The Flat Earther

"Tom, the playing field is being leveled," Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani told him. On the car ride back to his hotel, Friedman, as he is wont to do, began chewing over the phrase. "What Nandan was saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened," he writes in the book. "Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!"

Thomas Fried-man on how he came up with the title of his latest book. From here. That to me is the supreme example of completely muddled thinking. Nandan says that companies can now compete with each other on equal terms, and his interlocuter hears it to mean that the blue planet is flat. How the jump? How? And to think that even by his own logic, the earth cannot be flat. It is being flattened - it is not yet flat. He says so himself! And it is true, the process has not yet ended - barriers to completely free competition, in the form of tariffs, subsidies, and other forms which I don't know about, are still very extant as far as I know. So where the hell is the question of the earth being flat? How to explain that jump? The man must be out of his mind.

I haven't read the book. But after this review (mentioned in the Fortune article above) - I might just pick it up - but not if I can borrow it instead of buying. Just to see how much fun can be had with it.