Tom Friedman: A New Ayn Rand for a Dark Digital Future

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/tom-friedman-new-ayn-rand-dark-digital-future-1375106635

Friedman’s column in this weekend’s New York Times is, characteristically, a Panglossian panegyric to online technology as the salve for all economic problems. In it he paints the picture of a global dystopia where decent jobs are scarce, educational advancement is unattainable, and people must sacrifice their homes, their possessions, and their personal lives to serve and amuse complete strangers.

<snip>

What are the implications of a world in which you must be above average to get “any good job”? When Garrison Keillor described Lake Woebegon as a place where “all the children are above average,” it was a joke. But Friedman’s not joking. He’s describing a world in which ordinary people are excluded from decent employment – and he’s doing it without expressing regret or demanding change.

To be fair, Friedman is an advocate for education – in his own way. But his education arguments, like his economic ones, focus on the online, the gimmicky, and the jargon-laden. Friedman’s world doesn’t seem to include manufacturing jobs, or construction jobs, or good government jobs. He envisions a workforce made up almost exclusively of “lateral thinkers” and “integration” engineers. Students should be trained to “invent” their jobs, says Friedman, who claims that self-invented work will be the best source of future employment.

Based on the number of people currently seeking full-time employment in the U.S. alone, 15 or 20 million people need to “invent” their jobs pretty quickly. That’s a lot of Internet start-ups, along with a whole boatload of “lateral thinking.”
<snip>

Thomas Friedman is the perfect mirror for the undeserved self-infatuation which has infected our corporate, media, and political class. He’s the chief fabulist of the detached elite, the unfettered Id of the global aristocracy, the Horatio Alger of self-deluded, self-serving, self-promoting techno-hucksterism.

But give the man his due: When it comes to “building your brand reputation,” Friedman’s a master of the art. It helps to have the perfect platform, of course. As soon as the New York Times is ready to hire 20 million more columnists, our employment problems will be over.

[DetlefK]

1. Heard this before: They are trying to sell the sweatshop-economy as the new ideal.

About 1 year ago there was a thread on DU about an online-article. Some capitalist was praising all the small businesses that sprang up in France(?), created by poor immigrants(?).
That's ingenuity!
They are founding a business!
They adapt to the market!
These kinds of businesses are the future of the economy!

What he didn't mention:
Those businesses are barely regulated.
And those people are so desperate that they are willing to work for next to nothing.



So, when someone is trying to sell you this idea, then remember: They are trying to replace the industrial work-force with a network of unregulated, low-wage sweatshops that can be hired and replaced at will.
(What could go wrong? Some "lateral integration & synergy consultant" won't buy those lead-painted toys for his kids.)

[KG]

2. piss on tom friedman

[SnowCritter]

12. Nope!

Not even if he was on fire!

[truebluegreen]

20. +1

[reformist2]

3. eLance.com: compete with workers from India to get programming and editing jobs for $8 an hour

One visit there ought to scare the pants off anyone advocating "education" as the way out of this mess. The wages/salaries for highly educated and talented people of all kinds are collapsing before our eyes.

But that probably won't stop the Tom Friedmans of the world. Soon they'll be telling all 200 million of us to be cancer-research scientists to make a (middle-class) living.

[Fumesucker]

4. Friedman is a Unit

And that spells FU.

FU, TF.

[Locrian]

5. Tom Friedman

is the perfect example of the rich inbreeding of the "intellectual" free-marketeers.

An out of touch, drooling idiot, free market leg humper.

[East Coast Pirate]

6. Politics: Come Up With the Ultimate Thomas Friedman Porn Title

BY MATT TAIBBI
MAY 2, 2013

Yesterday I was clicking my way through the Times editorial page when I hit upon Tom Friedman's column, ominously entitled, "It's a 401(k) World." When I see headlines like that on Tom's pieces I have to make sure my airways are clear of food or drink before proceeding – there is real medical danger of power-laughing your way into a choking episode if you try eating and Friedman-reading simultaneously.

But lunch was over: airways clear. I gathered myself, took a deep breath, and read:

It's hard to have a conversation today with any worker, teacher, student or boss who doesn't tell you some version of this: More things seem to be changing in my world than ever before, but I can't quite put my finger on it, let alone know how to adapt.

Nothing like a lede sentence that offers no information and requires another lede sentence. Standard Friedman so far, chuckle level, safe to proceed:

So let me try to put my finger on it: We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.

What does he mean by defined contributions, defined benefits, passing the bar exam and escaping the most e-mailed list? Let's hold those four or five thoughts while we plow ahead, four or five life-preservers in hand(s), to try to rescue this reading experience:

Here is what I mean: Something really big happened in the world's wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I'm always struck that Facebook, Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, high-speech broadband, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago when I wrote a book called The World Is Flat . . .

Airway alert! Was it possible? Friedman wrote another "The world is increasingly hyperconnected" column!

More: http://m.rollingstone.com/?redirurl=/politics/blogs/taibblog/contest-come-up-with-the-ultimate-thomas-friedman-porn-title-20130502

[klook]

7. True, we don't live in a world of defined benefits.

We live in a world where unlimited benefits are there for the 1 percent to grab, and the rest of us have only defined contributions that can blow away in the wind when we try to reap the rewards of a lifetime of labor.

Thanks for the link - Taibbi's analysis of this Friedman blather-fest is hilarious.

[PADemD]

8. Funny!

Thanks for posting!

[ctsnowman]

9. Thanks for the link.

[ctsnowman]

10. This whole

economic problem could be solved if we'd just borrow money from our parents and start a business.

[DonCoquixote]

11. Some people can spin gold into lead

Friedman takes a hint of a half truth, and spins it into lies, saying that we need to be more like China. No, because even as China is rising, the seeds of their doom are already sown, especially when a lot of communists realize they are the sort of people that Marx wrote about, and prescribed a different medicine than what Beijing is offering.

[mtasselin]

13. who

Who in their right mind even pays attention to Tom Friedman, oh maybe Paul Ryan.

[paleotn]

14. Once again....

...we have Tom "I gots mine!" Friedman picking through the rubble of a de-industrialized US economy. He fancies himself as some kind of deep thinker, but in reality he just mortars together some jargon with the usual bullshit and thinks that shows that he has a clue. He doesn't, but he knows that doesn't really matter. He's got his and the hell with the country and everyone else in it. He and his "thinker" class are complicit with corporate leaders and "will legislate for money" politicians on both sides of the aisle in selling us out to the mercantilist, east Asians and damn near everyone else. Even the Pentagon realizes we have a serious problem since there's not a single, modern weapon system in our entire military that's not dependent upon components from foreign suppliers.

Use to be, they would sell this under the guise of opening markets for US exports, but unless American workers are willing to toil away in horrendous conditions for 80 cents an hour, there's no possible way we can compete in most industries. And that's if our trading partner's markets were actually open to US exports. Per "I gots mine!"'s latest scribbling, they're not even sugar coating it anymore. Now there banding about things like "invent your own job", which in reality means go F yourself. Or how about "helping US consumers by providing less expensive products", again that's shorthand for buy our crap at China-Mart and then go F yourself.

It might be different if the markets of our supposed trading partners were truly open. Fact is, they're not and that was never the point. The point is and always has been that American corporate types got tired of paying people a decent wage, providing benefits and a safe working environment. They got tired of supporting the economic engine that created the US middle class and the greatest economy the world has ever witnessed, and instead went after short term profits. Unlike Germany, they were able to accomplish this with the legislative help of bought and paid for politicians and the pseudo-intellectual cover provided by free trade zelots like Friedman.

Historians of economics will look back on the late 20th, early 21 century America and wonder at our utter stupidity. I wouldn't be surprised if Friedman's name becomes a future metaphor for economically shooting ones self in the face. The idiots "Friedmaned" themselves for short term gain! Maybe Ross Perot and his giant sucking sound will be seen as wise. A crazy man, defined for posterity by his one moment of lucidity.

[reformist2]

15. He actually has a bit of Marie Antoinette in him: "The people have no jobs? Let them bake cakes!"

[deafskeptic]

17. yes, he does. :P n/t

[deafskeptic]

16. when I read his book the world is flat, I thought he was a bubble headed thinker. :P n/t

[cantbeserious]

18. Thank You For Sharing

eom

[duffyduff]

19. I don't care what this guy has to say

He's little more than a gigolo anyway.