A little something to think about. . .

I had a wakeup call today. It was not the regular 7,05am wakeup by an alarm you want to hit with a hammer. It was the kind of wakeup call that a professor gives the student when they say; Do you really think you know it all?! The reason I had a wakeup call was because I have for a long time tried to get a better understanding of how to make the world a better place. Very little done so far, but I have always thought about these huge companies who uses people in developing countries to make cheap stuff for them. I have seen the label "Made in China" more times than I can count and I have still bought it. My professor gave me the example of lets say; Tiger Woods. Lets say he earns 50.000$ per hour, which he probably did before he got stuid! Anyways. He is awesome at mowing his lawn. The opportunity cost - meaning the things he has to give up to mowe the lawn is the 50 grand he could of made by being in a commericial. Let's say Tiger Woods has a neighbor boy who works at McDonalds and earns 7$ per hour. Tiger Woods figured that he could just let the neighbor boy mowe the lawn - and just to be nice he pays him 50$ per hour. You could say that Woods is being really cheap because he is - after all saving 49 950$ on letting the neighbor boy mowe it. The neighbor boy on the other hand does not complain beause he gets over 7 times more than he would at McDonalds. They both gain from the trade. However there are some people who thinks Woods is being such a sly person that they start to protest against the unfair wages of the neighbor boy. After a while and some bad publication later Tiger Woods decides to just mowe his own lawn because he is sick of the drama around it. The neighbor boy now has to go back to making 7$ an hour and Tiger Woods has to mowe his own lawn instead of getting 50.000$. I feel like this example is comparable to what multinational companies are doing to a lot of developing countries. I am not saying that some of the working conditions that the people in developing countries have to deal with are okay, but it made me think about how, little me could make it better, seeing as I live in a country with a completely different culture, economic system and have very different options as opposed to many of the people there. It is not fair that a "rich" person as myself living in a country that offers all these opportunities should just give my opinion about something I do not know a whole lot about. I know I am against child labor, but how can we get rid of it without destroying families and putting children out on the street? I am a student on my first year of college and I hope that over the next 3 years I will learn a lot more about myself and a lot more about the things I care about. Is it possible as a business major to care about things that does not neccesarily give me the biggest outcome of money? Will these years of college change the way I feel about so many things like fairness and caring? Or will these years help me broaden my prespective above and beyond what I thought I ever could. I realize - unlike so many other students in this country that I am very blessed to be able to attend a university and that I have the choise, as a woman to become exactly what I want. I can only hope that more people as the days and years pass by - will be able to see that too! Untill I write again, - Julie-