What esl professor asks me to write

Your Beloved Technology Companies Are Destroying People’s Lives

The virtual world is destroying people’s lives while the greedy tech companies try to steal every single penny out of people’s pockets. The products they promote are not accessible for young people. They are expensive and the time it takes to gain the rewards is too long. Young people who live luxurious virtual lives are poor. They waste considerably money and time to sustain their ridiculous life styles. As a society, we should do something about the source of the problem – video games. The governments can help solve this problem by regulating the product contents, making what they offer to young people more affordable, and constraining how long it takes to gain the rewards.

As technology companies are creating highly addictive video games, it’s extremely hard to help young people addicted to Internet while they are surrounded by digital devices. Heavy gamers suffer from major depression, anxiety, and aggression. According to Kardaras, Minecraft can turn a kind little boy into a rage monster (Kardaras 2). In addition, excessive gaming can have irreversible impact on young people’s brains. According to Carr, a study has shown that playing video games promotes more automatic thinking and it has long-term effects on our brains which may be deadly (Carr 3). People should take actions and fight against Internet addiction.

The best way to protect young people from Internet addiction is that the governments regulate the gaming industry so that young people will never spend lots of money and time on gaming. First, technology companies should make their virtual merchandise in the game more affordable or free of charge. For example, one gamer loves a video games called DNF. He eats instant noodle for every meal to save money for his dream weapon so that he can show off his high end arms to his friends. If he could purchase his dream weapon for several pennies, he can invest his money on education and business. Second, game developers should make it less time consuming to get awards in video games. For instance, to get certain rewards, many gamers do the same boring gaming routine even they are sick of playing through the same level. A DNF player need to play through a level more than 50 times to get an armor. It’s hard for a gamer who spend hundreds of hours playing the same game to leave all his achievements behind. If gamers can get every awards in an hour, gamers will not feel obliged to the game and have more time for their real lives.

Some people thinks that people should simply stop buying video games that are addictive, and then, without customer, technology companies who develop addictive games would go bankrupt in the hope that internet addiction would diminish gradually. However, this solution has two major drawback. To begin with, customers can’t distinguish addictive games from others by staring at the packages or watching the introduction videos. They will purchase addictive video games and addicted to them even if they intentionally avoid them. Not to mention that wishing upon a star that people are better than themselves is always a bad solution. Heavy gamers will spend money and time on addictive games even if everyone opposes to do so.

Regulations on video games’ affordability and time consumption can free millions of gamers from greedy technology companies. People should spread the message and raise the awareness of the public to save the young generation.

 

 

Works cited

Carr, Nicholas. “Does the Internet Make You Dumber?” wsj.com. 5 June 2010. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Kardaras, Nicholas. “It’s ‘digital heroin’: How screens turn kids into psychotic junkies.” nypost.com. 27 Aug. 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

 

The Second Half of the 21st Century Econ 15 Hist 15

In the second half of the 21st century, labor norms will change dramatically and governments will play an even bigger role in economy. In the past, people’s material and economic lives are shaped by labor norms. In the 17th century, peasants pursued subsistence labor norms where they grew food for their own consumptions and their life styles were constricted by the nature. Then the commercial labor norms emerged and merchants tended to pay their labors subsistence wages to produce products for profit, which is then invested to expend production (PPT early America). As productivity increased, the conflict between labor and capital built up. Workers unionized and struck against large corporations asking for better working conditions, higher wages, and shorter working hours (Heilbroner 230). To combat depression, government tried to break up trusts (Heilbroner 215), increased taxes, invested in social welfare, and established minimum wages and maximum hours (Heilbroner 306), until the start of Reagan administration. Labor norms changes over time and government is expending even though conservative presidents like Reagan tried to contract government spending and regulation (Heilbroner 341).
In the second half of the 21st century, commercial labor norms will fail in many industries and robots will take over many jobs. There will be a few people who control the computer networks and “oversee” the production procedure. First, due to robots’ extremely high productivity, mass production will not be profitable. History proved that high productivity does not necessarily lead to prosperity in one field. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, farmers could grow far more crops per person, thanks to increasing mechanization. However, farmers’ income dropped because the flood of output resulted in a drop in price (Heilbroner 288). Under Hoover’s administration, Henry A. Wallace thought it was necessary to destroy crops to increase food price. Second, robots will be highly customizable and mass production will not decrease cost, thus operators of the production line can produce moderate amount of products in response to the market’s need, which may eliminate one factor (overproduction) that causes depression, however there will be many challenges. To begin with, people need to be highly educated to get a job and fewer jobs will be available to semi-skilled workers (Heilbroner 369). Wealth may be concentrated and fail to be redistributed. Subsequently, people will have less money to spend, factories produce less products, and private investment will stagnate (Heilbroner 289). In 2050s, people will blame immigrants for taking jobs and ask governments and corporations for “good” jobs (high wages and short hours). 10 years later, people will accept the fact that robots have taken their jobs and ask governments for basic income. In this era, government will play bigger role in economy focus on supply side. Trickledown economics will not work since it will cause diminished purchasing power of middle and lower classes (Heilbroner 355). The only way to make the economy work is to give people basic income and increase spending on social welfare. To prevent monopoly, government will pass more strict law against merger and decrease the interest rates to encourage small business.
As people expect more from the government, government will gain more power. One government’s bold movement may result in complete economic halt. As average people may be able to enjoy their free money, spare time, pursue their interest and gain patronage. The economic system will be vulnerable since entrepreneurs will have little incentive to expend production under high tax rates. Need based production and high government spending may cause inflation.
There will be many challenges in 21st century. The one worries me the most is the unemployment caused by advanced technology while people still despise the idea of basic income and government spending on social welfare. Technology can cause real harm to economy when people and governments are not ready for it.

Bibliography
Heilbroner, R. (n.d.). In The economic transformation of America 3rd edition.