Biography

Thomas FRIEDMAN

2009 ranking: 30

Thomas Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman is a journalist best known for his work as an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and his works on globalization. After studying at Brandeis University and Oxford he worked for United Press International in London and Beirut. He then joined the staff of the New York Times and began his op-ed work in 1994. He has written extensively on a range of topics, Including Terrorism and US Foreign Policy besides globalization.

For Friedman globalization is an international system which has replaced the Cold War as a means of organizing the world. It has its own rules and internal dynamics, and influences politics, economics, the environment, culture - in short everything. Its impact is discernible in today's world.

His book The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999) was an in-depth exploration of globalization. The Lexus of the title represented a struggle for prosperity and development. This runs parallel with a drive to maintain cultural identity and values, symbolised by the olive tree.

His book unearthed a number of concepts to which Friedman gave colourful labels. In a world dominated by ever-more liberal capital markets and trade regimes all counties must cede some sovereignty to multi-national corporations and global sources of capital. He termed this The Global Straitjacket. Furthermore, when there are no barriers to capital movement, markets can be subject to often irrational forces, as happened during the South-East Asian Financial crisis of 1997. Friedman described these as the actions of the Electronic Herd. Perhaps his most controversial coining was the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention. No two countries with branches of McDonald's have yet fought a war. Put simply, both countries are involved in an economic world where making money is always more important than making war.

His second book, The World is Flat, was written after visits to Bangalore. India and Shanghai. The title is a reflection of the globalized world with ever fewer economic and increasingly political barriers. Friedman believes globalization has moved on, from a borderlessness affecting only governments (Globalization 1), through a stage involving companies and commercial entities (Globalization 2), to a world where globalization increasingly impacts on individuals (Globalization 3).

Friedman is fond of lists, and in The Earth is Flat he lists ten "flatteners" that have aided globalization. They are:

1. The Fall of the Berlin Wall.
2. The availability of simple-to-use and install web browsers.
3. Workflow software.
4. Open sourcing of software programming.
5. Outsourcing.
6. Offshoring
7. Supply chaining.
8. Insourcing,
9. In-forming - the growth of Google and other search engines.
10. The Steroids - mobile phones, iPods, PDAs, Voice-over Internet technology etc.

Globalization is undergoing a Triple Convergence. This includes:

1. A coming together of all the disparate flatteners. Up to 200 they tended to be independent players, but in the new millennium they have had a mutual impact upon each other.

2. Horizontalization - co-operation between companies to aid innovation.

3. The unleashing of brain-power from previously non-capitalist economies.

Friedman's comments on the US economy have also been influential and controversial. He has written that the US must openly embrace globalization. This means acceptance of increasing outsourcing of jobs to low-cost economies. Friedman argues that the jobs lost can be replaced by much better paid and high-status posts, which are dependent on Americans acquiring greater skill-sets through education. This openness to the world should not be restricted to trade, It should include an openness to immigration. He has described reluctance by the US Congress to fully open America to immigration as "pure idiocy". Although a fanatical advocate of free trade he believes the US should pursue greater energy security, especially through production of bioethanol and other fuel alternatives.. This would benefit US trade figures and lessen dependence on often volatile sources of supply. It might also cause positive regime changes in those states which have traditionally relied on petrodollars to maintain authoritarian structures. This form of pressure is, in Friedman's view, preferable in the long-term to more direct forms of intervention.

Essential Reading

The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999)

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (2006) reissued in 2006 with the subtitle The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century

Website: http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/

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