Word: profiteer
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...paychecks remained large enough to attract criticism though, and even as Silverman steered Cendant to a profit peak of $2 billion in 2004, investors were unimpressed. So he heeded their grumbling and broke up the company. The hotels became Wyndham Worldwide, rental cars the Avis Budget Group, travel distribution (Orbitz, Galileo) Travelport, and real estate Realogy. Blackstone bought Travelport last year, and now Realogy belongs to Apollo...
...sold, Second Life forgets the principle of a public good, and does not teach the importance of interdependence that is crucial to adult life in the real world. Such benefits include consideration for the environmental impact of development or the sociological importance of creating stable communities. By overemphasizing profit at the expense of responsibility, Second Life discourages the interpersonal cooperation that could provide an example for our lives in the real world...
...lack of restraint on capitalism defeats the potential good that could be fostered from this malleable digital reality. Rather than promote virtual values that could benefit players, essentially the main objective of Second Life is the reselling of virtual “real” estate at a profit...
...Business Week profiled Anshe Chung, a Second Life user who had made $250,000 USD in virtual Linden Dollars. Chung could exchange this for American dollars on the LindeX Currency Exchange that Linden Lab operates through PayPal. Such singular concern for profit does not make Second Life a good teaching tool, even though companies have claimed to use it as such. In an effort to teach young people how to manage money, Wells Fargo & Co. created an amusement park island on Second Life in 2005 where users could withdraw money from ATMs. Underlying this supposedly instructive intent, was, of course...
...that “there is no solid middle class in Second Life. People are either ‘poor’ or they earn a lot.” A main cause of this is the ease with which users can pursue their self-interest and desires for profit. But what really unites these problems of profit and short-sighted decisions is a general lack of empathy. Users who pursue wealth at the cost of cooperation, teaching, and sound decisions have implicitly exhibited a hierarchy of values that is headed by money...