As observed by no less a personage than Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics "there needs to be a better balance between the role of markets and the role of government. Simplistic reforms based on free-market ideology don't work. The way that East Asia managed globalization, which combined an export-orientation with policies aimed at poverty reduction, worked even for the poor people. These countries did liberalize trade, but only as they created jobs," jobs that were permanently rooted in the local infrastructure of the nation, rather than dependent upon other nation's conglomerates.

The political benefits gleaned by Friedman will also have little benefit, even for the United States, moreover, if economic benefits are not similarly reaped -- after all, the terrorists that attacked the World Trade Center, filled with hatred of America's power, wielded IBM laptops in their service of Islamic power, in defiance of...
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