Why Tom Friedman Is the Ayn Rand of Our Times

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/media/why-tom-friedman-new-ayn-rand-our-dark-digital-future

If Thomas Friedman didn't exist, America's high-tech entrepreneurs would have had to invent him. Come to think of it, maybe they did. The dark science-fiction vision he celebrates serves them well, at pretty much everyone else's expense.

Friedman's vision is worth studying, if only because it reflects the distorted perspective of some very wealthy and influential people. In their world the problems of the many are as easily fixed as a line of code, with no sacrifice required of them or their fellow billionaires.

Case in point: 15 or 20 million Americans seeking full-time employment? To Thomas Friedman, that's a branding problem.

Ayn Rand with a human face ...

Friedman occupies a unique place in the pundit ecosystem. From his perch at the New York Times, he idealizes the unregulated, winner-take-all economy of the Internet and while overlooking human, real-world concerns. His misplaced faith in a digitized "free" market reflects the solipsistic libertarianism of a technological über-class which stares into the rich diversity of human experience and sees only its own reflection staring back.

[Fumesucker]

1. How many pundits have been so consistently wrong that they have a unit of measure named after them?

[reformist2]

2. I could maybe forgive these technocrats 10+ years ago, but now they are willfully ignorant.

They seem to have no clue that many high-tech jobs now go to the lowest bidder among a global talent pool of contractors, all willing to undercut each other just to get the job.