In his previous book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”, Friedman stated that globalisation is making the world go from a size medium to a size small. In “The World is Flat”, he goes one step further to say that because of the increasing collaboration among suppliers and companies across the globe, the harnessing of powerful communication technology such as fiber optic cables and the internet, the world is rapidly becoming flat.
He has quite a few interesting examples to justify this statement, such as call centres being outsourced to Bangladore, Japan outsourcing data-entry work to China, radiologists outsourcing reading of CAT scans to doctors in India and Australia, America outsourcing accounting work to India; as well as the global aspect of the supply-chain of companies such as Wal-mart and Dell. Imagine, you can get your US tax return done, taking into account particular state laws, by a person in India! The Indian accountant accesses your tax records through a server loacted in the US, thus maintaining privacy laws.
Friedman also includes an interesting passage from the “Communist Manifesto” by Marx which foresaw this flattening of the world in 1848 and warned that if capitalism was adopted everywhere, it would make religion, culture, and the nation state irrelevant. However, Friedman is still firmly behind the theory that if more boundaries came down and perfect free trade realised, it would lead to economic revival. He even has a theory that if more countries were involved in manufacturing, supplying, distributing and consuming goods, they will have such a large stake in the global supply chain that it would make them think twice about starting a war!
Perhaps overly optimistic, but an interesting thought nevertheless.
