One dimensional man

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century Thomas L. Friedman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005 Thomas Friedman is a widely-acclaimed journalist, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, and author of four best-selling books that include From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989). His eminence as a journalist is clearly demonstrated in the way he prepared for The World is Flat. He traveled throughout the world, interviewing in depth the political and business leaders who have the most direct, hands-on knowledge of the truly incredible developments occurring in the business structures and technology of globalization. Only a journalist who moves freely at the highest levels could interview the likes of Sir John Rose, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce; Nobuyuki Idei, the chairman of Sony; Richard Koo, the chief economist for the Nomura Research Institute; Bill Gates of Microsoft; Wee Theng Tan, the president of Intel China; David Baltimore, president of Caltech; Howard Schultz, founder and chairman of Starbucks; Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys in Bangalore - and many others, each of whom gave him the inside story of how, specifically, the barriers of time and space separating economies, workforces, sources of capital, and technical abilities are crumbling. The result of this unfolding story, already far along but with much farther to go, according to Friedman, is that "the world is flat." With some notable exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa and the Islamic swathe, everything is connected with everything else on a horizontal basis, with distance and erstwhile time-lags no longer mattering. Friedman describes in detail the galloping globalization that has unfolded in even so limited a time as the past five years. Under the impetus of a worldwide network of interconnectivity, the world economy is much-changed from what it was at the turn of the century a mere half-decade ago. Friedman quotes the CEO of India's Infosys: "What happened over the last [few] years is that there was a massive investment in technology, especially in the bubble era, when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables," while (Friedman paraphrases him) "computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of software - e-mail, search engines like Google, and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Bangalore, and one part to Beijing...." Microprocessors today have 410 million transistors compared to the 2800 they had in 1971. And now, "wireless is what will allow you to take everything that has been digitized, made virtual and personal, and do it from anywhere." The effect on productivity is revolutionary: "It now takes Boeing eleven days to build a 737, down from twenty-eight days just a few years ago. Boeing will build the next generation of planes in three days, because all the parts are computer-designed for assembly." The most strikingly informative aspect of this book, however, is not about technology. Most especially, Friedman explores the rapidly evolving global business systems, each constantly regenerating itself to keep ahead of the others. These are systems that span the continents seeking the lowest-cost providers of everything from expert scientific and engineering work to the lowliest grunt work. Friedman points out that India produces 70,000 accounting graduates each year - and that they are willing to start at $100 a month. It is no wonder that Boeing employs 800 Russian scientists and engineers for passenger-plane design when "a U.S. aeronautical engineer costs $120 per design hour, a Russian costs about one-third of that." Friedman describes a call center in India where outbound callers sell "everything from credit cards to phone minutes," while operators taking inbound calls do "everything from tracing lost luggage for U.S. and European airline passengers to solving computer problems for confused American consumers. …

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process.

(1975). The Limits of Organization. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 543-544.

The Limits of Organization

The History of Economic Analysis

The article records a conversation in December 1992 between G. C. Harcourt and John King about Joan Robinson. The topics covered include: the mystery as to why Keynes did not include imperfectly competitive model economies in The General Theory; Joan Robinson's own major criticisms of The Economics of Impefect Competition- its static method was a “shameless fudge”; the influence of Marx and Kalecki on her thought; the development of capital and growth theory in Cambridge; the banana diagram; the relationship between Joan Robinson, Kaldor and Cambridge “internal” politics; her final assessment of Sraffa's work; why she did not get the Nobel Prize; her lasting contributions.

Talking About Joan Robinson: Geoff Harcourt in Conversation with John King

This is a reply to Paul Davidson's review, in the winter 2003-4 issue of JPKE, of my book, A History of Post Keynesian Economics Since 1936. After attempting to clear up some minor misunderstandings, I criticize Davidson's characterization of Marx and Sraffa as "classical economists," of Kalecki as an "imperfectionist," and of Minsky and Eichner as "mainstream Keynesians." Hicks, however, should be regarded as a New Keynesian rather than a Post Keynesian. Davidson and I also differ on more fundamental questions concerning the degree of coherence that is required in macroeconomic theory and on the related issue of whether Post Keynesianism should be a small tent or a large one.

Unwarping the record: a reply to Paul Davidson

Reflections on the Global Financial Crisis

Karl Marx is often and legitimately regarded as anticipating both the development of globalization and the corrosive effects market relations can have on other forms of economic and social organization. But he also used the principles of historical materialism to predict the long-term decline of the market. He identified five reasons for this decline: increasing economies of scale, and the ensuing centralization of industrial capital; the growing use of credit money and of joint-stock companies; the rise of cartels and trusts; expanding regulation of the market for labor power by the state; and the ever more pervasive role of scientific knowledge in production. Furthermore, Marx’s arguments were accepted without significant criticism by later social democratic and Communist theorists, and similar ideas featured prominently in the work of many non-Marxian economists who were sometimes indirectly influenced by Marx’s earlier analysis. In some respects they were all correct, but ultimately they were fundamentally mistaken, as the development of neoliberalism during the final third of the twentieth century attests.

John E. King

Papers

Talking About Joan Robinson: Geoff Harcourt in Conversation with John King

Unwarping the record: a reply to Paul Davidson

Reflections on the Global Financial Crisis

Karl marx and the decline of the market

The industrial relations 'reforms': an introduction. [Paper in: Whose Choices? Analysis of the Current Industrial Relations 'Reforms'.]