
America’s Real Dream Team - raju
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21friedman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
======
AndrewO
> If I just have the spark of an idea now, I can get a designer in Taiwan to
> design it. I can get a factory in China to produce a prototype. I can get a
> factory in Vietnam to mass manufacture it... And I can do all this at
> incredibly low prices.

Have you actually done that, Tom? Or are you just reselling us your same old
fantasy story about how easy it is to coordinate a bunch of companies from a
bunch of different countries and actually bring a product to market?

I can't even remember all of the other stories I've heard about multiple
rounds of prototypes, production problems, sub-standard end products, etc
(some of which requiring extensive travel to sort out). Or perhaps a partner
company dissolves its relationship with you and decides to market the product
on its own. Sure, it has to work out some of the time, but stop presenting
this idea that international business is somehow this miraculously effortless
process.

I know this wasn't the central point of a piece nominally about immigration
and youth achievement, but the fact that he had throw in the same stale
scenario that he's been writing about for over a decade makes it entirely
impossible for me to take this guy seriously anymore.

~~~
oldgregg
Notice something about all those kids? They live in AMERICA. Cultural context
does matter. I was working for a company a few years ago and the president
read Tom's damn book. Without any input or understanding of how software is
made he bought me a plane ticket and said go open an office in India. It
turned into a two year long clusterfuck. All of this outsourcing bullshit
would be more credible if it came from someone who actually wrote code and not
some jackass in his manhattan penthouse.

I'm all for importing great talent- it's one of the reasons the US has been so
successful. But that's completely different from his overplayed world-is-flat
delusion.

~~~
marshallp
Ever considered that you're just a bad manager?

When you outsource to another country you have to change your tactics and
communication style. The fact that you failed at outsourcing is more
indicative of your refusal to smarten up than anything else.

~~~
wisty
Or perhaps the president's a bad manager. If you send a manager off to another
country to implement build a new team and implement a strategy that _they_
think is doomed ... words fail me.

------
holdenc
A few unrelated thoughts: I've seen some of the brightest people get shipped
back to their home country after their "practical training" (the year allowed
for work after a foreigner's college graduation). This is the worst type of
protectionism, bordering on xenophobia. Our country was built by great
immigrants, period.

Secondly, most emerging economies emphasize math and sciences much more than
America. If the awards were for art and literature we'd likely see more
diversity here.

And lastly, I've known a few foreign science prodigies who get PhDs from tops
schools only to end up on the model validation team at Goldman Sachs, or some
job that pays well but is provincial and soul crushing.

~~~
marshallp
The most important piece of literature in the past half century was written by
Salman Rushdie, an indian.

The spelling bee champions nowadays tend to be indian.

Once hard working societies like india/china catch on that there's money in
arts, I'd bet that to be overtaken as well.

"And lastly, I've known a few foreign science prodigies who get PhDs from tops
schools only to end up on the model validation team at Goldman Sachs" I'd bet
wall street gets more top notch work done than academia or productive
industry. If only they'd get incentives worked out like wall street has, you
might get a new industrial revolution going.

~~~
dgordon
"The most important piece of literature in the past half century was written
by Salman Rushdie, an indian."

Really? I'd put Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago way ahead of anything else
I've read from the past half-century for importance. Or do you not consider
that literature because it's nonfiction?

Either way, what was so important about the Satanic Verses (or do you mean a
different book by Rushdie?) besides the fact that it pissed off some religious
dictator?

~~~
marshallp
Midnight Children

edit: won the "booker of booker" prize (the best book out of all the booker
prize winners over the past 40 years)

~~~
dgordon
I've only even heard of one of the Booker winners (Life of Pi.) Maybe I'm just
that uncultured. Then again, maybe the literary establishment is just that
insular.

~~~
wisty
Midnight's Children is like The Lord of the Rings for people who like modern
literature. It's no more silly or obscure than LOTR.

The postmodernists call it "post-colonial magical realism", because they can't
admit that it's just fantasy written by a good author (who writes very pretty
prose) who likes character development more than sword-fights.

Think of "the literary establishment" as Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.
Don't let their posturing put you off.

------
lispm
Strange, for me that would be a sign of alarm when immigrants take ALL the top
positions in competitions. Kind of a ponzi scheme, where here the scientists
of the next generation are all imported. As long as people are will to come,
the system appears to work - but it really does not. Those who look at the
surface will be blinded by the achievements, without seeing that the
achievements are based on imported brains and there is a structural problem.

It's not that the US is a small country - it should be possible that some of
the not so recently arrived families have competitive children, too. Let the
families live two generations in the US and they are no longer competitive or
no longer motivated enough? How attractive is it really to be in the US, when
the 'dream team' is all imported from 'hungry' countries... what is with the
rest of the people? The need education, too. Jobs. Well paid jobs.

~~~
bh23ha
_Kind of a ponzi scheme, where here the scientists of the next generation are
all imported._

It's so much worse, except for a very few native Americans ALL others were
imported, the scheme goes back hundreds of years!

~~~
lispm
Sure that's funny. But what's with the generations that are in the US long
enough? There was a huge brain import during and before the second world war.
Lots of jewish scientist found a new home in the US. They had a reason to
leave their home. Chinese people may want to leave their country, because it
is based on a communist one party dictatorship...

But the US now has 300 Million people living there and it still has to import
'brains'? There may be less 'brain' import from Europe - since Europe now has
lots of competitive science (LHC, ...). Now the current generation are
immigrants from China. But what next?

~~~
bh23ha
_But what next?_

Same as always, people who have good reason to prefer the states over their
country of birth will try to come here. Some will succeed. Most of those will
be run of the mill folks. Some will be great, some will be tragic.

------
hristov
Good old Tom Friedman. Even when I actually agree with his point, his writing
is so godawfull I want to strangle him. The real competition is between me and
my imagination? Really? How do I and my imagination compete exactly? This man
should not be allowed to make metaphors.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I was reading a political piece in Reason this morning and found Tom described
thusly: _..Columnist Thomas L. Friedman, the human one-sentence-explanation
dispenser..._ (link: [http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/18/the-obama-
narrative-na...](http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/18/the-obama-narrative-
narrative) )

I like Friedman -- in small doses.

~~~
jpcx01
Haha, Friedman belongs nowhere near the New York Times. He'd be better suited
as the whacky Social Studies teacher somewhere in the midwest (ok, he reminds
me of my old social studies teacher).

Another funny article where Jonah Goldberg has at Mr Friedman:
[http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ZTMzZTc3YWQ5MTgzN2I...](http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=ZTMzZTc3YWQ5MTgzN2I1MTIwN2QyYWFlYTY4NDg5NmY=)

------
henning
One thing that's interesting is to track where these child
prodigy/overachiever types wind up later in life. Some of them can't be found
in a Google search, which probably means they didn't start any companies,
publish any papers, or anything like that.

Others wind up leading very distinguished careers, like Terence Tao.

------
jimbokun
"The one thing that is not a commodity and never will be is that spark of an
idea."

That's probably the most easily commoditized part, actually. A "spark of an
idea", before all the actual work needed to turn it into something viable, is
close to worthless.

