The basic concept behind the “World is Flat” book is that the flatting of the competitive strengths and weaknesses across the world, mainly thanks to technological advances. The concept is one of globalization as well as the one of capitalism. However, one has to keep in mind that as far as globalization is concerned, it does not limit itself to the capitalism aspects of it even though capitalism gave birth to globalization. Globalization is a concept that does not look the content but only at the process of delivery across the world. It all depends on the extent of “push” behind the content. Just as important are the facts of communism, which in its own way, predicted the globalized world and predicted the struggle between the global worker against the global capitalist. In more ways than one, it is a war that has been fought over the centuries not only in terms of the traders and their workers, or landowners and their peasants, or in the terms of at the levels of kingdoms or nations or even villages. However, now it is a global issue as much as it is a local issue. The stakes have never been higher nor ever been so uncertain. You are competing against the highest paid worker in the most industrialized city of the western world as well as the unpaid worker who is willing to do it just on the basis of hope of gaining something better in future. Lose against the highest paid worker, what you lose is only few notches of living standards. Lose against the unpaid worker, you are out of a job. End of story. The worst part of this dilemma is that the unpaid worker is the hungriest person.
Wars during the yester years of the human history were fought in terms of armies and kings and so on and so forth. Through wars were depended upon the extra wealth of the society as whole, where most efficient country could maintain the necessary forces, the individual is little or no say in the matter. He could live his or her life without much fear of competition apart from his or her neighboring village or town. To be exact, it is a case of monopoly or duopoly. With the advent of global village concept, you have a village completely full of your competitors. Not only that, you have a village where, thanks to ever changing career methodologies, anybody could potentially compete with you – any person who can think to be precise.
In this global working environment, the nature of jobs and skill sets can be arranged on a grid scale. At one end of the horizontal scale is the specialization where as the other end is the newbie in every way possible, a person who knows nothing. Where as the specialist is a person whose strengths lie in only one specific area of expertise, where he or she runs a monopoly; a newbie has yet to learn anything period. In terms of the vertical scale, you have a person who works in one and only one industry at one end of the scale; where as the other end is filled with people who are “jack of all trades”.
