World Geography Mid-Term Individual Report

Name: Huang, Yu-Hsiang ID: B98208033 Dept.: Geography

The differentiation between global north and global south Is big. The power, technology, capital are controlled by global north. In a free market, it is reasonable that global north exploit global south. The multinational enterprises earn more and more money and leave the poor, pollution in the global south. Its was not a fair situation. However, in the logic of free market, its reasonable, the cost of removing pollution in the global south is much cheaper than in the global north. The salaries are much cheaper and the workers are tamer, its much easier to manage the workers to reduce the cost of production. The current operation of the capitalist logic has led to one that stresses efficiency, but the uneven distribution of world. The concept of social enterprises may be one solution to this situation. The concept of social enterprises is defined as an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvement in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders in Wikipedia. The concept is popular around the global north, like the USA, the UK, EU and Asia. If we want to distinguish the difference between the traditional enterprises and social enterprises, we can say that the primary goal of traditional enterprises is profit, the social enterprise is their social aims and profits are secondary. Motherhouse is a good example of social enterprises. The founder of Motherhouse is Eriko Yamaguchi. According to the information in the website of Motherhouse, Eriko Yamaguchi was born in Japan; she had an internship in the Inter-American Development Bank, confused that what she has done to help the developing countries. Egg-energy is another example. The main idea of the enterprise is that there was an unstable electric power supply in the sub-Sahara, Africa. 80% people live in the place of about three miles from the transmission wire. However, connecting to the electric gird and paying monthly bill are too expensive. People cannot afford. People use kerosene for lighting, which is dangerous, and disposable batteries for electronic devices. These solutions are pollutant and unfriendly to environment. Egg-energy proposes a solution that packaging the grid power into the portable batteries.