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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Seriously, someone needs to alert Thomas Friedman as soon as possible. The over-mustachioed and under-informed pundit has made a name (and fortune) for himself as the prophet of a glorious future in which globalization makes all things possible and all things wonderful. The thing is, no matter how appealing and optimistic, his overly simplistic tripe is just wrong.
Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor of global strategy at IESE business school, has written a brilliant and concise piece in Foreign Policy that eviscerates the idiocy that has become conventional wisdom. Ghemawat shows how the vast majority (typically 90%) of “globalization indicators,” like investment and communication, continue to operate within a nation’s borders. But this isn’t just a matter of being wrong. With something as nebulous as globalization, the assumptions made by academics and public figures are taken as truth, not theory, and have powerful implications for policy. For example, the decades long assault on welfare expenditure has operated under the assumption that it is incompatible with globalized competition.
As Ghemawat sharply observes:
“The champions of globalization are describing a world that doesn’t exist. It’s a fine strategy to sell books and even describe a potential environment that may someday exist. Because such episodes of mass delusion tend to be relatively short-lived even when they do achieve broad currency, one might simply be tempted to wait this one out as well. But the stakes are far too high for that. Governments that buy into the flat world are likely to pay too much attention to the “golden straitjacket” that Friedman emphasized in his earlier book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is supposed to ensure that economics matters more and more and politics less and less. Buying into this version of an integrated world—or worse, using it as a basis for policymaking—is not only unproductive. It is dangerous.”
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His strategy for Iraq is to declare that the next six months are extremely super duper important, no matter what the date is:
"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding." January 23, 2006
"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq." March 2, 2006
"We're going to find out... in the next year to six months - probably sooner - whether a decent outcome is possible" May 11, 2006
See: Link
So no wonder Friedman thinks globalization already happened -- he literally cannot comprehend the passage of time.
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.... Without America on duty, there will be no America Online.”
Yea, he said that. The book he wrote," The World is Flat", is filled with a bunch of babel which is rooted in baseless assumptions about the world today. The world is a very complex place. By most accounts the world is getting bigger if anything. States are breaking up into smaller states, nations are becoming more polarised, and ethnic clashes and rivalries are winning the day.
The narrow minded perspective of Friedman is annoying and the fact that so many professors make their classes read his work is beyond me.
Joseph Stiglitz eats him alive in this debate on C-Span. Stiglitz has a much different opinion on Globalization and he's an actual authority on the subject seeing as he was the former Chief Economist at the World Bank. Check it out. Link
In the so-called globalization debate, its been a one-sided insistence that the nature of globalization is all but certain, and that a minimal-welfare, streamlined governance is all but pre-ordained. The consequence is that politicians in the US, Britain, and other nations have been able to advance completely ideologically-based anti-welfare platforms to the detriment of their poor and social mobility, all the while claiming they had no choice, their hands being tied by the economic "realities" of a flat world.
In reality, globalization or the degree of globalization is a relative term. Globalization is the integration of economic, political, and cultural systems across the globe and so it is inherently a complex phenomena. It has been happening since the beginning of civilization, more tangibly in last three centuries. It has started with Westernization/ Americanization phenemena with British and then United States dominance of world affairs. It has been changing and more tangibly in last two decades. Like many events this is also a double edge sword with mixed consequences. Globalization can be a force for economic growth, prosperity, and democratic freedom. It can also force for environmental devastation, exploitation of the developing world, and suppression of human rights. So it has to be monitored and it is being monitored. In the 1970s and 1980s when many countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa pursued inward-oriented policies, their economies stagnated or declined, poverty increased and high inflation became the norm. The crises in the emerging markets in the 1990s have made it quite evident that the opportunities of globalization do not come without risks—risks arising from volatile capital movements and the risks of social, economic, and environmental degradation created by poverty.
One of the most evident forces of the globalization is the computer and network/Internet. Economist believe that this new stage of globalization of all nations is increasingly being nurtured by the computer and above all by the Internet. That is a good part of globalization. However there many bad ones as well. Plagues have also accompanied globalization by its speed of travel. Makes bacteria and viruses much more likely to travel from nation to nation. Economic growth in one nation at the cost of environment affects all as well and so the global warming has become a global concern.
Terrorism also affects the world and has created the greatest problem of nations losing the ability to control their own matters in the vast global economy.
Economicaly and politically there are different type of federalizations. Countries in Europe has been already working toward that step by merging national economies into a larger European Union. Couunties in South Asia has made SARC for a more open trade zone. Bulk of US’s growing debt is financed by China !
So Friedman is not absolutely wrong. I do agree with Prof. Ghemawat that “Buying into this version of an integrated world—or worse, using it as a basis for policymaking—is not only unproductive. It is dangerous.”. Each nation needs self-sufficiency as well and so each nation has to protect their core industries as well and so balance the immediate needs with the tactical and strategic needs. That is true for a corporations as well. Outsourcing is not always profitable, specially long term.