If just 10% of you rioting over new RMT-associations...Follow

I'm a little surprised at what people decide to get indignant over. The truth is, if just 10% of you raising Hell and threatening to break off ties with Allakhazam over their new dubious business connections actually applied your righteous indignation to (arguably more worthy) enterprises throughout the rest of the world ... the REAL world ... well, we could get some real humanitarian changes going.



I mean, honestly... How many of you continued to buy your clothing cheaply from The Gap, even after you knew full well that it was all pieced together by children in dismal sweat shops? The bad PR was enough to make them make cursory efforts to clean up their act, but it wasn't as a result of poor sales.

How many of you fellows bought engagement rings for your wives-to-be, fitted with stones that were provided to your jeweler via the diamond slave trade? Make no mistake about it ... almost every single diamond currently on the Western, English-speaking market is actually a so-called "blood diamond". There's almost a guarantee that if you've bought a diamond at any time, it came from one of these African countries: it was mined by a slave, who is kept in line by torture and sheer terror.

How many of you, knowing that, still have every intention of wearing your diamond jewelry, and buying diamond jewelry in the future?

How many of you actually stopped eating at KFC because of reports of inhumane cruelty to chickens on the part of its suppliers? How many of you stopped wearing your Nikes because of human rights abuses in the sweat shops in which they were assembled? How many of you purchase items, knowing full well where and how they were made, yet somehow manage to not care "enough" on a moral level to be a bit more discretionary with your buying habits?



And yet, the moral highground you've finally chosen to "take a stand on" is when a website goes into business with people who help others cheat at your favorite video game? I don't like the virtual money trade, either, but on the scale of issues worldwide, it's faaaarr down the list. If I'm going to cut anyone off of my wallet based on principle, it's going to be one of the markets I listed above, first.


If you're still willing to buy blood diamonds, eat chicken that lived its entire life in agony, in a cage it was too big to turn around in ... if you're still willing to wear clothes sewn together by a child forced to work 15-hour days, simply because it's easier not to think about it ... then ...





SHUT.

UP.

ABOUT.

THIS.

ISSUE.






Either get REAL about your newfound "principles" when it comes to your spending, or realize yourself for what you are: an angry geek. This has nothing to do with taking the moral high ground, and refusing to associate yourself with evil. If that were the case, you'd keep your money out of a lot of fat mouths that forward the cause of "evil" worldwide.

No, your priority is with your MMORPG. You're mad at cheaters in your game. Make no mistake about it, my yuppie friends: you are very much the billionaire who gets angry at orphans living on the land that you want for your new golf course, yet stops writing checks to businesses that support a politician that they don't like. This is a disturbing reflection of skewed priorities.

Guys, the vague, barely-tangible connection to IGE is something that is complicated and distant enough for it to be argued that it is not a sin at all. This move positively PALES in comparison to the kind of horror, the kind of evil, that you feed financially (without having to) on a daily basis. Your righteous indignation is confusing, when one takes into account the general apathy towards anything else that most of us have.

This is personal, for you.

Edited, Thu May 4 06:09:20 2006 by Lazrical

Amen
People are so stupid when it comes to the bigger picture... God, I hope their new community gets a large sum of money offered at them and they turn it down... *shifts eyes* cause you know ffxionline would resist huge amounts of money that benefits them, their families, and the website in general.
*sarcasm ftw*

If this post came from someone with more than 13 posts, people might give a ****.

People are voicing their opinions on a fightfully bad business decision, you can do what you want to your suppliers, there will always be others you can buy off, but **** of a customer and thats not the way to go.

And how do you know people keeping their principles here don't keep them elsewhere?

well i am a part of that 10% then as with the money I earn from my job, I do my best from what knowledge i have, to not support companies that conflict my principles and I will be doing the same at alla.

If I dont agree with it - I dont support it.

Passion has to start somewhere.

Anyway, I agree for the most part, except when you start comparing your own moral judgments to others. I'm for beating kids, tortured chickens, and bloody diamonds. If people want to get pissy about this particular subject, then let them.

This makes me a monster, I suppose. But I've been hated for less, and I'm doing nothing but being honest. Frankly, and I say what everyone else is thinking, if it doesn't bother me, then I don't care. This does, so I will let it bother me.

And since when have clothes from The Gap been cheap?

I also figured I'd add this story for all of you idiots who love to rate before thinking, of the point I'm trying to get at. A friend told this to me.

My friend had been going to a university for four years. This university had an exclusive contract with Coke. The only thing that was sold on campus in terms of food-related wares were Coke and Coca-Cola company products. At the start of his fall semester for his final year, this contract was up for renewal. A bunch of weekend activist students decided that they wanted a cause, and decided to stick up for the laborers in Columbia that Coke employs. They encouraged students speak out against the renewal of the contract because of the unfair conditions in which Coke employs those Columbian workers.

In the end, these activists won. The contract was indeed not renewed, and the University flourished with more than just Coca-Cola brand products...

...except prices in the University skyrocketed. As Coca-Cola controlled the University, they were able to keep prices to reasonable lows. But now since the University is out of the money from a Coca-Cola exclusive contract but still needed to have food wares, that meant they had to turn to the students to get it. Drinks in vending machines went from $1.25 to a walloping $2 per drink. Food prices overall went up enormously.

At the end of the day, a bunch of college students were able to stick up for a bunch of unfairly treated laborers in Columbia. Except that Coke didn't stop doing so. And now students have to pay more money for sticking up for what they believed in.

We live in a world of cause and effect. One thing leads to another.

Edited, Thu May 4 08:50:56 2006 by Viceroy

Ahem, had to chime in here and defend my country. Heineken = Good honestly brewed beer Made in Holland Ok? Got that? It's safe to buy it :P

Man I posted that hours ago. Go steal someone else's line noob. :P

All of life is on a slippery slope and, as individuals, we can do little to mitigate the angle. However, as a group of individuals (think 'FFXI party' vs 'solo'), we can have an effect on some things, even if only a little bit.

If we cave to RMT (who, by the way, I am not happy with because they unbalance the game for everyone, but, especially the good people who play this game who don't actively participate in their 'sport' by buying the product of their ill gotten gains, even though it rarely affects me since my gamestyle is very different than most), we lose a great opportunity to stand up for good and right. We become a part of what is taking over the world, one piece at a time, and we accelerate the slide.

I think those of you born into today's world not that long ago don't have the perspective some of us who are older do to see the vast changes in how things really were to how they are today, and so you accept with grace (or vehemence) these changes. I understand that but please consider very carefully what you are saying and believing, because, unless you do, you are just the kind of 'sheeple' that corporations today want you to be!

In this ever more complicated world of today, we are all tired and begin to just complacently accept anything corporations do because we 'can't do a thing about it' or 'someone else will take care of that' or 'it doesn't affect me personally'.

I understand if you decide this is not something YOU can stand up against, but, please understand those who choose to stand up and speak and/or leave when they see corruption taking place. We do it for the good of YOU ALL, not just for ourselves.

I don't wear Nike, don't eat KFC, don't have diamonds, don't even know what "The Gap" is.

Guess that makes me entitled to say you'd do the world a favor by commiting suicide.
If possible, in an entertaining fashion : I'd like to enter you in the Darwin Awards.

Now, that's beside the point.

The point is this : You comparison is stupid. The guys here aren't "mad at orphans living off the land they want their new golf course on", they're mad at the neighbour who goes the extra mile to ***** them over.
It's not a matter of good versus evil. I don't even believe in those empty concepts.
It's a matter of not supporting those that try to ***** you over.

So, nope, not a moral high ground.
Just basic intelligence : you don't give someone a whip so that he can use it on you.
Finding any excuses for RMT/allakazham is masochism.

Edited, Thu May 4 10:56:33 2006 by Bluuug

Last I checked, the GAP sells like a plain off-white t-shirt for 40 bucks, and then it falls apart in like two weeks. Cheap?

But on-topic, if people spent half the time working on improving their real lives and the world as they do in this game, yes, the world and their (my) lives would definately be better. Is that going to happen? No.

Regardless, this is an ffxi forum and gilselling definately impacts ffxi negatively more than anything.

Well sometimes its easy to avoid companys that you dont like sometimes its hard.

Here you face a direct choise.
A. You stay and support IGE in some way or another and if its just by giving out info.
B. You move on and stand to your point.

In RL its hard to avoid companys that do sweetshop business, i.e I dont buy nike-sneakers but then on the other hand you buy a pair of Jug-Sneakers or a pair of Pointers the company is small and it will say made in korea too so chance is the same sweetshop is making them but you cant tell cause you dont know

Im all in for a RL riot over all the stuff thats wrong but sadly 90% of the whole world population is not.

It would appear that your IQ is Inversly affected by your post count... so lets keep posting, next week we can take a ride on the short bus.