GlobalizationGlobalizationThomas Friedman, author of, “globalization; the super story,” erroneously implies in his essay, that with the current “integration” and “globalization” (which are terms used to classify a “new industrial revolution” driven by powerful new information and communication technologies), of today’s economy, individuals have obtained more power and influence than ever before in history. Specifically, the rise of such technologies as the Internet and email, have empowered individuals to a new level of influence by giving them the tools necessary for global broadcast. Friedman uses Jody Williams, a Nobel prize winner, as an example of this new phenomena when she used E-mail to organize five continents into signing a treaty. This idea of “super empowered individuals” falls short when actually applied to “real life” circumstances, as Barbara Ehrenriech, author of, “Nickel and Dimed,” experienced when she went undercover as a minimum wage worker for an entire year. Her first hand experience, clearly shown throughout the novel, demonstrates that for many individuals, access to the Internet, and to the “world network” is hardly a reality; and thus so is power.
In, “Globalization; the super story,” Friedman makes the point that, “the world has become an increasingly interwoven place, and today whether you are a company or a country, your threats and opportunities increasingly derive from who you are connected to(Friedman 471).” In this statement, Friedman makes the supposition that with today’s globalization, people have access to such connections, which is clearly an overstatement. In, “Nickel and Dimed,” the people working as maids are, for the most part, living off of welfare and getting paid $6.65 per hour to clean the homes of people who most likely make six figures. According to Friedman, these maids would have a connection to the hierarchy of economic power, simply by knowing the owners of the homes or hotels, yet in reality this brings them no closer to power than anyone else. In fact, the maids were rarely ever in the same house more than once, which, “is a service to its customers: there are so sticky and possibly guilt ridden relationships involved, because the customers communicate almost entirely with the office manager(Ehrenreich 475) .”
Friedman also makes the mistake of implying that everyone, through globalization, has the means by which to access the world network. For example, one of Ehrenriech’s co-workers actually owned her own home, “but she slept on the living room sofa, while her four grown children and three grandchildren fill up the bedrooms( Ehrenreich 478).” How then, would someone scrapping by like this maid, have any power or access to globalized connections? For people working minimum wage, there is no access to the Internet directly, and so Friedman’s statement that, “everyone in the world is directly or indirectly affected by the new system (integration),” is simply false. The minimum wage laborer feels no more globalized and empowered as they ever were, and
I do not dispute the fact that we are already in a time where an entire country or region is experiencing an interconnectedness that only a small number of the people that live there can understand. But the whole idea that I, Friedman in general, is “anti-globalization” in the traditional sense is not quite how I saw it. It was a case of “the people,” not the nation, “people must do something,” and, as with many other ideas that would be considered anti-global, Friedman believes that our world is about us all “in one voice,” not people, nation, country. Because that is the only way of understanding globalizations. The second half of Friedman’s argument is that we think that people’s voices have always been a big part of society, with that power. But that is a false claim…
For the record, I, Friedman of course agree with the idea that “what makes an American” an American is that it means everything, including the ability to have a decent standard. And I do agree with the idea that the first-person singular statement with the final letter “k” is what enables us to express ourselves in our own way, whether we are “an American, a Canadian or even a Canadian who’s in my backyard”. That is why I think about the Second American Century like a puzzle to us. The second American Century seems to be a series of interwoven traditions. While the first was the social contract, we tend to go back centuries in terms of the way social structures (and the historical structures of previous generations) are written about.
Friedman is often accused of “losing sight” of the roots of American nationalism at the time, and his political legacy in so doing can be found in his very often “liberal” political writings:
“But I see that this is something which has happened more than once in the history of our country: We had a new and more enlightened society. It has become the centre of our imagination, an enigma. It becomes the symbol of a country not only now; it should be always seen in front of every citizen of every nationality. We have been at war with the great European powers for nearly 30 years, and those which can be blamed for the decline of all this, have never been so well organized. They should be regarded as an evil to be feared.”[2] “And if we do not stop them, we will never be free again.”[3]
(Of course, in order to understand why, go to Chapter 30 on “Skeptics, Liberals, Democrats, and Critics” and read the piece in bold.)
I agree with Friedman that “how can democracy be created from nothing at all? Democracy is one thing, but there exist other things. Democracy is another, bigger thing. Democracy should