Where extraordinary becomes eccentric

Since my graduation about a month ago, I have been wondering how to utilize all the free time I suddenly gained upon leaving school. I work a more, but the addition of workload does not fully cover those seven hours I used to spend behind a desk, taking notes and competing during tests with my classmates, who regrettably lacked the competitive spirit. The golfing lessons (and especially the commuting part which over the last month doubled the carbon footprint I created since January till May) take several hours a day; nonetheless the time spent on wild swinging of the clubs is not substantive. Therefore I read even more than used to and thanks to the Internet and its endless supply of semi-legal ebooks, I never have to wait more than few minutes before starting another piece (which brings me to an idea of the low exposure the ebooks are getting; on Amazon you can either buy a printed copy, a recorded audiobook, or a digitized Kindle edition for Amazon’s proprietary reader, however no downloadable PDF file. I’d be willing to pay up to say 70% of a price of a hard copy, just to have what I want quickly on my desktop and subsequently in my Blackberry. It’s infuriating the length of delivery of my five new Richard Dawkins’s books spans for over two weeks and the package is still not in sight. But I am digressing…)

After finishing The Selfish Gene (Dawkins), A widow for one year (Irving), Jacques the Fatalist and his Master (Kundera’s adaptation of the novel as a play), and a short paper by Dwight H. Perkinson on The Challenges of China’s Growth, I began reading another book that very often cites China’s (and India’s) and its problems and, on the other hand, also the recent accomplishments and contributions to the leveling of the world. It’s called The World is Flat and it was written by my favorite NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman back in 2004 (revised editions followed in 2005 and 2007 I believe).

I am about one third through the book and my feelings are mixed. Friedman has been so far looking at the milestone events that contributed to the flattening of the world such as the fall of the Berlin wall and a release of Microsoft Windows 3.0, the day when Netscape, the company behind the Internet browser with the same name (now Firefox), went public, or the burst of the dotcom bubble that India virtually overnight a computer superpower, thanks to the overabundance of fiber-optic that connected India’s thousands of low-cost world-class computer scientists with American companies that had to — amid the stock market downfall — slash their development costs and were thus looking for people to whom they could outsource their work. Simply, Friedman is focusing on the role of the information technology and the ways it affected the business is done today. In my opinion, the individual chapters that describe those ten factors that influenced or even fueled the current wave of flattening globalization place too much importance on computer – especially software – and related development. I think the globalization is good and at the end benefits everyone, however drawing conclusions on the consequences of globalization solely from the point of view of software developers is too narrow – I believe the main benefit comes and will come from sharing the developed views on social values, with economics serving only as a proxy. Nevertheless, the book is filled with interesting bits of interviews with the leaders of Indian and Chinese hi-tech companies and therefore enjoyable to read. But it also shows how fast the world is moving and how our perceptions of policies change from advantageous towards detrimental. Especially these lines, written back in 2004, must draw smile to anyone familiar with the matter:

Fortune magazine (Oct 4, 2004) quoted a study by Morgan Stanley estimating that since mid-1990s alone, cheap imports from china have saved U.S. consumers roughly $600 billion and have saved U.S. manufacturers untold billions in cheaper parts for their products. This savings, in turn, Fortune noted, has helped the Federal Reserve to hold down interest rates longer, giving more Americans a chance to buy homes or refinance the ones they have, and giving businesses more capital to invest in new innovations. (Emphasis mine).

Friedman is lauding a study by Morgan Stanley lauding a fact the cheap Chinese imports saved the Americans almost negligible amount of money (note just this year’s stimulus was worth over $100 billion) and therefore allowed the interest rates to stay low, consequences of which are now felt by those crunched in the credit crisis. Interesting how things change during only four years, isn’t it?

Something is going on with me. I spend more and more time reading liberal commentaries by people like Friedman and Krugman, and I oftentimes tend to agree with them. I still am fairly conservative when it comes to politics, and rather liberal in my views on economics, but staying on the current course must eventually flip my beliefs.

Or perhaps I just disagree with the current energy policies in both the U.S. and CR (although the problems the countries are facing are significantly different), and they are coincidentally thorns in the those columnists’ eyes as well.

Today’s Friedman is once again worth reading.

The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

If this huge transfer of wealth to the petro-authoritarians continues, power will follow. According to Congressional testimony Wednesday by the energy expert Gal Luft, with oil at $200 a barrel, OPEC could “potentially buy Bank of America in one month worth of production, Apple computers in a week and General Motors in just 3 days.”

Thomas Friedman would probably not get pied for his latest column for New York Times. On contrary, the generally liberal college students would welcome his latest ideas on the necessary change in the course in which the U.S. is headed. It has become a customary habit to blame the government for any situation, even if the government itself couldn’t have prevented it, like the current credit crunch or a “poor” state of the infrastructure.

First of all, it’s not the current government that is entirely responsible for the turmoil of the financial markets and the prices of gasoline. The monetary policy of the United States is a responsibility of the Fed, the institution that operates independently on any branch of state, and it was its impassiveness in raising interest rates that led to the sharp and bloody drop last August. It was not Bernanke’s impassiveness, but Greenspan’s in the years following the 9/11. From the Friedman’s side it’s a pure hypocrisy (or populism) when he in his books advocates the globalization and cites its numerous benefits for the American companies, whereas in NYT he decides to question it when the American banks get help from global players. (more…)