Friedman and The Onion

Faux news I love

Although it can at times be raunchy, overall I love The Onion.   Evidently so does NYT columnist and bestselling author Tom Friedman.

In his recent column he quoted a four-year-old Onion faux story on Chinese manufacturing that seemed to capture American consumption up to last summer.

“FENGHUA, China — Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the “sheer amount of shit Americans will buy. Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy these.’ … One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity.”

Friedman, who authored both “The World is Flat” and “Hot, Flat and Crowded” brought it back to reality when he cited Australian  environmental business expert Paul Gilding, who named this point in history,  “The Great Disruption”– when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once.

“When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?’  Often in the middle of something momentous, we can’t see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker — the year when ‘The Great Disruption’ began.”

I walk in entrepreneurial circles, where there’s an uptick in the number of people hanging out their shingle, joining multi-level-marketing schemes and trying to turn a hobby into a mortgage-maker.  I honestly believe that all the laid off MBAs, PhDs, geeks and artists in the world today, enabled by social networking sites, will pool their intellectual horsepower and transform the world into something no one can yet envision.

Retooling takes time and takes a toll.

As Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”