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    Sometimes It Makes No Sense To Compete With The World

    By Michael Maiello on Wed, 08/08/2012 - 9:15am | Politics

    I know, I can't quit Thomas Friedman.  But when a below average writer achieves fame and fortune while so many greater talents deal in obscurity, it's annoying.  Particularly when the below average writer makes arguments like "Average Is Over," where he accuses American politicians and citizens of not being up to the task of global competition.
     

    Friedman likes to start with generalizations and then drill down to some person or group of people presenting a solution that he likes.  Today it's a group called "America Achieves," which is partnering with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to make an online resource so that parents can compare the performance of their kid's school not just to the school in the district next door but to schools in Finland and Singapore.  Then, if their students aren't achieving at the level of students elsewhere in the world, Friedman suggests that parents can call administrators and teachers to demand an explanation.

    This just seems like the stupidest conversation a parent can have with a principal.  Oh, it sounds reasonable.  But what, exactly, do you think would come of it. If your kid is having trouble reading or doing math, you're probably better off looking for resources in and outside of the school that can help than you are having a barely informed discussion that bridges disparate cultures, languages and histories.  I remember Malcolm Gladwell trying to write a story about why Chinese people are good at math and coming up with the theory that it's because of the rice paddies, which demand complex math skills to tend.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  In any event, an impractical answer for a school district in a Utah desert.

    Now, to Friedman's generalizations.  Our politicians are local, he says, but are business people are not.  CEOs, and by this he must mean only big company CEOs, have no national loyalties, he says.  He doesn't seem to think that this is a problem, just a fact of life.

    I think just accepting that is a problem.  After all, these companies, multinational though they may be in their manufacturing, do tend to derive the majority of their revenues from the U.S.  The U.S. is the largest consumer and corporate market in the world despite the declinist stuff that's so popular these days.  And, of course, there would be no globalization and no reliable global supply chains without the U.S. military.  These people are, to the extent they have torn loyalties (Friedman's characterization) being disloyal to the country that protects them.  Maybe next time that a U.S. multinational has assets appropriated in some part of the world we should tell them to appeal to their low labor cost partners in Vietnam or China for help.  Maybe the only way to make the point to people like this is to indulge their delusions of "global citizenship."

    Finally, Friedman gives short shrift to the achievements of America's work force.  How do we measure "better than average" if not in terms of rising productivity?  That's how America's workers responded to the challenges of globalization -- more output per hour worked.  It was not rewarded.  So why is Friedman asking for more of the same?

     

     

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    Comments

    Spot on comments, destor.

    To my way of thinking Friedman caters to, and reinforces, some of the most dysfunctional mainstream societal prejudices--blinders, I would say--presently holding us back.  Opinion writers who are performing a valuable function for a society must at least sometimes do the reverse. 

    The inference I draw from his writings is that the overriding blinder he thinks we suffer from is an inability or unwillingness or lack of political will to organize our American society to compete and win in the global marketplace.   About the only thing I've seen him be importantly right about is climate change, where the corporate community he writes to and for has needed commentariat folks who speak their language to disabuse them of the illusions and disinformation the head-in-the-sand reactionary elements in our society allow themselves to be held captive to. 

    On alternative energy and pollution abatement products and processes, to the extent that market incentives, existing and the enhanced ones we need, can move the ball along faster and farther, that is to be welcomed.   

    But Friedman seems remarkably unreflective about the implications of such a belief system writ large, apart from, to a degree, the climate change issue. 

    To take just one, seemingly obvious example: what rights and responsibilities should US citizenship entail today, including duties to people who do not live in our country?  What does one owe one's country--both as a citizen and as someone with responsibility for making decisions about large institutions such as transnational corporations and national governments?  What does a citizen have a reasonable right to expect from her national government?  From a corporation that does business in the US and benefits from its infrastructure and support systems in numerous ways, and holds a charter from an agency of government that is legally required for it to carry on business?  Or--a more charged question: to whom, or to what, do, say, US citizens and CEOs of transnational corporations, owe duties of loyalty?  What are the nature of those duties?  Those types of questions just smack me in the face every time I read Friedman. 

    Mainstream politics in our society remains a venue in which more fundamental questions about how we might organize our economy for sufficiency, equity and sustainability--the longer haul--remain largely non-discussables, apart from some essential but also limited discussions about alternative energy source development.  Those who try to foster more probing, far-reaching discussions in the public square at election season tend to be dismissed, ridiculed and marginalized by the herd of very serious people among the commentariat. 

    It is tempting to conclude that Friedman's own personal circumstances, in his case, have all but precluded any possibility of his work to reflect any degree of empathy for either the lives and circumstances of ordinary fellow citizens, or other values or commitments apart from personal wealth accumulation and the many interesting possibilities for travel and whatnot that it affords (has afforded him, very specifically). 

    Is there a pasture where opinion makers (opinion reflectors in his case) who have become excessively wealthy and seen the vibrancy and salience of their work suffer can be put, so as not to deprive prime public space to others who have important things to say--important to most of us, that is?   

    I asked DanK in A-man's most recent thread if he had other folks in mind besides Beinart when he sought to characterize a generation of opinion writers.  As I read what Dan wrote the person that most frequently popped into my head was Friedman.


    by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 08/08/2012 - 12:01pm

    I didn't mention Friedman because he is older than the 30-50 yr olds I had in mind.  But he is certainly a leading ideologue of the free trade, free markets and free labor crowd.

    There are a lot of people in all of the age groups over 30 who are part of the neoliberal transformation of US intellectual life.  But the older ones are more likely converts while the younger were born and bred into it.

     


    by Dan Kervick on Wed, 08/08/2012 - 1:15pm

    I remember reading "The Closing of the American Mind" in high school.  Not kidding.  Also, I think I was trying to annoy some of my ex-hippie teachers.


    by Michael Maiello on Wed, 08/08/2012 - 1:16pm

    The author of this book, Marjorie Kelly, is someone who in my estimation deserves a much more prominent platform: http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781605093109-0

    She is in her 50's, BTW.  This book is one I think could be considered seminal one day.  Perhaps the New York Times would consider offering her a split arrangement, whereby she and Friedman each get one column per week.  I don't feel I get anything unsurprising or different from reading Friedman.  Whereas I learn a lot, and am prompted to think in different ways that are interesting to me at least, from reading Kelly.   She is very much focused on the right questions for our times, I believe--and offering the most promising intellectual framework for organizing thinking about them that I have so far come across.   


    by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 08/08/2012 - 2:00pm

    Here seems as good a place as any to insert a clarification I would like to make. 

    When I recommend (where I've read it myself) or identify (where I've not read it yet myself, but it looks interesting or promising based on reviews or tips) a book to an individual or a group of people, this means, roughly translated: "I like you."

    I mention this only because there have been 1 or 2 times when I've passed along a book rec or reference to an individual and have had a sense that that might not have been appreciated. 

    One assumption I make when I do this is that if the person seeing it is not interested in the topic, or more interested in other topics, or doesn't have time to check it out, whatever, that of course they will ignore it or put it aside for the time being.  My hope is that they won't feel irritated, as though the rec or reference amounts to a request they cannot or do not wish to honor.  That isn't how I mean it. 

    But I also realize that probably just about all of the folks to whom I pass along such information read a lot as it is, and may feel a bit frustrated or overwhelmed at times by how much they have to read or feel they need to read for their jobs.  As do I at times.

    In my non-virtual life one thing I enjoy doing, maybe a half dozen times a year, is give a book gift to a friend or acquaintance that strikes me as likely to be especially welcome and resonant.  The affective component when I do that is the same as when I make an online reference: "I like you."


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 08/09/2012 - 10:46am

    I don't think anyone takes it any other way than you mean it, AD.


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 08/09/2012 - 11:17am

    I agree with Destor.  I see nothing wrong with passing along a link to something that interests us.  People can take it or leave it, but often I find things that interest me that way that I might not have come across otherwise.

    So keep 'em coming, Dreamer.  Some of us do appreciate it.

    (Marjorie Kelly sounds like someone whose work I would like to read.  So thank you.)


    by Ramona on Thu, 08/09/2012 - 11:33am

    AD - I greatly appreciate the links, as most of the time I'm a little bit (or a lot) more informed about the topic.  The opportunity to learn is always a gift and for that, I, as am sure many others appreciate the effort and thoughtfulness.


    by Aunt Sam on Mon, 08/13/2012 - 1:29am

    Really good challenge, Destor. So with corporations supporting Alec, trying to strip down government at all levels, the overworked couple with children needs to call out the local principal for lack of resources?

    I do think awareness of our lack of competitiveness is a good thing.

    Is this just a setup for the next argument, why we need large banks?


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 08/08/2012 - 2:56pm

    "Competitiveness" is a four-letter word. Its status as a key to our economic success is actually one of those falsities mentioned above by Destor as a Friedman "fact of life." My response to anyone like Friedman who insists that we need further reductions in wages and benefits or greater increases in "productivity" or more overall austerity to achieve greater competitiveness in a global economy is to invite them to go fuck themselves. This response is truly the highest degree of respect I can muster for the nouveau flat earth society.


    by SleepinJeezus on Mon, 08/13/2012 - 12:57am

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