SOLD To The Highest Bidder

When Commodification Goes Too Far

By Angela Kassahun

 

 

 

 

 

 

On March 17th, a car smothered in bumper stickers advertising web-host Globat LLC pulls up to the emergency room. Asia Francis, a 21-year-old woman from St. Louis, is about to give birth to her first-born. Family members are not the only ones in her Globat-decorated hospital room; the company’s marketing representatives make a special appearance to videotape this magical moment for viewers to enjoy on their corporation’s website. Francis, in her labor-induced state, is wearing a Globat T-shirt under which she has the Globat logo tattooed across her bulging stomach.

A few months earlier, Francis had auctioned the rights to sponsor the birth of her first-born child on eBay. Globat president and CEO Ben Neumann came across Francis’s offer on the online auction site, and made the winning bid of $1,000. “The opportunity to sponsor the birth of a child was simply too exciting to pass up,” Neumann said in a press release.

While it seems eBay’s motto of “whatever it is, you'll find it here

” is widely applicable, it’s not completely accurate. Today, the auction site employs customer service representatives to mull over transaction disputes, keeping an eye on the millions of eBay subscribers who are willing to sell, well, just about anything.

In order to control the online trading forum, eBay has imposed standards to protect its members from going too far. Currently, eBay has listed over 80 restricted items ranging from catalytic converters to gift cards and even the human soul.

he initial reaction to Francis’s story is often one of pity—the absurdity of her decision suggests some sort of unlucky circumstance.1 Not so; Francis, if anything, was lucky. Ridiculous or not, she chose to sell sponsorship rights to the start of her child’s life. Seven years before she gave birth, thousands of people marched on the streets of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Unlike Francis, the citizens of South America’s poorest country had no say in their government’s decision to auction off lives to the highest bidder.

Under pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the Bolivian government sold the country’s drinking water to foreign corporations, twice. The victims—citizens from the cities of Cochabomba and El Alto—went days without access to this basic need for survival. Nobody, not once, intervened to protect those in danger. The institutions that are “working for a world

 

1.Days after her child was born, Francis was asked, “Why sell the sponsorship rights to the birth of your child?” Her answer: “it was out of 75 percent fun and 25 percent for the money.”
2. “Working for a world free of poverty” is etched in the walls of the World Bank headquarters in D.C. In fulfilling their mission statement, the money lending institution has urged over 50 developing countries to privatize their natural resources, leaving tens of thousands without access to both food and water.