Was just reading for a good two hours about TOMS and then you post this and.... How did you know?!?!?!
The story is a bit silly for me in that it is shooting down a company for being imperfect when the company isnt trying to be the 100% perfect cure-all mentioned in the article. Corps helping third world countries is a GOOD thing - I see TOMS as a nice, fuzzy-feeling-in-your-stomach addition to the relatively large amount of money US citizens donate to charities around the world. A person wishing to be an agent of change can either fight the hard battle and start educating (or sometimes just annoying) people in to donating MORE money, or they can design some ugly shoes that cleverly coerce said US Citzens into giving a few more bucks to people that really need it.
Tom (if thats the name of the guy who made TOMS), could've just done what the author is suggesting to her readers and donate a large chunk of his meager sum of money after college, and then he would've contributed about twenty dollars and fifty cents to suffering children instead of being a catalyst for millions of dollars of aide through his company TOMS.