Intel CEO Craig Barrett stuck it to critics of offshoring while in Malaysia today. (Photo from Hardwaremania.)

"You shouldn't think of offshoring as a recent phenomenon. This has been happening for decades. It seems the press has just discovered it recently because it is an election cycle, especially in the United States."

And as I read that it occurred to me...why should Intel care where its jobs are?

We're used to thinking of corporations as belonging to us. They don't. They belong to their shareholders. In the U.S. this makes them individuals under the law -- although some other nations don't see them that way.

In the clear light of national interest, I don't think we should see them that way, either.

Corporations do what they do for their own reasons. Their job is to make a profit for their shareholders, to take care of their people and to serve their customers. And you're only their people when you're actually working for them. Once they're done with you, you're no longer their people.

A government of, by and for the big corporations, in other words, is not going to work in the national interest. It's going to work in the corporate interest.

I see nothing wrong with that. But I do see how it might discomfit small government types, who think that a nation of big businesses and small government can meet the needs of the people.

As with Barrett, that's not my problem.