The World Is Flat By Thomas L. Friedman

As each day passes, our society grows and develops because of technology. We continue to become more connected to the rest of the world because of this technology. This, however, does not change the staggering situational differences of the world. There is still uneven distribution of natural resources and unequal opportunity for people. There are many people in Asia and Africa

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

Supporters argue that outsourcing has a minimal effect on job losses, and has increased economic growth in some cases. In actuality, outsourcing has decreased the domestic economy by decimating job opportunities and lowering wages. Steven Pearlstein, economics columnist for the Washington post reaffirmed arguments that outsourcing has decreased employment availability and stability of the economy by saying “There are growing numbers of people who think that what started as a sensible, globalized extension of sending some work outside a firm to specialized companies may in fact be creating long-term structural unemployment in the United States, hollowing out entire industries”. (Pearlstein 3) The IT industry has been especially affected by outsourcing, with many jobs moving overseas to India and Bangladesh, leaving employees in the United States without a job, unable to compete with lower wage offerings. Supporters of outsourcing argue that this business strategy increases everyone’s productivity, raising everyone’s income, and boosting economic growth. Many such studies tend to focus on large multinational corporations, for which the data and anecdotes are more readily available. And indeed, during the 1990s, the data seemed to show that for every one job added abroad, companies added almost two new

International relations is a topic that is constantly changing and can be very fragile. In the article, “Your Local News- Dateline Delhi” Barbara Ehrenreich, a respected journalist, shares her personal insights into the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign lands. Ehrenreich’s cynical attitude, use of dry humor, and rhetorical questions makes this daunting subject easier to take in. Fareed Zakaria, a well-known author, explains the globalized world and where outsourcing fits, in an excerpt from his book, The Post-American World. Zakaria looks back in history to show the reader how the world came to this “globalizing moment”, then he hypothesizes the future of the global economy by piecing together all of the elements. Ehrenreich shows

Many businesses in United States manufacture their product overseas. This involves manufacturing products outside United States where the labor cost is cheaper. Because of cheap labor, it is often more economical for a U.S. company to manufacture overseas and pay the shipping costs than to manufacture in the United States. For a company, the savings may be substantial. However, there are negative impacts on U.S. employment, as many jobs in the United States are being outsourced and replaced by overseas positions. The manufacturers outsource production projects to save time, money or resources. The manufacturing is outsourced so as to remain competitive and maintain a steady work flow. Without outsourcing, manufacturing costs could escalate to the point at which no product would sell and all employees would have no work. Outsourcing comes

Outsourcing emerged on the financial arena during the 1980s and has since then been spreading. Outsourcing production was furthered with the process of globalization which provided a new component leading to the strengthening of resources, skill and labor specializations across the world. The process of outsourcing is using the skill and abilities of a third-party to accommodate society on the foundation of labor. As stated earlier, it was during the 1980s that the process kicked off mainly due to the efforts of corporations when they began to hire labor forces across the world. Even though outsourcing has come out from its developing stages, there are still following effects on the US economy.

In Friedman’s “It’s a Flat World, After All”, Friedman in a trip Bangalore, India accidentally “encountered the flattening of the world”. The following paper will analyze “It’s a Flat World, After All” and the flattening of the world. To conclude the paper I will summarize my thoughts on the flattening of the world.

The phenomenon has created major suffering for many American and as this outsourcing continues to spread, Americans will demand action (R. Hira 2008, p-95). The book also adds that scholars Ralph Goory and William Baumol have shown that even when the basic model of the economics are used trade does not make both the trading partners better off. The trading in one country will have a negative impact while trading in other country will have a positive impact. The country with negative impact will definitely affect its economy. United States economy being the world’s largest economy; historically, it has maintained a stable GDP growth, a low unemployment rate, a high level of research and capital investment funded by both national, and because of increasing saving rates, increasingly by foreign investors. But offshore outsourcing has increased the unemployment rate dramatically in the decade. And so the economy worsened day by day.

These forces are the direct result of advanced technology. Moreover, the forces were made possible thanks to the World Wide Web (which is another force Friedman mentions). Technology and Internet are the real reasons our world became flat, and the reason the above flattener forces evolved. Companies, groups, and individuals – all connected together to form one global village. US companies started to outsource the back rooms of accounting firms and forwarding Dell customers to the 24/7 call center located in India. US companies were able to reduce cost, while making India a “customer service nation” and China a “low labor cost nation”.

In this chapter, Thomas Friedman looks at how cultures and societies will have to deal with and adapt to the changes that globalization brings to the way of doing business. It affects whole companies and individuals. He gives the perception of the world is flattening by comparing the Industrial Revolution to the IT Revolution that is happening right now. The flattening process was identified by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels in the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. Marx’s writings about capitalism state “the inexorable march of technology and capital to remove all barriers, boundaries, frictions, and restraints to global commerce (Friedman 234).”

Mr. Friedman takes an example of a Math institute in online, going by the name Hey Math, where in Indian student teach math to 12th grade students of Singapore, which is an evidence of service can be imported or exported with no sweat. He says that the race is intensifying as many brilliant Indian youth is taking over all available jobs of the flattened world for a comparatively lesser wages.

This is related to technology and outsourcing as a by product of this new technology. The personal computer allowed more and more people to engineer their own life digitally. They could now send pictures, media, data, messages, and even market new products due to a little thing we call the internet. Over the years it has developed in ways that would have been unimaginable in the past. All due to thin tubes of glass that transmit electrical signals efficiently and speedily. Because of their thinness many are able to being clumped together allowing more information to be sent in bulk. These cables came to be known as fiber optic cables. Outsourcing, the practice of sending work to other non local companies to be finished, edited, or for other various reasons, was made possible due of the internet and new technologies such as these fiber optic cables. It also allowed more communication between foreign countries, such as India ;which was a very significant outsourcing center in the world due to cheap labor and their advancing capital Dubai. Not only did American countries benefit from outsourcing , but India did as well. Outsourcing provided more jobs for young Indians and helped boost the economy, making it more possible for them to support and provide for their families. Therefore globalization of this kind does unite countries, including developing countries,

The chapter “The Age of Total War” in Eric Hobsbawm’s novel “The Age of Extremes” is broken into four sections in order to explore the time period of 1914-1945. This essay will explore the subjects and processes that are present in this chapter of Hobsbawm’s (1994) novel in a limited scope. The processes that will be discussed are how the zero sum game led to the total war of World War one; the desire for revanchism led to the existence of World War Two, the cost of World War Two led to the economic crisis and how the disaster these events caused resulted in the desensitization of human beings. Throughout this chapter, Hobsbawm (1994) frequently expresses a fear for human kind in both a literal and metaphoric sense arguing that people of

Globalization has shrunk the world. People can now have access to any market or any product they want very easily. We can buy Japan made camera without actually going to Japan, we can eat Iranian food in our university campus in Kuala Lumpur, can find coke and Mc D at any corner of the world, China can sell its products at very cheap price to consumers all over the world, Paris can get consumer for their fashion trend even outside their country.

In the new global economy, the US may no longer easily dominate. As a result of the flat world, new parts of the world are beginning to successfully compete. Two of the more powerful ones are India and China. These emerging nations are now competing not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. As Friedman mentions in his triple convergence, roughly 3 billion people from India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia are now joining this, "plug and play" world in which they can basically compete and collaborate equally. While these nations certainly pose a threat to historical U.S. and European prosperity and power, the proper response is not to fight it, but rather to embrace it, in order to thrive in the new world.