The world is bumpy

What shape the world? First, it was flat, then round, then flat. And now, in a book being lauded by Bill Clinton it’s curved.

As the 20th century came to a close and a young arrogant country decided that it was the American century, Milton Friedman told us the world was flat. Friedman’s book extolled the virtues of the internet and how it made the business world a level playing field.

Now, it turns out it isn’t flat, but curved, so says financial expert David Smick. That is, sort of flat but with unexpected downsides that might make you slip off the edge.

Is this really where the world’s best minds can take us? Doesn’t it sound a bit like Francis Fukuyama’s idea about the end of history? That everything is headed towards the mid-American dream because it’s version of libertarian capitalism has won in the big cold war against communism. Didn’t it occur to him that something else might come along, or that things might change? Which civilization hasn’t thought it’s own to the world’s best/strongest/biggest/most likely to last forever? Is this not a least a little bit naive?

It’s amazing that supposedly very clever people can’t see that their pronouncements are intimately linked with their own experiences, with the Zeitgeist. Why are they not able to take themselves out of their current, blinkered situation and have a proper perspective on things? Isn’t that what being smart is all about?

Or perhaps it’s me who’s ridiculously naive, and they’re just saying all this stuff to sell books, get famous and make money.

In which case, I think the World Is Bumpy. Now, on to selling the idea, getting famous and making money.