Reflecting on the past 20+ years of Thomas Friedman books on globalisation and (later on) climate action

After going through the five titles of Thomas Friedman’s globalisation books, here are some thoughts:

1. Free trade has had very serious flaws. As much as we celebrate efficiency and low prices that came through free trade, the political, economic and social dislocations they caused had a much greater effect than was thought. Governments ought to have paid more attention to the costs that comes through free trade in advanced countries, and provided more retraining assistance and other areas of help to lift specific communities out of a rut.
2. More economic integration did not drive political peace. Economic connectivity did not cause the political systems to converge at all, nor did it necessarily drive greater political cooperation. In the end, economic integration created another channel of competition and political fights between countries.
3. Economic globalisation did not drive political stability. One of Thomas Friedman’s over-optimistic ideas was that the financial sector would end up becoming a powerful constraint for political elites in various countries, driving them towards anti-corruption, transparency, and being more democratic to their own people so as to appeal to the global financial market for investment…