Flat world

It’s a flat world after all. Thomas Freidman on Globalization, Bangalore, …

Second, the Netscape stock offering triggered the dot-com boom, which triggered the dot-com bubble, which triggered the massive overinvestment of billions of dollars in fiber-optic telecommunications cable. That overinvestment, by companies like Global Crossing, resulted in the willy-nilly creation of a global undersea-underground fiber network, which in turn drove down the cost of transmitting voices, data and images to practically zero, which in turn accidentally made Boston, Bangalore and Beijing next-door neighbors overnight.

Yes, crazy overinvestment can be good. The overinvestment in railroads turned out to be a great boon for the American economy. ‘But the railroad overinvestment was confined to your own country and so, too, were the benefits,’ Singh said. In the case of the digital railroads, ‘it was the foreigners who benefited.’ India got a free ride.