"I told you so"

I noticed that the 2nd ed. of the Friedman book has a different cover. The first one has this iconic image by Ed Miracle, titled "I told you so." There is something about this painting I find compelling; the rowers frantically trying to avoid the inevitable, the ships about to plunge into the abyss. I'm not really sure how it ties to the content of the book, since Friedman's point, as I see it, is essentially that a flat world is not, after all, the catastrophe for exploration (a metaphor for progress?) predicted by the conventional wisdom of Columbus' day. Maybe that's why it was pulled from the second edition.

So as long as we're going to talk about Friedman, Highline Community College professor T.M. Sell recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Seattle Times in which Friedman's book does not fare well. His criticism includes the following:

"Friedman never really says what he means by the world is flat, but apparently it's a metaphor for the world getting smaller and the playing field getting more even.
This metaphorical machete has a couple of problems. Think about it: The shortest distance between two points on a globe is a curve. In a flat world, those curves would get straightened and hence be farther apart.
The second problem is the metaphor treats world trade like a competition between nations, which it demonstrably isn't."

Sell goes on to point out that lack of infrastructure and corruption in places like India hampers these countries' ability to compete for ever-higher level outsourced jobs.

Both Friedman and Sell recognize the decline of high-pay, low-skill jobs that were a mainstay of the American economy in the 20th century. Both stress the importance of Americans teaching their kids to value education as a way to protect themselves from the downsides of globalization; predictions are that our children will change careers much more frequently than we did. "Lifelong learning" is a buzzword I see in action on my campus every day. People who come to our college range in age from 16-70, and many are retraining from all sorts of careers. It takes a lot of courage to come be a multimedia student in your 40s or 50s if you lack a technical background, and I have many hard-working students who fit that profile.

When I first read Friedman's book, I found it explained many seemingly disconnected events in my own personal & professional life, but his outlook was a little rosy for my taste. Since the release of the 1st ed., I have the sense that companies have pulled back somewhat from international outsourcing. Two cases in point: a friend of mine is a lead scientist at a large division of an international company, and several months ago told me that their local production facility had been shut down and the jobs sent to Pennsylvania. I expressed surprised that the jobs weren't outsourced to China. "No," he replied; "our predictions are that within five years it will not be economically attractive to manufacture in China." The other case: a start-up flat-screen TV company called Olevia has decided to manufacture 50 miles outside of L.A., instead of dealing with the set-up, distribution headaches, and tariffs involved in offshore manufacturing.

Which is not to say that globalization won't continue, but perhaps trends such as locally grown produce instead of peaches from Chile represent a recognition that the wage savings realized by globalization are at least partially offset by the costs of transportation, cross-cultural communication, and need for complex international business structures.