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Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed

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As I write this review in late 2009, pessimism about the world economy and other matters seems fashionable, yet Gregg Easterbrook has written a book that forcefully states a contrarian point of view--namely, that the world is well on its way to an accelerating "globalization" that will result in many positive developments for the world. (That's the author's theme, not necessarily my own.) Frankly, I wish Easterbrook used a different word than globalization to describe the world economic development he sees (maybe "world integration" or something like that), not because globalization is entirely inaccurate, but because once you say that word, a number of people stop thinking and start shouting. Anyway, the word is out there, and now we're left to access the author's arguments on the basis of how much sense they make. Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker and Google CEO Eric Schmidt really like this book, so this is a serious book worthy of careful analysis and discussion.

Although I wouldn't necessarily agree with all of the author's arguments (and I suspect few readers will), he makes a number of good, common-sense points. For example, he notes that history shows that when a crisis interrupts a larger trend, as soon as the crisis ends, the larger trend resumes. It's easy to react "of course," but despite U.S. economic growth that has persisted beyond the crises of a major civil war, two world wars, a depression, dozens of recessions (or "panics" as they were called years ago), a cold war, ever-possible nuclear Armageddon, politics as usual (by which I mean messy, often counter-productive actions), high inflation, high unemployment and assorted other problems, long-term economic growth has persisted. It's realistic, therefore, to think the present economic turmoil will give way to more growth, even though there are a number of alarmists out there today.

In the process of increasing globalization (or world integration), Easterbrook foresees continued movement toward freer societies--North Korea, Iran and some Arab nations notwithstanding. He notes that a generation ago, only about a third of the world's nations had multiparty elections, whereas today the number is closer to 80%. If you think the rate of change in the world has been rapid in recent decades, Easterbrook sees that rate of change accelerating. In this matter, he reminds me a bit of Alvin Toffler and his 1970s book, Future Shock. (Oops, I've dated myself.) Easterbrook envisions lots of changes, such as an effective shrinkage of the distance between parts of the world, due to advances transportation and, more importantly, the willingness among the world's people to trade with each other.

The author also points to advances in literacy rates, the greater assimilation of women throughout the world into the workforce (harnessing additional brainpower), and the emergence of a global middle class. Those are some of the easier themes to agree with. He also envisions more cooperative superpower relations, fewer arms races, and worldwide inflation being held in check--themes that may appear less obvious.

In developing his arguments, Easterbrook takes the reader through 10 cities (11, if you count "your town") to develop examples of his themes. Briefly, these cities are: Shenzhen (China), Waltham (Mass.), Yakutsk (Russia), Erie (Pa.), Leipzig (Germany), Arlington (Va.), Chippewa Falls (Wisc.), Camden (S.C.), Los Angeles, and San Jose dos Campos (Brazil). Importantly, not all the changes the author foresees are good ones. For example, he expects continued (and increased) job turnover, as the world's demands for skilled labor change more quickly, and he foresees increasing income inequality in a world where job skills are more important than ever.

In the final analysis, Easterbrook has presented a thoughtful and sometimes provocative look at the future. Nobody bats 1.000 in predicting, so I am not going to be shocked if some of his analysis proves to be off the mark. The real question for a potential reader of this book is whether or not the author has provided a sufficiently reasoned and articulate set of discussions and conclusions so that the reader will be challenged to think independently and intelligently about the future. I'd say he has.

As a long time fan of Gregg Easterbrook, I really wanted to like Sonic Boom. After all, it has a catchy title, and the subtitle even rings true (Globalization at Mach Speed). However, much like the articles he writes about the NFL on Tuesday Morning Quarterback, a lot of the book approaches information-like substance but fails to close the deal.

As others have written, I read the entire book and I'm still not sure what a "Sonic Boom" is. It seems to create conditions of significant change, and to happen in may places where growth is occurring rapidly, but I can't say I'd recognize it if I see it. In many of Gregg's articles about football coaches who punt on fourth and one, he claims they are chicken. Well, if you have a major thesis but fail to adequately define it, that seems fairly similar.

Next, the book is written with a lot of interesting insights, specifically based on cities that indicate a trend or a major change. Erie, Pennsylvania is used as an example of a city that boomed when the railroads grew, but failed as the railroads moved to a single track size, which Erie fought. Standing athwart the gates of history and holding back change hasn't worked well historically, and didn't for Erie. But is that news? Silicon Graphics failed to see that the graphics accelerator would simply become part of the operating system and is now headquartered in Chippewa Falls, while Google occupies its original headquarters. Tragic tale? Yes, possibly. Shenzhen China grows from a small fishing village to one of the largest ports in the world. Interesting information, but what to learn from it?

The book is full of interesting stories and ideas that indicate that change is accelerating, and that the shifts don't necessarily have to be bad. Global warming may be good for the arctic tundra near Yakutsk, freeing up minerals and oil deposits. The only problem will be getting all that value to market, considering the lack of physical infrastructure!

At this point in a typical Easterbrook column on football, we'd have an obligatory photo of a cheerleader who'd tell us what she'd take with her to a desert island. One of my favorite responses was "a yacht". No kidding. While this is a fast book to read, it left me trying to figure out if it was a long news article - are you aware of all this interesting change - or a book trying to analyze what all the change means - here's what a sonic boom is and how you can benefit - or a feel good book promising a better tomorrow. I think Easterbrook tried for all three, and failed. Easterbrook went for the all-out blitz (something he castigates football coaches for) when he should have settled for the base defense.

The book discusses an interesting issue, the prospect of increased globalization and its likely advantages (material prosperity, better health) and disadvantages (increased stress, uncertainty, and economic inequality). Unfortunately, the discussion itself isn't as interesting as the issue.

In each of 10 chapters, Easterbrook takes a city, finds a corporation or other entity in that city doing something relevant to the global economy, and uses that as a springboard for discussing some aspect of globalization. That approach sounds promising, but in most chapters the discussions include too much of what looks like mere laundry lists of corporations, corporate projects, and their resulting benefits and drawbacks. In one chapter, for example, the central issue is education. That's potentially a very interesting topic, and Easterbrook does make some interesting points, but to get to those points, you also have to slog through a list of what Easterbrook considers to be the top 30 or so U.S. colleges and universities, another list of the next best 70 or so, another list of the top dozen or so foreign schools, and then another list of the best state schools. What is the point of all those lists?

Many of the other chapters have the same "laundry list" problem, though to a lesser degree. And laundry lists just aren't that interesting.

Was really looking forward to this one, but there is such a lack of legitimacy to the bold statements made about both the future and the past that I couldn't take it seriously at any point. If a history professor would go through and remove the painfully obvious weak points, I've love to try it again. It's a disappointment because there are plenty of valid and exciting points made that get drowned by the euphoric statements about the near future and false claims about history. Damn!

While the book should be a welcome respite of positivity in the current negative economic climate, it lacked substance enough to make the argument for hope feel persuasive. The author never really refutes others' arguments. His idea of a rebuttal is "Maybe, but I doubt it." He uses this phrase repeatedly, which he seems to think is enough. It's not enough for me to be convinced, though. He also doesn't seem to understand that correlation does not equal causation.

There are plenty of interesting tidbits of facts, but the author never adds them up to make an argument. I'm not even sure what he wants to argue for, except maybe that the future will be better than the present. That is almost certainly true in the very long run, but he seems to think the economy will improve instantaneously and spontaneously. So far, the facts are not on his side.

The is a fact-filled book that reads not like a compendium of information, but like an expose of the realties of current life. Easterbrook provides a practical portrait of the process of Globalization.

I still hear some complaints or rants against globalization. But this book makes clear Globalization is not an option. It is not a trend we can or should stem. It has already happened. The statement of denial that still tries simplistically to pit the US against the world ignores the realities that have been developing for a century.

Laying It Out
The author explains how the phenomenon developed and lays out key components to enable the reader to understand what has happened, what is now going on and what to expect. You will learn a lot of details about our current world and the problem facing us and our technology. Or the problems presented to us by our technology.

This is a thorough and thoroughly readable explication of a complex topic. I appreciated that Easterbrook does not try to over-simplify Globalization. He just easily deals with a multiple dimensions of the phenomenon in an competent and understandable manner. Forbes magazine has described Gregg Easterbrook as "the best writer on complex topics in the United States." You will likely agree after you finish this intriguing volume

Easterbrook's smooth and clear writing style lays out the portrait of the current economic-political mesh of international networks that are deeply established. There is no going back. The brush strokes are wide and fast here, and the book moves quickly, at Mach Speed like the title's characterization of the process of Globalization.

China Changes
Easterbrook starts with an analysis of the huge changes that have occurred in China over the last generation. He looks at the trends of capitalization, opening up of the economy and the heavy industrialization, and the implications that has for the rest of China's world partners in the closely-knit global network.

He looks at the move of factories and plants form other countries to China, and related shifts in the segments of manufacture and distribution across the world. He finds that Caterpillar and John Deere have had recent record years selling heavy equipment to China, Indonesia and India.

World Sectors
Related to the world shift, the author described the closing of car factories in the northern US states like Pennsylvania and Illinois, and the opening up of new factories in Texas and Kentucky. The shifting configuration of manufacture and distribution that we see in the US is an expression of the same trend worldwide.

While some with blinkered vision complain about "jobs being exported" (an odd concept to me), in actuality, China now has a deep vested interest in keeping America's economy strong. This positive aspect of Globalization balances the negative local effects sometimes prominent when economic shifts occur.

Here are some other gems of insight and analysis Easterbrook provides:
- Since WWII US farm yield has grown faster than population growth
- Steelmaking polluted the Great Lakes, leading to a ban on the commercial fishing industry that had thrived in the Lakes
- Protectionist legislation accelerated the decline it was meant to stop
- Unions were one reason American industrial production lost ground
- China buys 40% of GE's locomotives
- In 2008, Virginia's government refused permission for a coal gasification plant that would have reduced greenhouse gases by 90% over conventional electricity production
- 1/3 of electricity is los tin transmission
- Incandescent light bulbs are only 5% efficient! They waste 95% of the power they draw
- Corn-based ethanol is a net energy loser
- Today's ethanol has about 2/3 the energy value of petroleum fuel
- The Federal Government is primarily an impediment to alternative energy research
- India's service sector accounts for 53% of the country's GDP; China 41%; US 78%; Denmark 72%; Germany 70%; Brazil/Portugal 66%; Czech Republic 60%
- Health care costs have risen ahead of wages by about 2% per year for a decades. Co-pay has risen 78% since 2001
- The US has the smartest and best-educated armed forces in the world
- Practical economics is missing from American schools; similarly for cultural studies, at a time when the whole world is living in our communities!

What I like and enjoy about a book like this, is that it brings a lot of facts together, to more clearly put into focus a realistic picture of what the world might look like in the near future.

It's not meant as a definitive, "cast in stone" concept, but allows the reader to delve more deeply into the disparate facts that they might see in front of their eyes every single day, yet in very small, freeze frame snippets.

These include better understanding the rapid growth of China, the improvements in transportation systems, and the more widespread availability of healthcare and education throughout the globe.

This book should be enlightening and inspiring to most people.

I think that Gregg Easterbrook makes a single forceful point in his book, Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed: worldwide development is booming and the change will be messy, loud and disruptive. I kept thinking as I read this book that Tom Friedman presented much of this in his recent books. In a single global market where goods and services will be both cheaper and more widely available, entrenched players need to be nimble. Sonic Boom is an optimistic and opinionated view of the world economy that readers may find agreeable or disagreeable with one's own view. Easterbrook presents no clear data to support his views, but I find his writing engaging enough to hear his views whether backed by facts or not.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

Remember John Belushi's rant in Animal House: "Over? Did you say 'over?' Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"? You get that feeling a lot reading this book. The energy is there, and possibly some good ideas as well. But it's a barage of loosely-related facts, few of which are both little-known and true. You keep expecting the author to go somewhere with the facts, but he leaves you to digest them in your own way. One of his favorite phrases for the weakest linkages is, "it could be a coincidence, but I doubt it." This is, I guess, the main message in the book. A lot of stuff is happening, some of it surprising, and it's all part of one gigantic trend called "globalization," and it's speeding up. This point is never articulated, but if you won't assume it, the book makes no sense at all.

If you will be surprised to learn that none of the ten largest cities in the world, and only three of the top 40, are in the developed world; or that Haier sells more refrigerators than Whirlpool or any other manufacturer; or that you can use Google to find facts about cities; or that the bulk of economic growth today is driven by innovation; you might benefit from the lists of facts in this book. You'll pick up some dubious ones as well. For most people, the value will be having them strung together in machine-gun prose that smashes through preconceptions. Instead of trying to fit each one into an established worldview, the book urges you to go with the flow. Forget about past patterns, just move fast in the direction the world seems to be going, "for he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled" (you'll enjoy the book more if you listen to Bob Dylan while reading).

The breadth of topics covered in detail is impressive, if puzzling. When Karl Marx comes up, the author evaluates his argument in ten point-by-points. When discussing colleges, it's not enough to say the US has some top colleges, we have to read a list of 29 of them. Then 70 second-tier ones. Then 12 top-tier non-US colleges. Then non-US branches of US top-tier colleges. Unless the author is being paid by the word, it's hard to know why he does things like this. There's a lot of minutiae about sports, especially college sports, down to legal agreements, costumes and dance moves of what he labels "cheerbabes," and funding.

Although it's not clear the world needs such a book, it is extremely well-done. If you feel that you're behind at halftime of the big Globalization game, by all means read this book, then go out and win one for the Gipper. But it's no substitute for a rulebook or manuals of strategy and tactics.

Easterbrook, despite his well-deserved reputation, seems to be caught in a time-warp and overtly bullish stance on globalization that distracts him from developing a well-defined premise or hypothesis in this book. A reader even remotely familiar with the popular press on globalization with book such as In Defense of Globalization: With a New Afterword will find this book to be quite superficial and is unlikely to gain any new insights.

The premise of the book is actually quite intriguing - "prospects of a world more prosperous, more free and less militaristic and yet ever more nervous...". The cheer-leading style of narration (always portrays a sense of awe/wonder, deserving or not) and a "rosy glasses" way of looking distracts the author from the premise's promise. In addition to the obligatory references to Google founder wearing khakis to work, a reader is likely to pick up some interesting anecdotes and comparisons that can sustain one's interest for a chapter or two. Despite the effort to present a balanced view of globalization from all corners, the author's not framing one chapter from a city in India - a linchpin in globalization, seems like a glaring omission (though he provides some comparisons sporadically).

In the end, the reader may be more confused than educated - no new insights, a overly rosy approach of narration and contextualizing, and a directionless editing that fails to develop a coherent theme despite the potential of the author's premise. Not a must-read.