Is "The World Is Flat" right?

I'm just past 1/4 of the way through Tom Friedman's latest book, The World is Flat (TWIF) and I've got a number of thoughts I'd like to share, as much to get them written down as anything else.

1. Natural resources are finite. If China and India develop at the kind of accelerated rate that TWIF implies (Friedman talks about the potential to have 3 or 4 or 5 US economies chugging along) and there is not a parallel accelerated development of recycling technologies and practices, we're all going to be in deep shit.
2. Finite Natural Resources corollary 1: The capacity for growth is finite - companies can't grow their business for ever (even if you were to believe that acquiring another company is the same as growing your own, which of course it isn't).
3. Finite Natural Resources corollary 2: Corporate strategies predicated on a de facto belief that growth is always good are running at a brick wall (even if that wall may be far away at the moment).
4. (Based on the Cliff Notes summary Friedman gave to Charlie Rose in May, 2005, recently rebroadcast) Given the complete inability of the Bush Administration to take any action to address world-wide flattening - evidence the "all fossil fuels all the time" energy bill and predilection for faith-based science - Friedman should be contributing heavily to Democratic candidates.
5. Single-payer, government-funded health care should probably the most important goal of US business - besides the health care insurance industry of course.

I'll be back to update when I'm further along in the book.