I ranted last month about the socialist rag produced by the business student council at my school. I had hoped that this was an anomaly, until I opened up the latest issue. Here is a quote from “Can’t Buy Me Love,” an editorial from a freshman business major:
Gullible consumers rush to the stores, confident that their new pair of Nikes will suddenly transform them into 6’5” NBA all-stars surrounded by flashy cars and beautiful models. What, you mean that’s not true? …. As silly as it may seem, we do fall for this ingenious plan, hatched by companies to seduce us to spend money. Why has materialism become such a huge problem?
With technology in the increase, our society has become so fast paced that people no longer bother to fully communicate with one another. Now instead of tucking their kids into bed ever night, busy parents can read them a bedtime story via videophone. This lack of attention results in families spending less and less time together. Dinner is eaten in front of the television and kids only come home to sleep…. The chance that companies will stop pushing products on us and polluting our minds with unnecessary greed is very slim. Therefore, the chance of resolving these problems falls on the average consumer’s shoulders.
On a more positive note, we discussed offshore outsourcing in my global IT systems class this week. Despite my professor’s best efforts to raise doubts about the benefits of outsourcing, virtually the entire class was united in the opinion that it was a good thing. When he suggested that CEO’s ought to value “human factors” above profits, one student exclaimed “why, that would be negligent!” The professor then proceeded to spend an hour writing dozens of complex diagrams and equations, all to make the point that out-outsourcing is attractive because foreign IT workers get paid less, although “there’s no reason to think that they’re less productive than Americans.”