Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid

            This week on The World is Flat, we dive into free trade, what is it? Why is it important? Also, what kind of personality makes a “new middler, and what skills does it take?”  Later we sit down with the distant relative of C-3pO, also known as CQ + PQ > IQ, learn about it and how it is important.

Free Trade    

            What the hell is free trade? This is something that I do not understand, so with the Friedman book and a little help from the internet, I will explain. Starting with an old friend, Wikipedia, definition is this: Free trade is a policy by which a government does not discriminate against imports or interfere with exports by applying tariffs (to imports) or subsidies (to exports) or quotas. Friedman expresses importance of free trade with his China-America story and explains how not only does it open up trade lanes and boost the world economy, using outsourcing and offshoring is now easier and creates more competition in the industry between companies. Friedman mentions because business had opened up the possibility of workers in other countries that competition has pushed Americans to keep up with that competition and stay educated in that job market or skill level. With the influence of a healthy American economy and outsourcing of these jobs it will push the lower level countries we acknowledge in free trade to improve their countries wages and thus improve their economy strengthening the overall world economy. Of course opening up the world market with the help of free trade has a major effect on the overall world economy.

The New Middle

            This book in my opinion keeps this explanation kind of vague so I will explain to the best of my deciphering abilities.

            A new middler is middle class jobs, only fewer. A worker that moves where the business is, especially in collaboration jobs in sales, marketing, maintenance, and management and these people will need to be a good horizontal collaborator and be willing to work comfortably with a global company. What skills and personality traits make a new middler? Friedman says that they have to be special or specialized, like Michael Jordan, or J.K. Rowling, they have to be localized or anchored, and they have to be in the middle class jobs and be willing to be flexible and constantly re-skilling or training themselves to new innovations and technologies that arise. In my opinion it would be beneficial to be very multilingual as well as multicultural to better understand the market you are doing business with. So to be multidimensional and multicultural is highly desired in a global workforce market. The question remains, how willing are you to move where the business moves if you have the desired skillset? My answer depends on two things before I would even consider the move, first would be how good is the pay? Really would it be worth it to make that move? Also, how it the environment where I would be making the move, is the area safe and how easy would it be to blend into that culture?

CQ + PQ > IQ

            CQ is curiosity quotient, PQ is passion quotient, and IQ is intelligence quotient. Friedman lives by the equation stated above and in Friedman’s words, he would rather take a person with the curiosity and the passion to learn or try something new over an intelligent person any day. I guess that is true because you could have someone who is very intelligent and with an ego to never learn something new as well as lazy and probably not get as much productivity out of him or her. A curious and passionate person is a self-motivator and self-educated, they have that drive, passion, and desire to learn and be a better person. I find that true to some of us in college. For example I will use myself, now in high school I found myself to be an intelligent person however I was lazy and failed miserably. I took a shot at college five years ago and realized all of the wonderful things a college can bring me, however it was trying times for myself and I dropped back. As I registered for classes I figured out that it does not matter what you know, but what you desire to learn, and how hard you are willing to work for that success. So this time around I am seriously challenging myself, it will be tough and I am sure I will fail, but I feel like to fail is to learn and I will just keep working at it to be successful. I am curious to learn new things, it will be a bitch to work at it, as well as hold a full time job, but I try to keep pushing myself to get that successful end result. To end this module I am pulling a quote from this book that I love as well as use it as my title for this blog, Friedman even states that it should be engraved on every doorway to every school in America, the quote is: “Nobody works harder at learning than a curious kid.”