Summary Report Assignment - The World is Flat - Essay Example

The speaker argues for the fact that the changes in the world over the past several years have created a situation in which traditional barriers of language, culture, geography, and/or political system have become increasingly irreverent. What this has affected is a situation in which commerce can and does take place nearly anywhere. However, instead of fighting against these changes that globalization brings and seeing it as a fundamental threat to the worker in the United States or elsewhere in the developed world, Friedman argues for the listener to instead embrace these changes as a means of further specializing the work force and using these elements of a flat world to the competitive advantage of the skilled worker in the United States; to the same degree and extent to which skilled workers elsewhere throughout the globe are using the talents and skill sets of laborers elsewhere to promote industry and development.

A further focus is placed upon seeking to make retirement benefits and insurance less dependent upon the actual employer and more dependent upon the government. This prescription is rather strange as Friedman can otherwise be understood as a laissez faire economist; however, this particular approach is one that allows the reader to come to the understanding that even though the economic principles that he supports and promotes are fiscally conservative, there is a strain of economic liberalism in his approach.

This of course makes his view more balanced and palatable to those that might otherwise by put off by his more hands off approach to global economics.