Capitol View
THE outline looks just great. We will have high-tech investment, which causes high-tech jobs, triggering more high-tech workers and soon we will be free from limiting jobs in tourism and the military and everybody will be rich. Attracting high tech to Hawaii
There is not a Hawaii governor or gubernatorial wannabe, legislator or councilman who is not able to recite in their sleep the mantra of "more high-tech jobs."
Since Hawaii folded up agriculture, embraced tourism and developed some environmental sensitivity, the notion has been that we needed a non-smoke stack industry.
Gov. Ben Cayetano mentioned two years ago that if General Motors asked permission to set up a car manufacturing plant, he would have to think about it, because we weren't into heavy industrial production.
Actually, it is the industrialists who would be doing the heavy thinking, because Hawaii's raw materials -- sand, lava and big waves -- never drew the Andrew Carnegies of the world to our door step.
But what about Bill Gates? Should we be doing more to get a sleek, collegial Microsoft campus built here?
There would be no pollution, high pay and little expensive support required, so what is not to like?
As with most things that seem too good to be true, the dream of a Hawaii high-tech factory dropping out of the sky and falling neatly packaged unto some vacant state land is a bit of a stretch.
First of all these high-tech jobs come at different levels.
If high technology means typing into a computer -- data entry -- those jobs are already fleeing.
The latest positions to move are 125 data processing jobs with First Hawaiian Bank.
They are going to the mainland and will be handled by an Arkansas company.
Outrigger Hotels also handles much of its data processing on the mainland. Also GTE is moving and consolidating many operations away from Hawaii.
Because these big high-tech firms leave such a light footprint on the environment, they are mobile and part of the frictionless Internet economy. In other words, you can start a business in Hawaii and quickly pack up your workers, give them plane tickets to a cheaper state or country and grow bigger, faster somewhere else.
The home-grown company now flourishing off-shore is Digital Island, which made some money for the state when its stock took off. But it also relocated most of its offices to the mainland. Of the 45 job openings now available with the company, in sites ranging from Boston to Hong Kong, only three are in Honolulu.
FINALLY, of the remaining possible high-tech jobs, they may not be sewing Nikes, but in their own ways they are being talked about as the sweat shops of the millennium.
"For all the talk of easygoing environments, new-media companies are also notorious for employee burnout and nanosecond turnover," says Clive Thompson, editor for Shift magazine, which tracks Web site production houses.
University of California Professor Norman Matloff last year studied the much-promised computer programmer jobs and found that only 2 to 4 percent of those interviewed were hired.
He reported that the computer worker shortage was only in young, unattached programmers willing to work 80-hour weeks for comparatively little pay.
Hawaii's digital dreams may never come true, but if they do it won't be without a new set of worries.
Richard Borreca reports on Hawaii's politics every Wednesday.
He can be reached by e-mail at rborreca@pixi.com