Foreign Work, Gold Farming, Capitalism

I recently wrote a blog entry about Fremdarbeit (Foreign Work or Outsourced Work) by Johannes Kreidler. It is a music composition that was done cheaply by hired composers from India and China for Johannes Kreidler from Germany, who received way more money for the work than he payed.

Today he published a video documentation with English subtitles, which I am quite happy about, because now, more people can understand what was going on with this project. It contains various background information and live cuts of the premiere of the music. And it contains an awesome scene at 8:48! An outraged spectator accuses Kreidler of exploitation! What better prove can there be that his project actually worked out?

This project was about more topics than just outsourcing, but see for yourself:

Now, just imagine if people would react like that in various different situations. Imagine an angry person in a shoe shop throwing shoes onto the floor, then leaving the shop while angrily shouting “No, I do not pay 100 times more money than what the workers in China got”.

Or think about the virtual money of online-computer-games, that people buy for real money off of companies. These – often western – companies usually gather the virtual money by using bots (software) and/or cheap, often Chinese people. They play all day and night under mostly inhumane conditions, to gather the game-money. Gamers, mostly from the western countries, then buy the virtual money for a few dollars and improve the equipment of their virtual game avatars.

What if people would simply not buy the virtual gold anymore or behave like the person in the shoe-shop of the aforementioned example. People do have the power to improve  the economic system. More than politicians or lobby organizations. But sadly, many individuals are more interested in their own benefits, for example to buy their virtual game avatar a new horse or new sword. And further more, the economic system is so brutal, that gold-farmers are happy to work in sweatshops because it is better than to have nothing.

And if you scream “Education! Education! Then they get better jobs!”. Nope. That is just a carrot on a stick held in front of our noses by the elites. A society can not exist if everyone is a quantum physicist, architect, composer, doctor etc.

The aforementioned examples are just logic results of the capitalism, which is primarily driven by the rule to make profit. It is primarily a profit orientated and not matter orientated system. (Yes, It often goes hand in hand but that may be a topic for another blog entry)

Old cold-war propaganda movie:

And so I think complaining about exploiting foreign workers is not enough. Basically every worker generates more value than he receives as wage, not just the Chinese guy who does outsourced work, but also the US worker at let’s say GM, even with needed (re)investiments in mind.

I think we have to do a lot of rethinking.

Thanks for your attention

Zalia (Polignostix)