Playtested game: products of slavery

These were the revised instructions for the slavery game:

You work on the black market, so you sell whatever you can for whatever prices it will bring you.  

With that money you can buy things.  Your aim is to buy things for yourself and your family so that you will have status and your friends will envy you.

You may or may not know the origin of the products you sell.  Most likely it will have been produced at great harm to the producers.

You will each start off with $25 and a selection of products from the board.

Note down the names of the people who buy from you with the product they bought and the price, ex:

Janine – shoes - $50

Add the money you earn to your original $25 and buy as much as you can.  Note down what you buy and the price, ex:

            Cell phone - $75

            Steaks for 4 - $50

The winner is whoever spends the most money by 11:40

The products are: CHOCOLATE, FRUITS, VEGETABLES, SUGAR, SHOES, COSMETICS, MEAT, JEANS, GOLD JEWELRY, CELL PHONES

During the lesson, I had to clarify that the aim was to buy the higher status objects such as shoes and cellphones and that the lower-end products such as fruits and vegetables were only a means to making money. 

The game ended when one girl had spent all of her money approximately 15 minutes into the game.  I also decided to end it because by that point, one girl was selling her boyfriend (also in the class).   She got $20 for him.

I then asked them to count how much money they had spent.  The winner had spent $178, so i called her up to the front of the class to read the mission statement of the university up to the part where it talked about ediucation people "con conciencia ética".  I then reread the part  of the instructions where it says 

You may or may not know the origin of the products you sell. Most likely it will have been produced at great harm to the producers.

This led into an interesting discussion and journal writing session on both the ethics of blindly following orders as well as the issue of consumerism.  Some of the comments:

• I used to believe that after the Second World War, nothing worse could happen, but now I discovered that people are even more curel than they were in that time.
• I didn't think of what you were asking us.  It was just a game! 
• Do you trust the company or the activists?  Both can lie. 
• We need to be more aware of what we do and what we buy.