June 13, 1999 Once in a while I'll read a book that fits like a glove. Let me first admit that I'm a sucker for those books that purport to give some big picture view of the world, even if I don't agree with the paradigm presented. (OK OK, I've come to hate that word too, but I can't think of a better one). Thomas Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. I've been reading his column religiously for the past two years, and see him occasionally on the PBS Washington Week in Review program. He is the only NYT Op-Ed writer that I agree with most of the time. So when he wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree I had to pick it up.

In Friedman's NYT columns he has been as likely to talk about the Internet as international relations, the Secretary of Commerce as the Secretary of State. This is because he sees a new world emerging from the crumbling Berlin Wall. From a world organized around capitalism versus communism, comes a world organized around global commerce-- with no alternative. It is a world that requires the United States to function as the prime mover (the only superpower); a world that is technology driven and information rich. It is a world that demands political stability and will punish bad lenders and bad borrowers. Welcome to the post-Cold War World.

Almost everybody has been touched by globalization, even if they don't notice it. In my case, I worked for a big American corporation (DuPont) that was hit severely with downsizing (they called it right sizing) during the 1990 recession. They spun us off to concentrate on their "core competancies" in 1996. In the mean time I lost plenty of friends to downsizing. We knew when Sterling acquired us that consolidation would still have to occur in the world of radiographic film manufacturers. Last year Kodak and Imation merged. Three weeks ago Agfa acquired my company. More layoffs will come. More costs will need to be trimmed to compete in a low margin business. But guess what? This is happening all over this shrinking globe in all kinds of businesses.

There are those who will say that this world is unfair to the weak (poor people and poor nations). Yes, but there is opportunity, and, according to Friedman, the system must include safety nets and shock absorbers for citizens and countries. Countries can choose not to join, but they will increasingly be isolated and lose all possibility of progress as measured by an increase in living standards. Are there dangers? You bet. We're only in the first decade of this tightly intertwined era. We've had near meltdowns in Asia and Russia. Can these meltdowns bring the entire system down? Too early to tell. We need to go through our first depression/ recession. The markets have proven that they will punish the weak, inefficient, and corrupt financial markets, so there will be built in incentives to reform and democratize.

Or so says Thomas Friedman. To figure out where you are on the 'isolationist versus globalist" and "no net versus social safety net" continuum, consider the following matrix:

Friedman and yours truly come down on the globalist , social safety netters' quadrant. For me it is not that that is necessarily the world that I want, it is the world that is, and best get on train and learn the system before the train leaves the station. Fight the power and you lose the power. Read this book!