Thomas Friedman is back again, all facile posturing and sham profundity as he hops onto the latest bandwagon in search of royalties. But the merit of Hot, Flat, and Crowded, reviewed here, is that it neatly demonstrates that popular scaremongering appeals intensely to the inner authoritarian as well as to the wistful Military-Keynesian.
I read The World is Flat because it was recommended: sounds like this new book will be about as good as the other. I think I have better things to read.
I read The World is Flat because it was recommended: sounds like this new book will be about as good as the other. I think I have better things to read.
Don't read good books: read great books.
Posts
1 comment:
Friedman said that after 9/11 US went into sleep and so fell behind information technology, which, according to him, made countries like India and China race ahead of US on that front. And now he talks of energy technology in the same simplistic way. There is more to economic progress of a nation than just information or energy technology. And there are billions of people out there in India and China itself, who are leading miserable lives because of the "merits" of globalization. And there are also continents other than US, in case Mr. Friedman deosnt know about them. Since he never mentions them in his book, like Africa, where people are living in absolute poverty and diseases and malnutrition.
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.
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," which offers a counterperspective to Friedman's theory on globalization.
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.
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
Post a Comment