By saying that the world is flat, Thomas Friedman meant that humanity has attained full globalization status. To support his theory, Friedman uses his experience while traveling to Bangalore, India, to discuss the contributions of globalization on prime economic concepts which consequently flatten the global competitive playing field. Friedman identifies ten key aspects (flatteners) which have helped shape the globalization platform which are; the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Netscape, Workflow software, Uploading, Outsourcing, Offshoring, Supply-chaining, Insourcing, Informing and The Steroids. Thomas Friedman uses the aspects of international trade to show how flat the world has become.
Pankaj Ghemawat, on the other hand, talks about how globalized we are and how globalized we are not which he calls ‘World 3.0’. Ghemawat uses data comprised of Cross-border Phone calls, Cross-border movement of people, Foreign Direct Investment per annum and proportionality of exports to a country’s GDP to show how the world is not flat. He notices an overstatement of key percentages in immigration and foreign aid. Using France as a case example, Ghemawat finds out the 24% of the French population assumed to be comprised of immigrants, immigrants actually made up only about 8% of the total population. Secondly, Ghemawat disputes the notion that about 30% of the U.S federal government budget went to foreign aid while in reality, the percentage is 1%.
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From the battle of wits between Thomas Friedman and Pankaj Ghemawat, it is evident that the world is not yet a global village (not yet flat). This is due to the fact that data on key indicators is exaggerated. Indicators such as the ratio of foreign aid to federal government’s total budget, the actual percentage of a population that is comprised of immigrants as well as the fact that Thomas Friedman derives his ‘flatteners’ from observations and doesn’t collect/present analyzed data.
