Sometimes I get sick of the following attitude: "With my x years of experience I now consideration myself qualified to comment as a de facto authority on everything under the sun. Because I have x years of experience my assumptions lay beyond reproach and my arguments are, therefore, infallible."
To these people I offer my weekly retort where I question there assumptions and assert my own infallible opinions. Enjoy!
This week, Thomas Friedman.
The World Is Flat v. How to keep the highground in a flat world...aka why America shouldn't worry. I'm reading Friedman's new book on the role of global expansion on America's future success. It reads like a horror story. I woke up one night in a cold sweat, with visions of legions of Indian engineers chasing me down, taking my job, evicting me from my house, stealing my wife and selling me as a slave to a Chinese widget factory. Everyone also seemed to be laughing manaically at me, a la Fantasia 2000. It was very strange.
Since that dream, a byproduct of Friedman's doomsday predictions for American youth, I have been unable to relax. I've been stressed out trying to find out what my niche is going to be in the world: corporate marketer, graphic designer, brand strategist, homeless sidewalk dweller. As I poured over my options, choruses of "America isn't producing enough engineers" ringing through my head, I realized something: My "pouring over my options" was exactly what was going to save America. To clarify: after reading an article last week on the growth of entrepreneurship programs in the US I realized that our entreprenuerial spirit will save us.
America, since the days of the revolutionary war, has fought dirty, I mean been "resourceful." When the redcoats sailed over to crush us, we met them on our terms, not theirs. By fighting from trees, ditches, hills and vales we picked off those bright red coats like fish in a barrel. (Or lobsters walking down a dirt road; take your pick. Personally I think walking lobsters is the better visual. And quite a bit funnier.) By changing the "terms" of war we won the war. It will be the same for globalization 3.0. We must meet the world on our term, not theirs. There is a vikings chance of winning the Super Bowl that our educational system, one with too many problems and not enough money to throw at them, can gear up to produce the necessary engineering minds to compete in the next century. But engineers don't start companies. A students work for B students who work for companies owned by the C students that worked their butts off. The next generation of Americans is not content to fight for positions or careers. We want market share. We want autonomy. We want the respect that comes from running a successful business. Resourcefulness has set America apart since its inception. When the chips are down we find new chips. We do not look at things as they are and submit. America looks at things as they might be and makes strides to see that it happens.
To say that America is doomed is just flat wrong. To say that our only solution is to breed the next generation of super engineers is equally erroneous. Our destiny lays not in competing for jobs, but in creating the companies that give foreign workers a home. Ideas will always reign, especially in the knowledge worker world of the future. Let us not back down. Let us not think how we can beat our foreign counterparts for jobs. Let us instead learn how we can hire, finance, buyout and leverage the talents of others for our own benefit. It's a concept as American as apple pie: we stole it from someplace else, made it better and claimed it as our own.
If you have an idea for a retort send it to me @ project|nautlius
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