> If I just have the spark of an idea now, I can get a designer in Taiwan to design it. I can get a factory in China to produce a prototype. I can get a factory in Vietnam to mass manufacture it... And I can do all this at incredibly low prices.

Have you actually done that, Tom? Or are you just reselling us your same old fantasy story about how easy it is to coordinate a bunch of companies from a bunch of different countries and actually bring a product to market?

I can't even remember all of the other stories I've heard about multiple rounds of prototypes, production problems, sub-standard end products, etc (some of which requiring extensive travel to sort out). Or perhaps a partner company dissolves its relationship with you and decides to market the product on its own. Sure, it has to work out some of the time, but stop presenting this idea that international business is somehow this miraculously effortless process.

I know this wasn't the central point of a piece nominally about immigration and youth achievement, but the fact that he had throw in the same stale scenario that he's been writing about for over a decade makes it entirely impossible for me to take this guy seriously anymore.

A few unrelated thoughts: I've seen some of the brightest people get shipped back to their home country after their "practical training" (the year allowed for work after a foreigner's college graduation). This is the worst type of protectionism, bordering on xenophobia. Our country was built by great immigrants, period.

Secondly, most emerging economies emphasize math and sciences much more than America. If the awards were for art and literature we'd likely see more diversity here.

And lastly, I've known a few foreign science prodigies who get PhDs from tops schools only to end up on the model validation team at Goldman Sachs, or some job that pays well but is provincial and soul crushing.

Strange, for me that would be a sign of alarm when immigrants take ALL the top positions in competitions. Kind of a ponzi scheme, where here the scientists of the next generation are all imported. As long as people are will to come, the system appears to work - but it really does not. Those who look at the surface will be blinded by the achievements, without seeing that the achievements are based on imported brains and there is a structural problem.

It's not that the US is a small country - it should be possible that some of the not so recently arrived families have competitive children, too. Let the families live two generations in the US and they are no longer competitive or no longer motivated enough? How attractive is it really to be in the US, when the 'dream team' is all imported from 'hungry' countries... what is with the rest of the people? The need education, too. Jobs. Well paid jobs.

Good old Tom Friedman. Even when I actually agree with his point, his writing is so godawfull I want to strangle him. The real competition is between me and my imagination? Really? How do I and my imagination compete exactly? This man should not be allowed to make metaphors.

One thing that's interesting is to track where these child prodigy/overachiever types wind up later in life. Some of them can't be found in a Google search, which probably means they didn't start any companies, publish any papers, or anything like that.

Others wind up leading very distinguished careers, like Terence Tao.

"The one thing that is not a commodity and never will be is that spark of an idea."

That's probably the most easily commoditized part, actually. A "spark of an idea", before all the actual work needed to turn it into something viable, is close to worthless.