Tom Friedman’s new book, The World is Flat, has really shaken me, and I haven’t read it yet. I read the excerpt in a recent Sunday Times and got the gist (the book is on order).
Publisher’s Weekly (from Amazon.com) describes the book this way:
Before 9/11, New York Times columnist Friedman was best known as the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, one of the major popular accounts of globalization and its discontents. Having devoted most of the last four years of his column to the latter as embodied by the Middle East, Friedman picks up where he left off, saving al-Qaeda et al. for the close. For Friedman, cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have finally obliterated all impediments to international competition, and the dawning “flat world” is a jungle pitting “lions” and “gazelles,” where “economic stability is not going to be a feature” and “the weak will fall farther behind.” Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs, by contrast, will be empowered. The service sector (telemarketing, accounting, computer programming, engineering and scientific research, etc.), will be further outsourced to the English-spoken abroad; manufacturing, meanwhile, will continue to be off-shored to China. As anyone who reads his column knows, Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives who are his main sources that these developments are desirable and unstoppable, and that American workers should be preparing to “create value through leadership” and “sell personality.” This is all familiar stuff by now, but the last 100 pages on the economic and political roots of global Islamism are filled with the kind of close reporting and intimate yet accessible analysis that have been hard to come by. Add in Friedman’s winning first-person interjections and masterful use of strategic wonksterisms, and this book should end up on the front seats of quite a few Lexuses and SUVs of all stripes.
That any of this would happen is not a surprise to anyone who follows outsourcing and offshoring. What has been a surprise is the speed at which it has happened, and the immediacy of the devastation it is likely to cause to the livelihoods of many middle class North Americans as it makes its way through our economies. During the 70′s and 80′s much of the manufacturing sector in North America, and the blue collar employment that it provided, was moved offshore, and our economies tried to restructure to adapt. That’s a difficult proposition at the best of times for blue collar workers in their 40′s or 50′s, but much of the rest of North America sat back and watched the damage done on the evening news, tsk-tsked the problems through supper, and went to their middle class service sector jobs the next day with the problem entirely forgotten.
It can’t happen to us. Is that why we watched, and tsk-tsked, but largely did nothing? Did we think – it’s a blue collar problem – it’s not a middle-class problem. It can’t happen to us …
Well, the message of Friedman’s book is that it can happen to “us”, and it will, and it already has, and there is very little time to adapt. He covered one of the problems we have in adapting in another recent column about our education systems, and how woefully far behind they have fallen:
There is a real sense of urgency in India and China about “catching up” in talent-building. America, by contrast, has become rather complacent. “People go to Shanghai or Bangalore and they look around and say, ‘They’re still way behind us,’ ” Mr. Hagel said. “But it’s not just about current capabilities. It’s about the relative pace and trajectories of capability-building.
“You have to look at where Shanghai was just three years ago, see where it is today and then extrapolate forward. Compare the pace and trajectory of talent-building within their population and businesses and the pace and trajectory here.”
India and China know they can’t just depend on low wages, so they are racing us to the top, not the bottom. Producing a comprehensive U.S. response – encompassing immigration, intellectual property law and educational policy – to focus on developing our talent in a flat world is a big idea worthy of a presidency. But it would also require Mr. Bush to do something he has never done: ask Americans to do something hard.
There is opportunity, of course. But there is also great danger. Can we react? Can we adapt? Will we be ready?
I’m inclined to think it is already too late – and I wonder about the children of today, and how well we are going to be able to equip them to lead productive and secure lives.
And so, what are we prepared to do now? Are we prepared “to do something hard”? Or is it just time to change the channel?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
A colleague of mine is fond of saying, “Get used to change, or get used to obsolescence.”
What did we think was going to happen when the Cold War ended and 2.5 billion people walked onto the capitalist field? What did we think was going to happen when we wired the world? What did we think was going to happen when we preached a gospel of customer-first consumerism, radical process refinement and reinvention? The rest of the world looked at America and said, “Yes! That’s what we want!” Now they are listening to Nike, and “Just doing it.”
Did we think the rest of the world would be satisfied to be our sweat shops forever? Or our resort islands and diamond mines and oil fields? The greatest wealth comes from the products and services much higher up the value chain. If you were running a developing nation’s economy, would you recommend industrial age products, or information age services to your young workers and students?
What did we think was going to happen when everyone started emmulating us?
In a race for the top, we can’t stop other countries from playing. All we can do is try to run faster. If we stay out of the race, we automatically lose.
What was that earlier post? Change or die?
I agree completely, Andy. Another essay has me thinking even more closely along those lines these days. Elizabeth Kolbert is writing a brilliant series of essays in The New Yorker on climate change, and as I read the interviews she’s conducted with scientists the world over, all well-meaning people trying hard to save us from ourselves, working hard to figure out how we need to change our emissions to limit the climate damage we are causing, I can’t help but think — the other 90% of the world’s population is not going to agree to forgo the industrialization we’ve already enjoyed to save our atmosphere, are they?
Do we think the rest of the world will be satisfied to be our sweatshops forever? Or our resort islands and diamond mines and oil fields?
Of course not – they want for themselves what we want for ourselves. And to get it, they have to do 10 times the damage to our planet we’ve caused. Where does that leave climate change?
I think we have some difficult lessons ahead of us.
“Difficult lessons” indeed. Learning is a painful process. And while America has always been very good at leading by example, we have not always been as good at learning from others.
I do have some hope, though, that several of the world’s largest countries — India and China spring to mind, of course — will have the foresight to “leapfrog” over some of the cruddier technology that we’re still anchored to. China, for example, is currently building the world’s largest hydroelecric Three Rivers damn project. That’s some relatively clean energy on a scale we’ve never even attempted. I wouldn’t be surprised if China and India both put massive amounts of capital into cleaner, safer forms of nuclear energy, too. We’ve hamstrung (is that a word?) ourselves on nuclear by swinging too far to the left on some environmentalist issues, and not far enough on others. We end up not having very many good nulclear plants, but also not cutting down on energy consumption… and so we have to burn more coal and other fossil fuels. So we end up causing more illness and deaths due to allergic reactions, asthma and other results of coal burning than we might have from nuclear.
What’s the answer?
Hemp.
No. Sorry. Just kidding. Maybe it is hemp. Or cold fusion. Or hamster power. I have no idea. But I do know that there are going to be a lot of people yelling about “protecting American jobs.” And, if those voices are heeded, what they’ll “protect us” from is the future.
[Didn't that sound all cool and prophetic and creepy? PS... Love your tag-line]