UCLA Economist Ed Leamer reviews Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat"

[swag]

Came across this on an econo-blog and thought that some here might find it interesting/amusing.

http://uclaforecast.com/reviews/Leamer_FlatWorld_060221.pdf
(Acrobat Reader required)

. . .

When the Journal of Economic Literature asked me to write a review of The World is
Flat, by Thomas Friedman, I responded with enthusiasm, knowing it wouldn’t take much
effort on my part. As soon as I received a copy of the book, I shipped it overnight by
UPS to India to have the work done. I was promised a one-day turn-around for a fee of
$100. Here is what I received by e-mail the next day: “This book is truly marvelous. It
will surely change the course of human history.” That struck me as possibly accurate but
a bit too short and too generic to make the JEL happy, and I decided, with great
disappointment, to do the work myself.

. . .

What Might that “Flat World” Metaphor Mean?

Stumbling onto a book titled “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman would leave a
book browser puzzled about its likely content. My first guess would be epistemology
and evolution. “The World is Flat” must be a reference to the pre-Columbian sailor’s
worry about falling off the edge of the earth, and the tenacious clinging to that idea by
members of the Flat- Earth Society in the face of “overwhelming” “scientific” evidence.
Put that into the current context, the debate about the intellectual legitimacy of
“intelligent design”, and you are led to my conclusion: “The World is Flat” is probably a
book about faith-based decision- making and the teaching of intelligent design in the
schools. This book is going to surprise. It will show that a flat earth is not a straw man
at all, and that science is only another kind of religion, seeking to burn its heretics at the
stake with all the vigor of traditional religion.

Alas, the subtitle “A Brief History of the Twenty- first Century” unsettles this brief flight
of fancy about the content of this book, but it leaves the browser utterly confused. How
could “The World is Flat” and “A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century” have
anything to do with each other? That subtitle reminds me of the New Yorker cartoon
that hung outside a history professor’s office at UCLA for many years. It depicted a
student receiving a final exam in a history course: “Explain World War II. Use both
sides of the page if necessary.”

Enough with all these diverting thoughts. It’s time to look at the blurb. The blurb points
in a wholly different direction: “ … the convergence of technology and events that
allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply
chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle
classes of the world’s two biggest nations and giving them a huge new stake in the
success of globalization? And with this “flattening” of the globe, which requires us to
run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human
beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?”

Huh? That last sentence packs in at least two too many metaphors for me to process: a
flat earth, people running faster but staying in place, a small world and a fast world. And
then there is the “explosion” in the previous sentence. What is Friedman getting at with
this mélange of metaphors? I understand that China has increased it exports of
manufactures to levels far above anyone’s expectations. I understand that call centers
and some back-office functions and some software coding have moved to India. I
understand that GDP growth in both China and India has been phenomenal and has lifted
hundreds of millions out of poverty. But what is the meaning of that flattening
metaphor? What is the alternative to a flat world? A smooth sphere? Bumps? That’s a
puzzle worth solving.

. . . more

[long_green]

1. That first paragraph is laugh-out-loud funny.

nm

[reichstag911]

2. Fix link, please. n/t

[swag]

4. The link is fine, but it does require Adobe Acrobat Reader.

[reichstag911]

9. Oops! Was that there link up at the top...

...there the whole time? I thought you'd meant to nest a link in the "more" at the bottom. Well, hush my mouth...

[reprehensor]

3. John Ralston Saul likes to hammer Friedman too.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/11/saul-2.html

MJ: Your general argument runs counter to the conventional wisdom, which is that globalization is on balance a good thing. Witness some recent books—say Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, Martin Wolf’s Why Globalization Works and Jagdish Bhagwati’s In Defense of Globalization—which all take a much rosier view than you do.

JRS: First of all, Friedman is barely worth considering. It's basically one of those 'How to succeed' books; it's very embarrassing, frankly. On the other hand, when you read people like Baghwati—who are very intelligent—when he says he thinks it's a great success, you read the book and you find that 50 percent of it says the opposite. He thinks the inclusion of intellectual property in the WTO was a terrible mistake and could well bring down the international trade system. And he says the deregulation, willy nilly, of international money markets is a terrible mistake. He feels he's on the side of globalization, but when you really get to what he means by globalization, it's very very narrow. Stiglitz is a bit further along that road. He says that globalization obviously isn't working very well, but there's no way out. John Williamson, the author of the ‘Washington Consensus’ regularly says, “Well, that's not what I meant....”

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Yup

On the other hand, when you read people like Baghwati—who are very intelligent—when he says he thinks it's a great success, you read the book and you find that 50 percent of it says the opposite. He thinks the inclusion of intellectual property in the WTO was a terrible mistake and could well bring down the international trade system. And he says the deregulation, willy nilly, of international money markets is a terrible mistake. He feels he's on the side of globalization, but when you really get to what he means by globalization, it's very very narrow.

That's exactly the position that The Economist takes. "Free trade is the cure for whatever ails a country, and of course it has lots of problems, but all we need to do is (list of twelve difficult and unlikely things), and we'll have Utopia."

It's a cult, I tell you, a cult.

[BeyondGeography]

6. Bonner/Wiggin's "Empire of Debt" is a Friedman-bashing exercise

par excellence. Here's a sample:

"Friedman's oeuvre is a long series of 'we should do this' and 'they should do that.' Never for a moment does he stop to wonder why people actually do what they do. Nor has the thought crossed his mind that other people might have their own ideas about what they should do and no particular reason to think that Friedman's ideas are any better. There is no trace of modesty in his writing; no skepticism, no cynicism, no irony, no suspicion lurking in the corner of his brain that he might be a jackass."

[swag]

7. no suspicion lurking in the corner of his brain that he might be a jackass

That's a fucking beautiful line.

[donsu]

8. I cought Tom doing his flat earth gig on c-span one day and stopped

to listen to him. (the first I had heard of flat earth) I listened enough to know he was a con man selling his wares.

who paid him to do the bk.?

[reprehensor]

10. Might as well toss in Greg Palast, too...

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=435&row=1

I was getting myself measured for a straitjacket when I received an urgent message from Bolivia.

The jacket was Thomas Friedman’s idea. He’s the New York Times columnist and amateur economist who wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is kind of a long, deep kiss to globalization. I was in Cleveland to debate Friedman at the Council on World Affairs meeting in May 2001. Globalization, he told the council, is all about the communications revolution. It’s about the Internet. It’s about how you can sit in your bedroom, buy shares in Amazon.com and send e-mails to Eskimos all at the same time, wearing your pajamas.

According to Friedman, we are “connected” and “empowered” and “enabled.” And if that isn’t cool enough by itself, globalization makes economies grow. Any nation on the planet that takes the pledge and follows the map can open the hidden gold mine. Poverty will end, as will the tyrannies of government. And every Bolivian will get their own e-mail address.

The end of world poverty! Eskimos! E-mail! I wanted this brave new future and I wanted it now! All I had to do, said Friedman, is change into something a little more form-fitting. “The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political economic garment of globalization,” Friedman says. And, he explains, the tighter you wear it, “the more gold it produces.”..

more clobbering at link