The World Is Flat - Cont'd

I finished reading The World Is Flat yesterday. The second half of the book talks about dealing with the new “flattened” world. Competition will be global, as I’ve mentioned in my earlier post and so advancement means being better than that other guy or gal in India or Poland. To compete, a country needs to do many things, but better laws and regulations, meaning less laws and regulations, a.k.a. economic liberalization, is a good starting point. Better education and training is also crucial to both develop the skills of the labor force and ease the inevitable structural shifts in employment between industries through re-training. The book offers a compelling case for the flattening of the world and the continuance of that trend. However, it also talks about the forces that might un-flatten the world, protectionism and paranoia. The first could arise as a political response to job losses than developed countries might face in certain industries as the global playing field is leveled. The second would arise if a second terrorist event on the magnitude of 9/11 or more were to happen in a major US or European country. Both forces would mean more walls and barriers, and thus a less-flat world. I found the book extremely interesting and even fascinating at time, such as when Friedman talks about where every component of his Dell laptop came from. Although I’m sure many people would disagree with some of his points (or many of them for that matter), it still offers a great update on the current state of Globalization and the forces behind it. It also makes a good case for why the trend would benefit the majority of people and offer suggestions to help those who would be left behind. Friedman started and ended the book with a very interesting coincidental fact: the Berlin wall, arguably the beginning of the flattening of the world and Globalization, fell on 11/9/1989 while the World Trade Center fell on 9/11/2001. Throughout the book he refers to the forces behind 11/9 (democracy, liberty, economic opportunity) versus the forces behind 9/11 (a sense of humiliation which cases anger and frustration and which Friedman describes as “the most underappreciated force in international relations) as the two forces in existence that are trying to move the world in one two opposing directions, we must choose to believe in 11/9 and not in 9/11 for the world and us to prosper.