all you need to know

This week’s reading of “The World is Flat” by Thomas L. Friedman, was very compelling on many different fronts. One thing that stood out to me was the fact that Ireland has become a power of a country, I would have never guessed that. I found it very interesting that they offer basically free college for their people. By them doing that they eliminate the stress of losing jobs to cheaper labor, and stress the importance of having a well-educated labor force. The country as a whole decides they need to make changes, and by doing so they have seen where they need to improve, where they did and still need to. This country has done great, but my argument is the fact that they only have 4.6 million people as of 2013. The U.S has 316.13 million as of 2013. My argument is that we can’t hope to use the same tools they did to become a better country in the flat world. We have to go through the same growing pains they did before we can fully embrace and understand what we should do. I feel that education is paramount to us being able to move forward in the future. Every country that has been able to thrive in the new flat world has realized it, and we still need to as well. I just wanted to talk about Rob Watson, I felt he made a good point by saying there are “far more environmental lawyers and scientists than environmental businessmen”. This just shows you can make a difference in the world by just thinking about what is best for our environment. I also have respect that he went back to school to find out how he could make a green business more profitable. Our world is something we should care for far more than saving a few cents here and there. This has to become a standard at one point to help make our planet livable for others in the future.   

Some countries have been able to do more with the same possibilities at hand. The main reason is that development is a voluntary process. The people in power of this country hold in their hands the outcome of what can happen when it comes to trying to develop their countries.  After they become invested in wanting to develop their country they must do four basic things. One, they must try to improve their infrastructure. Two, become more invested in the importance of education in your country, this will create a more educated labor force. Three, having good governance will help attract companies to your country by having flexible labor laws and low corporate taxes. The last but not least is having an open economy for open foreign trade. Some regions of the world shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to why they cannot attract business to them. They chose to let their culture get in the way, these cultures chose not to be open to changes that could help them out in the long run. The regions that have cultures that chose to be open and willing to change have a great advantage.

 A self-directed consumer is a consumer that wants the feeling of every product and serves being tailored for them. This has made companies have to offer much more options for the consumers, but it also gives them the ability to give us a buffet to serve ourselves. As a company you can not only offer what you want consumers to buy anymore. Now with the rise of self-directed consumers we can serve ourselves anywhere to see what the best prices are. The rise of the self-directed consumers has made buying from the internet much easier to do. Essentially you are taking away the retailer from the buy experience, you become the employee by simply checking yourself out. This saves the company money by not having to pay for work that is ultimately done by the customer. I can honestly say I am a self-directed consumer, but I like to be in control so I will never change that. I just like to always have control of how I can buy and this gives me that control.

When I was thinking globalization I wondered what other countries felt about it, and what scared them most about it. But after reading this week I was dumbfounded to find they felt that the American cultural would overtake their own, and that they would lose their beloved culture. But this did not happen until the world became flatter and brought with it the diversity of the entire world. With the use of the internet, cultures became even stronger. You could now communicate with others from thousands of miles away with ease. We can now see that Americanization has not happened like everyone had thought it would with globalization. But rather the opposite, an equal flow of cultures in to the world is now more of what could happen with globalization.