book review: the world is flat, by thomas friedman
i have been reading this book slowly but steadily for the past few months, much as i would have loved to finish it in a week, but it's been a busy few months. and all i can say is that "the world is flat" has helped me understand a few trends in the world today, without being rocket science or difficult to comprehend. it's not just a continuation of "the lexus and the olive tree" it's a whole different world the book is successfully introducing. sure enough, there are some political opinions in there and you can see the american background of the author in a few instances, but you cannot expect to have a book about the world without political opinions, can you?friedman has done some serious research about this book as well, and created something that can give you food for thought on what could be the way forward for this world. political systems, globalisation, economic equilibrium and a lot of modern trends that have changed all this and will continue changing it, are all there in the book. but just one paragraph towards the end of the book, says it all for me:
"analysts have always tended to measure a society by classical economic and social statistics: its deficit-to-GDP ratio, or its unemployment rate, or the rate of literacy among its adult women. such statistics are important and revealing. but there is another statistic, much harder to measure, that i think is even more important and revealing: does your society have more memories than dreams or more dreams than memories?"
definitely worth a read.
posted by dimitris @ 07:52
2 comments
2 Comments:
Just off press ...
The World is Flat?
“Globalization is Threatening to Hollow Out America’s Middle Class,” Assert Business Analysts
Thomas Friedman’s recent New York Times bestseller, The World is Flat, asserts that the international economic playing field is now more level than it has ever been. As popular as it may be, some reviewers assert that by what it leaves out, Friedman’s book is dangerous.
“The world isn’t flat as a result of globalization,” say Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo, business analysts and authors of a critical analysis of Friedman’s book. “It’s tilted in favor of unfettered global corporations that exploit cheap labor in China, Indian and beyond. Today’s global corporations go to the ends of the earth to employ factory workers for 20 cents an hour and PhDs in science and technology for $20,000 a year,” add Aronica and Ramdoo. In short, “Globalization is the greatest reorganization of the world since the Industrial Revolution,” says Aronica.
This epic change has shaken up the way the world does business, and Americans are reluctantly facing a shift of wealth and power to the East. Across the country, a growing number of Americans fear that they could be replaced by someone from a developing country. Recent polls indicate that millions of Americans are preoccupied with the outsourcing of American jobs and the threat of global economic competition. From boardrooms to classrooms to kitchen tables and water coolers, globalization has become a hot topic of discussion and debate everywhere. But by what Friedman’s book ignores or glosses over, it misinforms the American people and policy makers.
Aronica and Ramdoo’s concise monograph, The World is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of Thomas L. Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller, brings clarity to many of Friedman’s stories and explores nine key issues Friedman largely disregards or treats too lightly, including the hollowing out of America’s debt-ridden middle class. To create a fair and balanced exploration of globalization, the authors cite the work of experts that Friedman fails to incorporate, including Nobel laureate and former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Dr. Joseph Stiglitz.
Refreshingly, readers can now gain new insights into globalization without weeding through Friedman’s almost 600 pages of grandiloquent prose and bafflegab. “It’s of utmost urgency that we all learn about and prepare for total global competition. If you read Friedman’s book, and were awed, this fall you really should read more rigorous treatments of this vital subject. Globalization affects all our lives and will be of even greater significance to our children and grandchildren,” says Ramdoo.
Aronica and Ramdoo conclude by listing over twenty action items that point the way forward for America and other developed countries. They provide a comprehensive, yet concise, framework for understanding the critical issues of globalization. They paint a clear and sometimes alarming picture of the early twenty-first century landscape, and present timely information needed by governments, businesses, and individuals everywhere.
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i have some agreements and some disagreements with the above! :) see below:
friedman's book can be dangerous. but in the modern times, as the world is complex, *any* book read can be dangerous, if we don't add our own judgement on top of what we read. and that can literally be any book, this one, the bible, a novel etc.
what i said in my posting is that it gives some food for thought and the most complete representation of the picture that i personally have seen so far. i never thought that it is a book that contains everything and all perspectives around. there might be other, better books around, explaining the world in a better way. i haven't read any yet.
another thing that i would like to see in a book is the way to move forward for *developing* countries, not developed ones. i am not so concerned on what happens if some people lose their wealth. i am more concerned of what happens if the gap between poor and rich countries widens further, and i want to see how the developing countries can catch up, using the opportunities offered by the world as it stands today.
unfortunately most of the books around will not offer that perspective, because they are western driven and more concerned about what happens if the us of a or britain/france/germany/japan etc lose part of what they have gained over the years, continuing to ignore the rest of the world who is starving because of their actions in the past hundreds of years. in my view, it's one of the effects of globalisation, which was driven by the west initially: they were able to buy cheap labour in the east and widen their profits, but when the east starts to develop itself (and the world depending on it more and more like on china and india nowadays), a big part of the cake will be taken away from the west, as the decision making power will shift direction. it's like a boomerang effect.
in any case there are things missing from this book like from any book around. but what i'd like to see more of is the way for developing nations to hop on the train.
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