Fast forwarding to today, free-market Friedman seems to assert that now, with his utopian, digitally connected flat world, even the nation-state could wane as flat-world capitalists create, in the words of Marx and Engels, “a world after its own image.”
Henry Ford was a pioneer of “welfare capitalism” designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men a year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers. In January 1914, Ford announced his five-dollar a day program. The revolutionary program called for a reduction in length of the workday from 9 to 8 hours, a 5-day work week, and a raise in minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers.
Wall Street criticized Ford for starting the 40-hour work week and the minimum wage, but he showed that by paying his people more, Ford workers would be able to afford the cars they were producing — which would be good for the economy. Ford labeled the increased compensation profit-sharing rather than wages.
With today’s corporate globalization, we are seeing a return to Dickensonian capitalism on a grand scale. Not only do we need a strong American middle class, we need a strong global middle class, not a global 3rd world that is seeing America heading toward 3rd world status. We need a new Teddy Roosevelt and thinking capitalists in the likes of upstart Henry Ford if the world is to avoid Wall Street’s rule and its preeminent goal of only increasing shareholder value.
Q) You raise multiple points in your book illustrating ways in which the world is not particularly “flat”. If I read you right, you are not against “flat world” but a Friedman conception of a neo-liberal “flat world” that exists today. Tell us a little more about your thoughts the current “flat” world and the kind of “flat” world that you would like to see. In other words, how does the current global economic regime look like and what would you like to see changed?
RA: Neo-liberals believe that free markets, free trade, and the free flow of capital are the most efficient ways to produce the greatest social, political, and economic good. They argue for reduced taxation, reduced regulation, and minimal government involvement in the economy. They include privatizing health and retirement benefits, dismantling of trade unions, and generally opening our economy to foreign competition. Detractors see neo-liberalism as a power grab by economic elites and as a race to the bottom for everyone else.
The current economic regime unleashes neoliberalism. Agriculture, indigenous peoples’ resources, water, genes, medicines — increasingly, they are all being privatized and placed in the hands of transnational corporations. The field of economics has always addressed both private and public goods. But today’s neoliberal philosophy views all goods as private goods — perhaps even our laws are becoming private goods.
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1 - Jake
The following is writing response assignment I have done for my English class on the world is flat?. Is my analysis misguided or is it nearer to the truth than Friedman was?
In this critique of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, the reader receives an occasional glimpse into Friedman’s book itself. Some of these glimpses are more disturbing than others and some are even given appropriate recognition by the authors of the critique, Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo. However, there is one excerpt from Freidman’s book which I found to be far and above the most disturbing and culturally degrading. In this section Friedman asserts that there are certain jobs in our new flat world that have become “untouchable”. These “jobs” are demarcated by Freidman as the Great Collaborators and Orchestrators, the Great Synthesizers, the Great Explainers, the Great Leveragers, the Great Adapters, the Passionate Personalizers, and the Great Localizers. As Aronica and Ramdoo have paraphrased this proposal from Friedman’s book, “we should all become masters of social, organizational, and motivational skills”, or as they go on to say, managers. The most disturbing aspect of this idea is Freidman’s apparent perception of the American people as only being interested in getting a job so we can have money to buy stuff. In his defense, this is a very popular ideal of the American identity, but it is not the kind of goal we should hold above all else and certainly not what we should be teaching our children.
It is also important to note that Freidman is pushing for the American people to do something which not everyone was made for, to lead. Being a manager or president is a
heavy responsibility that requires lots of work with very little recognition aside from a pay check. To lead is essentially to carry the concerns of all those who are under you and this is a task that very few are suited for. Should we start telling our kids, “you can do whatever you want when you grow up…on the weekends.” Friedman’s idea not only contradicts the ideological foundations of this country but also a later chapter in his book. In this later chapter Friedman encourages for a push in math and science. Are these jobs also untouchable? Or is that only if we become smarter than China and India? As a college student graduating with a degree in English, it is a very bleak, flat world that Thomas Friedman has painted for me.