Friday, August 29, 2003

Can't Find it Damnit!

OKay, I'm really annoyed. I wasted about half an hour skimming the Worst Book Ever Written, Tom Friedman's the Lexus and the Olive Tree, trying to track down a particularly striking quote which I think provides a perfect representation of the man's twisted psyche. I failed. It's in there somewhere, but the brain was going to explode if I had to read any more of those words.

But, anyway, somewhere in that pile of poop Friedman says something along the lines of "When the economies of Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand collapsed I was thankful. Maybe they'll learn their lesson." Now, that wasn't the exact quote. I can't find the exact quote. But it's in there, it's something like that.

Of course, when economies collapse like that people go hungry, child prostitution and other kinds of exploitation thrive and, frankly, people die. Friedman was thrilled because it confirmed something about his muddled confused inconsistent world-view.

Why does anyone pay this guy?


UPDATE: Pete Guither finds it for me:

"I believe globalization did us all a favor by melting down the economies of Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and Brazil in the 1990s, because it laid bare a lot of rotten practices and institutions in countries that had prematurely globalized."