…words

Michelle Tripp has written an interesting and thoughtful post based on her impressions from this video. It has been around for a while, but it worth watching again:

What does it all mean?

Michelle writes:

“Our world is changing. Beyond the obvious. Beyond the Obama. Beyond the recession and drama in the Middle East. Beyond cars that look like insects and phones that measure contractions and 10 year-olds that that know brands better than college professors.

Things are really, truly different. Case in point? The push for national healthcare isn’t simply a humanitarian benevolence. We’re embarking on the end of American culture as we’ve known it. And government leaders are just trying to get the nation prepared for what comes next. A flat, globalized world. They’re looking ahead of the curve to a higher jobless rate and more Americans without private health insurance. They’re trying to find ways to legalize illegal immigration and open the borders to free trade because the dam is too weak to hold back the impending tidal wave. They’re trying to get a very independent nation prepared for interdependence. This is the unspoken message of the Did You Know video. This is what it means to live in exponential times.

In a flat world, what will be will be. You can push back, but only for so long.”

I agree with Michelle’s characterization, but I disagree with the tactics that are currently in play.

I disagree because the tactics aren’t enough

The strategy behind these tactics does not look far enough ahead. Some might say that the world is changing too fast, that we have to accept some things that we do not like in order to be able to manage the things that we still can. This thinking is wrong. We are not headed to a “flat, globalized world” ( see Thomas Friedman’s book – summary), rather, I believe that Richard Florida is looking the right direction when he describes the world as “spiky”.

There is a tendency to look at ‘averages’ and misinterpret them in a dangerous way. If you read Florida’s article take a good look at the diagrams. They show amazing disparities in income, education, productivity and information flow. In particular, take a good look at the diagram that shows where patents are granted. Enormous areas of the world are empty. Patents mean innovation, and innovation drives business.

Florida writes:

“The world today looks flat to some because the economic and social distances between peaks worldwide have gotten smaller. Connection between peaks has been strengthened by the easy mobility of the global creative class—about 150 million people worldwide.
They participate in a global technology system and a global labor market that allow them to migrate freely among the world’s leading cities.”

Yet the geographic obstacles remain. As an educated person in the US I can collaborate (and generate income) easily with another educated person with access to similar levels of technology in another part of the globe because we can easily overcome the geographic distance between our ‘spikes’. It is essentially impossible for me to collaborate (and generate income) with someone who does not live in or near one of those ‘spikes’. Thus the disparity increases.

Topping the spikes does not help the non-spikes

The issues that Michelle mentioned in her post are dangerous to improving the situation. In fact, “trying to find ways to legalize illegal immigration and open the borders to free trade because the dam is too weak” is exactly the opposite of a successful, long-term strategy. These tactics only work if everyone else does them too. For an example, see the Tragedy of the Commons:

…a hypothetical example of herders sharing a common parcel of land (the commons), on which they are all entitled to let their cows graze. In Hardin’s view, it is in each herder’s interest to put as many cows as possible onto the land, even if the commons are damaged as a result. The herder receives all of the benefits from the additional cows, while the damage to the commons is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational decision, however, the commons are destroyed and all herders suffer.

Unfortunately, not every country can have wide open borders, because there are some countries that people would just plain evacuate (which may very well be a net positive), yet other countries cannot support a massive influx of new inhabitants. Markets need time to grow, urban infrastructures need time to be designed and built.

Opening borders and providing healthcare to all by transferring the resources of the productive to the non-productive may look like an attractive, short-term solution. The underlying problem with this solution is that eventually governments run out of other people’s money to spend. If everyone can get free services and welfare, why bother working at all? If the point is to make standards-of-living more equitable by making everyone poor then that is the policy to follow.

“Flatten” the Earth by raising standards, not lowering them

The best way to take advantage of the exponential world is to work toward increasing the levels of accountability in all areas: personal, commercial, and governmental. The global credit/financial crisis was caused by a failure of responsibility and accountability on multiple levels and across ideologies. It may seem convenient to blame “the bankers” or “the Senators” of this or that party, but the truth is many of us are responsible.

We failed to hold these companies accountable to transparent accounting practices.

We failed to hold our elected and appointed government officials accountable to regulatory standards and ethical behavior.

We failed to educate ourselves as to the basics of economics and financial trends.

We must raise our own standards, and encourage everyone around us to do the same. That will be a big part of the solution to surviving, and thriving, in the exponential world.

What say you? Leave a comment.
UPDATE: This is an expanded version of the above video, with more statistics and social media information: