WEEK FIVE COMMENTS

Please forgive my late posting. My Internet connection has been down all weekend due to a dead cable modem.

One of Thomas Friedman’s goals as an author is to shock his readers, as his title “The World is Flat” suggests. In my opinion, what he is really talking about is the economic and technological LEVELING, not FLATTENING, of the world, but the word “Flat” makes for a better title, and ever since the Levelers Movement of the 17th century the word “leveling” probably has too much of a socialist flavor for a misty-eyed capitalist like Friedman.

Friedman’s book is certainly thought provoking and so well written as to actually qualify as a “page turner.” I read his first several chapters this summer and chapters nine and ten for this week’s assignment.

Friedman’s “flattening” is evident all around us and I myself have benefited from this phenomenon in the last few years. This past Saturday night I attended an annual black-tie ball in the grand ballroom of the Westin Hotel, where executives from the Pacific Northwest grocery industry gather to raise money for cancer research. For the fourth year in a row, I had produced several short video biographies, to be shown at the ball, about people receiving awards that night. I produce these videos on low budgets, so the sponsors of the event always show their gratitude by inviting me to come and have a free dinner.

Ten years ago I would not have been able to produce video programs slick enough for an event like this unless I owned or worked for a video production house with equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, thanks to small 3-CCD video cameras and software programs like Final Cut Pro and Photoshop, I can produce professional-quality video programs, with plenty of bells and whistles, on my home computer.

After the screening of the first video on Saturday, the chairwoman of the Washington Food Industry Association, who was sitting at my table, leaned over and asked “Where is your studio?” I told her that my “studio” is a closet-sized room in the back of my tiny apartment in Capitol Hill. Later, when it came up in conversation that my other jobs is bussing tables in a restaurant, the CEOs and their wives around me raised their eyebrows as they realized that I was not likely to be a member of their country club. It is Friedman’s “flattening” that brings me to this event each year to work, break bread and sometimes even make friends with people who, not long ago, were way out of my league.

Throughout his book, Friedman presents a picture of a world changing so fast that you have to “run faster and faster just to stay in the same place”. I must be getting old because this image makes me feel tired and a little sad. I must admit, as I look around me, that Friedman’s spirit is the spirit of the age. At the charity ball every year someone always asks me how I plan to “grow” my video business. When I tell them that I’m not ambitious, that I’m happy with things the way they are and don’t really want more clients for now, they always look surprised. Some of them find my attitude novel and amusing; others look slightly disgusted and seem to lose interest in talking to me.

Today, business is all about ambition and growth. One day in my restaurant I heard a businessman say, “the purpose of having a business is to buy out or be bought out.” It’s not enough any more to just stay in business, make a fine product, make a profit; today to be a “player” you need to constantly be growing, growing, growing (like a cancer?). In Friedman’s view, growth, change and moving “to the next level” are essential for the survival not only of companies, but also of nations.

In chapter nine, “THIS IS NOT A TEST,” he issues strong warnings that the United States is falling far behind nations like China and India in education, innovation, research and development. I was struck by a quote from Bill Gates saying that in other nations, he finds that the leaders are often scientists and engineers, while in the United States they are almost all lawyers. My father, who is an engineer, was impressed by this quote when I read it to him. I told him that I am very proud of the fact that my representative in Congress (Jim McDermott) is not a lawyer, but a psychiatrist, as well as being one of the few members of Congress who voted against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act.

Friedman gets down to brass tacks with some ideas that I like, including making college education in the United States free or even mandatory. He proposes that corporations need to be constantly educating their employees so that people will be ready to change jobs as technology changes and their old jobs get outsourced overseas. He also suggests that “portable” health insurance and retirement benefits be developed to help ease the difficulties of people moving from job to job. Freidman calls this approach, “compassionate flatism.” This is a noble idea, but I’m not sure how much weight the concept of compassion has in today’s world of freewheeling capitalism.

In chapter ten, THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE,” Friedman applies his sense of urgency about development, education and free-market “flatism” to the whole world. He creates an amusing, provocative metaphor by reducing the world community to the scale of a small city, in which each region is a distinctive neighborhood. In this metaphor, regions like China and India are the bustling neighborhoods, where people “never sleep.” Europeans would not be flattered by Friedman’s characterization of their neighborhood as an “assisted living facility” of geriatrics attended by Turkish nurses. I was very amused by his description of the U.S. as a “gated community, with a metal detector at the front gate and a lot of people sitting in their front yards complaining about how lazy everyone else was.” There is a lot of stereotyping going on here, but it rings pretty true.

Friedman believes that the wealth or poverty of nations today turns on their willingness to open themselves up to trade with other nations. To make this happen, many nations need to do a lot of de-regulation, privatization, union busting and abolishment of protectionist policies and socialist programs. Freidman may be right. In a world of ever-growing population and ever-shrinking resources, constant growth, ambition and fierce competition may be the only ways for a nation, a company or an individual to survive.

Friedman waxes almost poetic about what could be described as hungry, grasping, clawing ambition. His words and his tone make me rather uncomfortable. It all sounds too much like cancer: growth that never stops until it destroys itself by destroying the body on which it grows. Friedman paints globalizing nations and multi-national corporations as being strong, confident realists who just want the best for everyone concerned. He never mentions the word “greed.” He doesn’t talk about factories in China, unhindered by government regulation, dumping toxic waste in rivers and destroying traditional farming villages downstream. He doesn’t talk about the World Bank and the IMF prying their way into the economies of nations with predatory lending programs, getting them hooked on debt until they have to practically sell their souls to get out.

Instead, Friedman’s villains are people who resist globalization and change. In his global village, people on the Arab street “have their curtains closed, their shutters drawn, and signs on their front lawn that say, 'No Trespassing. Beware of Dog.'” Now, I myself enjoy people who are worldly and liberal and open to new things, but I also respect the rights of people who want to be left alone. In fact, I find people and groups and nations that hold onto traditions and obsolete ways to be fascinating, often beautiful and inspiring. And I’m not the only one. Look at the great tourist spots of the world. Many of them are old, perversely unchanged places and cultures. And I think it’s more than just nostalgia or curiosity that draws us to the old parts of Friedman’s global town, where strange, outmoded buildings stand proudly and there are few new shops popping up, flashing neon. I think that in these places we find a sense of enduring values and reassuring feeling (or illusion, perhaps) of permanence.

In Freidman’s world, people and companies and nations who think like me are the laggards, the losers, soon to be left behind, swept aside or taken over by the swift and the sure. Friedman would be one of those people at my banquet table whose lip would curl with slight disgust when he learned that I “like things the way they are.” Well, soon I and those like me will be in an assisted living facility, attended by Turkish nurses, while Friedman’s steamrollers roll on and on and on.