Well, as many NineShift fans also like and compare the book to Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, this is hard to write. Keep in mind that pilots don't like flying jokes. And authors- - like cooks, relatives and competitive people in general - - find it hard to be compared to other cooks, relatives and authors.
So, here's where I disagree with Friedman.
* The world is not flat.
Not literally, figuratively, nor economically. Global economics came into being in the 1880s, according to British historian E.J. Hobsbawm, and much of the world, including Africa, Latin America, the Mideast, and much of Asia, is not competing directly nor indirectly with America.
* America did not invent the 21st century.
Ameri-centrism is neither reality, nor is it helpful to mislead a nation into thinking it created the most important forces impacting the world. Oddly, his "the ten forces that flattened the world" were all created by Americans. In reality, the single most important force that has changed the world is the WorldWideWeb, invented by a Brit. The web is not even on Friedman's list. Sorry, but UPS fixing laptops doesn't come close to being one of the ten most important forces. This lack of perspective is what doomed the British Empire 100 years ago.
* An oil based auto economy is neither possible nor beneficial for the U.S.
"Give me $10 a barrel oil," he says on page 462. But America and post-industrial countries can neither can run on wasteful oil consumption, nor should they. This is part of the last century, not this one. $10 a barrel oil would destroy humanity in about 65 years. This perspective also has unavoidable undesirable human and political consequences, like invading countries to get their oil, which unfortunately Mr. Friedman supports.
* "We get our share" (page 469).
"Our share" currently is having 4% of the world's population getting and using, by whatever means necessary, 35% of the world's resources. Somehow Americans have to understand that the other 96% of the world does not think we have an inherit right to a disproportionate share of the world's resources.
Those are some of the main differences between NineShift and World is Flat.
How do you compare the two books?