Saturday Stew: Fortune Favors the Bold
A friend has been asking me to read Lester Thurow's Fortune Favors the Bold for months now, so I finally gave in and started reading it yesterday. Dare I say that this book is superb-- okay, Im only on Chapter 2 but so far I'm really impressed with Thurow's lucid and bipartisan take on globalization, a process he argues can be controlled but not dispelled.Capatalism he argues is a necessary evil -- capitalistic polities and economies flourish one simple reason -- we accept the risk associated with capitalism (alienation, if you're a Marxist) in exchange for a higher standard of living. Communist countries, on the other hand, give up those luxuries for a collective organization and distribution of goods and services. Socialism, in other words. Chapter 1 also demonstrates that global isn't just a catchphrase, but a reality brought upon by technological improvements -- the same advances which have come to supercede geographical and military conquest as the chief forms of power. Countries thyat oppose capitalistic endeavors are asking for poverty -- they will fail economically -- a hard point to swallow, but Thurow holds nothing back. There is one statement that has stuck with me -- "Globalization doesn't crush countries -- it ignores them." If information economies are the alpha omega of our globalized world -- as he says -- then it is up to developing countries to get with the program. And true to the book's title, that entails a certian level of entrepreneurial boldness.
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