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" Back a few years, David Halberstam was supposed to speak at my son&amp;#039;s graduation from Brandeis, but Halberstam died a car wreck shortly before the ceremony so, scrambling, Brandeis went to the alumni bullpen and called in...Tom Friedman. This was the worst strategic move since Darrell Johnson brought in Burton for Willoughby in Game 7 of the 1975 Series. I don&amp;#039;t remember what Friedman said, but it was pretty damned banal. I have considered asking for all four years tuition back ever since. Yesterday, Friedman may have reached the apogee of entitled and detached foofitude. He once again found some plucky &amp;quot;entrepreneurs&amp;quot; who are the future of the economy, if we&amp;#039;d all learn how to look in our tool sheds, garages, and attics to find the fortunes hidden there. (Friedman would have made a great member of the Oakenshield clan, says the guy who saw the new Hobbit movie last night.) Of course, this only applies to those of us who can still afford homes in which to have garages and attacks, and those of us who are not living in tool sheds since the Wall Street entrepreneurs played mumbledy-peg with the world economy back in 2008. In DiNunzio&amp;#039;s case, four years ago she was raising capital for her start-up,Tradesy.com. &amp;quot;I started Tradesy with about $12,000, from a combination of credit card debt and loans, and went on to generate an additional $28,000 to fund the company over our first 18 months of operations by renting out my spare room on Airbnb,&amp;quot; she explained. &amp;quot;I used free Internet resources to teach myself web design, marketing and basic coding, and had everything I needed to start a business that now employs 22 people and serves 1.5 million customers every month.&amp;quot; DiNunzio is one in a wave of entrepreneurs who&amp;#039;ve been buoying our economy from below, at a time when so much national economic policy has been paralyzed. These risk-takers never got the word that China will eat our lunch or Germany will eat our breakfast, so they just go out and start stuff, and build stuff, and invent stuff - and create 20 jobs here and 30 jobs there.  I mean, good for her, but, seriously, this is now the future? (I can&amp;#039;t top Billmon, who tweeted that Friedman had saved the economy by &amp;quot;reinventing the consignment shop.&amp;quot;) I note the absence of labor costs, including what we used to call &amp;quot;wages.&amp;quot; Maybe that&amp;#039;s the future. Everything&amp;#039;s a glorified yard sale and we&amp;#039;re all just mail-order houses. But maybe I can get a buck for that old lamp that I&amp;#039;ve come to hate. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20058/tom-friedmans-yard-sale-122313/>