Friedman and his Critics...

To say that Thomas Friedman is controversial in his ideas presented in his book The World is Flat would be an understatement. As I read the book myself, I find myself confused and wondering if his ideas actually make sense or if it is just me and my simple mind that can't grasp these huge political concepts. However, after reading the ideas of a few of his harshest critics, I am starting to change my opinion of the ideas that he presents us with for why the world is "flattening." In his article "Flathead" Matt Taibbi calls Friedman a "genius of literary incompetence" that "does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up." Through the entire article, Taibbi jokes about Friedman's poor writing style and failed attempts at metaphors throughout his book, starting with the simple claim from the title that the world is flat. Friedman made this assumption when the CEO of Infosys stated to him that "the playing field is being leveled." According to Taibbi, Friedman has foolishly and incorrectly jumped from the term "level" to "flat," which most certainly are not the same thing. Taibbi begins to compare Friedman's claim that the world becoming "flat" is making the world more interconnected to Columbus's discovery that the world is round. In this, he makes the observation that in a round world, each end is closer to the other, thus making a more interconnected world. Why, then, has Friedman made the claim that a flat world is a more interconnected world? It should make sense that a more round world would be more interconnected. This claim, along with many other claims and examples that he tries to use in his book, are caught and refuted by Taibbi as he makes many arguments against Friedman, has made me question what I myself think of Friedman's ideas.
In his book Making Globalization Work, Joseph Stiglitz criticizes Friedman and argues his own points against the man, claiming that "not only is the world not flat; it is getting less and less flat." One peer-reviewed article, although validates that Friedman's ideas and suggestions that Friedman presents are valid, poses a question to contradict Friedman's platform : "Is globalization really making the world flat?" It describes two rebuttals to The World Is Flat that have been written: Richard Florida's The World Is Spiky and The World Is Flat? by Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo, in which these critics claim that the tools that are spreading globalization will actually concentrate wealth and labor, in contrast to Friedman's suggestion that it will spread out almost evenly across his proposed "flat" surface. However, even though these authors differ in opinion from Friedman, this article provides a possibility that perhaps they are all right, as the critics are look at our present world while Friedman is looking into the future. The viewpoints are compared to the difference between socialism and capitalism: "Florida, Aronica, and Ramdoo believe that flat world means a world in which income gaps decrease and wealth is evenly distributed. Friedman instead sees a world where the opportunity to achieve wealth is evenly distributed, but wealth itself is not." In this way, he validates Friedman's point while also criticizing it, claiming that his idea for the future of America is our focus, and that we must all take advantage of the opportunities that we have to succeed and improve our own world.
After reading part of Friedman's book, and now some of his critics, I am partly compelled to believe that his ideas make sense and are true. However, I also agree with many of his critics that his ideas make no sense. Again, perhaps this is simply because I have a very limited understanding of politics and economics and globalization in general. I have noticed that many critics are not so much opposed to his general ideas as they are offended and annoyed by his writing style and the way in which he attempts to get his point across. This is one thing I can whole-heartedly agree on. It is quite a trivial thing to be annoyed by his atrocious attempts at metaphors; however, I wonder, if he is as bad as these critics say he is about making simple metaphors, should we believe that he really knows what he's talking about in other things? In his other ideas? In his propositions about the future? Is he a genius, or the idiot that his critics claim?