AWOL - Big Essay Draft 4

Is the American way of life fragile or sturdy? Most Americans find their way of living non-negotiable. “Americans don't seem to find anything wrong with them. It seems that the American public agrees. Our way of life is so special, so unique, so satisfying that it must be protected at all costs” (www.faulkingtruth.com). Protecting the American way of life has been evident for the past centuries when ‘America’ was The average American feels that their way of living is supposedly the ‘right’ way of living and that every person should live in that particular way. Of course the average American can also agree that the American way of life is to also strive to be successful and to make money; a positive way of living by benefiting one’s self.

A way that Americans strive to be successful to make money is through capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system that involves laborers who help produce and sell the supply that is within the ‘free market’. Three main parts of capitalism is the land, labor and the capital. The land represents the natural world; everything one would use to make stuff—out of raw materials. Labor is the all of the work necessary to produce and sell the product. Capital is the money or tools used to make profit. Supply and Demand play a role in which supply is produced by the laborers, land and capital and is sold for any price, meanwhile the amount of supply stays the same. Demand is the amount of products purchased by the consumer, at all prices. The process of supply and demand is the profit motive to invest money through private ownership where goods and services are distributed.

A person familiar with the hip-hop culture is a Hispanic teen who explains that the American way of life involves three things, “Money, power and respect.” In his opinion, he finds that having respect by gaining a ‘title’ in society, or among friends, will help one survive for being known for what they do. Similar to Capitalism, Money and power are alike in ways that the more power one has, the more money he/she receives for having that kind of power. The Hispanic teen adds that it is some what of a privilege to have the power, the ability, to do something he/she is good at and get paid for it, and it is likely that after one gets paid, it is priority to provide for others whether it is for family or friends, before one’s self. In most cases, in society, money does buy happiness, only when it involves food, shelter and education—a good aspect about the American way of life. Within Capitalism, companies are only ‘happy’ when they find a way to make profit/power by adjusting the company’s supply and demand.

However, in the process of making profit through Capitalism—or any given situation, competition does occur. Competition creates an opportunity, for most companies, to expand and make money. Globalization, a comparative advantage, is a process that allows companies to expand their businesses to other countries by trading across seas to make more profit compared to what they would usually make in the states. To a certain extent, competition has its downfall towards American businesses because it gives American citizens less opportunity to having a job. Although Capitalism may benefit most monopolies, in some way it creates a disadvantage towards others companies below monopolies when trying to make money.

EBay is an example of capitalism and how little and big companies work. Within EBay, there are sellers who are, I would say, have the most bidders and least amount of bidders-more demand than other 'companies', which plays a big role on how successful a person can be with selling their product. All of what people actually do to the product is cause inflation by constantly raising the price in the matter of hours. In any given situation of buying and selling, one can agree with the phrase, 'time is money'.

My 'EBay experience' was rather annoying than it was ‘fun’. This was the first time I used EBay to bid on an item that I could have possibly wanted. At first I didn't know what to bid on, so for the hell of it, I bid on a pair of ballerina flats that were $19.99 (plus shipping).

I started to bid on the item on Monday of last week. The bid was coming to a quick end, in about two hours. At first the shoes were auctioned for $5.99. At the time I bid higher just in case someone were to outbid me. LITERALLY, one minute later, I was out-bidded by a random user. I bidded again, 2 dollars higher than the previous bidder, and once again I was outbidded by the same user. I honestly was not going to wait around to hope that I hopefully won the bid, so I stopped trying to out-bid the user and went looking for the same pair, for just $19.99. I was the first bidder, and the auction was going to last two days later.

To my surprise, after the two days, I won the bid. At the time I did not use any strategy to try to win a bid. I asked Tyler Scrima what he does to win bids, since he has been buying and selling off of EBay since the 8th grade. He told me to wait till the very last minute to place a bid, however when I tried doing that, previously, somebody was still out-bidding me. It was annoying to the extent where I had to try to out-bid other people to get this one item. But after realizing that it is a website where people actually bid or buy items for cheap, which explained to me why people spend a great amount of time trying to find bargains--not that it is a bad thing of course.

On the day after Thanksgiving, most Americans consider that day as a holiday known as "Black Friday". During that time of year, most chain stores, such as Wal-Mart, sell their products for more than 50% off. On that day, shoppers are obligated to buy whatever they can get, even if they do not exactly 'need' that product. What's frustrating about black Friday is that after buying so many things, shoppers put themselves in a position where they have to pay all these bills after maxing out their credit cards. In the end, most of them are wondering where their money had gone. It comes to show how materialistic Americans have come to be.

With my experience on Black Friday, my family and I spent our time in the Poconos, where we actually did not shop for anything. We live in Reeders, PA which is a five minute drive from the outlet, and 15 minute drive from the mall. Because I had a basketball tournament that same day, my parents actually drove all the way from PA to NY to make it to the game in the Bronx. My cousin also tagged along because she was staying i New York City for the next two weeks. While I was playing in my basketball game, my family toured the city, visiting the Empire State Building.

In regards to 'Buy Nothing Day', if people were to actually follow up on that day, the economy would shift in terms supply & demand. Even though Americans are aware of the consequences for buying an excessive amount of products, people are still go about their way to do something that affects them in a negative way-which in my opinion is ridiculous.

On the day of Black Friday, a man who went by the name Jdimytai Damour was killed while working at his job in Wal-Mart. In the morning of Black Friday, Damour and other workers were assigned to barricade the Wal-Mart doors, until the store opened-which was at 5:00am. Witnesses say that "he was bum-rushed by 200 people" (NY Daily News) which unfortunately lead to his death an hour later when he arrived in the hospital.

It is more pathetic than it is outrageous that the people who were involved with the shopping spree were selfish enough to not realize that they were running over a man. It is explainable that if only one person to stop, and try to help him, then that same person would have been ran over as well--however, that would not be the case if everybody realized what was really going on below their feet.

Shoppers "took the door off the hinges", "Chant[ed] 'push the doors in", and when Wal-Mart employees tried to close down the store, after the death of Damour, shoppers were yelling, "I've been on line since Friday morning!"

The American way of life, based off this incident, shows how much concern Americans have over saving a little over $100 than a life of a person. "Whats funny about this is that they bum-rushed into the store, took the door off the hinges, and in the end did not steal anything" (Ben Sherry)-- which is ironic because that is usually something a robber would do when trying to steal something from a store. The anticipation and the rush of Black Friday show how fiend people are to get 'material items' such like your flat screen TV, or laptops and such--Not even realizing they had killed a person in the past 24 hours.

Aside from the death of Jdimytai Damour on Black Friday, it is often that people view the American way of life as a negative lifestyle. One of the major issue/concerns Americans have while living in America is the way the government is structured and the actions taken while in the war with Iraq. Anthony, a middle-class teen, believes that the American way of life is to “stabilize America’s economy and the social issues concerning the war in Iraq.” American citizens go out of their way to not only survive in society, but to also clean up the government’s “dirty work”. In any given situation, “Americans try to help themselves, but by doing so, they are hurting other people in the process.”—similar to how the shoppers at Wal-Mart tried to help themselves, but by doing so, they killed a Wal-Mart employee.

On November 4th, 2008, history was made when candidate Barack Obama was elected President of the United States for the Next four years. His successful win did not surprise me when he won most of America’s vote; however I was much concerned on how the polls could have changed in the next few weeks. Because Obama is a Democrat, I felt that votes needed to be recounted, in reference to what had happened years ago with Al Gore and then four years later with Kerry, assuming that the ‘incident’ would happen again with McCain.

Not to offend those who support Obama, but I feel that this year's election has gone way out of hand. I feel that ever since Obama was recognized, he has been some kind of icon where his face is on every wall, every t-shirt, pin, bag, pencil, you name it. Of course there is nothing wrong with that; trying to publicize the election to the public, however in my perspective, I feel that it has been some kind of popularity contest where everybody is voting for him ‘just to get on the band-wagon’.

I knew two republicans in our school, even during Bush's eight years of presidency, they both still supported him. And ever since Obama came along they had surprisingly switched sides, and started to support Obama. It is great that Obama is now the President-elect, but in my opinion, I believe the two previous-republicans switched parties because 99.99% of their friends are Obama supporters. They could have still supported McCain... he hasn't done anything quite as dramatic as Bush, but he still is a republican, yet they still changed their Vote for Obama.

"For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple... the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job."
(http://www.howobamagotelected.com/)

Regardless of who was going to win, it should not have been a popularity contest--people can agree that they did have some similar changes they wanted to make, but it’s all about who is going to ACTUALLY make that change and clean up all the mess that Bush has made for the past eight years? Either Obama or McCain would struggle to try to fix that up, but because the U.S. is already messed up, I assume that Obama [in this case] is just going to leave things the way they already are and just tweak things up--just a bit.

The race has not only been some kind of popularity contest, but as well
Bottom line, It is great that Barack Obama is the President-elect, but I do not think that people had the right reasons for voting for him, majority of the people at least.

Other than the government, a middle-class Asian mentioned how the American way of life in the city is different, in comparison to those who live in the suburbs. “The American way of life in the city is career oriented, while in the suburbs, the way of living is more family oriented.” Geographically speaking, a person’s way of living is different in a certain households; their way of living is the way he/her survives in the American society. He says that “in the past, the American way of life was for families to immigrate to the states and to live freely.” Now, “Most people are working hard for money, usually taking the money they make for granted.”

One of the good aspects about the American way of life is the “opportunities one has when trying to pursue a career, or dream.” In comparison to those who live in third world countries, the American way of living would consider to be a ‘great’ way living, in terms of having a job and providing for him/her self. The Asian male added that he “feels lucky, in a way, to be able to walk outside freely.” With that being said, he added that “people sometimes abuse the American way of life by taking advantage of the materialistic things”. People do not realize how privileged they are to live in America, while others are actually struggling in other parts of the world.

Karl Marx, of the 1800s, would think otherwise.

Karl Marx, a philosopher and analyst of Capitalism, is known for his book The Communist Manifesto, with Friedrich Engle, a radical capitalist. During the mid 1800s, Marx tried to understand capitalism and how it developed; a process known as the Dialectic. The dialectic is the method of looking at different situations that could have led to an event/phenomenon; the way things changed due to collisions. Within the dialectic is the thesis (the original situation) anti-thesis (developing contradiction): higher synthesis (Capitalism). The Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, another philosopher at the time, believed that the change in quantity, in any given situation, lead to a different kind of reality. He thought that history was a process that the world was most likely going to turn into in a point in time; a physical reality. In relation to Marx’s dialectic process in Capitalism, it was believed that Capitalism was a process that helped others become socialists. The “division of labor necessarily draws after it greater division of labor, the employment of machinery greater employment of machinery, work upon a large scale work upon a still greater scale” (Marx). In Capitalism, it was also a process that showed how the owners got richer while the worker of the company remained poor.

The division of labor, within the capital, also defines Marx’s Primitive Accumulation of the Capital. The Primitive Accumulation of the Capital is “a small percentage of the population obtained possession of the necessary resources to start businesses which employ people and gain profit” (Wikipedia). The process in which the capital creates businesses/companies is through the laborers. Capitalism also seeks for “competition by restlessly introducing further subdivision of labor and new machines, which, though more expensive, enable him to produce more cheaply, instead of waiting until the new machines shall have been rendered obsolete by competition” (Marx). Marx felt that overall; capitalism was fundamentally irrational for workers. In order for the owners to obtain the machinery, land, farms, etc. to make the commodity, the owner had enslave and create genocide, by exploiting people who were and are still willing to alienate him/her self to work for the capital.

An example of Americans alienating theirs selves is Americans being “fueled by the media”, which is could be a negative aspect of the American way of life. The same Asian male argued that the American way of life “is relied on the media, and how it is sudden that hip-hop became a new ‘culture’ opposed to being Asian, Hispanic, or other ethnicities.” In each culture are certain morals, while in the new culture of hip-hop persuades one to ‘brand’ his/her self with expensive clothing. The person who strives to be a part of the hip-hop culture is much concerned about he/she carries his/her self, to try to impress others of what they have, while other cultures are morally involved with family and religion. The average American alone alienates their self by looking for a certain image to follow in order to have a higher self esteem to fit within the American community.

In Capitalism, one is capable of alienating his/her self by selling the time and energy to make money. Workers who are easy to sell his/her labor-power, “their ability to work” (Ollman), to capitalism are known as ‘Proletarian’. An example that used to take place, and still exists today is prostitution. Women who seek for money use their own body as the product of their own ‘company’ are known as prostitutes. They sell their body by having sex with men (or women), and get paid in return of their ‘deeds’ that were made. In relation to capitalism, laborers sell their selves to the capital by “[maintaining] the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labor, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours” (Marx). Regardless of how great or little the pay is for a large amount of hours worked, laborers are more willing to sacrifice what they would normally do at home, or maybe school, to make money and provide for his/her family, which is common for the average American.

However, a Hispanic teen explained how it is more of a racial issue to survive in America than it is about being in a certain class. He said that the ‘white man’ in society usually is viewed to have more power than the ‘black man’ who strives to be as successful as the ‘white man’. It is difficult in most situations when a black-male, or female, is underestimated for what he/she does, because of the color of their skin. Though laws have been passed against discrimination, unfair judgment still exists today, even outside of working class citizens.