Will Blog for Food

The Rapacious Prescription Drug Industry

There are two recent books that expose the unsalutary practices of the drug industry. One is "Our Daily Meds," by Melody Peterson  (left) and the other is "The Truth About the Drug Companies," by Marcia Angell (below). A recent study found that half the Americans that have health insurance are on some kind of prescription drug! Ever since drug advertising became legal in the US in 1997 (one of two nations in the world that allow it), the drug industry has beaten a drum to the tune that there is a prescription drug for every malady perceived or otherwise that will take care of the problem. They have even created diseases for which there was no prior awareness.

USA Today on Tuesday examined the "political clout of the pharmaceutical industry," which since 1998 has spent $758 million on lobbying efforts -- more than any other industry, according to the... Center for Public Integrity. The pharmaceutical industry in 2003 spent $143 million on lobbying activities. At that time, there were 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, D.C. -- more than two for every member of Congress, USA Today reports. Of those, 476 were former federal officials, including 40 former members of Congress. Former Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) earlier this year was named CEO and president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. According to USA Today, Tauzin's move to the private sector is "testament to the industry's power." Prior to taking his position with PhRMA, Tauzin helped pass the Medicare prescription drug benefit as chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Currently, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) -- the "gatekeeper for legislation that comes to the Senate floor" -- is a "key lobbying target" for the industry, USA Today reports. During the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry contributed at least $17 million to federal candidates, including $1 million to President Bush and $500,000 to former Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass).

The pharmaceutical industry would have you believe that they need to charge such high prices for their wares so that they can do research to come up with more and better drugs. In point of fact their research budgets are meager compared to their outlays for advertising, lobbying and executive compensation packages. They've found that a "me too" drug can make them more money than a drug that they've developed from scratch. A "me too" drug is one that they've copied from a success by another drug company, but offers nothing new or original. As for research, they won't hesitate to put a drug on the market whose negative side effects almost outweigh the positive effects of the drug, and those positive effects may be little more than a placebo. As a result, US citizens are loading up on drugs in their systems which may be doing them more harm than good.

Doctors are totally in bed with the drug industry which offers them all kinds of money and perks to go along with the program. The drug industry will even ghostwrite the research papers for them (as well as the congressional legislation) and see that they are published in what used to be independent, unbiased journals. All the doctor need do is put his name on it. (All Congress need do is pass the legislation.)

The newer and scarier material in “Our Daily Meds” concerns the increasingly serious consequences of Americans’ dependency on prescription drugs. Disagreeing with Iowa’s nosologist, Ms. Petersen says the lethal consequences of overprescribed or misprescribed drugs are too readily accepted as “natural” death. She cites the unwillingness of pathologists to question the wisdom with which doctors dispense medications. The reluctance of hospitals to perform autopsies, she says, has impeded medical research into what these interactions can do.

So the accumulation of drugs is a person's system and the encouragement by the drug companies to increasingly rely on pills to cure every perceived pain or ailment goes hand in hand with the public's laziness and unwillingness to take responsibility for their own lives and to seek a panacea by altering their lifestyles - in particular diet and exercise. Dieting and excercise require work and a willingness to undergo pain and discomfort. Instead why not avoid the pain and discomfort by taking a pill? And if a particular drug does not solve the problem ... ? Not to worry, the doctor will simply prescribe another drug. If that one doesn't work, then another and another... In this way the profits are multiplied. So a failure is actually a success ... in terms of profits.

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind "mining, crude oil production," and "commercial banks.") The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D. Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called "me-too" drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first.

Not only that but when a study shows that a drug such as Vioxx causes more harm than good or has disastrous side effects, the FDA allows them to keep it on the market, to keep selling it and to keep endangering peoples' lives. A conclusive study found that Vioxx was causing heart attacks and strokes, but it's still being sold as well as other drugs which have been found to be harmful.

The moral is profits first, human lives second and our government is in the pockets of the drug lobby.

Book Review: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins sets out in this book to prove that there is no God. In his initial chapters he goes over the "proofs" of the existence of God, as well as other reasons for believing in God such as Pascal's wager. Pascal said that one is better off to believe in God for the following reasons. Suppose there is a God and you believe in him. Then surely you will go to heaven. If there really isn't a God and you believe in him, you've lost nothing. But, if there is a God and you don't believe in him, you'll surely go to hell, whereas, if there really isn't a God and you don't believe in him, you've gained nothing so you're better off to believe in God. But hold on for a second. This is assuming that all God cares about is whether you believe in him or not. What if God doesn't really care whether or not you believe in Him but cares about how you've lived your life? Then all bets are off. And what if your believing in God causes you to carry an unnecessary and inhibiting baggage of false beliefs around your whole life, causes you to live in a mental straitjacket? Then surely, you've lost something by believing in God!

Dawkins separates the human race into a number of religious classifications from Theists (true believers) to Deists such as Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein, who believe God created the universe but doesn't micro-manage it by listening to and responding or not responding to prayers and supplications to agnostics who are unsure whether there is or isn't a God to atheists, like Dawkins, who believe there almost certainly is no God. We have to wait till the 4th chapter for Dawkins' proof that there almost certainly is no God and it is a big disappointment or maybe it's a huge relief depending on your point of view. His proof is essentially that, if there were a God, then who created Him and so on in an infinite regression? Well, it doesn't take too much imagination to imagine a God who is timeless, who exists outside of time and, therefore, always existed. Time is a function of the physical universe as Einstein demonstrated. Time started with the Big Bang and will end if the universe ends in a Big Crunch. If the universe continues to expand it may never end, but, at any rate, it is a function of our physical universe and doesn't apply to any entity that transcends our universe. Well, God, if He exists, and is the Creator of our universe would "almost certainly" transcend the time constraints of the universe He created. Timelessness is not hard to imagine, and I'm surprised that Dawkins, who prides himself on being able to imagine things beyond our normal 3 (or 4) dimensional world, doesn't seem capable of imagining it.

I agree with Dawkins that the great preponderance of war in human history has been justified by religion or has had religious overtones. Many ancient warlords and conquistadors were only interested in religion to the extent that any particular religion's God would help them to vanquish their enemies and win wars. The Roman emperor, Constantine, made Christianity the state religion of Rome only because he thought the Christian God would help him win battles. Otherwise, Christians would have probably continued being persecuted and tortured and thrown to the lions in the Roman Colosseum. But the existence or non-existence of God really has nothing to do with religion as it has played out in human history. I agree with Dawkins that religion really isn't about whether or not God exists so much as it is about filling a psychological void in the human experience. We probably need God more than God needs us.

If one is not a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a member of any other religion, one can still believe in the existence of God. Anyone can completely reject organizational religion and can still have a personal one. The fact that religion has been used to justify war does not mean that there is no God or that there is one. One of the positive things Dawkins is for is to conduct objective experiments which can reflect on certain religious beliefs. He discusses an experiment in which a group of cancer patients was prayed for by another group of people while a control group of cancer patients was not prayed for. It was double blind in the sense that no one knew which group was being prayed for or by whom. Then the two groups were statistically evaluated to see if one group had less deaths than the other. In this particular experiment, prayer was not found to have a benefical effect. There are other experiments that could be conducted. One I dreamt up is to have a carefully monitored light bulb hooked up to a switch that was switched off, but very easy to turn on. Then the object would be to have a group of people who would be willing to try to turn on the light after they had died. This experiment could be conducted over a long time span - many, many years. It would be hoped that a large group of people would agree to be participants. This would tend to prove or disprove that there are ghosts or that people who have recently died could affect reality among the living by interacting with them as ghosts and, at least, some of the dearly departed are reported to do. It is claimed that ghosts can open and close doors. Then they should be able to turn a light off and on. This would be a controlled experiment as opposed to the anecdotal stories that are heard which could be entirely apocryphal. The number of times the light turned on spontaneously could be compared to the number of people in the control group who had died.The only problem with experiments such as these is that true believers are not interested in conducting them, and scientists are for the most part not interested either.

Dawkins explores to a great extent the dichotomy between Darwin's theory of evolution and the religious fundamentalist theory of Creationism. Of course, he comes down on the side of Darwin and his arguments are most convincing. This is really child's play for an intellect like Dawkins. It's a no-brainer that the theory of evolution is viable. The only question is do we know all that there is to know about how evolution works? I don't think so. I think there is more to be discovered. It would be arrogant to assume that the last word has been written about any scientific theory. Will Darwin's theory ever be invalidated? I don't think so. Will it ever be added to or subsumed? Undoubtedly. While random genetic changes over a long period of time and natural selection can account for the evolution of complex species from simple ones, is randomness the only mechanism that's involved? I don't think science can maintain that with 100% certainty. I think there may be other mechanisms like even maybe the subconscious mind that might affect mutations thus making them somewhat less than totally random. I also happen to think that Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) is a reality. There was a book "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain" that reported scientific experiments on ESP and, to my mind at least, strongly suggests the reality of such phenomena. J.B. Rhine founded a Department of Parapsychology at Duke University and conducted statistical experiments in card guessing and dice tossing. I think this is a fruitful area of research although there doesn't seem to be any money to fund it in a theocratic, militaristic culture such as the US.

Dawkins pays tribute to the psychological roots of religion. As human beings, we are all in need of solace, peace of mind, consolation and love. When I was a boy, my parents led me to believe in Santa Clause. Now there was somebody who loved me and rewarded me every Christmas by delivering a great assortment of presents. It was my favorite time of year, and Santa Claus was my best (imaginary) friend. Of course, it was my parents who loved me and delivered the presents. My Mom taught me that, although she didn't put it in exactly these terms, God was essentially Santa Claus writ large. God was all loving. God loved me unconditionally. That was the God they taught me to believe in. This was very comforting. Although I'm ambivalent about a personal God at this point, it is still comforting to believe that the universe has a purpose and God, while I don't believe He micro-manages life on earth, ultimately wants good to win out over evil. The purpose of the universe may be nothing more than the unfolding drama, the spectacle of it all, from beautiful sunsets to the ecstasy of sex. I tend to think prayer may have some validity, even though God doen't necessarily hear and answer prayers, in terms of sending out good thoughts and wishes via ESP to other human beings. So prayer may have validity even though the mechanism by which it works may not be the same mechanism that most people who pray believe in. In fact God may have set up the universe to work perfectly and automatically (including evolution), physically and spiritually, without his having to do anything.

This gets to the heart of the problem. Suppose that all religion is subjective and has nothing to do with objective reality. Dawkins decries wishful thinking, self-delusion and anthropomorphism where anthropomorphism is defined as ascribing human attributes to inanimate objects, natural phenomena or in this case God. As Dawkins points out, human beings' minds can play tricks on them when dealing with objective reality and most humans don't have the aptitude, inclination or robust intellect to be absolutely objective. It is too cold and forbidding. So we need things like God if only in the mythological sense. Dawkins and other scientists, and, in particular, atheists tend to take things absolutely literally. They are literalists for whom something is either true or false. What does it hurt to believe in a God of our own devising if we can believe in art, history, mythology, even Santa Claus, for Christ's sake, even though we know he doesn't really exist, and find some consolation there. Dawkins rightfully points out the importance of the Bible as part of our literary, cultural and historical heritage. Maybe we should consider God a part of our mythological heritage too and yet still draw comfort from Him as we would from art, music or literature - in other words not take God too literally or too objectively. How could you tell a child who has lost her mother anything other than "Mommy is in heaven with God"? Dawkins mentions religion as consolation and this is probably the bottom line of why religion is necessary even if you don't believe in it with your rational mind. You couldn't tell a child that her mother's death was just a random perturbation of atoms and molecules that came together in an unfortunate circumstance.

The trouble with atheists, especially atheist scientists, is that they don't even believe they they themselves exist as anything other than a machine, let alone whether God exists. Turing invented the Turing machine and the Turing Test. He said imagine that you ask questions through a slot in the wall. On the other side of the wall is either a computer or a human who supplies the answers through the same slot. If the computer is sufficiently complex, you could not tell the difference between a human and a computer based on the answers you get. Some scientists even believe that advanced computers or robots even have conscious feelings. So in a spiritual sense, some scientists, at least, believe that machines are "alive" and that they themselves are nothing more than "dead" machines. If you can't believe in yourself as a spiritual being, a self who is real to you anyway, how could you ever believe in the existence of something beyond yourself whom you've never seen or experienced in any direct way?

So let's postulate for a minute that God exists. Then the real question is: "What is the nature of God?" Is he all powerful and all loving? No, he can't be both because, if he was, he would step in and prevent the slaughter of innocents. He could have prevented 9/11 just by having better communications between the FBI and the CIA, not to mention having the President willing to read the PDB which was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack within the US.". He could have prevented the Nazi genocide of the Jews. He could have prevented genocide in Darfur. So it's obvious to me that God is not micromanaging affairs on earth. I think of myself as a Deist plus. I think God could have set up the universe just by defining six numbers, and set it up so that God is involved on an ongoing basis in terms of psychic and spiritual phenomena. In fact God, instead of being a well-defined entity outside the universe, could have immersed himself and dispersed himself within the universe and life itself could be God manifested in multitudinous forms combining both spiritual and physical attributes.

So the atheist position that there is no God is sort of a conversation ender. It's much more interesting to wonder, if there is a God, what is his nature, and what am I doing here and how does that all relate to the purpose, if there is one, of the universe?

Choice

A recent book, The Paradox of Choice, by Barry Schwartz, argues that, as choices proliferate, people are less satisfied overall. He says that we would be better off and more satisfied if we had fewer choices. I think his analysis is fairly shallow and he misses the mark. A lot of the book is "filler" which one has come to expect from a best seller. This book claims to have been a "Business Week Top Ten Book of the Year." His book is long on pseudo-psychological psycho-babble and short on the analysis of social conditions such as advertising which distort the whole process of choosing and turn many choices into phony or false choices which benefit only the seller, not really the consumer.

A social system such as preferensism which is an outgrowth of social choice is predicated on the assumption that increased freedom is associated with increased choices, and, I would argue, that increased choices are increasingly satisfying provided that the choices are real and not distorted by advertising. In addition, there are methods and techniques (hardly mentioned by Barry Schwartz) for dealing with what might seem like a bewidering array of choices. For example, before I purchase a CD, I read reviews (hopefully more than one) to see what the critics have to say about the music. I know from experience that I'm particularly interested in only one genre of music so that eliminates a large number of choices that I don't even have to consider right there. Consumer Reports as well as a number of online services such as epinions rate and rank different products, and there are price comparison wesites such as shopping.com that do price comparisons.

Therefore, I feel there are intelligent ways of making a decision as to which product or service one wishes to consume which make the process rewarding if not enjoyable. The only depressing thing to me is having my programming interrupted by TV and radio advertising. That, not the number of choices available, is what is truly depressing. Schwartz walks into a store and notes that there are "285 varieties of cookies," "40 options for toothpaste" etc. Unfortunately, he never gets beyond a rather psychological analysis as to why there are such a bewildering number of options and are any of the options any good? I have been on a quest to find plain white toothpaste like used to be on store shelves when each manufacturer was represented by only one variety of toothpaste. Although there are 40 varieties of toothpaste, I have not been able to locate on the store shelves just plain white toothpaste. The question is why? I think the answer has to do with (of all things) the marketing clout of the large toothpaste producing corporations. Crest and Colgate are the two largest and they have the most varieties of toothpaste taking up the most shelf space real estate in the supermarket. Inside the boxes, which tout the different varieties, the toothpaste is remarkably similar. For the most part it is all an aqua color which leads me to believe that the only significant difference among the different varieties is the packaging.

Now the supermarket will not devote a large amount of shelf space to just one variety of toothpaste. For a company to dominate the supermarket shelves, they have to produce what seemingly is a large number of different kinds of toothpaste. The only problem is they're not really all that different. So these choices are false choices. They're not really giving consumers a large number of choices at all, just attempting to dominate supermarket real estate, and evidently, the supermarkets are happy to go along with this deception.

Another problem in the "bewildering array of choices" that Schawarz notices is that in many cases hardly any of them are of high quality. I've noticed time and again a product, that I had been a regular purchaser of because I really liked the product, disappearing from store shelves only to be replaced by a similar but less desirable product. Why do you suppose this is and how does this affect Schwartz' rather depressing analysis that more choices produce less satisfaction? My analysis is that the store manager only wants to devote shelf space to products for which there are the highest profit margins. Therefore, a lower quality product which costs less to produce may have a higher profit margin than a high quality product whose ingredients cost more. Such a product may have a lower profit margin. And through advertising, corporations can increase demand for low quality products which have high profit margins. This is why independent testing and rating agencies are so important. Expert opinion and criticism can defeat the purpose of advertising which is to increase corporate profit margins, not to educate or inform the consumer, let alone provide him or her with a quality product.

Companies which put out a high quality product can take market share from companies who have established a "brand" but continue to market the lowest quality the consumer will buy. Take coffee, for instance. The coffee industry has known for years that there are two kinds of coffee beans: the low quality and cheaper Robustico and the higher quality and more expensive Arabica. Naturally they sold the lower quality coffee and made hefty profits for years. Then along came Starbucks and their goal was to deliver a superior product. They, therefore, used the higher quality and more expensive ingredients. Their profit margin per cup might have been lower, but they gained enormous market share because consumers, once they had been exposed to a superior product, came to be willing to spend more to get an excellent cup of coffee rather than the swill they had been used to. The same thing could be said for bread. People who were fortunate enough to travel to Europe where the quality of bread and coffee was superior saw the opportunity for emulating those operations and establishing high quality niche markets.

So I think Mr. Schwarz totally misses the mark. Instead of an analysis of the false choices that are so depressing, he tells us that more choice in general is depressing. His agent must have told him to include the psycho-babble in order to sell books. But it's basically bullshit. Most people that are at all sophisticated or experienced make choices based on their experience and rely on expert opinions from knowledgable sources. Smart people today can avail themselves of resources widely available on the web to make choices. There are quality comparison sites and price comparison sites. Instead of giving an intelligent method for culling the bad choices and narrrowing down to the good quality choices, Mr. Schwarz just says that we should have fewer choices in general and then we would be better off. I disagree. I think we are better off when we have an increasing number of high quality choices.

In a society based on preferensism, choice is fundamental. A citizen has to make choices which are both political and economic in nature. The educational system in any society needs to teach people how to make intelligent choices. For instance, in a political system in which all candidates for the Senate are voted on by all voters instead of just voting on a district by district basis, obviously there would be many more choices to consider than if one were just voting for one senator from one district. Such a system could still make sense and increase the freedom of each citizen if citizens allowed themselves to be guided in making choices the way they are guided by critics and experts in making consumer choices. A party or publication might make recommendations based on their way of thinking and each voter might take the recommendations of the party or publication they felt an affinity with.

There are other ways to make choice manageable in a preferensist society or one based on individual and social choice. A good review of some of these ideas can be found here.

Book Review: "Armed Madhouse" by Greg Palast

Greg Palast's book, "Armed Madhouse," is an eye opener since, although I was thoroughly convinced that the Bush Administration had plans for the ultimate disposition of Iraq's oil, I hardly suspected that there were two plans: Plan A and Plan B. Within a month of Bush's inauguration, the State Department and the National Security Council met in Walnut Creek, CA to plan the invasion of Iraq. The 323 page plan they came up with was like a coup: decapitate the Iraqi head of government, namely Sadam, and replace him with someone more suitable leaving everything else the same including the state owned oil ministry. This plan would only shut down Iraq for a few days, and then Iraq would open again for business. There would be no long, drawn-out occupation. Why did they want to get rid of Sadam? Sadam was jerking around the oil markets thereby interfering with OPEC and its self-designated control over world oil pricing. The troops would be in and out in 3 days. This plan was Colin Powell's baby. It's also what the Saudis and Big Oil, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco, wanted.

Shortly after 9/11, the neocons, based in the Defense Department with roots in Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which included Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams and Dick Cheney, got into the act. They drafted Plan B which called for total war and a complete rewrite of Iraq's laws, regulations and policies affecting everthing especially the oil. This would not be a 3 day wham bam thank you maam but a lengthy occupation. Their 101-page confidential document spells out a complete make-over of Iraq's economy in accordance with the Chicago School's free market philosophy: tax breaks for the rich, putting all state owned assets, including banks, up for grabs to foreign investors, even new copyright laws protecting software and music!

Essentially the War in Iraq involved a shadow war between the Defense Department and the neocons on the one hand and the State Department, Big Oil, the Saudis and OPEC on the other. The neocons wanted to bust the Saudi-controlled OPEC cartel with their ability to control the worldwide price of oil thus making oil prices a function of the free market. The Saudis set quotas for each oil producing member country including Iraq and Iran thus controlling the price of oil worldwide. Since oil prices were set in dollars (oil had to be bought and sold in dollars), the US and Saudi Arabia were essentially in bed together. This was especially true of the Saudi royal family and the Bush family which have ties going way back. This makes it curious as to why Rumsfeld and the neocons prevailed at first in the invasion and the post-invasion occupation in which Jerry Bremer was installed as the "Emperor of Iraq." (By the way, Bremer was a friend of mine at Andover which also produced George W Bush.) Bremer, having worked for Kissinger & Associates, represented the neocons and started the process of auctioning off Iraqi assets to the highest bidders and tinkering with the Iraqi Constitution.

After about a year of this, President Cheney had a change of heart. He was split in his allegiance to the neocons and his allegiance to Big Oil. After all, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and George W had all been oil executives. You might wonder why Big Oil would not want Iraqi oil assets auctioned off to them so that they could bust OPEC's stranglehold on oil pricing and so that they could make big bucks owning and controlling Iraqi oil and pumping and selling it at as great a rate as they could. The answer is that the price of oil is completely controlled by the Law of Supply and Demand. Pumping more oil does not result in greater profits. Pumping less oil and then jacking up the price of oil due to oil shortages results in greater profits. The same ruse was perpetrated by Enron in its quest to "screw little old ladies in California." Therefore, Big Oil is completely happy to have OPEC and the Saudis essentially keep the supply down and prices up. If everyone was free to pump as much oil as they wanted, there would be a resultant glut, prices would fall and profits would diminish. We've seen how limited supplies of oil and recent record high prices have resulted in insanely high oil company profits. So effectively, Big Oil's interests are the same as OPEC's interests. While a cartel among oil companies is illegal, a cartel among nations such as OPEC is not. They act as the world governing body for setting production quotas and hence oil prices and profits.

Dick Cheney, with his allegiance split between the neocons and Big Oil, finally woke up one day and decided Bremer and the neocons had to go. At that point the neocon plan to turn Iraq into a "coaling station" was out and the State Department's Plan A, which kept the state owned oil company (with heavy participation by Big Oil) intact, went into effect. The only problem was that the US was starting to lose control of the entire situation in Iraq so it didn't make much difference whose plan for control of Iraqi oil assets was operative. However, the battle between the State Department and Big Oil and the Saudis on the one hand and the Defense Department and the neocons on the other rages on even as the war in Iraq rages on. It's anyone's guess as to what the final outcome will be. But it seems clear that it's in the interests of the Iraqis to be a docile and compliant member of OPEC, and, if and when they regain control of their economy, to kick Big Oil out of Iraq altogether.  Meanwhile, there are other forces at play in the world such as oil producers Venezuela's and Iran's antipathy to the US and China's increased demand for oil which could throw OPEC out of kilter and undermine Saudi control of world oil pricing. If and when oil can be bought and sold in euros or some other major currency, the US will not be able to count on an unlimited credit card limit with which to run interminable budget deficits and fight interminable wars without raising taxes.

Barbara Ehrenreich, Disposable Workers and Salesmanship

In her new book, "Bait and Switch", Barbara Ehrenreich puts forth the theory that, since there are more female college graduates these days and since they are scoring higher on tests and grades, they should be in the higher positions in US corporate life. To her consternation, however, the male college goof-offs are still populating the higher reaches of corporate life. Why? Is this fair?

Ehrenreich likes to accept certain parts of American mythology and then cry foul when this contradicts another tenet of American mythology forgetting that it's all only mythology anyway and maybe her time could be better spent debunking the myths and giving people sound career advice instead of complaining about how irrational it is that the myths aren't consistent. Myth #1: The more highly performing a person is in college, the better in terms of position and earnings that person will do in real life. This is a bunch of BS put forth by the educational system to insure that they have a steady flow of customers lusting after college degrees. The educational system myth would have you believe that the key to success is success in learning a bunch of technical crap that's in high demand by corporate employers. The reality is that people who are just good technically are at the bottom of the corporate totem pole. What they would not have you believe and what the truth is is that a good salesman in whatever field is worth ten times what a good technical person is any day because they are the people who actually bring home the corporate bacon and these skills you don't learn in school unless you learn them by goofing off and developing social as opposed to intellectual skills.

I worked in the military-industrial complex for 15 years so my experience is limited to that area but the same principal applied. At the Navy research lab where I worked, I noticed that there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the projects, the departments, how they were organized or anything else. That's because the single most important organizing principle was that a department was only as successful as the department head's ability to pry money loose from Congress or the Pentagon. That is to say each department head was essentially a lobbyist who spent most of his time in Washington, DC tapping Congressional pots and selling them a bill of goods about whatever they could in order to bring money into their department and hence into the lab.

This would explain why the Antenna Department, whose technology was well established 50 years ago, had more workers and a larger departmental budget than the Microelectronics Department, a department whose field of endeavor was a current hotbed. The simple explanation is that the Antenna Department head was a better salesman than the Microelectronics Department head was. That was all there was to it. That was simply the main organizing principle. It had nothing to do with the needs of the Navy, the needs of defending America or anything else. It had simply to do with who could successfully sell Congressmen and other Pentagon types who were sitting on pots of money to part with that money. That's the way the system worked. The Department head didn't need a PhD from Cal Tech or MIT. He needed salesman skills which he would more probably have learned at the  local bar rather than in calculus class.

The MIT and Cal Tech types would be just the worker bees at the bottom of the corporate totem pole. Of course, in Barbara Ehrenreich's world she thinks that just because men are at the top of the corporate totem pole and not nerdy women this proves prejudice and discrimination toward women. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that women who have barely the least in educational credentials but who do have great faces, bodies and/or personalities will have a far better chance of ascending to the higher, more rarified spheres of corporate life. So you see, Barbara, it's not quite as unfair as you try to lead people to believe. It's just that the mythology is false.

In the military-industrial complex, the lowest level is occupied by those who only do technical work. Then you have many levels of middle management all progressively at higher GS levels (in civil service) until you get to the department head who is at the highest GS level because he brings in the most money. The dirty little secret is that all the engineering, math and other hard technical subjects you studied in college only position you to be the lowest paid workers in the complex who are doing essentially the crap work, most of it make work with hardly any real life consequences other than to produce some bogus report that some Congressman's intern might look at approvingly so the next round of funding can continue. As far as making the US a safer place, you've got to be kidding. As far as those who do well in college being in the upper echelons, that's a joke.

When I was in college studying to be an Electrical Engineer at Georgia Tech, in one of the advanced electronics courses I had a professor who proclaimed, "Every Electrical Engineer should know how to work a Thyratron problem!" You knew there would be one on the final which I worked correctly. They only cared if you put the right number in the box. It didn't matter if you had the right approach but made a little mistake. No credit for that! This was hardball, baby. The real world. No hand holding! If you had the right number, you got full credit. If you were off by one decimal, you got zilch. Needless to say, I went forward with full confidence that I could tackle any Thyratron problem in the real world that I was asked to do. I was ready to apply my engineering skills that I had worked so hard to acquire. Only problem was, not only was I never asked to do a Thyratron problem in the corporate world, I was never even asked to do a circuit design problem of any sort.

The truth is that most engineers in the military-industrial complex are nothing more than contract monitors or liasons who travel a lot. Any serious work that needs to be done is sub-contracted out to Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) which is an adjunct to Cal Tech or Lincoln Labs which is an adjunct to MIT where they have a lot of really top notch PhDs who are ready and able to do the highest level technical work. The BSs and MSs who populate the military-industrial complex, whether in the civil service or in the corporations (I have worked for both), will seldom get a chance to do anything of any meaningful technical value for which they were trained, but will instead continue to receive what amounts to middle class social welfare for the rest of their life. Their life consists of a mixture of meaningless work combined with boredom. Those who want to climb the corporate ladder go into management and get out of technical work at the earliest opportunity. Those with budding salesmanship skills (for which they've had no training except at the local bar) can move on up the ladder.

This makes Myth #1 - that you will do better in life if you did better in school - a total farce, one for which Barbara Ehrenreich totally falls. Myth #2: If there weren't a "glass ceiling," women who did well in college would do better in corporate life than men who didn't do well in college. The reality: Nerdy women won't get any farther in corporate life than nerdy men. Women with social skills who are good looking but with a bare minimum of credentials will ascend to the top echelons of corporate life just as men with similar attributes do. The key thing is salesmanship or saleswomanship skills. Physical appearance and personality combined with an ability to be persuasive and convincing are key elements for both men and women.

Consider another field. Who do you think makes more money: a good car mechanic or a good car salesman? The answer should be obvious. But do they teach you to be a salesman in school. I don't think so. Instead they teach you mechanistic, technical skills because those skills are easier to measure. Imagine a final exam in which the highest score is obtained by the student who manages to sell the professor a bill of goods?

Take another field: the law. The most money is made by defense lawyers who manage to get guilty, wealthy clients off. What are his or her skills? The ability to "sell" the jury on his client's innocence even if he knows his own client is guilty. These are literally salesmanship skills - the ability to be persuasive, the ability to be convincing. The same could be said for prosecutors who manage to convince a jury that an innocent person is guilty. It works both ways and has nothing to do with establishing the truth of the matter. It has everything to do with the relatve salesmanship skills of the attorneys involved. Those who have a better track record can command a higher price. Those who can't manage to get their clients off become public defenders.

Barbara is right that there are many "throw-away" workers who have gone to college and done everything right only to find themselves in the position of not being able to get a job in their chosen fields. If there was truthiness-in-advertising, colleges and universities and, to say the least, high school guidance counsellors should flat out tell people that educational degrees in themselves are no guarantee of a job and you might want to think twice about investing all the time, money and effort into something that will only put you in a position of being able to compete for a job. You will have to pursuade some interviewer to hire you and not the next guy. Corporations love nothing more than to pick and choose among a number of qualified applicants. It's the law of supply and demand. Not only does having far more qualified applicants than jobs keep their salaries low, it also puts the employers in the position of cherry-picking the best (in their terms) applicants. The best just might be those who have superior salesmanship skills or those with better personalities or those who are better looking.

Barbara makes a good living writing about those who have been disposed of in this disposable society - books such as "Nickel and Dimed," about America's low wage workers, that somehow made the New York Times best seller list. It is somewhat ironic, I think, that Barbara, who has managed to carve out her own self-employed niche, is obsessesd about telling others not how to carve out their own niche but why they should feel resentful because America hasn't lived up to its own mythology. And basically the whole reason for the mythology in the first place has to do with selling. People in the education field are selling the mythology that education is so important to success in life because, if they didn't, their customer base (namely, students) would dry up. They're not likely to tell you the truth just as any other salesman is not likely to tell you the truth. He's only trying to make a sale so he will tell you that his product (education) is the greatest thing in the world, the sine qua non of a successful life.

I knew someone once (who will remain nameless) who barely made it through high school.  The prognostication by my parents (who were educators) was that this poor fellow would be a dismal failure in life. However, he had a winning personality, and, after leaving school, in short order became a top salesman for a company selling industrial machinery. He was making $200,000. a year at a time when the average PhD in a highly technical field was making maybe $60,000. This guy was a total non sequitur. It does not follow, according to American mythology, that someone who does not do well in school should do well in life. However, like the hummingbird, who by the laws of aerodynamics shouldn't be able to fly, this guy defied all predictions. And there are many more like him. The fact of the matter is that good salesmen do well, selling is an essential part of any field and that it is something you don't learn in school.

The problem is that rather than turning out employees, the colleges should be turning out entrepreneurs, persons in any field capable of making a living irregardless of whether or not they happen to be able to be employees of corporations. Interestingly enough, some colleges are changing their orientation in that regard. The Jacobs Schoool of Engineering at UCSD advertises its "entrepreneurial atmosphere." I can't vouch for this school's change of approach from the time I went there, but, I think, it's a step in the right direction. Ehrenreich's approach might have been to recommend that a person's education should be aimed at self-sufficiency rather than a place "in the system." This self-sufficiency should include self-employment as one alternative if one finds that he or she has been "disposed of" for whatever reason by the system.

The 60s, the New Left and Revolution

In the 60s we used to make a distinction between the New Left and the old left. The old left was still around. They were old men who had admired Marxist-Leninism in the 20s or who had considered themselves communists and admired the Societ Union before it was obvious what "Uncle Joe" Stalin was up to. They continued to hold the values of universal brotherhood, considered the working class to be mainly saints, and were antagonistic to the capitalist class. Their political aspirations were mainly the pipedreams that old men dream or regrets for what might have been.

The New Left was different. We were going to make it happen - revolution that is. Thousands of college kids were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. A cultural and sexual revolution was under way. Someone told me, "Bellbottoms are revolutionary," and I better get rid of my straight-legged jeans. On the left everyone was a brother or sister even if you hadn't met them before. The Black Panthers were our heroes. Che Guevara was a hero. Country Joe and the Fish sang "And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam." Mario Savio instigated the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley by using the F word liberally.

The father of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse, was teaching at the University of California San Diego where I was a graduate student. (By the way, Herbert and I share the same birthday.) Marcuse was a German Jew who had escaped Hitler, come to America, worked for the CIA and finally wound up in Academia. He was a philosopher who had written several up to then not very widely read books. Marcuse was a Freudian-Marxist, someone who combined the revolutionary ideas of Marx with the revolutionary ideas of Freud. In appearance he seemed rather grandfatherly, certainly professorial and a kindly old man. He was in his seventies when he lectured in German philosophy at UCSD. Hegel's dialectic was on the menu. I enjoyed every minute of his lectures so much I didn't want to miss anything so I never took notes. I wasn't taking the course for credit anyway.

I was a graduate student in the Applied Physics and Computer Science Department and wanted to do my thesis on voting systems and social choice theory as I thought, if you were going to replace all the institutions of society in one fell swoop by having a revolution, you should at least have some idea, some theoretical underpinning, of the kind of society you wanted to replace it with. As such I was an ambivalent revolutionary. The Applied Physics and Computer Science Department was eager to get rid of me as I was the only student in engineering that had radical views and thought that, instead of proceeding with business as usual, we all should be doing everything we could to bring the war to an end. Toward that end a meeting had been arranged between Marcuse and me to see if it might be a good idea for me to switch departments and become his student. When I told him about my interest in applying information theory to voting systems and conflict resolution, he said, "Don't give them a blueprint." Well, I thought the most I could do was to provide a road map, not a blueprint, but I did want to proceed with my technical aspirations for societal architecture rather than writing diatribes about the labor theory of value which I had done more or less as a hobby but which I didn't consider to have any lasting value.

Marcuse had written a book, "Eros and Civilization," which was my Bible along with Norman O. Brown's "Life Against Death," and Wilhelm Reich's "Mass Psychology of Fascism." Reich's book was actually banned in the US at that time so we considered it a revolutionary act to steal a copy out of a Canadian library and reprint a hundred copies which we gave away for free, of course, to anybody that was interested. Marcuse's basic oeuvre as a Freudian-Marxist was that repression of the instincts (primarily the sexual instinct) led to all sorts of right-wing impulses such as hate, greed and war. This was also the basic belief of Brown and Reich. Marcuse advocated in circumlocutory English (it was obvious he thought in German) the "liberation of the instincts." The general idea was that, if people were unrepressed and sexually fulfilled, this would lead to a world of brotherly love which would be filled with non-greedy people willing to share what they had with others. From this a society based on the principal "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" would actually be possible and could actually be built.

Hence, the motto "Make Love, Not War" was seen as an admirable weltanschauung. The problem, which can now be seen with 20-20 hindsight, is that the Freudian-Marxist central tenet did not turn out to be correct. Liberation of the instincts (which was probably more due to Hugh Hefner than Herbert Marcuse since I'll wager more people read Playboy than "Eros and Civilization") certainly did take place. But it didn't reduce the amount of hate and greed in the world. In fact just the opposite. Hate and greed were liberated as well. This was borne out as the criminal population soon took advantage of all the free love and brotherly and sisterly trust. College girls hitchhiking down the coast to UCSD pretty soon started to be assaulted by those taking advantage of the love fest.

Charles Manson, more than anyone, put an end to the era of love and trust by killing a pregnant Sharon Tate. People started to get more conservative in their values. It was "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" all over again. The commercializers and predators moved in on the Summer of Love in San Francisco. Haight-Ashbury hippies started turning into street people still believing "Love is all you need" and that their brothers and sisters would be happy to share their spare change with them. In a massive counter-revolution, mainstrean America elected Nixon President in 1968. In the eighties Reagan led us all to believe that "greed is good." We needn't repress our urges to be greedy and selfish. Private property was good. Communal living was unAmerican. Sharing was bad.

In the final analysis liberation of the instincts did nothing to bring about a more just, equitable or loving society. People are certainly less repressed than they were, say, in the fifties - less repressed sexually and less repressed psychologically with respect to all the emotions especially anger, egotism and greed. So whether society is better or worse off, it is certainly a mixed bag. In some ways society is better off; in some ways, worse. However, liberation of the instincts did not lead to a change in the structure of society as envisioned by Marcuse et al. But Marcuse had an out, theoretically at least, something he called "repressive desublimation" which explained why liberation of the instincts might not lead to an ideal society. Irregardless of the theoretical fig leaf, I think that whatever changes there have been in societal structure or in the realm of politics have generally been in the opposite direction from the one Marcuse and the other Freudian- Marxists envisioned.

Book Review: American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips

The sub-title of American Theocracy is "The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century," and it is more or less equally divide among these three somewhat disparate topics although they're all linked in some ways. Kevin Phillips runs down the whole history of religion in the US, and it is a fascinating account. It seems like the more radical religions have always displaced the more mainline, conservative and thoughtful religions. The Southern Baptist Convention, in particular, has taken over not only the whole south but bordering regions as well. These religions are characterized by blind faith and emotional appeal rather than thoughtful analysis. Therefore, the world's problems can be addressed not be intellectual analyses, but by gut feeling and the knowledge that God (not mere humans) always has the situation well in hand and that everything happens for the reason that God intends it to happen as prophesied in the Bible.

This particular kind of religion goes back to the post-civil war era when the notion that "the south will rise again" was kept alive in the churches. Now that the south has risen again as evidenced by the Red State take-over of the political process, southern and, therefore, American hubris exerts itself in the world as if we were God's chosen people. Taking the Bible literally, having dominion over the earth instead of husbanding the earth's resources, looking forward to Armageddon and the Rapture in which all the "true believers" will be taken up to heaven while the rest of us will be left behind to face a sorry mess, these are the articles of faith that America's dominant religion has foisted on America's dominant political party.

George W Bush, as a born-again Christian, is happy to pander to the religious right whether it is promoting a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage (which he knows at the outset won't pass) or ignoring environmentalist warnings about global warming. Since God's divine hand is guiding history, America's leaders need do nothing more than emphasize absolutes, authority and tradition. The fact that most of the rank and file of the religious right are disadvantaged by Republican economic policies does not seem to deter them from voting against their own economic interests as long as they have elected officials that mouth the jargon of Christian conservatism. Since most of them are not sophisticated in the economic sense but are more concerned with Nascar, professional football and shopping at Wal-Mart, they can rest assured in the knowledge that a God fearing Christian in the White House is carrying out policies that represent God's will. Certainly the repeal of Roe vs Wade is one of them.

Regarding oil policy, American reserves are on the decline while Saudi Arabia and Iraq have the world's largest and second largest proven reserves, respectively. While the US is the world's largest consumer of oil, it is becoming increasingly dependent on the middle east for its supply. In a sense OPEC has the US where it wants it: in a stranglehold. It can increase the supply. It can decrease the supply. It can make the price go up. It can make the price go down. That's what makes the invasion of Iraq so critical for US neocon and oil company interests. Iraqi oil freed from the grips of either a Saddam, who wouldn't deal with the US after the 1991 Gulf War, or an OPEC would, hopefully, represent  a free market controlled by western oil companies. Well, it hasn't worked out that way so far, but that's still the ultimate goal.

The other factor driving up the price of oil is that China, developing at a rapid pace, is trading its bicycles for automobiles. China is developing a voracious apppetite for oil and other natural resources and is competing with the US for the limited supplies available. Meanwhile, such countries as Iran and Venezuela are nationalizing their oil assets joining Saudi Arabia, Mexico and others and leaving the major western oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and British Petroleum in the lurch. The net result is that the US is increasingly dependent on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other OPEC countries. The one ace in the hole that the US currently possesses is that, by virtue of a secret agreement with Saudi Arabia, oil must be purchased in dollars which at the present date, at least, is the world's reserve currrency. What this means is that other countries wishing to purchase oil from OPEC must keep a reserve of dollars with which to buy it. It also means that OPEC countries accumulate dollars from their sales to the US and other nations which must then be funneled back to the US by buying up US debt such as Treasury bonds or US assets such as port management companies that were to be sold to Dubai Ports until there was a huge outcry against it.

So we are dependent on the very countries where terrorism is spawned (Saudi Arabia is officially a Wahhabist Muslim country) both for our oil supply and for buying up our debt. Is it any wonder then that President Bush threatened to veto any legislation that would nix the Dubai Ports deal? As late as the 1980s, the US was a creditor nation. Since then it has run up debts to international creditors of over $4 trillion making the US the world's largest debtor nation. As long as oil continues to be priced in dollars this is not that great a concern. But, if OPEC should decide to price oil in euros as well as dollars, then nations need not keep a large dollar reserve and might increasingly make their purchases in euros or other currencies if OPEC should decide to sell oil in a number of different currencies. The petro-dollars - the accumulation of dollars by oil producing nations - would diminish and the US would have to raise interest rates, devalue the dollar or give in to inflationary pressures or all three in order to finagle its way out of a fiscal donnybrook. The spectre of such possibilities make controlling Iraqi oil as a conterweight to OPEC and China, which is cutting deals all over the world with countries basically hostile to the US, seem like a rational alternative to giving up the American way of life and debt.

Phillips' third major point is about the financialization of the US. As he says: "...Moving money around has surpassed making things as a share of the US gross domestic product." Financial services are on the rise; manufacturing is on the decline. The stock market bubble of 2000 has been replaced, by means of reducing interest rates to borrowers and "creative" financial instruments such as Adjustable Rate Loans (ARMs) and interest only mortgages, by a real estate bubble which is already on the verge of breaking. What bubble will be next to rescue the US economy? All kinds of fancy stock market derivatives and hedge funds have made the stock market subject to a bubble burst at any time, and guess who will be hurt? The 401k'ers who are hoping for a pension some day. The hedge fund guys can shift their money very quickly, and the derivatives accelerate the rises and falls much faster than an unsophisticated investor can react.

The US savings rate is now negative with consumers carrying a huge load of credit card and mortgage debt. Americans are encouraged to overconsume. Something like half of Americans are overweight and a third are obese. If Paul Volcker said it was his job as Fed chairman to "take the punch bowl away just as the party got started," now the policy seems to be to add more punch to the bowl and bring out the pork rinds and buffalo wings! Consequently, in addition to stock market and real estate bubbles, there is a credit bubble which could burst at any time. America has become a rentier culture. That is it makes more money from unearned income - capital gains on stocks, real estate, dividends and rents - than it does from manufacturing. Deindustrialization and postindustrialism have replaced manufacturing and hard work as the engine that drives the economy. The hard work, "the jobs Americans don't want to do," is done by illegal immigrants. The US trade deficit, because of imports of cheap manufactured goods from China and oil from the middle east, is in the neighborhood of $600. billion annually. Germany, Japan and Switzerland, by contrast, enjoyed huge surpluses in trade in manufactured goods and large ones in their current accounts in 2003 and 2004 all the while maintaining high workforce wages and benefits.

The Republican policy of profligate spending while lowering taxes, which started with Ronald Reagan who quintupled the National Debt and continues to the present day with George W Bush, is hastening the day when the US, already the world's largest debtor nation, will no longer be able to borrow and spend on such favorable terms as it currently enjoys. When the chickens come home to roost, and the world decides the euro or an Asian currency is a more favorable reserve than the dollar, the US will not only be the world's greatest debtor but the world's largest indentured servant.

Book Review: The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman

This book is worth reading because it is an exhaustive account about what's happening in the world due to globalization. Thomas L. Friedman identifies the main forces and technological innovations that made globalization possible, chief among them being the thousands of miles of fiber optic cable that were laid down before the dot com bust of 2000 that make a telephone call to India easier, faster and better than a call across town. This makes it possible to outsource back office and call center work, help desks, credit card inquiries etc to Bangalore where there is a large well-educated work force eager to handle this kind of work for about one sixth the cost of an American worker.

He goes into great detail about how Wal-Mart, Dell and others make use of cheap foreign labor and modern computers and communications including the internet, a process called supply-chaining, so that new customer orders or replacement inventory can be automatically generated at the cheapest source in the world and then transported by means of a global parcel distribution system pioneered by UPS and FedEx. This makes every business, large or small, a global business from its inception. Storefronts started by housewives on Ebay are global by default. The world is flat because labor can be accessed anywhere in the world, but especially in India, China and Russia where there are large, well-educated populations. By the same token, markets can be accessed anywhere in the world. Routine tasks and even such tasks as accounting can be done anywhere there is a computer terminal hooked up to the internet. Globalization has done a lot for countries like India and China where fairly large segments of the population are moving into the middle class thanks to outsourcing and offshoring. However, as Friedman points out, this is still a drop in the bucket compared to the large overall populations in these countries. So even though a middle class is developing, the bulk of the populations are still poor.

Since manufacturing facilities and labor can be located anywhere in the world, it makes sense to seek these items out where they can be provided for the least cost. Then the products must either be  transported to markets in other parts of the world or sold in the countries of origin. As middle classes develop in other parts of the world, consumers there have purchasing power which creates markets for consumer goods in the developing world as well as the more established consumer markets in America, Europe and other developed nations.

What do these developments portend for America? Friedman makes no bones about the fact that American jobs are being lost to other countries where the work can be done more cheaply. If transportation costs are cheap (in the case of call center work there are no transportation costs), work will be done elsewhere. Friedman's solution for American workers is the same old starry-eyed fol de rol that we've heard before. American workers have to work harder, be better educated, more clever, more creative, work harder etc. This is the mentality of the rat race. Instead of calling his different phases Globalization 1.0 and Globalization 2.0, he might just as well have called them Rat Race 1.0 and Rat Race 2.0. Rat Race 1.0 is when Americans just had to compete with other Americans for jobs. They had to study hard, get into the best colleges, work hard and compete to get ahead working long hours to impress the boss.

Corporations wanted workers who were docile and compliant and spent their leisure hours consuming and buying stuff - cars, houses, fast food, beer and prescription drugs especially. Now Rat Race 2.0 is when a door opens and about a billion other rats enter the arena. Now you have to race faster, run harder, study more, work harder, be more docile and compliant to get ahead in the competitive struggle. More and more jobs that aren't worthy of American citizens or are jobs Americans aren't willing to do, according to this scenario, are being farmed out, while we Americans will do the real creative, value added work. Guess what? It's bullshit. Other countries are increasingly taking over the creative work as well. Top level research is being done decreasingly by Americans and increasingly by Chinese and East Indians. Friedman's solution for the American worker, to constantly retrain, change jobs, get more education, work harder, work longer, is in the end a prescription for a heart attack and a nervous breakdown, much to the drug companies' delight.

Instead here's an alternative scenario for the American worker. Start your own business. Then your job cannot be outsourced. Why leave your fate up to corporations who have no loyalty to workers but will seek the cheapest labor wherever they can find it in the world? Become a capitalist yourself! Train yourself for a line of work over which you have complete control, and a line of work that can't be outsourced. Examples: medicine, law, plumbing, electrician, handyman, barber and beauty shops, franchises such as Starbucks, real estate. Whatever you do, don't go into high tech, cutting edge fields. These are the primary candidates for outsourcing. Take the money you would have spent on college and instead invest it in real estate. Your goal should be not to just be a worker living from paycheck to paycheck with the American dream of a mortgage and a couple of cars. Your goal should be to increase your net assets, your net worth, to the point that you can live off of a return from capital and not just the sweat of your brow. This is what they don't teach you in school where they teach the new American Dream which Friedman totally endorses which is to get better educated, work harder and run faster in the rat race. A moderately successful business man (and I include handymen, gardeners and plumbers in this category) doesn't have to do this. More importantly, a moderately successful businessman does not have to beg a corporation for a job.

If you're in business for yourself, whether you're a big time or small time operator, you have control over what you do, how you do it and when you do it. You don't have to enculturate yourself in some corporate culture. You can be your own person. You can speak your own mind. You might, by so doing, lose a customer here and there, but you won't lose your job as you would if you got into an argument with your boss. You can set your own working conditions, workweek (quantity and quality of hours), holiday and vacation schedule and benefits. You're not in the position of being a beggar or having to ingratiate yourself to your boss. In other words you're free, something which all Americans supposedly cherish, but in reality most of them only think they're free because they're basically just free to consume and vote for the party which has the most money for smear ads.

To be fair to Friedman, he doesn't think the whole globalization scenario is completely rosy for everyone. He acknowledges that there are many parts of the world which are not flat, where there is misery, disease, unemployment, disempowerment. He rightfully understands the role that humiliation plays in the gestation of anger and resentment among the classes and societies that are left out of the increasing prosperity for the lucky ones. In India, for example, the outcasts are the lowest of the low, live in squalor and aren't even seen as fit to associate with non-outcasts who consider them dirty. So you have the two extremes in one country. The outcasts of the world need something to hope for or they will turn to anger, resentment and destruction, in a word - terrorism. Globalization is not the solution for everyone although it's Friedman's solution - more globalization to include the disenfranchised, that is.

But there's a disconnect here. Corporations who are in the business of cherry picking the best and cheapest labor in the world in order to maximize profits for their shareholders (and for management too, incidentally) have no interest in being social workers. In fact their interests are diametrically opposed. Their interests are in paying out the least amount of money for labor and taking in the greatest amount of money in sales, that is for their shareholders, not for humanity in general.

Of course, not everyone agrees with Friedman's view of the world. His book, however, will be much discussed and chewed over. Nevertheless, this is a good book for those not familiar with how the process of globalization has changed and is changing the world bringing at least some prosperity to some who haven't had it before.