Earlier this week I glanced at a bulletin board on campus and a particular posting caught my eye. Not that there was anything visually or otherwise striking about it, just that its subject was interesting. Essentially it addressed a situation with some random athletic equipment manufacturer and some factories in a developing country.

Actually, I think the company was Nike and the country Indonesia, but the specifics of that situation are not critical; I’m more interested in the general idea of it, and the things it brought to mind.

What struck me about that posting is what always strikes me about all reports of factories in third world countries – the incompleteness of the information. The lack of a “back-story,” if you will.

The posting mentioned a dollar rate of pay for the workers, which as usual was sufficiently small so that it would be unimaginable to live on in the United States.

What it didn’t talk about was what the conversion rate is and how that wage relates to the standard and/or cost of living in that country. In addition, there were also references to sexual and other kinds of abuse. But of course no reference to the fact that the boss committing these crimes is not Nike CEO Phil Knight, though he was in fact pictured on the flyer.

I don’t have an issue with whether the working conditions are poor at these factories, but with the fact that the activists who protest these situations are far from responsible in their reporting of the facts. For one thing, I know a lot of people who would be glad to earn $1.25 a day, even if they had to work in a sweatshop.

That’s because where I come from, a lot of these people have alternatives that are far worse, for which they don’t get paid; indeed most of them would be ecstatic to not have to continue subsistence farming and living from hand to mouth (recall the commercials that encourage you to “spend $0.80 a day to save a child”).

The bosses who mistreat their workers are probably natives of that country, and their behavior is symptomatic of something other than Nike operating procedure.

The things that cause the trials and tribulations of underdeveloped countries tend to be a little more intricate than the epiphanies you get during a three week vacation. I lived in one of the countries for 15 years, and I don’t have a clue what the solutions are.

I don’t know the whole story of Nike factories, and I do understand that it’s impossible to tell the whole story on an 8 by 11 sheet of paper. But we ought to think carefully about what we intend to accomplish with such crusades. These clothing and footwear manufacturers have their products produced in these places because of cheap labor.

Cheap labor stems from poor economic conditions, which only exist in poor countries. And while it is true that the companies are taking advantage of a bad situation, keep in mind that they did not create the poverty, nor are they really making the situation worse.

Indeed, they may in fact be providing an income to a poor family that would otherwise have none. The bitter truth is that if Nike were to pay its Indonesian factory workers the U.S standard minimum wage, and spend money to improve conditions, and so on, they might as well have the products manufactured here in the United States.

Where does that leave us? We might have to pay a little more for a pair of athletic shoes, but I don’t think those who can afford these shoes in the first place would feel those effects nearly as bad as the Third World family that finds itself suddenly without an income.

It’s unfair (not to mention shortsighted) to burn corporate CEOs in effigy for situations that they neither create nor exacerbate.

Also, when you hear of the workers being sexually abused or having to work impossible hours, keep in mind the problem here is not Nike’s corporate policy, but something out of that company’s control.

Based on experience, it’s my guess that the problem stems from the mentality that tends to be pervasive in the world’s poorest countries.

If you’ve ever lived in a place where corruption and dishonesty have become a part of everyday life, then you know what I’m talking about.

This is a problem most of these countries have been trying to solve for years, and I doubt that some American political action group would fare any better.

It’s just na‹ve to believe that Nike has the ability to stop some depraved line supervisor on the other side of the world from raping his 14-year-old workers.

I don’t know what the solutions to the problems of the world’s poorest countries are – in truth I don’t think any human being can claim to know that. But while we work on figuring it out, if the inability to read between the lines causes the shutdown of Nike factories in Indonesia, I’d be more than happy to hook Phil Knight up with a new location.

Like I said earlier, I know people back home who would do anything to earn $1.25 a day.

Emeka Anyanwu is a senior in electrical engineering from Ames.