The World Is Flat

Thomas Friedman in his recent moderate The beingness is monotonous discusses a short history of globalisation in the twenty-first century. His discovering journey took him round the world to investigate the new concept in transnational business. He views himself as Columbus-like, that in a new modern word, in which he is searching for the sources of todays wealth. Only to educe to a rhetorical conclusion that the world is flat non roundHis book, The world is flat has been a subject to much criticism. His work was highly criticizes by Aronica and Ramdoo, (2006) in their book The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedmans New York Times Bestseller. They point to the fact that Friedman does not spend a single table or data footnote in his book. Friedman makes arguments by assertion, based on not documented facts, simply makes his assumption based on stories from his journey around the world, visiting fewer places, and selected CEOs he visits on his journey.(Aronica & Ramdoo, 2006)Friedman in a research for his book visits India, where Nandan, the CEO of Infosys explains to him that the playing playing field is existenceness leveled causing Friedman to conclude that the world is flat. (Friedman, 2006 p.7) Friedman refers to a flat world in a metaphorical sense. He reiterates over and over again that The world is flat. In which he means that reducing barriers in trade and political and technical advances have make it possible to do business, instantly with any opposite businesses around the world, without the need to emigrate. It has each(prenominal)(prenominal)owed for parts of the world, which had previously been disconnected, like India and China, to compete in the world market. And that we are this instant connecting all the knowledge and expertise, using computers, email, fibre-optic networks and so on.Friedman argues that there are ten major forces that planate the world, and describes each of the following flatteners. The fall of the Berlin Wall or the work flow software uploading outsoursing offshoring insourcing in-forming and lastly he talks nearly steroids. Next Friedman delve into what he describes that the forces of flatness have resulted in the triple convergence, ternion additional components that acted on the flatteners to create a new, flatter global playing field.Friedman also states that technology has made the world flat by removing geographical, hierarchical and other boundaries to trade. In a flat world, Friedman writes, you pile innovate without having to emigrate. Yet, there are still many people in rural areas that have been remaining out and neglected of this global integration. People are migrating from rural areas to the spoiled cities in search of jobs all the time, and this is what Friedman calls a flat world?Richard Florida,(2005) in his article The World is spiky argues that the globalisation has changed the playing field but it has not leveled it., Richard talks about uneven di stribution of the worlds population, light emissions, focussing on peaks as of the cities that drive the world economy, and valleys places with little connection to the global economy. Both authors seems to be right, but they both missing the point, using misleading metaphors.The paradox of these two metaphors is that the flattening of the world is creating a new nominee for even greater spikiness. Some would argue that it does not weigh whether the world is spiky or flat. What does matter is where you live. Now, people have to compete and work harder than ever before. People in American are losing their jobs because mortal on the other side of the world can do it faster and for slight money.Technology makes it all to a greater extent possible today to bring the world closer and make it more interconnected and interdependent.(Friedman, 2006) However, technological innovation by itself leave alone never flatten the world, instead it tends to create inequalities by being unre ached to less fortunate. Leamer (2007) in his critical review demonstrate that the technological revolution, economic integration and interaction augment the openness of trade and promote the production and transmission of information and knowledge in general. However, it is possible that increase economic integration can lead to spatial agglomeration of economic activity rather than to a geographically flatten pattern.Process of globalization may as well wipe out dummy and distance between countries, then again, rough will argue that in a global economy, free-enterprise(a) advantages are often heavily localized, arising from concentrations of highly specialised skills, knowledge and institutions.Friedman argues, that the world is regainting flatter, incomes though, are not. scattering of incomes within countries and between countries is growing greater. Nevertheless, all these arguments show that the world is not flat, never was and is not possible going to be in the near fu ture.In second chapter, Friedman describes than Netscape went public and how Internet and World unsubtle Web came along and enabled more people to communicate and interact with more people anywhere on the planet, causing the Earth to flatten even more. In 2007 Foreign Policy magazine article, Pankaj Ghemawa, argued that ninety portion of the worlds web traffic, investments and phone calls are local, suggesting that Friedman has overstated the significance of the trends he describes. (Ghemawat, P. 2007).Friedman talks about outsourcing of manufacturing and other litigatees to a foreign country to take advantage of less-costly labour. Outsourcing may indeed be well-behaved for the multinational corporations to stay competitive and survive, however, Arnica and Ramdoo (2006) in their book argue that, Friedman discuss in a choose of global corporations moving their operations overseas to exploit weak governments and nickel-and-dime(prenominal) labor.Global corporations are not inves ted in the well-being of American workers and their local communities. Instead they go wherever they can to exploit cheap labor, lax environmental regulations and tax breaks. Stiglitz (2006) in his book points out that, the policy frameworks and laws are manipulated to be shell suited for the industrial elites. Moving operations overseas is cost cutting to improve the financial execution of big corporations, without loyalty to ones country. Their only loyalty is to increased profits and increased salaries of their directors.As a result of outsourcing, Many of American citizens, according to Friedman, are now worried about their careers, because some of the jobs they used to hold are now being performed outside the country for a much reject cost to their former companies. The reason behind the outsourcing is simply the cost. Indian workers can work for far less then American. The question is what will be the outcome of shipping all these jobs overseas? Some will argue that outsour cing less skilled work to emerging economies will raise living standards around the world. Workers in developing nations will get new and higher- paying jobs, and consumers in the U.S will be able to secure products that are cheaper than if they were made at home. Leamer (2007) argues that it makes both parties worse off saying we get their fight and they get our culture.Outsourcing is occurring at a breathtaking pace, and as a result America is facing a big challenge because their jobs are at risk. Business services and finance is now at risk of being outsourced. And in the near future accounts, marketing and sales, and even human recourses will be shipped overseas in the name of cost saving. We are not only outsourcing business processes, but also moving process of innovations. Overall, this is good for global economy, but the U.S. workforce will face drastic career changes and pressures on wages subject to competition from foreign labor. Thus, what is good for some might not be good for others. other example given by Mr. Friedman that stroked me is how Southwest Airlines let you issue your own boarding pass online two dozen hours before the flight. What if you forget to print out your ticket? This is just a simple demonstration of declining timber of services a customer receives in a flatten world.I would argue that while the flat world has done extremely well for many industries and people around the world, Friedman but does not recognize that the more flatten world brings many dark sides of globalisation along with it. The global financial form is more unbalanced, the threats of climate change are stronger and there is more international terrorism. The Friedman is reinforcing a wrong pass on to its audience for peace, loyalty and prosperity.Thomas Friedman points out that different parts of the world are now more connected because convergence of technology, information systems and telecommunications systems that created a global platform is shrinki ng the world, and enabling each of us to reach around the world faster and cheaper than ever beforeYes, there have been some striking changes and transformation in the world economy, and we are now more connected than ever before, however the world is not flat. (Stiglitz, 2006). Stiglitz in his book Making globalization work (2006) touches various aspects of globalization that is destroying the developing countries and their aspirations to leave behind a decent living to their citizens. He talks about egotistic intellectual property laws, the unjust trade mechanisms and many more critical points to complete success of globalization. Mr Friedman appreciates the existence of global poverty but fails to explain its structural and geopolitical causes.