do you care?

I asked the ASSU prez (I think Elizabeth Han is her name) at an "elections" party last week what she was doing, and she said she was travelling the world, then going off on a Fulbright to fight world poverty. It got me thinking about why I don't do the same. I know in theory that the scourge of abject poverty is one of the great challenges we face today as a species and as a global civilization. And I know there is lots more we could be doing to alleviate it. But I'm not really doing anything about it. I give a little bit of dough now and then to 501c3's that are working on this (Soteni, Accion, Partners in Health), but it's really not that much. The main thing we ought to do is eliminate the West's trade subsidies, but I don't know how to get that to happen. I wonder if I really spent some time on my own in some of these countries if I would still be so apathetic. After all, my crusade to fix broken schools only came about after I spent some time in one. So maybe my apathy is just the consequence of my lack of exposure. Which makes it irrational, not considered. On the other hand, what is my comparative advantage in the field of international development. I'm sure I could help advance the cause, but is there really anything that I could contribute that others can't? Do I have any unique insights? Probably not. So my competitive advantage is probably stronger in physics/education, though you could also argue that I'm unlikely to make any truly unique contribution in either of those fields either....