International Law

Friedman Watch: Master of the Obvious

By Stan

I was at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, a few weeks ago and interviewed Craig Barrett, the former chairman of Intel, about how America should get out of its current economic crisis.

If I hadn’t already mentioned the name of Tom Friedman, columnist and international man of mystery, in the post title, you could figure out the author of the above quote quite easily. It’s almost like satire — if I wanted to make fun of Friedman, I would start off with something like that.

The exposure one gets as a New York Times columnist is remarkable, and the attention Friedman has received from his pop-globalization books continues to amaze me.

This latest formulaic pablum is vintage Friedman in that he lets us know, immediately at the outset, that he travels to other countries a lot and talks to very important people. We therefore must admit that he is a very important person and should take the rest of his column seriously. As another towering example of the mediocre commentariat, Washington Post columnist George Will, might say to establish his disdain for whatever straw man he has just hastily constructed, “Well.”

All I ask is that the Op/Ed page gives me something interesting to think about. I don’t have to agree with it, but if it’s a cogent argument, then maybe the two brain cells that are still operable inside my skull, addled though they are by summer heat and cold beer, can rub up against each other and get a thought or two percolating (to mix several metaphors).

Too much to ask, I guess. Instead of something profound or even amusing, we get Friedman’s advice to the U.S. government for future sustained economic development:

[T]he country that uses this [economic] crisis to make its population smarter and more innovative ? and endows its people with more tools and basic research to invent new goods and services ? is the one that will not just survive but thrive down the road.

We might be able to stimulate our way back to stability, but we can only invent our way back to prosperity.

That last bit is nicely trite and will sound good coming from Friedman as he repeats it to a fluffy CNN anchorperson.

I really don’t know what to say except perhaps “Gak!” That about sums it up, I think. Friedman’s response to the complicated set of economic challenges facing the U.S. is to advocate education? O . . . K.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much in favor of better education, not to mention legal/regulatory reforms, as the next guy. Every time I work on a licensing deal, an infringement matter, or a registration, I see how valuable intellectual property and innovation is to today’s economy.

The problem for Friedman (one would imagine) is that everyone else already knows this. During the U.S. election, Obama was talking about education at least 20% of the time, and he has consistently put education up there with energy/environment and health care as top level priorities for his administration.

The government here in Beijing has been talking innovation as a means to boost long-term growth practically forever (by which I mean since 1978 of course). Pick up a copy of People’s Daily, China Daily, read some stuff in Xinhua — it’s impossible not to find an Op/Ed from a government official or local business leader extolling the virtues of innovation.

Lots of folks have opinions on how to encourage innovation, and as I’ve written many times in the past, no one really knows for sure how to do this. But I think we all agree that the goal is a good one.

So why does T. Friedman keep collecting a paycheck for churning out ego-stroking truisms? I can’t say for sure, but last week when I was attending a conference in Barcelona, I sat down briefly with Jack Ma, media whore and head of Alibaba, and posed the question to him.

His take on this pressing issue of the day was that because of the unique structure of international business, the New York Times has adopted a business model whereby a knowledge worker, such as Friedman, produces, on a periodic basis, his current thinking on existing paradigms, signalling when appropriate the shifts in paradigms (optimally being ahead of the curve or the next wave). In return for this regular presentation of meta-ideation, the knowledge worker shares in the monetization of the product in the form of semi-monthly remuneration.

I followed up by asking Jack if it mattered whether the “meta-ideation” was actually ahead of the curve or way, way behind it. What if the knowledge worker was spouting ideas that were decades old or blatantly obvious?

Doesn’t matter, he mused. The product is not important, the image and marketing is. As long as the knowledge worker is broadly perceived as having his finger on the pulse of the next wave, then they can print excerpts from the telephone directory of San Jose, California and call it cutting edge.

Next weekend, I intend to forego the New York Times Op/Ed page. Instead of criticizing other commentators for their shortcomings, I will boldly strike out on my own and attempt to take the pulse of the next wave, armed with nothing more than a wet suit and a beach towel.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Full post as published by China Hearsay on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).