Why Tom Friedman Is the Ayn Rand of Our Times

Continued from previous page

"In a world where, as I've argued,  average is over ..." (Emphasis from the original.)

"Average is over"?  Averaging is a mathematical function, inextricably woven into the fabric of reality as we understand it. How can it be  over? It's like saying that subtraction is over, or means and medians are null and void.  (Watch yourself, standard deviation. Thomas Friedman has his eye on you.)

What's he really saying here? The "as I've argued" offers one clue to motivation, if not meaning: Anything self-referential from this author - and that's a lot - is a signal that he's floating another potential "The World Is Flat" book title.

But what's he  saying?  Our context-driven codebreaking takes us to the next phrase:

"... the skills required for any good job keep rising ..."

Ah, I see. "Average is over" is connected to job skills. Friedman apparently means that you can't get a good job anymore if your skill level is only average.

Why didn't he just  say so?

20 Million Startups

What are the implications of a world in which you must be above average to get "any good job"?  When Garrison Keillor described Lake Woebegon as a place where "all the children are above average," it was a joke. But Friedman's not joking. He's describing a world in which ordinary people are excluded from decent employment - and he's doing it without expressing regret or demanding change.

To be fair, Friedman is an advocate for education - in his own way. But his education arguments, like his economic ones, focus on the online, the gimmicky, and the jargon-laden.  Friedman's world doesn't seem to include manufacturing jobs, or construction jobs, or good government jobs. He envisions a workforce made up almost exclusively of "lateral thinkers" and "integration" engineers. Students should be trained to " invent" their jobs, says Friedman, who claims that self-invented work will be the best source of future employment.

Based on the number of people currently seeking full-time employment in the US alone, 15 or 20 million people need to "invent" their jobs pretty quickly. That's a lot of Internet start-ups, along with a whole boatload of "lateral thinking."

Friedman's unrealistic view of the labor force, shared by many tech entrepreneurs, is one in which the middle class is as  passé as a Commodore 64.  How can formerly middle-class Americans survive in the world they envision?

Average White Brand

According to Thomas Friedman, tens of millions of un- and under-employed Americans can "earn a good living online by building their own branded reputations." (That's right: He went there. He said "branded reputation.") Using websites like Airbnb, Friedman suggests, they can rent out "their kids' rooms, their cars or their power tools."

Friedman seems unaware that millions of Americans don't  have kids' rooms. (Lots of people don't have cars or power tools, either.) He might be astonished to learn that even in New York City, where he is professionally based, nearly half the population is considered either "poor" or "near poor." Those who live in ghettoes or other concentrations of minority poverty don't seem to exist for him.

Airbnb was co-invented by a kid who needed rent money after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. But there are families that can't afford to send their kids to the Rhode Island School of Design. And not everybody can move to San Francisco, where Friedman's plucky young heroes conducted the business transaction which led to the creation of Airbnb.

"Three people stayed with us," said co-founder Brian Chesky, "and we charged them $80 a night. We also made breakfast for them and became their local guides."