Flatlining
Posted by SCapozzola on September 2nd, 2008
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s recent bestseller, ‘The World is Flat,’ has cheered globalization in all its forms. As an outspoken advocate of globalization, Friedman has celebrated the progress that results from opening markets and “leveling the playing field.” Because his book praised the advent of the Internet and the information age as a means to interconnect global citizenry, he has frequently touted the need for improved education in the U.S.
Some would argue that Friedman’s faith in the Internet to transform and modernize countries like China and India has been misplaced. In truth, China’s booming industrial and scientific progress has resulted in large part from the deliberate transfer of U.S. research and technology to Beijing as companies have chosen to relocate their factories overseas. Simply put, China’s rapid rise is not a coincidence of timing.
The comeuppance of this shift in hi-tech production is that China is quickly becoming one of the most wealthy and ambitious nations in the world.
During the recent Olympics, Friedman was astounded to note the stunning modernization that has swept China. Shanghai’s 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, for example, easily trumps a comparable commute into Manhattan from LaGuardia airport. As Friedman admits, “the rich parts of China, the modern parts of Beijing or Shanghai or Dalian, are now more state of the art than rich America. The buildings are architecturally more interesting, the wireless networks more sophisticated, the roads and trains more efficient and nicer.”
What accounts for China’s boom, according to Friedman? Like the recent spectacle of the Summer Olympics, China has focused on “national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work.”
By contrast, Friedman says that “much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001” and that “it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America.”
Unfortunately, it’s hard for state and federal budgets to be applied to internal improvement when depleted tax bases are stretched to the breaking point. America has lost 2.3 million jobs to China since 2001, at an estimated cost in lost wages of $19.4 billion just in 2007. Unless this hemorrhaging is reversed, there won’t be the money and productive know-how to keep pace with fast-sprinting China.
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September 7th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Greedy self-destruction. Neither political party can protect us.
American workers can choose to support themselves by purchasing American-made goods—or we can choose to perpetuate our Devil’s Bargain with the People’s Republic of China.
Again, I’d like to recommend “Dollar to the Giant” on YouTube–an insightful, artistic presentation of our predicament:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUj8leZxmK8
It’s well within our power to right our own course:
1. Whenever possible, buy goods made in the USA.
2. Don’t buy anything made in China.
We could rebuild our country and create enough prosperity for either party’s promises.
We’ve done it before. We can do it again if we simply exercise a little responsibility and stop thinking the government’s going to do it for us.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:38 am
On an alternative note, a counterperspective to Friedman’s theory on globalization :
Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel winner for economics and was Chief Economist at World Bank) said while on a trip to India, that 600 million people from India (out of the one billion!) have been left out of the “development” fold of globalization. So, obviously, all India is not going to migrate into middle class, if anything the inequality is far, far worse now, after the advent of globalization.
Similarly newspaper reports have pointed out how Chinese workers are working in apalling conditions, to churn out the low cost products, with poor pay, cramped rooms, no accident or health insurance benefits, no job security, no overtime, long working hours - so who is actually benefiting from this sort of globalization? Corporates ofcourse, and the few privileged people of India and China who have been able to get educated in engineering and technology! Not the vast majority of population.
There is a small, but interesting book, by Aronica and Ramdoo, “The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller.” It is a small book compared to the 600 page tome by Friedman, and aimed at the common man and students alike. As popular as the book may be, some reviewers assert that by what it leaves out, Friedman’s book is dangerous. The authors point to the fact that there isn’t a single table or data footnote in Friedman’s entire book.
“Globalization is the greatest reorganization of the world since the Industrial Revolution,” says Aronica. Aronica and Ramdoo conclude by listing over twenty action items that point the way forward, and they provide a comprehensive, yet concise, framework for understanding the critical issues of globalization.
You may want to see www.mkpress.com/flat
and watch www.mkpress.com/flatoverview.html
for an interesting counterperspective on Friedman’s
“The World is Flat”.
Also a really interesting 6 min wake-up call: Shift Happens! www.mkpress.com/ShiftExtreme.html
There is also a companion book listed: Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
www.mkpress.com/extreme
http://www.mkpress.com/Extreme11minWMV.html