Okay, it’s a “credit where credit’s due” moment for me.  Thomas Friedman’s column yesterday was about how the ChiComs will have to allow social freedoms or will see the progress their country has made come to a halt.  This is from a guy who’s spilled lots of ink expressing his envy of the ability of those very same totalitarians to impose their economic, political and industrial will on their subjects, where we in America have to allow the people to interfere with their betters’ ideas of what we ought to be doing.  So bravo, Mr. Friedman — and welcome (back?) to reality.  Here’s hoping it lasts a while.

One small quibble:  Friedman says this near the end of the piece:

The logic is that all of us are smarter than one of us, and the unique feature of today’s flat world is that you can actually tap the brains and skills of all of us, or at least more people in more places. Companies and countries that enable that will thrive more than those that don’t.

That first phrase is right on the money, as is the second full sentence.  The balance of the first sentence, a rehash of a major point of his book The World is Flat, isn’t nearly true.  Trouble is, Friedman is hung up on the technology world of innovation and production.  But in older areas of production, trade in both products and capabilities have been around long enough that Robert Torrens and David Ricardo pointed out the benefits of comparative advantage back in the early 1800s.  And of course, I, Pencil is from 1958, so it’s not like distributed knowledge and abilities became some hidden legend.

But those are minor points.  Let me wrap it all up by applauding Thomas Friedman for a change.