Lessons from this week's Friedman column

When Thomas Friedman needs "reminding of the real foundations of the American Dream," he turns to -- surprise! -- fellow seven-plus-figure entrepreneurs with ponderous extended metaphors:

Our economy is like a car, added Sridhar, and the financial institutions are the transmission system that keeps the wheels turning and the car moving forward. Real production of goods that create absolute value and jobs, though, are the engine.

“I cannot help but ponder about how quickly we are ready to act on fixing the transmission, by pumping in almost one trillion dollars in a fortnight,” said Sridhar. “On the other hand, the engine, which is slowly dying, is not even getting an oil change or a tuneup with the same urgency, let alone a trillion dollars to get ourselves a new engine. Just imagine what a trillion-dollar investment would return to the economy, including the ‘transmission,’ if we committed at that level to green jobs and technologies.”

So just in case you were worried, there is a vast reserve army of Friedmans which the punditry can draw upon to depress intelligence levels.

But that's not really what this post is about. Rather, I was struck by this passage:

“Infants and the elderly who are disabled obsess about survival,” said Sridhar. “As a nation, if we just focus on survival, the demise of our leadership is imminent. We are thrivers. Thrivers are constantly looking for new opportunities to seize and lead and be No. 1.” That is what America is about.

I personally always derive satisfaction from seeing the helpless and disabled used as a foil for the dynamism of capitalism. But there's a more general point here as well. While the first thing I was reminded of here was Aristotle's comment in the Politics that states exist, not for the sake of mere life, but for living well , I realized that that was merely a superficial similarity. In fact, there were few Greeks who would have spoken in Sridhar's terms. It may be an irreconcilable difference between the ancient and modern worlds that the ancients could not extricate themselves from the web of communal and familial obligations (to their children, to their elders) which shaped and largely directed their way of life. Sure, "thriving" was a goal to be pursued beyond mere "surviving," as Aristotle saw, but there was a set of pretty clearly defined and delimited qualities that entailed thriving: self-sufficiency, territorial autonomy, the ability to participate in politics, freedom (inasmuch as this was possible) from menial labor.

This relatively conservative outlook, and the social structure that enabled it (i.e. slavery, even/especially in the case of democracy), ensured that there would be no constant drive to "succeed and lead and be No.1" in "new" ways, particularly in the realm of "economics" (if we can speak of such a thing). We owe our modern existence in large part -- I'm not discounting technology -- to the Sridharian attitude of willful disregard for the ties that bind. In the face of tradition, the entrepreneur must set at nought all its counsel, and would none of its reproof.