Labels: culture, economics

(So is the book)

A winner of multiple Pulitzers, Tom Friedman is a widely read commentator on foreign affairs and modern life. His previous book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree defined many aspects of globalization for America and the West.

In The World Is Flat, Friedman essentially adds an addendum to this earlier work, neglecting in the process to generate any real new insights. Like many in this field he seems to fall victim to the old joke: a sociologist is someone who thinks the plural of anecdote is data.

His central (and perhaps only) theme is the barriers to economic competition are falling (i.e. flattening) rapidly. This is chapter 2 in the Book of Duh! for most of us – no small thanks to his earlier pioneering work. There are few in America who do not suspect their job is at risk from competing workers around the world – and more than a handful who have the scars to prove it.

Friedman picks only the low-hanging intellectual fruit to illuminate this development: the fall of Communism, software standardization (MS Word/LINUX), ubiquitous wireless communications, Google, outsourcing – hardly shafts of brilliance in the darkness.

He then proceeds to tell perfectly charming stories about the lives of both the beneficiaries and losers in the global free-for-all. His consummate writing skills are best displayed in these sections and reader may find themselves pushing on to the point where he offers answers or at least responses to the social and economic challenges he lists.

No such luck. Friedman is content to prepare his case of “I told you so” (doubtless for a later book). In fact, the only advice from this premier scholar of globalization is found on the last page:

To put it another way, the two greatest dangers we Americans face are an excess of protectionism…and excessive fears of competing in a world of 11/9 [fall of the Berlin Wall] that prompt us to wall ourselves off, in search of economic security.

Sounds familiar, especially for US agriculture. Given his accuracy in predicting this response, it is a shame Friedman did not offer some tools for anxious Americans to apply other than essentially saying “work harder – the other guys are”.

Books like these always leave me wondering what the author will write when his NYT column is outsourced to India. There is a whiff of smugness in the words of those who supply seemingly unique intellectual products. However, that product/service can also be outsourced, and as newspapers struggle to compete for advertising dollars the market for commentators could become very flat indeed.

We have plenty of books describing the flattening world. Few are offering a way for the West to ride our mountain down.

If you read Lexus, I would give Flat a pass. But I would strongly recommend reading one.

Labels: culture, economics

Labels: culture, history

• "Settlers acquired little land in Illinois and less than a million acres in Iowa under the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862." I guess I could have figured that out from dates, but I thought it played a bigger part.
• The first settlers fixed on the wooded tracts for one reason I had forgotten. To have livestock - a must in the prairie economy - you needed fences, and the best fences were rail fences. See Lincoln, Abraham.
• "We must remember, however, that the county histories contained the biographies only of the successful citizens of the community. No one bothered to record the histories of the tenants in the Middle West who failed to climb the ladder to ownership." This survivor bias colors our remembrances to the point we overestimate the success rate for pioneers.
• The first settlers seldom truly settled. Most flipped the property for more land further on the frontier. Indeed most land was purchased on speculation by modern standards.
• "In general, tenants were most common where the soils were highly productive." Some things haven't changed.
• The desperate need for fencing drove the politics of the first half of the century via fencing laws and disputes. It also introduced our venerable old friend, the osage orange tree. I always thought those were planted for windbreaks.
• As farmers began mechanizing machinery sales developed a pattern. "A good crop in the previous year was of some importance in affecting the decision, but the crop prospects for the next harvest were crucial. When these were promising, farmers were most apt to order". Priced a combine lately?
• "In 1860 most Illinois counties had a number of farms of 500 acres or more; indeed three central Illinois counties listed more than fifty operating units of this size."
• "The average age of owner-operators in 1880 was 50.2 years." It's time to stop being stunned by average operator age of fifty-something. It looks like that has always been the right answer.

Labels: history

• This may be the Old World - when the Egyptians were still fumbling around with humps in the sand, Native Americans were building colossal structures and welding together huge empires of millions.
• There are good reasons why the wheel and milk animals were not big hits over here in the beginning.
• Indians were probably less shocked than Columbus at that first meeting.
• You probably don't know as much about the history of corn as you think.
  
• It is impossible to overestimate the effect of smallpox on the Western hemisphere. Without doubt, smallpox defined the farms in the Midwest.
• Anybody who thinks Indians "left a light footprint" has never seen a prairie fire, or noticed now many nut trees there are in "pristine forests".
• Indians were libertarian ecological exploiters, bless their little hearts.

Labels: culture, environment, history

Labels: food

Labels: culture