriate junctions.

By the way, one of the great misconceptions about this “new reality” is that the only “winners” are Indians and Chinese and others working out of straw huts and dilapidated shanties. Not so, according to Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance and a true gentleman whom I’ve had the privilege to speak with recently. Mr. Rosati practically steams when he hears someone say this, because, and at least insofar as Elance is concerned, fully half of its workforce is comprised of Americans.

For those of you wondering about this, Fabio told me personally that many companies usually try to fill out their producer ranks with local hires, then look online, at which point they have the option to hire Americans or foreign workers. American workers on Elance are typically entrepreneurial people who want flexible work with no commute, or people who are building their own service business.

This is a good deal for everyone and maybe it is also the beginning of a pathway that will ultimately reconsolidate our broken-up families?

As to TAE’s foray into the world of FM radio, I can only say that, and in eleven years on AM 1360, I have never once had a call from someone as “dug in” as Joe. There was nothing I could say to convince him that hard work and free market enterprise typically prevails.

But then again, we were warned. We were told by FM NewsTalk 104.7’s management that a certain percentage of their audience (an audience weaned on right-wing “attack” talk, by the way) was virtually incorrigible vis-à-vis “seeing the world optimistically.”

Having spent considerable hours now listening to the Monday through Friday FM 104.7 fare, I must say that I agree. A steady diet of these particular hosts can be overwhelming. (I’m also told that a good deal of what you hear on these kinds of stations is what the radio people refer to as “shtick.” Even those spouting the propaganda don’t fully believe what they’re saying; though it is very good for their personal bottom line.)

It should be interesting.

I do know this --- I will continue to espouse entrepreneurism, free market capitalism, and honest and fair hard work. This has always worked for me (even though Joe somehow thinks that I have special “insider’s privilege”) and I see no reason to change now.

I closed my call with Joe by asking him, “By the way, how long have you been listening to our show?”

I about fell over backwards when I heard his response --- “Ninety minutes,” he said.

As soon as I could compose myself, I said to him, “How about listening for at least three weeks and then calling me back?”

(Like I said, I’m an optimist.)