Here is a listing for the book on Amazon. I am a little over halfway done, and as a business person, I am finding the book to be very thought-provoking and informative.
His basic thesis is that communism lost out to free-market capitalism and that as freedom of technology, finance and information become commonplace, globalization becomes an inexorable force. Any country wanted to surf the way must align its basic economic structure (i.e., become a free market), adopt appropriate macro economic policies, and pass laws to root our corruption and make accounting standard and transparent.
Fascinating book - essential reading for a perspective on Globalization. He tends to repeat his main points a lot, sometimes uses examples that already seem dated, and seems to position the inevitability of globalization in a positive way, at least at this point in the book (I am opening a related-but-different thread about that in Great Debates, btw), but his ability to illustrate the Big Picture - even if you don’t like it - is a valuable service.
Have you read it - what are your thoughts?
If you haven’t - check it out!!
It was required reading in a university class of my daughter in Guadalajara. She’s been after me to read it. I guess I’ll give it a whirl.
If you want a little balance to Freidman, you might want to check out Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph E Stiglitz. He was chief economist and vice president from 1997-2000. He also believes that globalization is inevitable, but that the policies preached by Friedman and his disciples have caused political unrest and starvation in the countries those countries that have been obligated to follow the principles of Neoliberalism. To be fair I have not read Freidman’s latest book, but all his recent articles don’t change much from his original book in 1962. *Capitolism and Freedom
A couple points of clarification from furlibusea’s post:
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The Friedman I refer to is the author of the book the Lexus and the Olive Tree and NY Times reporter Thomas Friedman, not Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist *Milton *Friedman. As of half way through the book, Thomas F. does not refer to or comment on Milton F.'s point of view regarding globalization.
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Stiglitz was a Senior VP of the World Bank - that point is unclear in furlibusea’s thread.
I appreciate the reference - the Stiglitz book looks to be worth reading. I do note in the reviews for that book that it appears that Stiglitz may agree with T. Friedman’s take on the positive aspects of globalization, but currently feels that some global bodies, like the IMF and World Bank, are not fulfilling their duties in support of that form of globalization…
Sorry, I caught that icky sentance right after i hit enter. It should read : …have caused political unrest and starvation in the countries that have been obligated to folow the principles of Neoliberalism. Also sorry for the messed up italic. I will say that i am thrilled the links work.
Oh dear sorry I am an idiot, I will look up the other book. I had to slog through Milton Friedmans stuff for a class on Latin American globalization, and HATED HATED HATED it. It is also possible to find many writers that think globalization is just plain a bad idea, and should be completely done away with. I doubt very much that this is in anyway possible, but they do point out some of the problems that need to be adressed. Thankyou for clarifying my post, I should avoid posting prior to the sufficient consumption of coffee.
Incidentally, “globalization” is not a new force. It’s merely a return to the status quo of the 19th century, when nations traded up a storm and had their fingers firmly planted in each other’s economic pies. (Americans and Canadians might be astonished to learn that their 19th century railroad networks of frontier legend were built largely with European money and, in many cases, imported European rails.) There’s a great passage in J.M. Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace where he describes this globalization by enumerating all the foreign goods that were easily available to a Londoner in 1914.
This all came to a crashing halt in the first half of the 20th century, when the quadruple whammy of World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and the rise of the Soviet bloc led to massive trade barriers and a world of fragmented economic islands.
So the current trend of globalization isn’t some strange new aberration; instead, the way the world was from 1914-1989 was the aberration. We are only now recovering from a profoundly disfunctional chapter in the history of the world economy.
Yep - Wumpus, you’re right, and Thomas Friedman states as much in the book. And he also offers contrasts as to how that form of globalization differed from the form currently being pursued today…
You can also look at globalization as it is currently practiced as an economic colonisation (ok slightly oversimplified). The process has been going on since at least 1492 or so.