[AndrewO]

It never ceases to amaze me how "easy" everything is for Tom Friedman. Especially given his complete lack of any real experience.

It was just a couple of months ago that he was talking about how "easy" it was to design a product in the US, prototype it in Taiwan, manufacture it in China, setup customer service in India, get a graphic designer off of 99designs, blah blah blah. (Come to think of it, he's been saying some variation of that for an entire decade...)

International business is easy! Scaling to Amazon levels is easy! (And yes, less of a challenge in 1999 than today, but still: not "easy"...)

How does this hack keep getting work? Bigger question: how many people have been led astray by this pied piper of the globalized/information age?

[aothman]

My favorite Friedman-ism is this one: "I had lunch with a group of professors at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, or HKUST, who told me that this year they will be offering some 50 full scholarships for graduate students in science and technology. Major U.S. universities are sharply cutting back."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/opinion/13friedman.html

50 graduate scholarships is roughly the equivalent of a smaller department at a US research university.

[acangiano]

> How does this hack keep getting work?

He doesn't really get technology or what it takes to run a business. But it's not really surprising that a 3 time Pulitzer Prize winner would continue to get work as a journalist.

[StudyAnimal]

The message I get from his article, is not that "scaling to amazon levels is easy", but "scaling amazon size ideas down to a size where they are easier is possible".

Isn't that part of the startup culture? That simple scaled down approaches are not only credible alternatives to "big business" but are in many ways better alternatives.

Bigger question: how many people have been motivated to try something by this pied piper of the globalized/information age?

[jonnathanson]

I think you're giving his analysis too much credit. His point wasn't so much that the field remains wide open to startups. It was that, in his estimation, Amazon had no sustainable competitive advantage precisely because the barriers to entry into its business were (ostensibly) very low.

This is a little like saying that anyone can beat Tiger Woods, because all you need to do is pick up a golf club and practice for 10,000 hours, and golf clubs are readily accessible. While nominally and theoretically true, it's also a drastic simplification of many, many factors that have gone into making Tiger as good as he is -- and that will keep him better than most of the competition for quite some time.

Access to resources is only one very small part of business strategy. The rest is what you make of those resources, and how the advantages compound when you're making smart use of them. On the flipside, the beauty of startups is that they can, and often must, use the resources in different ways.

Furthermore, he made the fundamental mistake of thinking that Amazon was just a traditional retailer, but on the web.

[yardie]

IIRC, Amazon took something like 6 years to turn a profit. Its success is built off the hubris of investors at the time. Their business model was to sell everything at a lost to build up the brand, than assume profits will come later. In hindsight I doubt it's an event that can be repeated.

[rokhayakebe]

I agree with you. I remember reading an article by Om Malik and Copland and decided then and there that I wanted to do a startup. Mind you before that I did not know anything about startups. Soon after I read TF's the world is flat and it jump started me. In the end everyone is right for saying he makes shit sound easy when it isn't, but as you say there is a bigger question.

[Gaussian]

He takes the same "it's easy" tack when explaining how people can green their homes. He then describes what he's done at his own home, which, he fails to mention, is a 12,000-square-foot mansion for which he bulldozed an existing house to build. He planted 200 trees on his property, installed geothermal heat, solar panels, etc. Sounds great. Most people can't blow $5 million on green energy trinkets around the house, however. Not that I have a problem with him choosing to outfit his house this way; he can spend his wife's fortune any way he wants. But he'd be well-advised to reduce his associated sanctimony when it comes to green energy.

[eli]

I'm a bit embarrassed to post it, but this brief Wonkette satire of Friedman is hilarious: http://wonkette.com/411206/obama-golfs-with-dumb-tom-friedma...

[davidmathers]

This is not satire:

A wake-up call’s mother is unfolding. At the other end is a bell, which is telling us we have built a house at the foot of a volcano. The volcano is spewing lava, which says move your house. The road will be long and rocky, but it will trigger a shift before it kicks. We can capture some of it. IF the Middle East was a collection of gas stations, Saudi Arabia would be a station. Iran, Kuwait , Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates would all be stations. Guys, here’s the deal. Don’t hassle the Jews. You are insulated from history. History is back. Fasten your seat belts. Don’t expect a joy ride because the lid is blowing off. The west turned a blind eye, but the report was prophetic, with key evidence. Societies are frozen in time. No one should have any illusions. Root for the return to history, but not in the middle.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/84059/tom-friedmans-v...

[AndrewO]

I never realized this, but he reads like a very bizarre "Old Spice" ad.

[billswift]

"Everything is easy for the person who doesn't have to do it himself." And it is even easier for those looking at it from an adequate distance and who have no idea what is involved.

[andr]

Try replacing "easy" with "easier" and it might make more sense.

[jcampbell1]

What is easy is for his in-laws to turn their $4B fortune into $0, in a matter of a few years. Their assets were primarily in shopping malls which compete with Amazon.

[rokhayakebe]

Did they really loose their fortune and did TF have something to do with it?