Yup, Thomas “Airmiles” Friedman is off on one again. Globollocks back in full effect, this time reminding us of the War For Innovation going on in his head. He’s got a book of this stuff out, apparently, bless.
Friedman still believes that the USA needs to have an industrial policy (surprisingly, he doesn’t trouble us with the “geo-green” thesis that it’s a sensible use of time and effort to try and persuade a Republican President who is a former oil company executive and Governor of Texas that what America really needs is a tax on gasoline and massive public subsidy into researching fuel cells). But he provides enough punchlines to be going on with.
Most particularly, Friedman touches on one of my personal hobbyhorses:
” We have an administration that won’t lift a finger to prevent the expensing of stock options, which is going to inhibit the ability of U.S. high-tech firms to attract talent – at a time when China encourages its start-ups to grant stock options to young innovators.”
The latest front in the War for Innovation, apparently … It is, let us recall, legal in the USA to grant stock options. Nobody is proposing that it be made illegal. What Friedman is protesting against is that companies which issue stock options, should record the fact that they have done so, in the P&L account.
I’m in general in favour of this. As I said a year ago (Christ has it been that long?), if stock options really are all that and a bag of chips, why are people so reluctant to tell the truth about granting them? The school of thought which suggests that if you know you’re in the right, it’s OK to tell a few little white lies has taken enough bad defeats in the period between Enron and Abu Ghraib[1], but apparently Friedman’s the boy on the burning deck of this one.
The rest of the article is boilerplate Friedman stuff; the USA will become a Second Rate Power with the trade deficit and budget deficit at nightmare proportions, unless we subsidise the living hell out of a high-tech industry that appeared to be doing just fine on its own. If you like that sort of thing, well, I suppose that’s the sort of thing you like. But the closing paragraph is just a gem. I’ve no idea where the New York Times is outsourcing its subediting of Friedman’s column to, but presumably it’s somewhere where they like their moustaches swarthy and their metaphors mixed:
Economics is not like war. It can be win-win. But you need to be at a certain level to be able to claim your share of a global pie that is both expanding and becoming more complex.
Wow. That’s some fucking pie.
[1]If Friedman wants to use “From Enron to Abu Ghraib” as a title for one of his columns, I suppose I have no real way of stopping him.
{ 22 comments }
gmoke 04.19.05 at 4:01 pm
I thought about reading _The Lexus and the Olive Tree_ until I heard Friedman talk on Charlie Rose and realized that the man not only sounds like he’s talking only to kindergarteners but that he also has no idea of the most important difference between a Lexus and an olive tree: you can eat the fruit of the olive tree while a luxury car produces nothing but carbon monoxide and other noxious substances.
bi 04.19.05 at 4:05 pm
Innovation will be encouraged when innovators find that the fruits of their labours can be used to actually _improve_ the world, not just to create more Weapons of Mass Destruction or to further fill the pockets of zillionaires…
junius ponds 04.19.05 at 4:15 pm
I’m sympathetic to Friedman, actually. The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, comprising tech corporations like TI and academic societies like APS, recently released a report claiming the US is losing its competitive edge in high technology. As Slashdot reports, DARPA recently announced that it is cutting basic CS research in favor of short-term projects.
>Wow. That’s some fucking pie.
junius ponds 04.19.05 at 4:16 pm
I meant to say that the pie is soon to be featured on fafblog.
Daniel 04.19.05 at 4:18 pm
The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, comprising tech corporations like TI and academic societies like APS, recently released a report claiming the US is losing its competitive edge in high technology
Call me a cynic, but I’d expect to see a task force comprising corporations like Krispy Creme to release a report saying that the government needs to spend a load of money on donuts.
Kieran Healy 04.19.05 at 4:18 pm
Fafnir needs to blog about that pie.
junius ponds 04.19.05 at 4:32 pm
Call me a cynic, but I’d expect to see a task force comprising corporations like Krispy Creme to release a report saying that the government needs to spend a load of money on donuts.
Donuts! Well, who am I to disagree?
The NY Times had an article concerning this, but it’s now behind their pay wall. I remain agnostic on the question, but it’s surely something to take seriously if the economic success of post-post-post-industrial America is predicated on intellectual property, and if one agrees that federal spending (Defense, NSF, NIH, et al.) seeded US tech industries.
Rob 04.19.05 at 4:57 pm
MMMM doghnuts….
Back to pie–it starts out like on of those McDonald’s Apple Pies which are really turnovers. But in time the pie actually becomes more pie like a Sara Lee frozen pie. And there was much rejoicing as we slip in teh names of two large conglomerates. And in the end it becomes a really big Shepard’s Pie which a whole bunch of stuff left over from Friedman’s refirgerator of moldy ideas just thrown together.
Troutsky 04.19.05 at 6:00 pm
Chin up boys, we simply grow and think and eat our way out of this mess. I was actually in Winston-Salem (home of Crispy Creme)in 2002 when donuts were selling like donuts and there was going to be a huge downtown arts complex built with collaberative donut and university money. Now they are going to fund a bench down in the park with a brass plaque on it.Easy come ,easy go.
nick 04.19.05 at 6:48 pm
I, too, await Fafnir’s post on that expanding pie of complexity.
Uncle Kvetch 04.19.05 at 8:48 pm
It could have been worse. It could have been reiteration #53 of “Iraq is at a turning point, and things from here in on could get much much better, or much much worse.”
dsquared 04.20.05 at 1:39 am
That one’s today. “In the long run, I am an optimist about democracy in the middle East, but in the short run, brace yourself”. Never has Keynes’ phrase seemed more grimly appropriate.
abb1 04.20.05 at 4:58 am
IMHO, the way to advance high-tech in the US is to return to the successful and time-proven strategy of funding high-tech R&D thru the Pentagon, instead of wasting perfectly good “defense” budget on armored humvees, napalm, torture equipment, bribing Iraqi rednecks and other low-tech endeavors.
david 04.20.05 at 8:15 am
Dsquared, have you seen the March 25 or so review of globalization books in TLS? China’s an important example for free trade, and more! Those of us looking for free and expanding pie on the internets want more globollocks.
digamma 04.20.05 at 8:45 am
People still read Friedman?
Hogan 04.20.05 at 11:30 am
I, too, await Fafnir’s post on that expanding pie of complexity.
I also want to find out which elevator I take to rise to the level where I can share the pie. I’m afraid if I use the stairs, it’ll be gone before I get there.
Troutsky 04.20.05 at 2:14 pm
The good thing about Friedmans “long run” is it applys to anything up to and including infinity, so he’s got himself a pretty sure bet.Im going to stick my neck out here and say I think we will see democracy in the Middle East before the galaxy is sucked into a black hole.
Uncle Kvetch 04.20.05 at 2:28 pm
Make the pie higher!
nick 04.20.05 at 9:01 pm
According to the rubric for this Friedman extract in the Graun, Airmiles is going to be at Chatham House on May 26th. Free tickets available. I hope beyond hope that Daniel’s diary is free that evening.
dsquared 04.21.05 at 8:45 am
Aaaargh! It ain’t. I’m off to Crete that very day.
dsquared 04.21.05 at 8:46 am
(ironically enough, I paid for the flight with airmiles)
nick 04.21.05 at 6:04 pm
For the record, Matt Taibbi’s review is a thing of beauty:
Predictably, Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the end—and I’m not joking here—we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce. Moreover, Friedman’s book is the first I have encountered, anywhere, in which the reader needs a calculator to figure the value of the author’s metaphors.
There is much more.
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