I ended up reading this book by mistake. I had meant to read "The World is Flat". But then not being able to lay my hands on a copy of the latter, I read "The Lexus and the Olive Tree". It did not disappoint me. Unlike some of the other works on globalization by academics such as Jagdish Bhagwati, Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs which I recently finished reading, this book is not by an academic. Tom Friedman has been a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and this book is an encapsulation of his experiences across a multitude of countries such as China, France, Italy, Taiwan, Liberia and India. What he focuses on in the book is the way globalization has shaped each of our lives over the past two decades or so and drills right into our heads that the only constant in today's fast-paced lives is change. He makes a big deal about the behemoths which failed to change such as East Germany and the Soviet Union, among countries and Pan Am, as an example from the corporate world to show that resisting change or not responding quickly to it puts you in the threat of being irrelevant at best and extinct at worst.
A key emphasis of the book is how the end of the Cold War meant a lack of ideological alternatives to the free market capitalism embodied by economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. For the most part, this has removed any alternatives from the domain of leaders in the developing countries in the Second World countries such as Poland and Hungary and also the Third World economies such as India and Egypt. The result has been that every leader in the world who seeks to improve the lot of their people has been forced to choose between "free market vanilla and North Korea" as the author puts it. While this has helped leaders abandon their paradigms which didn't work anyway, it has also bred a sense of resentment in people who have been unable to change as fast as the capitalist system would want them to. So for the Brazilian or Mexican or Chinese worker who has just been thrown out of his job because the factory in which he worked for the last 25 years of his life just closed, Friedman says that it is not surprising that he is out on the streets protesting against the big invisible hand of the markets. However two comments which Friedman makes are absolutely on the money here: First he says that as long as the number of people opposing globalization are fewer than the number of people who are in its favor, the process of globalization will move on because of this clamor for a better lifestyle from the grass roots, a process Friedman labels as "globalution." Second, it is also important to have safety nets not maybe like those we see in Western Europe but more on the lines of what we see in the United States for those people who are hurt by this juggernaut of globalization. This is really what the crux of the book is all about: how there are two viewpoints at work together in virtually every nation of the world, including developed ones; one, which tries to reassure people that by closing their walls to others and resisting change, they will all be better off while the other viewpoint knows for certain that it is an impossible thing to achieve and the best public policy initiatives are those which ensure that the system works for the common good and simultaneously create safety nets for softening its impact on those who are hurt.
All together an absolutely fabulous work on globalization suitable for any individual willing to look at the issue of globalization from a multiplicity of perspectives. Must read for those in the public policy and higher education domain.
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Top reviews from other countries
- DORA STReviewed in Germany on February 13, 2024
THOMAS FREIDMAN
Thank you 🙏THOMAS FREIDMANDORA ST
Reviewed in Germany on February 13, 2024
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- David LeongReviewed in Singapore on April 1, 2021
Landmark book on globalization
Globalization has been happening for many years now & is something that impacts our day-to-day life. Friedman has written a landmark primer on this and every global citizen ought to read this.Landmark book on globalizationDavid Leong
Reviewed in Singapore on April 1, 2021
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- Verified CustomerReviewed in Canada on February 16, 2016
Want to understand the World around you? Start here.
- west_35thReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 21, 2001
american view of the world
