Review of “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman, published in the Charlottesville Daily Progress, May 7, 2006

The World is Flat is a must read. The author, Thomas Friedman, is a regular columnist for the New York Times.  Flat was first published in 2005 and revised in 2006.  To Friedman, the world is changing just that quickly.

Flat presents a world view, subtitled, ambitiously, “A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.”  Friedman’s world view is that the technology breakthroughs of the last generation have dramatically changed the world.  The term flat is a simple statement that as employees, we now compete world wide with all other employees of the same skill level.  Why?  Because our competitors, those other employees in India, China, wherever, can hop right onto the internet and do our jobs.  This means, in time (and pretty quickly at that), workers anywhere in the world will be paid the same wage for the same quality of work.  If there are a lot of unskilled workers world-wide, who can do what I know how to do on the internet, that’s not good news for me.  I will be paid what they will be paid.  It’s just a matter of time. 

Friedman details, for the first 200 pages, the remarkable decentralization of corporate activity that has been spawned by the internet.  The outsourcing of “help centers” that explain our credit card bills, our telephone bills, help with making our new computers work, and so forth to India and parts East are just the beginning of this decentralization.  If you check into an American hospital, your x-rays and lab work may be already being sent to India overnight for Indian technicians to review and to provide a diagnosis, available to your doctor as he arrives in the morning to drop in to visit with you.  Your children may be learning junior high school math through an internet tutor in Bangalore, India.  The world of employees, highly skilled, lowly skilled, has become available world-wide through the internet.  The mighty web has become ubiquitous.

Friedman’s tome is actually nearly 600 pages long.  The first 200 pages are clearly the best.  The last 400 pages meander through a variety of political themes, which are often in direct contradiction to the economic themes of the first 200 pages.  Friedman can see that the new flat world he describes is brutally competitive and even ruthless in its winnowing out of the winners versus the losers in the new globally competitive landscape.  That bothers him.  So, much of the last 400 pages takes the reader through the notion of “compassionate flatness,” meaning a strange, unconnected array of mostly government-heavy programs to bring compassion to this new flat world.  More likely, however, the “compassionate flatness,” advanced by Friedman, if adopted by a country’s government, would condemn that country to the status of compassionate losers.

Friedman cautions that America’s dominance of technological and scientific innovation is now threatened by the growing numbers of scientists and engineers produced in China and India and the declining numbers in America.  Bizarrely, Friedman suggests that higher education in the United States needs to tackle this problem.  But, it is certainly not higher education in China and India that is driving the enormous output of scientists and engineers in those countries.  The K through 12 equivalent in China and India is far superior to what passes for public education in the United States. 

As everyone knows, higher education in the United States is the best in the world.  Public education and, in particular, the declining emphasis in public schools in America on science and mathematics is the real culprit – not the dollars being spent on higher education.  It is not dollars that matter here (certainly India and China spend far less per capita on public education that any Western country), it is much more a question of attitude and emphasis.  The reality is that public education in America doesn’t expect much of its students.  Students know that.  Their parents accept that.  But, attitudes in China and India are another story.  Families in China and India encourage science and mathematics training for their children and most of the necessary background to produce scientists and engineers are provided long before these children head off to college.

The moral of Friedman’s tome is that the Western world and particular Western workers cannot rest on their laurels.  They have grown lazy and fat while the youngsters in India, China and elsewhere are restless and hungry (and smart).  The lazy, fat Westerners can no longer avoid competing head to head with the hungry, smart, and energetic youngsters from what used-to-be the underdeveloped world.  The underdeveloped world is developing and quickly.  While Africa, Latin America and the Middle East appear to be going nowhere, the same is not true for China, India and parts East.  East Asia is on a tear.  Friedman does an excellent job of taking the reader through the remarkable transitions that are in motion at this very moment in China, India and elsewhere that will reshape the world in which we live and the world our children will inherit. 

Friedman is a cheerleader for the new global economy and chides those who resist the flattening of the world – the protectionists and the anti-globablizationists.  But, Friedman notes that those who don’t upgrade their basic education and skills will fall behind in this new global economy.  The world will probably tilt toward Asia during the next generation and only those in the West who dramatically improve their education, skills, and work ethic can expect to continue to enjoy the world’s highest standard of living.

Edwin T Burton, an economics professor at the University of Virginia since 1988.  Professor Burton lives in Charlottesville with his wife.  Professor Burton teaches a popular finance class at the University of Virginia.

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