Ed Leamer’s review of Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat, in the Journal of Economic Literature, provides a wonderful review of economic geography and trade theory, while making it clear just how bumpy the world really is. I’ve been largely unsuccessful explaining to a number of friends why Friedman’s latest makes my blood pressure rise, but now I have something wonderful to point to (via Marginal Revolution).
Physically, culturally, and economically the world is not flat. Never has been, never will be. There may be vast flat plains inhabited by indistinguishable hoi polloi doing mundane tasks, but there will also be hills and mountains from which the favored will look down on the masses. Our most important gifts to our offspring are firm footholds on those hills and mountains, far from the flat part of the competitive landscape. Living in the United States helps a lot, and will continue to. Though personal pleasure is our real goal, as a byproduct, we provide our children highly loaded dice to roll at the genetic craps table. Beyond the all-important luck of the draw, it takes the kind of education that releases rather than constrains their natural talent. We send our children to good private schools and then on to UCLA. The rest is up to them.
Leamer’s 55-page review has far more content than Friedman’s easily digested 608 pages. It takes serious concentration to read, but it’s well worth the effort. I wish, however, the editor had blue-pencilled the cutesy opening two pages. One cutesy paragraph, good, two pages, too much.
Lance
As probably one of your friends so kindly mentioned in your blog – I think the difference is easily explained. You, and most of your friends in the blogosphere, are deeply read and intellectually thorough in your examination of issues of import to you. Therefore Friedman’s book appears obvious and not worthy of much.
I feel, however, that the value and impact of the book is for the great masses who don’t understand, or even think much about global issues, and chinese takeout is the closest they will ever get to China. It is for these people that the book has value. This came to me over the weekend when the 3rd friend mentioned the book over dinner. Each of these are friends through the family or the children whom we have known for decades, and with whom intellectual discussions are infrequent.
For 3 of them to have found, read and been highly moved by the book says something to me quite different than your comments.
Michael
I didn’t mean to sound condescending. Of course, Friedman gets some things right. The importance of innovations emerging from China and India would be difficult to overstate.
My problems with Friedman come down to what I see as, first, desperate over-simplification, and second, the utter failure of his central metaphor.
He is wrong to leap from Nilekani’s statement that the playing field is being levelled to, “My god, he’s saying the world is flat.” There’s a big difference between a levelled playing field and a flat world.
As Leamer explains far more eloquently than I ever could, the world isn’t flat. It will never be flat. That’s important, and Friedman completely misses that.
Interestingly, another excellent example of how unflat the world is was captured in the current New York Review of Books. John Gray reviews Suzanne Berger’s How We Compete. Berger and her colleagues at MIT have done more research on how corporations can thrive in a globalized world than anyone else.
Here’s the nub: “She writes that the common belief is that ‘globalization forces everyone onto the same track. But that’s not what our team found.’ Drawing on a five-year study by the MIT Industrial Performance Center, Berger presents a wealth of evidence about the different strategies adopted by five hundred international companies to survive and prosper in the global market. The result is a consistently enlightening analysis that explores the many different ways in which companies respond successfully to global competition. The computer company Dell is strongly focused on distribution and outsources all manufacturing of components overseas, for example in India, while Samsung makes almost everything itself; but both are rapidly growing, profitable businesses. General Motors is finding it difficult to adjust to high-wage labor, while Toyota—which has kept production at home or in other advanced countries—is doing well. Faced with similar challenges, companies can thrive or fail in different ways.”
Friedman’s previous book, The Olive Tree and the Lexus, made the same error. His argument there was that the “golden straitjacket” meant that all nations had to follow the same path to success. He was wrong then and he’s wrong now.
There’s value in Friedman in that he reaches masses that a more sophisticated, nuanced view might not capture. But it’s more than trivial that he simplifies and just gets some things plain wrong.
Your argument with credentialled references is indeed valid, but I feel is addressing a separate issue.
As per our previous discussions, I would much rather share these thoughts with you over the phone than in this venue.
Can you convince me to spend more time writing in the blogosphere?
Michael
Pingback: Davos Newbies » Blog Archive » More not flat
Friedman’s book should be entitled “Losing Our Superpower”. His Utopian outlook within the chapter that addresses America and Free Trade, is laughable. There is such disparity in the world, that for his outlook to come to fruition, America must undergo the largest adjustment to meet the rest of the 3rd world’s rise. By the time true parity exists amongst trading partners with equally valuable products and services, America will be long gone as the Superpower in the world, with it’s people and might relegated to the lowest common denominator of the world’s masses. This adjustment, this downhill slide from power will take many years to develop. When will people like Friedman realize that America has nowhere to go but down, if philosophies like his prevail. Pat Buchanan has it right.