8 ms·

Time to Reboot America

71 points by raheemm 18y ago

tokenadult 18y ago
"China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs." Full openness to information is indeed a great advantage. A country where lots of people ponder what everyday people and governments in other countries are doing better has many sources of ideas for local improvement.
- delackner 18y ago
  "A country where lots of people ponder what everyday people and governments in other countries are doing better has many sources of ideas for local improvement" In a country where most people have never even set foot in a modern european or asian city, the trouble is that most people don't have any idea how far behind US infrastructure has gotten.
  - natrius 18y ago
    Most Europeans have never set foot in a modern American or Asian city. Most Asians have never set foot in a modern American or European city. Your point still holds, but too many people use that factoid as some sort of slight against Americans when it's really not.
  - tokenadult 18y ago
    Remembering how rare, and how emblematic of family wealth, foreign travel was when I was growing up, I'm amazed these days at how many Americans I know who have been to both Asia and Europe. The people I know would claim to be only "middle class," not at all rich, but they are well traveled. The United States has been issuing passports by the millions for quite some time. http://travel.state.gov/passport/services/stats/stats_890.html http://travel.state.gov/passport/services/stats/stats_890.ht... Note that unlike some other countries, there is essentially no domestic use for a United States passport. United States citizens get passports if they are traveling overseas, and until recently travel to Canada and Mexico without passports was quite routine. So there are evidently plenty of Americans who have had a chance to go look around and learn from other countries. I would be quite happy to hear of more: in many respects, I think four years spent doing almost ANYTHING overseas and living in the local economy of a country with another language is more educational than four years spent pursuing a college degree, but meanwhile plenty of Americans, for business or for pleasure, do plenty of foreign travel.
sabat 18y ago
He's right that we need to reboot -- but the irony is that it's his generation (and his mentality itself) that is forcing this. The I-got-mine, greed-is-always-good, me-first, I'm-entitled generation of baby boomers (circa 1940-1958) is directly responsible for this mess. And, as usual, it's up to us Xers to clean up. Friedman is emblematic of his generation. He likes to make blanket statements like "the world is flat!", leaving out precious details (like the fact that cultural differences mean that a guy in Mumbai cannot so easily start the next Amazon), and expects parental-like approval from all of us. Look what I did! Look at me! Same attitude -- self-satisfied under-achievement -- created this gigantic CF we're calling an economy. Reboot? Yes. That probably means forcing all these codgers into retirement homes where they can bitch and moan about how we Xers aren't doing well enough recovering from their disaster.
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  > cultural differences mean that a guy in Mumbai cannot so easily start the next Amazon Why do you think so?
- Hoff 18y ago
  Blame is wasted effort. Agism (either way) can be legally hazardous. Bailing out a failed business model is wasted investment. Given your perception of the older folks, I'd suggest pursuing a business model based on catering to and profiting from those entitled boomers you appear to despise. But trust me on this one: some of those older folks are looking to profit from the perceptions of and the views of the younger folks, too. Whether US-based or international, looking forward at what might change - what an upgrade from Acela to service competitive with TGV might mean, for instance - would be my preference. I'm looking at where I can improve, and how I can best deal with and can profit from the changes that are inevitably coming. At what and where the target is going to be. At what products and services I can milk or can sell off or can retire, too. Changes are underway in the world economy. And I'd prefer to profit from both the "Xers" and from the "codgers" if I can manage it, as you'd termed these two large pools of potential consumers. Blame? There's enough of that to go around. Profit? Positioning for that in the current chaos is far more interesting.
puzzle-out 18y ago
I think Americans put too much emphasis on the link between freedom of speech and information and creativity/innovation. Sometimes the most explosive innovations are made during the transition from censorship to an open public sphere - such as the parliamentary innovations of the English civil wars. Americans, and people in the West in general, need to be defamiliarised with the concept of freedom of speech and information, so that when they recognise how valuable it is, they will make better use of it.
- tempest67 18y ago
  Great point about the explosiveness of transition periods -- the Renaissance comes to mind as well, powered both by new intellectual openness and the thuggish Medicis. But calling for "defamiliarization" with free speech sounds kind of horrible -- like putting us in jail for a while so we appreciate our freedom of movement. But isn't the process of technological upheaval a continual defamiliarization of sorts, with people constantly changing modes and methods of communication with every new development? We don't need to be subjected to tyranny to be continually thrown off balance and required to innovate...
  - puzzle-out 18y ago
    Sorry, I was using 'defamiliarisation' in the context of the Russian critical readings of literature - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization - I can see how it takes on sinister overtones outside of this, and I have no idea how it can be done in practice, other than looking at examples of tyranny elsewhere, contemporaneously or historically, of which there are many. There are certainly parallels between today's technological upheaval and say the English civil wars, when the printing press was being celebrated by people like Milton in similar terms - "as good as almost kill a man as kill a good book". I guess the point I'm getting at it is often the struggle that leads to the creativity - and thus why the Renaissance as you say is so interesting.
    - tempest67 18y ago
      Oh, like Brecht -- Verfremdung! I should have gotten that -- sorry. I love the Milton quote (and I wonder what it means in the age of technical hyper-reproducibility online...). I also wonder what could accomplish defamiliarization nowadays, when satire and Dadaism have become commodities and every crap sitcom breaks the fourth wall. But perhaps utter economic collapse will do the trick?
tptacek 18y ago
Thomas Friedman was able to get steady wi-fi on a bullet train running through the wealthiest outpost of a country of 1.3 billion people, 3/4 of which are rural poor living at or near the $1/day poverty level. Therefore, America needs a reboot.
- iamwil 18y ago
  You skipped a step there. It seems you're mixing effects with causes. When you do that, of course it sounds ridiculous.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    The evidence Friedman marshalls for the "effect" he's writing about is inadequate.
    - timr 18y ago
      It's an editorial, not a dissertation. Not every piece of persuasive writing requires footnotes.
- hassy 18y ago
  well said. from TFA: > All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? he seems to have forgotten about hundreds of millions of Chinese living in poverty. how disgusting.
  - potatolicious 18y ago
    As opposed to the tens of millions of Americans living in poverty? Yeah, the Chinese poor have it far worse than the poor in America - but at least their middle class is growing, not shrinking. Wealth is being generated for the everyman, and things are rapidly getting better for the average Joe. Compared to the shrinking middle class in America as wealth flows upwards. Don't get me wrong - I'm far from pro-Chinese, I'm just saying, let's not let the fact that there are starving people there prevent us from seeing our own faults.
kingkongrevenge 18y ago
How is this guy famous? Everything he has ever written sounds like something anybody's uncle might toss out at the dinner table. The guy is not original and has nothing insightful to say. Frequently, he sounds like an idiot. I'm just completely mystified at his acclaim.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  There are a lot of "somebody's uncle"s out there, and they all buy Friedman's books to give to their nephews.
patrickg-zill 18y ago
Buy gold and/or silver. The US Dollar is in the early stages of collapse; it will be severely devalued, perhaps down to being worth 50 or 60 Yen or more. This is not being political, it is not Bush's or Obama's fault, but the result of an entire generation or more of mistakes, which started back in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve and accelerated in 1933 under FDR and then again in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  to be fair Nixon's hand was kinda forced. the vietnam war combined with the OPEC problems practically bankrupted us.
- david927 18y ago
  > Buy gold and/or silver And if you want to keep it, store it in Switzerland.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  Don't buy gold and silver. I don't know where this "buy gold" superstitious BS came from. I think it's out of some mistaken idea that gold has intrinsic value where paper money does not. This is false. The value of gold is not intrinsic - it is assigned by people, just like fiat currency (which is also why gold-backed currency, or the lack thereof, is not our problem). In fact, gold's value also fluctuates with the economy, just like everything else - when the economy tanks, gold prices rise, etc etc. It's almost expected for people to run screaming back to gold every time the economy hiccups, and this has made it an unsafe commodity to hold. Not to mention when you buy gold - you are not buying any actual, physical gold, you are buying gold production, which will never ever reach your hands. If you really want to hoard precious metals, at least go out and physically have it. Your gold is just as imaginary as fiat money until you have it in your hands.
  - patrickg-zill 18y ago
    Gold can be argued to have intrinsic value, when it has shown to retain some amount of value across over 5000 years of human history; and it would be almost impossible to have a working electronics industry without some amount of gold, or some other metal with nearly-equivalent properties (right now the industry is working on ways to minimize gold but it is still needed). It is not superstition. I don't know where you got the idea that I was recommending a non-physical holding of gold or silver, but it is a good point to address: all COMEX contracts state that in the event of default (non-delivery) they can just give you USD, which of course is exactly what you don't want.
Prrometheus 18y ago
You know what, Friedman? It's a lot harder to manage a continent-spanning country of 300 million people than a tiny, rich city-state. That's where the wisdom of decentralization comes in, but we completely abandoned that in the 1930s. Can you imagine the bureaucracy to manage a country of 300 million people as well as Hong Kong? Neither can I. It probably doesn't exist. The One's election to office and his promise to shovel out $1 trillion in green pork doesn't change a whole lot. Friedman says: >"Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely." There is not a single example from American history to give me hope of this.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  As hard to manage as a country of 1.3 billion people? Or an industry leading nation of 130 million people? Hong Kong is not the only example of a hyper-advanced Asian city. Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, Beijing... you name it, and we're not even approaching India and further west. The success of China, Japan, South Korea, and the myriad of other east Asian powers is not an isolated case of blind luck. Incredible dedication has been shown here to grow a nation's infrastructure, and the US would be wise to take heed and follow suit if they want to maintain their lead. Take a look at the bureaucracy needed to manage a country of 1.3 billion people, including a wealth gap far wider than that of the US, and yet continually building out massive infrastructure projects both urban and rural. This is something America is not doing, and I'd hate to see a repressive dictatorship out-do the West in anything.
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    Have you heard about the economist Mancur Olson and his theory of institutional sclerosis? His thesis is that bureaucracy tends to build on itself, becoming less rational and more wasteful as a society ages. Occasionally, there is a catastrophic event that overturns the established order, wiping out the cruft and allowing society to start fresh. However, over time the waste grows again. He uses this theory to explain why the American South did so well after reconstruction and after the Civil Rights movement. He would likely also argue that this explains why Japan and China have done so well, since both underwent massive disruptions in the last century. Our own society, however, has been very stable for many centuries and has had plenty of time to accumulate bureaucratic lard.
gruseom 18y ago
Yay, another reason to roll out the Tom Friedman smackdown to end all Tom Friedman smackdowns (as well as possibly the best book review of the last 10 years): http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html
gahahaha 18y ago
Sorry to repeat what everybody else is saying, but Thomas Friedman is a total loser. Why he is famous is beyond me. 3/5 cheap rhetoric, 1/5 bragging about some "exotic" place he has been, 1/5 self evident observation equals one Thomas Friedman column. Dear NYT. Fire this man already! Oh, wait. NYT is the newspaper who thinks it is a good idea to employ Ben Stein too. They will not see the incompetence of Friedman if they are blind to the insanity of Ben Stein (search google for Ben Stein Watch)....
- delackner 18y ago
  "1/5 bragging about some "exotic" place he has been" I'm curious, what G7 nation's major city have you been to that had trains as terrible as New York?
  - Tichy 18y ago
    It is well known outside of America that the American trains are bad. I suppose Americans just go by car or airplane, so it doesn't matter much. I really disliked the article, too. So Hongkong airport is impressive. Hm, maybe some dictatorship has shelled out serious money to make an impression? Somehow it reminds me of the dot com boom - the companies who spent the most were to first to go bankrupt...
    - someremains 18y ago
      Be careful, it wasn't the current Chinese regime that executed the rash of infrastructure improvement projects in Hong Kong in the 90's. In fact, the vast majority of the projects were initiated and executed by large British engineering and architectural firms to milk as much money out of building projects prior to the turn over to Chinese rule in 1999.
      - Tichy 18y ago
        I didn't even want to make any claims about China. Maybe the super airport makes business sense. Just saying that a pretty appearance doesn't prove that a great economy is behind it.
illume 18y ago
The author needs needs to get some exercise... like a lot of Americans.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
bbgm 18y ago
I think Friedman makes a fair point. I've lived in three very different countries for some lengths of time, and traveled to many others over the years, so the following is a little more than anecdotal. When I first came to the US several years ago, my first reaction was that in many ways (and remember this was over a decade ago) the US was a little backwards, culturally, socially and most definitely when it came to infrastructure and facilities. Is it still the technological leader of the world? Yes, but that's less due to its own efforts and more due to sheer inertia from the heyday of US technology and an inability of the rest of the world to take advantage of the sense of ennui that seems to be pervasive. There are many countries, out there, young democracies (or not), that are hungry, eager. When they figure it out, watch out. You can't assume that the US will stay ahead forever. America does need a reboot. Our future depends on it.
known 18y ago
No Risk No Return. I think post 9/11 average American has stopped taking risks. Instead he invested (time & money) in buying houses.

71 points by raheemm 18y ago

"China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs." Full openness to information is indeed a great advantage. A country where lots of people ponder what everyday people and governments in other countries are doing better has many sources of ideas for local improvement.

delackner 18y ago
"A country where lots of people ponder what everyday people and governments in other countries are doing better has many sources of ideas for local improvement" In a country where most people have never even set foot in a modern european or asian city, the trouble is that most people don't have any idea how far behind US infrastructure has gotten.
- natrius 18y ago
  Most Europeans have never set foot in a modern American or Asian city. Most Asians have never set foot in a modern American or European city. Your point still holds, but too many people use that factoid as some sort of slight against Americans when it's really not.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  Remembering how rare, and how emblematic of family wealth, foreign travel was when I was growing up, I'm amazed these days at how many Americans I know who have been to both Asia and Europe. The people I know would claim to be only "middle class," not at all rich, but they are well traveled. The United States has been issuing passports by the millions for quite some time. http://travel.state.gov/passport/services/stats/stats_890.html http://travel.state.gov/passport/services/stats/stats_890.ht... Note that unlike some other countries, there is essentially no domestic use for a United States passport. United States citizens get passports if they are traveling overseas, and until recently travel to Canada and Mexico without passports was quite routine. So there are evidently plenty of Americans who have had a chance to go look around and learn from other countries. I would be quite happy to hear of more: in many respects, I think four years spent doing almost ANYTHING overseas and living in the local economy of a country with another language is more educational than four years spent pursuing a college degree, but meanwhile plenty of Americans, for business or for pleasure, do plenty of foreign travel.

sabat 18y ago

He's right that we need to reboot -- but the irony is that it's his generation (and his mentality itself) that is forcing this. The I-got-mine, greed-is-always-good, me-first, I'm-entitled generation of baby boomers (circa 1940-1958) is directly responsible for this mess. And, as usual, it's up to us Xers to clean up. Friedman is emblematic of his generation. He likes to make blanket statements like "the world is flat!", leaving out precious details (like the fact that cultural differences mean that a guy in Mumbai cannot so easily start the next Amazon), and expects parental-like approval from all of us. Look what I did! Look at me! Same attitude -- self-satisfied under-achievement -- created this gigantic CF we're calling an economy. Reboot? Yes. That probably means forcing all these codgers into retirement homes where they can bitch and moan about how we Xers aren't doing well enough recovering from their disaster.

kirubakaran 18y ago
> cultural differences mean that a guy in Mumbai cannot so easily start the next Amazon Why do you think so?
Hoff 18y ago
Blame is wasted effort. Agism (either way) can be legally hazardous. Bailing out a failed business model is wasted investment. Given your perception of the older folks, I'd suggest pursuing a business model based on catering to and profiting from those entitled boomers you appear to despise. But trust me on this one: some of those older folks are looking to profit from the perceptions of and the views of the younger folks, too. Whether US-based or international, looking forward at what might change - what an upgrade from Acela to service competitive with TGV might mean, for instance - would be my preference. I'm looking at where I can improve, and how I can best deal with and can profit from the changes that are inevitably coming. At what and where the target is going to be. At what products and services I can milk or can sell off or can retire, too. Changes are underway in the world economy. And I'd prefer to profit from both the "Xers" and from the "codgers" if I can manage it, as you'd termed these two large pools of potential consumers. Blame? There's enough of that to go around. Profit? Positioning for that in the current chaos is far more interesting.

puzzle-out 18y ago

I think Americans put too much emphasis on the link between freedom of speech and information and creativity/innovation. Sometimes the most explosive innovations are made during the transition from censorship to an open public sphere - such as the parliamentary innovations of the English civil wars. Americans, and people in the West in general, need to be defamiliarised with the concept of freedom of speech and information, so that when they recognise how valuable it is, they will make better use of it.

tempest67 18y ago
Great point about the explosiveness of transition periods -- the Renaissance comes to mind as well, powered both by new intellectual openness and the thuggish Medicis. But calling for "defamiliarization" with free speech sounds kind of horrible -- like putting us in jail for a while so we appreciate our freedom of movement. But isn't the process of technological upheaval a continual defamiliarization of sorts, with people constantly changing modes and methods of communication with every new development? We don't need to be subjected to tyranny to be continually thrown off balance and required to innovate...
- puzzle-out 18y ago
  Sorry, I was using 'defamiliarisation' in the context of the Russian critical readings of literature - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization - I can see how it takes on sinister overtones outside of this, and I have no idea how it can be done in practice, other than looking at examples of tyranny elsewhere, contemporaneously or historically, of which there are many. There are certainly parallels between today's technological upheaval and say the English civil wars, when the printing press was being celebrated by people like Milton in similar terms - "as good as almost kill a man as kill a good book". I guess the point I'm getting at it is often the struggle that leads to the creativity - and thus why the Renaissance as you say is so interesting.
  - tempest67 18y ago
    Oh, like Brecht -- Verfremdung! I should have gotten that -- sorry. I love the Milton quote (and I wonder what it means in the age of technical hyper-reproducibility online...). I also wonder what could accomplish defamiliarization nowadays, when satire and Dadaism have become commodities and every crap sitcom breaks the fourth wall. But perhaps utter economic collapse will do the trick?

tptacek 18y ago

Thomas Friedman was able to get steady wi-fi on a bullet train running through the wealthiest outpost of a country of 1.3 billion people, 3/4 of which are rural poor living at or near the $1/day poverty level. Therefore, America needs a reboot.

iamwil 18y ago
You skipped a step there. It seems you're mixing effects with causes. When you do that, of course it sounds ridiculous.
- tptacek 18y ago
  The evidence Friedman marshalls for the "effect" he's writing about is inadequate.
  - timr 18y ago
    It's an editorial, not a dissertation. Not every piece of persuasive writing requires footnotes.
hassy 18y ago
well said. from TFA: > All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? he seems to have forgotten about hundreds of millions of Chinese living in poverty. how disgusting.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  As opposed to the tens of millions of Americans living in poverty? Yeah, the Chinese poor have it far worse than the poor in America - but at least their middle class is growing, not shrinking. Wealth is being generated for the everyman, and things are rapidly getting better for the average Joe. Compared to the shrinking middle class in America as wealth flows upwards. Don't get me wrong - I'm far from pro-Chinese, I'm just saying, let's not let the fact that there are starving people there prevent us from seeing our own faults.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago

How is this guy famous? Everything he has ever written sounds like something anybody's uncle might toss out at the dinner table. The guy is not original and has nothing insightful to say. Frequently, he sounds like an idiot. I'm just completely mystified at his acclaim.

byrneseyeview 18y ago
There are a lot of "somebody's uncle"s out there, and they all buy Friedman's books to give to their nephews.

patrickg-zill 18y ago

Buy gold and/or silver. The US Dollar is in the early stages of collapse; it will be severely devalued, perhaps down to being worth 50 or 60 Yen or more. This is not being political, it is not Bush's or Obama's fault, but the result of an entire generation or more of mistakes, which started back in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve and accelerated in 1933 under FDR and then again in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.

nazgulnarsil 18y ago
to be fair Nixon's hand was kinda forced. the vietnam war combined with the OPEC problems practically bankrupted us.
david927 18y ago
> Buy gold and/or silver And if you want to keep it, store it in Switzerland.
potatolicious 18y ago
Don't buy gold and silver. I don't know where this "buy gold" superstitious BS came from. I think it's out of some mistaken idea that gold has intrinsic value where paper money does not. This is false. The value of gold is not intrinsic - it is assigned by people, just like fiat currency (which is also why gold-backed currency, or the lack thereof, is not our problem). In fact, gold's value also fluctuates with the economy, just like everything else - when the economy tanks, gold prices rise, etc etc. It's almost expected for people to run screaming back to gold every time the economy hiccups, and this has made it an unsafe commodity to hold. Not to mention when you buy gold - you are not buying any actual, physical gold, you are buying gold production, which will never ever reach your hands. If you really want to hoard precious metals, at least go out and physically have it. Your gold is just as imaginary as fiat money until you have it in your hands.
- patrickg-zill 18y ago
  Gold can be argued to have intrinsic value, when it has shown to retain some amount of value across over 5000 years of human history; and it would be almost impossible to have a working electronics industry without some amount of gold, or some other metal with nearly-equivalent properties (right now the industry is working on ways to minimize gold but it is still needed). It is not superstition. I don't know where you got the idea that I was recommending a non-physical holding of gold or silver, but it is a good point to address: all COMEX contracts state that in the event of default (non-delivery) they can just give you USD, which of course is exactly what you don't want.

Prrometheus 18y ago

You know what, Friedman? It's a lot harder to manage a continent-spanning country of 300 million people than a tiny, rich city-state. That's where the wisdom of decentralization comes in, but we completely abandoned that in the 1930s. Can you imagine the bureaucracy to manage a country of 300 million people as well as Hong Kong? Neither can I. It probably doesn't exist. The One's election to office and his promise to shovel out $1 trillion in green pork doesn't change a whole lot. Friedman says: >"Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely." There is not a single example from American history to give me hope of this.

potatolicious 18y ago
As hard to manage as a country of 1.3 billion people? Or an industry leading nation of 130 million people? Hong Kong is not the only example of a hyper-advanced Asian city. Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo, Beijing... you name it, and we're not even approaching India and further west. The success of China, Japan, South Korea, and the myriad of other east Asian powers is not an isolated case of blind luck. Incredible dedication has been shown here to grow a nation's infrastructure, and the US would be wise to take heed and follow suit if they want to maintain their lead. Take a look at the bureaucracy needed to manage a country of 1.3 billion people, including a wealth gap far wider than that of the US, and yet continually building out massive infrastructure projects both urban and rural. This is something America is not doing, and I'd hate to see a repressive dictatorship out-do the West in anything.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  Have you heard about the economist Mancur Olson and his theory of institutional sclerosis? His thesis is that bureaucracy tends to build on itself, becoming less rational and more wasteful as a society ages. Occasionally, there is a catastrophic event that overturns the established order, wiping out the cruft and allowing society to start fresh. However, over time the waste grows again. He uses this theory to explain why the American South did so well after reconstruction and after the Civil Rights movement. He would likely also argue that this explains why Japan and China have done so well, since both underwent massive disruptions in the last century. Our own society, however, has been very stable for many centuries and has had plenty of time to accumulate bureaucratic lard.

gruseom 18y ago

Yay, another reason to roll out the Tom Friedman smackdown to end all Tom Friedman smackdowns (as well as possibly the best book review of the last 10 years): http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html

gahahaha 18y ago

Sorry to repeat what everybody else is saying, but Thomas Friedman is a total loser. Why he is famous is beyond me. 3/5 cheap rhetoric, 1/5 bragging about some "exotic" place he has been, 1/5 self evident observation equals one Thomas Friedman column. Dear NYT. Fire this man already! Oh, wait. NYT is the newspaper who thinks it is a good idea to employ Ben Stein too. They will not see the incompetence of Friedman if they are blind to the insanity of Ben Stein (search google for Ben Stein Watch)....

delackner 18y ago
"1/5 bragging about some "exotic" place he has been" I'm curious, what G7 nation's major city have you been to that had trains as terrible as New York?
- Tichy 18y ago
  It is well known outside of America that the American trains are bad. I suppose Americans just go by car or airplane, so it doesn't matter much. I really disliked the article, too. So Hongkong airport is impressive. Hm, maybe some dictatorship has shelled out serious money to make an impression? Somehow it reminds me of the dot com boom - the companies who spent the most were to first to go bankrupt...
  - someremains 18y ago
    Be careful, it wasn't the current Chinese regime that executed the rash of infrastructure improvement projects in Hong Kong in the 90's. In fact, the vast majority of the projects were initiated and executed by large British engineering and architectural firms to milk as much money out of building projects prior to the turn over to Chinese rule in 1999.
    - Tichy 18y ago
      I didn't even want to make any claims about China. Maybe the super airport makes business sense. Just saying that a pretty appearance doesn't prove that a great economy is behind it.

illume 18y ago

The author needs needs to get some exercise... like a lot of Americans.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

bbgm 18y ago

I think Friedman makes a fair point. I've lived in three very different countries for some lengths of time, and traveled to many others over the years, so the following is a little more than anecdotal. When I first came to the US several years ago, my first reaction was that in many ways (and remember this was over a decade ago) the US was a little backwards, culturally, socially and most definitely when it came to infrastructure and facilities. Is it still the technological leader of the world? Yes, but that's less due to its own efforts and more due to sheer inertia from the heyday of US technology and an inability of the rest of the world to take advantage of the sense of ennui that seems to be pervasive. There are many countries, out there, young democracies (or not), that are hungry, eager. When they figure it out, watch out. You can't assume that the US will stay ahead forever. America does need a reboot. Our future depends on it.

known 18y ago

No Risk No Return. I think post 9/11 average American has stopped taking risks. Instead he invested (time & money) in buying houses.