Who's this "we" you're talking about? Are you a software engineer or a temporarily embarrassed billionaire? Do you think the rational thing is to pay the lowest regional salary worldwide?
This kind of race-to-the-bottom logic needs to be rejected: by workers, business culture, and the government.
Unfortunately business culture embraces races to the bottom (for everyone but owners and executives), and uses its lobbying might to push the government into tolerating or even supporting it. And there are a lot of deluded workers who (for some reason) seem to be feel smart when they parrot the ideas of people who want to screw them.
Hiring someone vs paying a vendor for a service:
- different level of commitment
- might tie your org to a physical location
- different legal risks
- shows investors a different picture (probably this would even influence a bank loan)
- manager has to fight a different bureaucracy
Not to mention that comparing the cost of a hire by looking at their salary is pretty dumb. ISTR hearing at Google that the overall estimated cost of employing a SWE is like 4X their compensation? Can't remember the exact figures though.