The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Friedman is excellent at 'at the factory' reporting on supply chains, outsouring, reporting on the strengths of Bangalore and China, how services are now exported and imported and how all corporations are now effectively multinational. The world really is quite different than it was fifteen years ago and Friedman describes this well. Friedman's analysis of how to 'surf the wave' however amount to little more than bromides. Friedman encourages constant learning, stresses engineering and the sciences, avoiding slip ups etc. It is not the Friedman is mistaken it is that Friedman doesn't develop anaylyses of the trials and tribulations of the 'flat earth' in depth. Friedman seems to be saying both that 'this is paradise' and the 'sky is falling' with the message going back and forth between the two. Friedman's analyses of how to take advantage of and how to avoid the pitfalls of the 'flat earth' are lacking. The first 200 page deserve five stars but the rest is more or less padding.

....by virtue of the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels. Eventually everything will be made locally (each town and hamlet will have its own cobbler, etc.) A veritable nightmare from the microeconomic point of view.
Amru Albeiruti

"Flat" is not self-help, but as far as motivational books go it's probably the most effective. It's a wake up call to all Americans: we need to stay extremly competative on a global scale because other countries are starving for success. Reread the last sentance, look at the people at your local Wal-Mart, listen to your tech support, and you might get an idea of the kind of situation we are in. It's closer than you think.

I work in an semiconductor assembly site of a multinational. Because of the popularity of this book, being touted by top managers, using it as some sort of a faddish gospel, all our payment and purchasing transactions are now offshored to India.

As a result, there's so many scanning and duplicate work. It's very hard to make a follow-up to resolve an issue with India, when you cant speak in person. Sometimes, work are needlessly replicated just to complete a proper purchase-until-payment process. You cannot imagine how much time is lost.

Ive read the book myself. (I remembered an email from a business unit boss saying "that people whove read this have a great advantage to those who have not" when I was looking at the storeshelves). The writing is really convincing and it's a good, encouraging read. But after one year, Ive seen offshoring myself, and felt how terrible it is. I saw what Friedman skipped.

Friedman is really evangelizing his thesis without a single caveat. He even singled out these transactional-accounting things as should-be offshored first. But if you go down to the nitty-gritty, there are only minimal acctg transactions that you can offshored smoothly, and sometimes those transactions should remain at site, depending on issues that are liable to happen. We lose a sense of ownership on resolving issues fast, as well, in the process.

If the author is open, I can guide him on the current mess we are in. Could have been better also for him to observe the catastrophe of transfer and endorsements, during the start/launch of offshore work.

Thomas Friedman begins with a poor understanding of American history, and extends this into a baffling misunderstanding of world events and energy technology.

the world isn't so much flat as it is suddenly inundated with cheap transportation, fast communication, and un-precedented data storage and processing abilities. the Cheap energy that enables cheap transportation is getting a lot more expensive. and most of the olive trees have to be cut down to create parking lots for all those new cars. A series of enormously expensive oil wars seem to expend all the savings made by outsourcing.

Trade does not decrease the risk of wars. before the Revolutionary War Britain was the number one market for American goods. Before the War of 1812 70 to 85 percent of American trade was with britain. We also spoke the same language and had the same religion. Before the Civil War the States had no real trade barriers between them. Before World War I france and Germany were very important trading partners. Before the Russians entered World War II, Russia was Germany's most important trading partner.

Britain conducted several wars with China to protect the rights of British Merchants to sell Opium to the Chinese. This broke the back of the Chinese government: a serious of regional insurrections and wars killed tens of millions of Chinese and set the stage for the later successful communist revolution: there are no holocaust museums or organizations for this in America.

America outsources production in order to consume more than it produces. Most small towns and cities get hollowed out. This subsidizes the construction and operation of new suburbs, which creates our oil addiction. We'd have been better off never de-industrializing.

Friedman appears on news programs. He wishes the U.S. could be China for a day. the U.S. was better than China for generations. This was when there were tariffs, distance, communications limitations with Asia and Europe, and barriers to exporting manufacturing capital to these places. Today Americans grow up wanting to be lawyers and economists. Lawyers can create their own work, while economists mostly rely on producing lobbying and propaganda for folks who want to become millionaires and billionaires outsourcing. Most american kids don't grow up interested in mechanics, chemistry, applied engineering, or manufacturers: they grow up in suburbs far from an awareness of factories, foundries, appliance repair shops, and science labs.