How to flatten a penny
My son slipped a penny into the slot, turned the machine on, and made his penny (or was it mine?) flat. He can’t spend it now, but who uses pennies these days? We have drawers full of them. Seeing it made me think of Thomas Friedman’s book, The world is flat: a brief history of the 21st century (an easy memory since I was reading the book).
Friedman writes for the editorial department of the New York Times. He has written Longitudes and Attitudes and The Lexus and the olive tree. the world is flat completes a trilogy that validates Marshall McLuan’s maxim: “Now we live in a global village… a simultaneous event.”
Friedman makes comprehensive observations with wise criticism and keen understanding. For example, listen to Friedman here about the Iraq War: “If you don’t visit a bad neighborhood in a flat world, it will visit you,” and he did.
9/11 and 9/11 I will not reveal the entire content of Friedman’s book. I couldn’t do it justice, and it’s too long (471 pages). I’ll tell you two events turn the world around for Friedman. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of Windows95 and the fall of Windows on the World. Interestingly, the first occurred on 9/11/1989 and the last on 11/9/2001.
find flat pennies The world is flat because nothing is proprietary. What can be made, learned, built, and used in America can be made, learned, built, and used almost anywhere. Information and innovation are not restricted; The Internet, the cell phone, and the imagination have global instincts. Almost anyone can flatten a penny.
What a flat world means for your investment options Friedman does not address foreign investment. He emphasizes collaboration between scientists, analysts, researchers, academics, and corporations. He encouraged you to read the many examples of outsourcing, insourcing, and infosourcing articulated by Thomas Friedman. If we are to maintain a viable international presence, we must engage with other nations, their betterment, and our mutual benefits.
We can make an acute observation. Investments are not ethnocentric. Intelligence is not either. Every investor must accept a future that involves opportunities in China, India and Singapore (Eastern, not Western). American companies are fighting for this opportunity; Congress and the President must avoid quasi-protectionist acts.
My son must do more than flatten pennies Fortunately, it does! While doing homework, she writes messages to her classmates (recently discovered girls). I said, “When you’re spending time texting, a guy your age in China or India is working on his next math problem. He’s your competition.” Americans have no right. Encourage and warn your children and grandchildren.
“The flattening of the world is moving forward… nothing will stop it. But what can happen is a decline in our standard of living, if more Americans are not empowered and educated to participate… This is not a test. This is a crisis, and as Paul Romer has so perceptively warned, ‘a crisis is a terrible thing to waste'” (the world is flatpage 305f).