Assignment 6

Justin Olsen

IST 1100

Module 6

Free trade is trade between different countries with no restrictions. Basically any product could be shipped anywhere with no problems. Unfortunately several countries that claim to support free trade also apply tariffs and taxes to imports and subsidies to exports. While seemingly being helpful for the local economy these restrictions hurt both local and global economies. Free trade is important because in a global and flat market everyone should have equal opportunities regardless of simple things like lines on a map. Free trade also helps us learn how to better take advantage of this new flat world that we now live in. Economists almost universally agree that free trade does considerably more good than harm. They also think that countries should remove all tariffs and let employers work overseas without restrictions. The problem is that this new flat world scares Americans. Based on my observations of culture, this fear of outsourcing has been going on as long as outsourcing has existed. Our culture has built this idea that companies are evil and companies that take American jobs away are even more so. This coupled with the fact that we are on the other side of the baby boom has left Americans distrustful of trading with other countries. Our "us VS them" mentality has not helped much either. The new middlers seem to need a few basic traits. People skills is the first trait because this can help people think that the company cares about them. Of course this book was written in 2006 before smartphones and the internet really took off so the need for people skills may have changed. Versatility is very important. We are advancing at an incredible rate and if you cannot advance with us you will be left behind. This is why a good new middler will have to be able to learn and adapt to any task at a moments notice. I disagree with Friedman's assumption that there are jobs that cannot be automated or digitized. Artificial intelligence is growing at an exponential rate to the point where human level intelligence tasks could be performed by computers in as little as twenty five years. CQ + PQ > IQ is the idea that passion and curiosity are more important than intelligence. Friedman believes that someone with high CQ and PQ would be far better at any given task. It does not matter how smart someone is if they do not care about what they are working on.