under+paid

Figure 4.    In this paper I will be talking about the exploitive nature of Second life, as well as the real world exploitation of humans and countries. I’m going to take examples of this nature from two books, the Shock Doctrine and the unsettling of America, plus from our virtual world game. The use of these two books I feel will fulfill my paper with the arguments needed to show this capitalist, neo- liberal exploitation in action. Plus, they will make the argument I’m trying to get across efficient and to the point. Lastly, I hope to make clear to everyone that this form corporate exploitation hurts the working man, the wage laborers, the small farmer, and the individual.  Farming in America was once family oriented and operated and the people who lived off the land where very prosperous. These individuals grew their own food as well as food to sell at the market, which was made up of food that was extra from what they need to survive. But around the 1950’s this type of home- based farming community was starting to die out, to what eventually would come to take its place. This farming that came along was called “Agribusiness”.  The beginning of this “Agribusiness” or mega- farming had its first beginnings in 1862with the first land- grant college act {Berry p. 144]. The first act was called the Morrill act, this act granted an amount of public land to be given off to states and some to representatives and the senators of each state, to be used for the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college [Berry p. 144]. Students at the colleges where to be taught about agriculture and the mechanics of agriculture, in reality this act and the one’s that came after it where for agricultural industry, which is Agribusiness today. Furthermore, the land – grant acts at first had a noble purpose to them that called for local institutions to respond to local needs and problems of the farm communities [Berry p. 147]. So, the point of these acts was to have college students learn agriculture in college and then go back to their communities to their farms and practice what they learned, but this never happened because the students learned the mechanics of farming instead of loving, and caring for the land, and helping out their community like every good farmer knows to do. In the end these students where learning industry and how to make our farmland more productive, not real home based, small farm agriculture, but corporate farming.  The land- grant acts have fulfilled their duty in assuring agriculture a position in research to become big industry. So, who is helped with this experimentation in our colleges, and labs? Well it is large growers or the mega- farmers with the machinery, and the chemicals, to grow large amounts of crops, which takes money, plus the companies and the processors have a stake in the profits for they sell their products to the big corporate farms. Then who are the individuals who are being exploited? First the small farmer because, he cannot keep up with these big corporate giants in farming, for the small timer has not the funds necessary to grow, so he sells out. Next is the taxpaying citizen who loses out because these companies who support “agribusiness” get official licenses to manufacture and sell their products and the taxpaying individual funds this research [Berry p. 149].  According to Wendell Berry {The Unsettling of America} it is not worth having these big corporate farms because, they take away community when small farmers lose their jobs as a result of their takeover. Then when the farmers leave the community dies with it because, there is nobody to go to town anymore, no families, and no products to sell anymore. What we have here is the rural community and all of its functions disintegrating because of the large farms taking over in the name of business, and cheap food.  When the public thinks about big business we automatically think of corporations like Delta, Kraft, and Nike, but what one doesn’t think of much is how they exploit and run the government. It’s so much that these companies have their hands in the government, but the Nike corporation does exploit its labor in the third world countries by not paying them decent wages and by not giving them any benefits. In Naomi Klein’s book the Shock Doctrine she gives many examples of this exploitive scene and the corporate takeover of the government. In the beginning she talks about the hurricane in New Orleans, and how everything was run by private corporations and no government agencies. These companies Like Black water would not let people from the city in to their own neighborhoods to bury relatives, what companies like this did was block off whole blocks and streets and neighborhoods, and not let anybody in to give a proper burial to their Kin. What is shown here is how the government of the United States is the companies doing the work in the city; our public sector has been sold off to the private sector without too many people knowing.  One should wonder how all this corporate takeover started in our time, well it’s been going on since after World War 2, but we need to start more resent with Rumsfeld and “the core” [Klein p. 288]. Donald Rumsfeld wanted to completely hand over public sector jobs over to the private sector, which were jobs he felt, would be better handled here. He also knew in private hands these jobs would be cheaper for the government and they could have an under paid labor force which the government in turn would save money by not having to pay employees large wages for excellent work. Plus, Rumsfeld wanted to put the military in private hands and outsource it to large companies to pay soldiers less money, it in a way like he is branding the military by putting this government function into private control [Klein p. 284]. In other words he wanted a “Hollow military” [Klein p. 285] and saw the need to completely weed out the core of thinking of the Pentagon and put into private hands were this thinking would be cheaper, and so the government wouldn’t have so much clutter, they could just sit back and watch events unfold.  “He was saying we were the enemy, that the enemy was us”.  -Pentagon staffer  Eisenhower warned the government and the American people at the end of his presidency about the dangers of this military- industrial complex by saying “ this is a global war fought on every level by private companies whose involvement is paid for with public money” [Klein p. 12]. He was saying that this is not good because we are using public money for private use, and in the future these privately runs wars will so privatized that they will become their own separate markets, and according to Klein they have, because this Disaster capitalism complex in her opinion is far more reaching than the military- industrial complex [Klein p. 12, 13]. In just a couple of years the “disaster capitalism complex” has spread its wings out from the government and into private hands, and now it fights terrorism, helps in international peace keeping, municipal policing, and disaster relief [Klein p. 12]. In 2003 our government gave out 3,512 contracts to private companies just for security purposes, and the Department of Homeland Security in August 2006 alone handed out 115,000 contracts to the private sector [Klein p. 13], when this “homeland security” should be run by the public sector of the Pentagon. The industry of “homeland security is now a $200 billion private sector, and it costs the tax payer on average $545 per household [Klein p. 13]. Our military also hands out contracts to restaurants like Burger King and Pizza Hut, contracts them to run a franchise in places like military bases in Iraq, and at Guantanamo Bay [Klein p. 13]. All these examples relate to the policy trinity, which is the elimination of the public sector, with the total freedom for corporations to run wild, and with bare bones social spending [Klein p. 15].  This replacing of the public sector also goes on in Second Life in how the business of this world just like in the real world make the regulations, of wages for workers, in that they are the government of Second Life because, of the companies, and the businesses that make the rules. In other words the core of the virtual world pertaining to Second life is Linden Labs [second Life’s government], But it has no real function, just like what Rumsfeld wanted for the U.S. government, in that he wanted the corporations to run public functions, which actually would make these functions private after being sold off to big business. So, in essence there is no such thing as the core in Second life or in U.S. policy, for the private corporations makes the rules.  This neo- liberal agenda made its start in the U.S.A. with the Chicago school of economics, then made its way to South America, and now the capitalism has infiltrated the virtual world of Second life. The agenda of the “Blank Slate” capitalism came from a man named Milton Friedman, who was an economics professor at the University of Chicago economics department. Friedman’s idea was to wait for a disaster in a country or a war to start and then go and start the countries over again with his brand of economics which is rightly named “Disaster capitalism”. He wanted to start the country over with a “blank slate” and build the country’s economy from the ground up, put the public jobs in private hands and make the government of the country “hollow”, like it is in Second Life, and, in the U.S. but he started in South America because, his style of capitalism wouldn’t fly to high in the here in the U.S. Freidman framed his movement as an attempt to free the market from state control [Klein p. 15], and the theory states that the everybody will get rich but it is really the corporations, and the elite, that run the country, in turn the poor stay poor.  If it wasn’t for Freidman’s agenda being implemented in the South America, Then the country of Chile wouldn’t have been in the past or in the future one of the most unequal countries in the world {Klein p. 86]. The inequality was a result of the rich getting richer from the free market capitalism and the poor laborers getting poorer. The men who controlled the country took billions of dollars from the wage earners in just three years and gave it to the capitalists and the land owners [Klein p. 86], then they started to toss people out of work and send them to camps if the rose a finger in protest. In ever country from China, to, Russia, to Chile, where the Chicago school policies have landed, in the past three decades, has risen a very powerful ruling class, and an alliance between very few but large corporations, and wealthy politicians {Klein p. 15]. In the end, what has happened is these elites, and have political and corporate have merged extracting resources that have been previously held in the public domain, and they didn’t even come close to freeing up the market from the state in any of these countries [Klein p. 15].  “I don’t think I was ever regarded as Evil” <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> -Milton Friedman <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> Chicago school counterrevolution also came to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, but most important in Argentina. Before the U.S. backed military governments seized power in 1976, Argentina was a thriving country with fewer people in poverty than France or the United States, and unemployment rate of just 4.2 % {Klein p. 89]. When the Junta took over the government within a year wages were lost, factories closed, and poverty went out of the roof {Klein p. 89. Here in this country the economic minister sold off hundreds of state run jobs, and lifted restrictions on foreign ownership, and to attract investment in their country the government took out a thirty-one-page advertisement to attract these companies[Klein p. 88, 89]. To make things worse the government attacked the policies and institutions that lifted the poor of Argentina to the middle class, from in part to the abundance of men who had gone to the Chicago school[Klein p. 88]. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> According to Klein this cheap labor is not a good thing because, the people working for these private companies won’t work as hard if they are being paid less, in government hands they would have better pay. The CIA, Red Cross, etc. which are some of the last parts of public control, are going into private hands and we see Friedman’s crisis theory going post- modern [Klein p. 289]. Another example from the book is when Klein discusses the airline companies and how they are in private hands now and don’t pay their workers nearly anything for hard work, which is why according to Klein they don’t work as hard. So, here we can see that big companies have lots of push when it comes down to how they pay and treat their employees. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> To understand this whole neo- liberal agenda we need not to go any farther than to look at Second Life and its spread from the real world to the virtual world. This agenda is ever strong today as at anytime especially here in the Second Life. How this has happened is that the people who play second life can buy all sorts of objects and gadgets and even clothes, although most of the things an avatar can buy is not useful to the real person or his avatar. The only real item which is useful to the avatar is clothing because; it creates his character and makes him more individualistic, than the rest of the avatars on Second Life. In this world one can buy a water fountain for 350 Lindens [figure1], but you are actually paying with real U.S. dollars that come out a $ 1.63, which seems like not a lot of money, in actuality it is for something you can’t obtain in real life or use to make your character in Second Life. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> Another example we have of this worker exploitation in SL are companies that have you wear clothing to advertise them [figure 2], for an hour one has to go around to different places in the virtual world and wear the advertisement, the catch is that the individual only makes 32 cents U.S., which is 3 lindens for an hour’s worth of work. This seems like a waste of time to me and slave labor for one. Also, here in Second life there is a website to go to called Lindenx exchange; one can go here to exchange U.S. dollars or any other foreign currency to obtain linden dollars [figure 3]. This is an example right here of how we are paying real money for fake money and then we can go buy things that we can’t use in real life with fake money in Second Life. In other words we are being exploited by giving money to this Second life world for they are making real money off of us, while we are getting fake currency that is worth nothing. At the exchange one U.S. dollar is worth eighty- six linden dollars, this does sound like a “Fair Deal”, but if we ponder a moment on this fact we can see that it is all just an illusion, because we really aren’t receiving real money in the trade off, and they {second Life] is the reaper of our illusion, in our thinking that we also benefited in the exchange. Furthermore, avatars can dance for lindens, but will only make two lindens for ten minutes, and that only comes out to .31 cents U.S. [figure 4]. Lastly, there are companies here in SL where one can take surveys for 100 lindens, for five minutes at a time, and this time only comes out to .68 cents U.S. [figure 5]. Although, it is five minutes of one’s time just for sixty- eight cents to survey what you think about their company, in the real world they would pay a person much more, but how this system grabs you is with lindens, which again is fake money. So, my point that many people are being ripped off when taking their valued time out to tell a company how well or not well they are doing. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">In conclusion, and with so much argumentative material that was at my disposal everyone should have come to a great realization on the fact that this exploitive, neo- liberal agenda is out their everywhere and has been for over three decades, and has now made its way in to the virtual world of Second life. I hope I made a clear argument on how the free- market economy and the Chicago school agenda has slithered in to the world of Second life. Just to think that Friedman began his neo- liberal agenda over forty years ago and it has birthed its way farther and hasn’t stopped after all the destruction of life, families, individuals, societies, but has kept on regenerating its self after failure on numerous times. His ideology has come in many forms many places around the world and the virtual too; we have seen the themes infiltrate many forms of government from Russia to Brazil. If we look back at what Klein had to say about the matter we’ll see that the open market capitalist agenda hit the southern cone countries of South America, and before these economic policies came the governments of the countries of the southern cone had been just fine with their conservative, protectionist governments. In the end though they were run out of power by the Friedminite, free market, and when the takeover happened workers unions were shut down, hundreds of people tortured for not complying to the new economic policies of the new governments. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">With Berry and “Agribusiness” we should see how he falls in with this free market capitalism, in how this big production of crops does hurt the small farmer, in many ways, and the community where the farmers come from. All the specialists that do research for this kind of production are in it more and more production and do not care what happens to the community of small farmers that work the land, just like Big corporations don’t care what country the set up business in as long as they get cheap labor, lots of production, and big profits. Furthermore, this “agribusiness” is like shock therapy in that it shocks the whole of our rural communities to near extinction when the big crop production farms buy up land and put farmers out of business, with the town too, who are the community that works and sells the products off the land. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> To end all, I want to say that most the things I talked about in the paper have come in to play in second life, because the free market needed to grow. It seems that this neo- liberal agenda has been tried almost everywhere on the planet, but all it does is bring disaster to many, and only a lot of prosperity to a few. Although, in the future we will definitely see many business getting rich off the Second life free market, while it still exploits the people that work, and make it run day-to-day. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> “I support a government that stays out of my wallet and out of my bedroom” <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> -Milton Friedman <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 114%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">

March 23, 2008. Here at Club Joy one can dance or sit to earn Linden dollars on this little green pad in front of me. But, you make very little money doing so, all any one makes is a dollar every ten minutes, and thats not right. This is one example of cheap labor, and exploitable labor in SL, it is just as companies do in the real world they find this cheap exploitable labor.

Figure 2. March 29, 2008. The sign in the distace reads do you want job? But for an hour at a time you only make 3 lindens that seems to me like a lot of work for almost nothing. Also, it's exploitive because you have to wear a t- shirt to advertise for companies and people click on the avatar to read the advertisement. Figure 3. march 29, 2008. The lindeX exchange is a place an avatar can go to exchange real U.S. money for linden dollars, and it tells how much our money is compared to linden dollars. One U.S. dollar is worth one hundred and eighty- six Linden dollars. We are paying real money for usless objects, this is the capitalist economy at it's best in that they make money {second Life}, while we loose our money to get money to spend money in a fake world. So, in the end the market wins and the consumer looses just like milton would like if you know what i mean. march 29, 2008. Here at South beach mall and marina, you can buy a cowboy outfit for 300 linden dollars, but you have to exchange your money for lindens, which come out to $1. 41 U.S. dollars to get 300 lindens. This is again us loosing money to get usless objects, in the end this company makes money off of us and all we get is this outfit to wear in a virtual world. Figure 1. April 4, 2008. This fountain costs in second life 350lindens$, and it is useless for anyone to need it in this world especially for their character. right here is a form of consumer exploitation, because first its to much money, its useless, and the worst is it does cost one real money to buy this object not just the lindens. In real life the amount of money one would be be paying for this fountain is $ 1.63, but that is not the point. The point is that it cost real money for a useless thing which we can't use in Sl. Figure 5. At free Lindens.com an avatar can earn 100 lindens in five minutes just for taking a survey or trying out a companies products. If you look at this from the capitalist idea then you will see that we are in a fake world and getting fake money just to take survey even though its only 5 minutes but, it is a waste of time. So, then why don't these companies give a person real money? well this then wouldent be exploitation, but by them giving fake money and you giving your time up for this fake cash you are first an idiot, and caught in the veracious web of capitalism. Damit this money is useless. Here another example of of getting free fake money for taking your time to create sports team for a fantasy league. capitalism at its best, getting people to work and giving them nothing, in this case non- real cash.

April 4, 2008. In sl the churches ask for money as they do in the real world. Why would someone give to a virtual church when they really dont know where its going.