The Six Economies of SL: Why They Clash
The Six Economies of SL: Why They Clash
Vasnetsov, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (1887).
If you think about it, you can see how the six economies of Second Life, far from being integrated and helping each other, inevitably clash, because each one is animated by interests that conflict with the others. The six economies include a spectrum of outworld to inworld, running from 1) Lindens 2) Solution Providers; 3) Educators and Non-Profits 4) Inworld Content Creators, Realtors and Sole Proprietors; 5) Hobbyists 6) Workers and Welfare Recipients
1. The Linden Lab Economy. This is Linden Lab’s own economic interests as a real-life company, not the inworld economy. It is the most relevant outworld economy to us all. Linden Lab of course makes the world and its economy and holds it on its severs, so of course at one level, we’re all grateful.
At another level, as it turns out, our interests clash in the inworld economy:
o Supply Linden sells Lindens on the LindEx to make money for LL; this is like Yeltsin printing and selling rubles and leading to the ruble krakh. RL countries try to avoid policies involving too much dependency on printing currency to “help the poor” yet LL feels they have to do this not only for their own income of some half a million US per month, which covers all or much of the cost of running the LindEx itself (though may not make up for fraud costs); LL says they have to run it “for the sake of the children,” the newbies who need cheap currency or they won’t come in. Thus Supply Linden erodes our wages, but enables content and rentals to be purchased. LL also prints stipends for premium accounts which also erodes value but enables premiums to pay for their accounts if they annualize them.
o LL prints and sells land on the auction at will. This is the chief synthetic feature of the economy, after printing Lindens. It is here where the land policy of glutting has really harmed economy no. 3. Yes, content providers are so closely linked to realtors (virtualtors) in this economy, that when one suffers, the others will too. LL gets more money from sales from especially newbies wanting land, and supposedly brings in more customers that helps the entire economy to float higher, but it doesn’t quite work. By dropping prices over night making people in this economy lose their investment by 40 percent, then breaking the back of regular private island and mainland land barons further by releasing thousands of low-prim sims into the market, along with $750 mainland auctions, the Lindens made it hard for rentals and land sales companies to keep attracting paying customers. The customers went and become end users, buying their own land, but then…those customers, often in the hobby economy, no. 4, couldn’t get their part-time rental hobby started with all the competition, or couldn’t get anyone to buy their land for a profit, once the thrill of paying $75 a month wore off.
o LL created and developed Bay City, thus getting directly into competition with Economies 2) and 4), making high-priced built up communities that sold for fortunes in Lindens. This land, priced in Lindens, soaked up land baron and lingering casino and bank cash that then found its way back on to the LindEx, enabling the Lindens to collect on cashout fees, although lessening the need for Supply Linden to print cash. BTW, I think Supply Linden must be selling less now as for the last two months, you’ve been able to wait about 24-48 hours with a limited sell and sell it for 264 or 263, not 265. The months previous to this, you could put a packet out all month and it would never sell at 263, there were too many ahead of you.
o LL as the all-seeing game gods can devise policies that no one else knows (or perhaps only a few held close in the Solutions Providers economy) and introduce features or policies that can have devastating impact on the other economies — banning casinos, banks, “ageplay” etc. They can also constantly tinker with the software, and features like “traffic,” deciding at a whim to remove the way in which most people in the 3rd Economy make sales — search/places/sorted by traffic.
o LL has a product to sell: its own company and a sort of idealistic world-generating software. Therefore it needs to put the product’s best face forward. That means programs like Showcase, where only a select few dozen stores with fashion or gadgets, or hangouts or live music venues, get to be featuerd within the client and on the website, driving traffic to their sites. The selections are arbitrary and not always felt to be demonstrably of quality by “the community,” but even if they were, the problem of windfall for the few at the expense of the many would remain.
o LL sells classifieds, which, unlike other Linden dollar expenditures such as for textures or group formation, are not “sinks,” but are income that the Lindens convert to dollars. That means everyone is paying a tax to do business, because there is no free “Yellow Pages”. Whether you pay $30 a week in Search/Places ads through the land menu, which is a sink but a cost for you, or pay the Lindens a hundred American dollars just to stay on the first page of the Classifieds, you have a fixed and often heavy cost for your business.
o Linden arbitrarily decides whether “for any reason or no reason” you can be banned from the world or forums or both threatening mainly those in the 3rd Economy who need to debate inworld policies more on the forums and blogs, and who need the advertising capacity of the classifieds on the forums.
o Linden siphons off builders and content providers and pays them US $10/hour, which undercuts the 2nd Economy of Solutions Providers who pay more, but can’t pay steadily nor promise a permanent visible resume in world with their projects — the Lindens hold them for longer and keep the builds out permanently.
2. Solution Providers. Those articulate individuals who are in this class often have the financial, legal, and PR clout to argue that they are a benefit to the entire SL economy, even threatening you with a libel suit if you beg to differ. But objectively speaking, they are displacers.
o They siphon off the most talented labour. Those builders and scripters who used to run their own little or big inworld businesses in the 3rd Economy, and therefore form part of the warp and weave of exchange of goods and services among micropayments, disappear from the 3rd economy. Where once their prices were affordable for rental agents or dressmakers who needed a store, now they are priced out of the market. That is, it’s not as if they were paid slave wages, as inworld businesses are prepared to pay
o They use their proximity to LL, which favours them in various ways with special meetings, groups, access, to help sway their views, lobbying them against camping and traffic, which benefit the 3rd and 5th Economies, which are their rivals, or lobbying for specials like Showcase that give them visitors.
o They do not “invest in the economy”. Rather than, say, run an ad campaign that involves renting mall space, or sponsoring live music or other events, they use real-life media or simply restrict their presence to their own island (one of the reasons for their corporate clients’ failures). Sure, they might order 100 Lillith Heart trees for their decoration, but we’ve also seen them shamefully ask for bulk discounts at ridiculous prices to their former fellow citizens, now that they are “big spenders” — a major problem with the SL “corporate invasion” of 2007 is that we weren’t really dealing with outside corporations that might have been expected to have some scruples and procedures; we were dealing with the inflated egos of our former fellow citizens who were now too cool for school, and some of them were as nasty as they could be with their new ego-boosters.
o But we also found some of them were not so scrupulous, stealing IP by putting, say, the name of a company suit on a product or build and advertising their “project” when in fact it was built by undocumented aliens, poor people in SL who couldn’t complain that they didn’t have a contract in the real world and were sometimes paid in Lindens. So this is now the 2nd Economy harms the 3rd — the Solutions Providers hire a lot of the 3rd economy content creators, making them now in a sense traitors to the 3rd Economy needs, because they can’t care about it anymore.
This is exemplified in the harsh words of Nase, who typifies the “Solution Provider” mentality that hires types like him out of the 3rd Economy, where he might sometimes dabble for less, if a neighbour wants him to build a castle, in between waiting for higher-paying gigs in real dollars outside “the game”.
“its better for the player to get good cars free than to pay for bad cars” says Nase, by which he means, content is king, let professionals make it and give it away, and if it undercuts amateur selling the same kind of thing that is “bad,” then too bad for them. “it doesnt matter. the most im portant thing is that the indigenous get the best content at the lowest cost. especially free. regardless of who loses business or not as a result. as long as content gets to the player its good,” says Nase, and there you have it: fuck the economy, fuck everybody else, just create content for the masses — and let the Solutions Providers decide what is “good” for those masses — never worrying how they might make a living at their level, either.
Yes, Nase’s Darwinist statements, with their bad grammar, really epitomize the attitude of the Solutions Provider. They are here to make content for high-paying contents, and fuck the rest of SL. They should realize they are getting good content, and shut up. RightasRain Rimbaud is typical of this attitude. The rest of SL, with its adult products, its trendency toward gambling or prostitution — it’s to be destroyed. The rest of SL, with its tacky, amateur content — it should be removed, and the People should just flock to professional content laid out for their edification, that they pay-per-view for.
3. Education and Non-Profit Economy. It goes without saying that when foundations and governments support projects in SL, SL thins out, becomes merely a tool, a platform, a shelf space for interactivity that leads to the destruction of the natural indigenous economy focusing on the exchange of goods and services inworld. Education is decidedly an outworld phenomenon, even more than business, which could, in theory, merely be entertaining or providing “adventures” for people within their inworld context, even while focusing on their outworld companies’ PR and products. Education is a product you must emerge with to sell in the real world, whether that real world will involve some online aspect or not.
o Educators, especially the leftists coming in to SL to do all their new “progressive” theories, have no interest in buying and selling and capitalist profit. They abhor it. They love giving away things for free, as they think everybody should be living in a primitive gift-giving economy. Trade and barter and giving all seem to them to be living lightly on the planet with a low-impact footprint; money seems essentially to be all about large carbon footprints to them, and they find it evil. Flush with grants that can be hard getting but last for 3 or 5 years, educators could finally finish off what the 4th economy has established in terms of sales and services and culture. Educators can make use of free labour — their students, or pay them $10/hour like the Lindens pay builders. Non-profits can collect donations, and play on people’s consciences to pay to save people or animals or earth, instead of buying bling. The Lindens love this economy likely even more than the 2nd Economy of Solutions Providers who in part work for educators, because Solutions Providers complain a lot about the Lindens not being commercial enough. Lindens, deep in their fattie-huffing hard-rock souls, want to turn vegetarian and jog more and become a 3-d streaming NPR. Educators help realize their dream, as they are uplifting the next generation with high-minded study of Digital Arts instead of miring them in kinky sex and conspicuous consumption.
o Educators will complain if confronted with this reality of their destructiveness that they are “helping the economy” because they might hire a scripter to put in yet another overpriced notecard-taker or greeting facility, or because they buy 100 Lillith Heart trees and possibly a business suit or dress. Mainly, since they will be trying to opensource everything and make everything for free, they are creating — or trying to create — another world, a world where one ever has to do anything grubby like sell something or charge interest, a world where everyone can life for free. The problem with this world is that it always turns out to be damn boring, and nobody comes. Still, we can expect droves and droves of these people coming in to make 3-D NPR, and we’re in for a rocky ride.
o Educators get a 15 percent non-profit discount on sims, which pits their content against those of the 4th economy and other economies, since they get a boost, especially if they involve any stores that do in fact sell gadgets or if they sell rentals or conference space. As some educators may be challenged to cut costs, they may get into conference-space rentals or even rental of homes or shops — like the Lindens, they may fete a select group of professional content makers and have them have shops with for-sale items, and give away a lot of other stuff that undercuts other professionals and amateurs. The Lindens don’t really lose by giving away sims at a 15 percent loss because they can sell more of them and keep the long-term grant recipients on tier for 3 years.
4. Inworld Content Creators, Realtors, Sole Proprietors, Service Agents This is the heart of what most people mean by “the economy” because it is what creates the world after the Lindens merely roll out a server with grass or water on it. These businesses of SL, large or small, make up most of the visible content. Linden content and Solutions Provider content is not as visible simply because they are on less servers. Governor Linden owns probably about 15 percent of the Mainland, a lot of it empty, and the Solutions Providers, we were told, own about 15 percent of the sims, usually on behalf of businesses paying their costs, maybe less, as some of them have left.
o The 4th Economy supplies the overwhelming percentage of the Lindens’ bottom line made from land sales, tier, and currency sales. It exists primarily to benefit the 1st Economy, the Lindens.
o The 2nd and 3rd Economies compete and displace the 4th Economy, but the 4th Economy of inworld content makers is eyed with squint-eyed dislike by nos. 2 and 3 because it pulls people away from the services and content of 2nd and 3rd. The flying phalluses, so they imagine, come from this sector, or the 6th Economy of welfare recipients who exploit the camping dollars and land of the 4th Economy for their presence. 2nd economy, Solutions Providers, hates the undercutting of their overpriced services from 4th. 3rd Economy, educators, worries about content and events pulling their students away or simply providing them same goods and knowledge content for free or for less cost — eventually, amateur class giving of people who acquired knowledge could well supplant education costing a fortune, if online accreditation begins to recognize people for competency tests rather than hours sat in a classroom. It’s not a challenge facing us in the near future, however, as the educational class holds tight to their credentially power in real life.
o the 2nd economy harms the 4th economy most by making stables of professional artists who work for outside companies for outside real dollars that stay out of circulation, creating venues that in theory, anyway, are supposed to attract the masses. If the masses don’t find it compelling to get a little plot of land themselves, and tinker around with a shack and an amateur product on their own (which is what keeps many ordinary people interested in SL), they will in theory flock to this more managed entertainment, and abandon both payments of tier to the 1st Economy, the Lindens, and to the 4th Economy, rentals agents.
This never quite seems to happen, as most people find it useful to live rooted in the 4th economy, where they themselves can make a buck if they chose, and only visit the 2nd economies builds on an as-needed basis if they are attractive.
o the 4th economy harms the 5th economy, the Hobbyists, because they demand “real” policies that can create markets of value. The Hobbyists needs land to be low-cost and always the same price, and is often forgetful that he needs a market to buy his land back, as the shelf-space providers don’t want to buy it back, busy rolling out more. Hobbyists hate that people don’t want to be in SL “to have fun” as they are. They think people should give things away more too, and shouldn’t be “consumed with making a profit”. Or perhaps, just sell a little, prudently, to pay tier. The Hobbyists are often the bossiest and loudest at forums and office hours because they can play on the leftism of the educators and Lindens in the other economies, and prey on their hatred of land barons and commercial content, by insisting that “people should have fun” and “everything should be free”. They undercut the market, except that often, willy-nilly, they are drawn into selling things themselves, starting out giving things away for free and “having fun” on demand but then realizing they can have that “fun” include making money — so they lose their amateur status. They tend to keep their demand for shelf-paper land, however, unless their hobby turns to renting all or part of their sim to cover some or all costs. They tend to emphasize that they are making “communities” and that people who charge rent to make a living in real life are “gouging” or are “rapacious” unlike themselves, Lady Bountiful. Rental hobbyists of course undercut the land market, not only by offering free or cheap rent, but by not caring if their land sells, when they want to stop paying tier.
o the 4th Economy harms the other economies by buying and deploying bots for traffic infusion. This causes log-in log-jams, lag, and anger at unfair traffic advantage. The 2nd Economy responds by wanting to kill traffic as a metric, or kill or regulate bots, or outlaw camping, or get rid of clubs and malls that tend to be the major users of bots, and force people to buy from third-party sites usually owned by one proprietor who makes a percentage off every one else’s sales.
o the 4th economy, integrated with each other, tends to put some money back into the 4th economy because one business depends on another for supplies. Some businesss also have non-profit aspects to their business so that they put money into the hands of consumers, or provide free land or products as loss leaders for the good of consumers. But at the top, their pull is to real life if they spend 40 hours a week in SL — they have to make a living. So they are like guestworkers on the Lindens’ estate, sending their remittances back home to real life where they need to really pay their bills. After paying tier to the 1st Economy, they send a good deal of the rest to their real life bill-collectors. They are a source of support for other businesses, but the pull back to real life means that they feed the overall tendency to make SL a platform and tool for elites entertaining masses like TV or Disneyland, rather than a world that makes economic opportunity for everybody at all kinds of levels (which has been its strength).
o if it starts to fail, the 4th Economy, by owning a lot of the newspapers or blogs or garnering the coverage in mainstream media, can pull down all of SL and ultimately even damage the 1st Economy for the Lindens. Negative press coverage about gambling or sex or now even real-life kidnapping from a romance gone sour is all emanating from the 4th economy, where most consumers participate, buying houses or skins (like the lion avatar) to live inworld. The 4th Economy is objectively speaking, the true class enemy of 2nd and 3rd, who would like to make a condominium with 1st in order to make a controlled-content software and platform services provider that the masses have to conform to and not make a buck from.
o if it fails, the 4th Economy stops buying land or logging on to view content and go to events and turn to other worlds or go back to RL, and loss of membership presence begins to form bad press for LL. Their strategy seems to be to compensate for this by whittling back the 4th economy so that 2nd and 3rd can procede to eventually make up their bottom line — if between them, education and solutions providers for business make up, say, 40 percent of their revenue now, they can keep working to make it 60 percent and really put the 4th economy people on the run, while disciplining consumers to behave better.
5. The Hobbyists. I’ve outlined how the 4th economy is harmed by the Hobbyists, or fights them and harms them, too, by keeping prices of land and content high. The Hobbyist, with his eternal willingness to pay tier and open up his arms to his friends out of his own pocket, is the dream of Linden Lab because he pays without demanding political power or economic equity, as the 2nd and 4th economies do, who are battling LL policies for a piece of the economic pie, and trying to keep LL from competing with them.
o The Hobbyist doesn’t care if LL creates Bay City; he imitates it and offers it for free or he ignores it as he putters with his own stuff
o The Hobbyist can count on the fact that everybody has a hobby, and SL can become an easy hobby for many people at an amateur level, because just about anybody can at least make a t-shirt or sell other stuff at a yard sale or sell on commissions just to make a buck or two to buy more content. The Hobbyist can always sound the siren call that people “should have fun” to the 4th economy, inviting them to work at real-life jobs more and make real money where they “should,” and “have fun” in SL on their land instead of slaving away in Photoshop or officer menu clearing prims.
o The Hobbyist, by his tinkering and self-educational inclination, forms a ready substrate for classes, business seminars, etc. because he can just justify his time spent there as “for fun” or “interest,” since it isn’t taken away form a real-life or slaving SL job.
o The Hobbyist sometimes has RL wealth to dispose and can realize his dream and feel like a big philanthropist with much less money than it would take to do the same thing in RL, so he can really obtain ego satisfaction and a sense of meaning from SL in ways that few others can.
6. Worker and Welfare Class This class, as in real life, is loathed and despised.
o Most people think camping is ruining the economy and drawing resources, because people sit and do nothing and collect pogey. The few dollars they make do get ploughed into content, but some are poor in RL and cashing out to RL and living off freebies.
o Pole-dancers and sex workers who make some, but not a huge amount of money in SL (the poseball and bed makers make a lot more) are despised as prostitutes are scorned in RL, but they do represent a sector of entry-level jobs not needing an awful lot of special training, especially at the lower levels of clients. Sex workers feed the fashion, sex furniture, and rentals businesses to some extent, and live in clubs that are all part of the 4th estate, but I’ve put them in the 6th Economy as separate because they simply don’t tend to make as much money as the more skilled working class. The 4th Economy basically exploits them.
o No Payment Information on File accounts do not benefit LL except to show membership statistics already widely discredited as inflated, and are loathed as people taking up CPU resources without “putting back into the economy,” but of course, this is a gross misreading. NPIOF make up some of the wealthiest content producers in the 4th Economy who don’t repatriate wealth. They also make up the masses, like it or not, available to view content, buy content at least in small quantities, and go to events. Every world needs a free pass; perhaps the Lindens don’t make it easy for accounts to get content and Lindens more easily upon entry, without being tied down to land and monthly tier payments, which scare people, as they imagine they could keep getting socked with a bill and not be able to get rid of their land — and it’s true, they are stuck paying for any land tier they incurred within a 30 day period even if they dump that land after one day.
There are probably lots more ways in which each type of economy harms at least one or more of the other economies in this unhappy family — they constantly combine and vitiate each other in untold ways.
Some people look at a mass of internal contradictions like this, and they, like Karl Marx, conclude that all these contradictions need to be sharpened and revolutionary struggle encouraged until capitalism, and buy-sell economies, are simply destroyed. Others more pacifist in nature imagine if they can just go on relying on the capitalist wealth from the last century (foundations) or socialism (government grants), they can bring about socialism peacefully in SL. They’d like to remove all the conflict and clashing interests because they hate turbulence. If this harms economic opportunity for the masses, or even just an educated middle class online, too bad, as those people should be engaged in more spirtually enlightened and uplifting education or work that doesn’t involve making slutwear and dirty pose balls.
I’ve written over and over again about solutions to integrate the warring economies more, but it’s important that intelligent beings in the Linden economy sit down, review the real numbers for each of these economies, and devise ways to make them both help the 1st economy and not kill each other. It truly is a staggering balancing act.
These policies would include:
1. For the 1st economy of Linden Lab:
o control of land supply — and that’s being done, as the land glut ended and the spigot is turned off for 2 months
o cease developments that compete directly with inworld economy
o transparency on the land auction
o consideration of moving to a “buy now” and “resident upload” system on the auctions (this needs debating, not sure if this would work)
o end ad farming extortion that devalues land and exploits others’ businesses, regulate advertising and both enable more of it — in welcome areas with rules but with accessibility — and ban it from residential areas like prime waterfront, i.e. limit to to commercial sims with roadside.
o regulate bots so that they are visibly marked on profiles, so that bot-herders must pay for the accounts and enable people to bar them from their land
o refrain from creating special groups like SL Views or special traffic generation for the select like Showcase to avoid creating unfair advantage of one group over another; avoid announcing policy changes only to privileged developers first for their exploitation
o formation of a Business Architectural Working Group that has the 2nd and 4th economy representatives on it to participate in the debate of issues surrounding interoperability and open source so that it is not just left to the tekkies, who basically fall in either the 2nd or 5th economies and war against the 4th.
o create an “Explorers’ Account” for $10 one-time fee only that contains content that rotates from inworld content providers, and also MONEY so that people don’t have to worry about how to buy Lindens. People can use their one-time visa cards from the drug store for this, or not fear recurring charges. The biggest fear that people have about games and worlds — or the fears of their spouses upon whom they depend! — is a recurring charge for land or subscription that they might get stuck with, even a small one that can throw off a bank accounting and cause a $35 overdraft fee. So remove that fear by offering ONE-TIME Explorer accounts with money to buy that is purchased, not given as a stipend.
2. For the Solutions Providers and Their Clients in the 2nd Economy
o more diverse hiring practices that do not favour only one company, and make a wider use of the wealth of content providers
o advertise inworld through buying mall space, sponsoring music and other events or advertising in newspapers and blogs — the single most goodwill-buying exercise that companies coming into SL could engage in. The costs to rent at inworld malls and clubs and such are cheap, and the goodwill purchased is immeasurable.
o more joint sponsorship on builds and events for outworld clients, rather than cooptation or competition, find partnerships
o cease the campaign against traffic, as its based on a distorted belief that this puts only certain venues in the search — it benefits many, many people whose businesses rely on search
3. For the Educators
o stop making so many freebies and exploiting free student labour. You have a budget, use it on inworld goods and services. Spending $50 US a month could be a big help — stop the freebie madness and buy and sell, as people learn from this and gain a living from this. Encourage the students to set up a real profitable business so that they become part of the economy instead of a drain on it
o rent from land barons not only for headquarter space but for informational kiosks
o open up events not only to those paying for credit through real-life institutions, but make classes available for Lindens, in small segments, and accept more instructors from outside the university proper
4. For the Content-Creators, Realtors, Service-Providers
o stop making so many freebies, and put items on transfer so that others can resell them — the biggest help to newbies. Rather than “helping noobz” with free non-transfer content, help them with low-cost resellable content and let them be, it stimulates the economy.
o create really functioning and accountable (instead of loony and self-interested) Chambers or Commerce (not to be confused with Better Business Bureaus which should be run as non-profits) that hold to a set of ethics and best practices, i.e. not reselling stolen goods, not confiscating land that was purchased in island scams, making prefabs copyable but not transferrable, putting good notecarded instructions inside the product, etc.
o don’t undersell yourself to Lindens or Solutions Providers, $10/hour is not a living wage in many countries.
o have good business policies clearly stated on your profile regarding refunds or exchanges or customer service, and stick to them
o don’t buy from ad farmers or advertise with them
5. For the Hobbyists
o while recognizing what *you* find as fun, stop the forums and office hour campaigns against others who wish to have an economy, stop the lobbying for destruction of the land market or shaming people who don’t offer everything for free. There is enough very cheap and good land around in SL especially on private islands that it is nuts to be banging on other sectors of the economy that are your potential audience or customers or even friends.
o consider selling yourself to meet costs and becoming part of the economy
6. Workers and Welfare
o Charge more for sex work — you’ll get it, there’s a big demand
o Consider buying Lindens for a mere $3.64/1000 instead of camping for 100 hours of your life to get the same thing — yes, 100 hours of your life, instead of drinking one less latte and buying some Lindens!
o Advertise services for free on the forums classifieds, many people don’t think to offer such simple services as rental management, inventory control, sales help, shopping, product demos, testing, and reviews, interior design, etc. and yet these services are always in big demand and proprietors are always fretting that they can’t find good help — an ad on the jobs classifieds inworld is only $50 a week, or if you advertise on your 512 of land as a premium, $30/week. Lobby for job fairs inworld, not just for outworld businesses.
I’m sure lots more simple ideas like this could be discovered merely on the analogy of real life, which is, of course, where we all come from, and where we are all going.
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Comments
I remember when I started out, I initially thought those freebies were being given to newbies to give them something to sell. I didn’t realize that in some content creator’ eyes, reselling freebies is a cardinal sin.
I give away a lot of freebies myself, for various reasons. Although I identify with Economy #4, I am kinda #5-like insofar as I would rather give stuff away for free than not sell anything at all.
Newbies are (usually) welcome to resell their finds if they want to.
On another subject altogether:
I think it wd be a mistake for LL to stop making new mainland for the simple reason that the new sims are generally nicer than the older ones. In particular, the last wave of First Land sims from late 2006 are a disaster area. This is because of abandoned parcels and adfarms… I suppose the abandoned parcels will get reclaimed eventually, but those adfarmers are stubborn vermin who will never go away. They seem determined to hold on to their overpriced 16sqm lots until the day LL pulls the plug on the whole grid. The sad thing is, they could actually be making money off the land. They could sell the land for reasonable prices… or even put up vendors or real ads.
Sorry but due to inadequate planning the existing mainland must be allowed to die off and ad farms with it. And probably rental empires as well. Of course you will argue against the required correction.
The population will move to the new mainland. I don’t think LL could have predicted the sort of dirt that would enter SL for the purpose of destroying the experience of others. That is how humans are thus the requirement for law and governance.
Same thing applies for freebies. You can just forget the ignorant idea of transfer freebies. The scum will stand there buying a million copies for zero to resell. No prok you are not in the merchant business and therefore are quite unqualified to speak about it. Freebies must be no transfer.
Fact of the matter is the old SL is going away and the economy is moving to new players. The old dynasties are ending.
Upgrade/evolve or die and leave. Your choice. No matter how hard you try to keep status quo it is not going to happen.
We need less freebies.
And freebies should be for sale.
If you’re serious about helping newbies, that’s how you help them.
Actually, these new dynasties that imagine they are killing old dynasties and thriving are merely destroying the integrity of the world so that they fail, too.
I don’t believe in evolution as trans-humanists yammer on about it. It’s silly. We are in too narrow a slice for anyone to claim to be identifying patterns. People who talk most about the need to evolve always want somebody else to evolve, and never themselves. They never imagine that they themselves will evolve, or they imagine they are adapting wonderfully. It’s so foolish, because all of us could be killed by a big meteor and ice age.
Er, where’s this “new mainland” of which you speak?
There are plenty of creatures who hit upon a robust design and survive for many millennia without evolving…. horsehoe crabs, cockroaches, ferns and gingko trees have been living what seem to be happy lives for hundreds of millions years before us humans came along, and will be doing so hundreds of millions of years after we have devolved.
I guess that puts me squarely in the catagory 5 Hobbyist sector. Still, I don’t advocate for killing the SL or RL money making activities of others by demanding a “free stuff only” virtual existence. I often use RL money to buy Lindens from sector 1 and then use them to buy to goods and services mainly from sector 4. Its nice that we seem the happiest and least stressed sector of the economy though. The other sectors need to pay more attention to us, however, even if we are not demanding political power. You see, once the full first 1.0 version of Opensim becomes fully functional and available, then you will be quite right about our demand for cheap land being the undoing for those other sectors who want land to keep or increase in value indefinitely. Most of us will pour our personal energy into creating other grids (most free) for ourselves and those we wish to share and socialize with. So, the other sectors will have offer us sector 5’ers more product value, I.E. quality full perm items, more portable services and/or other virtual experiences more compelling than the one’s we can create for ourselves on our own sims if they want to keep our business. Its not that we don’t care about the welfare of the other sectors, its just that we are here to have some VR fun, not worry ourselves sick with obligation. I get enough of that sorta thing in RL, where I can make far more money. Sorry if that sounds selfish, but all the other sectors are into what they want too. We (mostly) are just not so vicious about it and more willing to negotiate, is all.
> Encourage the students to set
> up a real profitable business
> so that they become part of the
> economy instead of a drain on it
No economy can support a profitable business for everyone.
Oh, stop it, Yumi, you’re insufferable. I just got done chasing you on the Concierge List for all your socialist yammerings about open source not being a threat to commerce, and here you pop up here like a Whack-A-Mole.
Every student should be looking for a job. The cost of college is astronomical. There is absolutely no reason on earth why students brought into SL couldn’t be encouraged to start businesses.
In fact, I’ve seen such projects already, like Virtual Morocco, where students planned and build a city, with market stalls, and put content they sold in it, of their own designs. Seriously, there is no reason that this shouldn’t be promoted as normal, like real life, and to pipe up and saying something stupid like “no economy can support a profitable business for everyone” just shows your tattered Marxist slips are showing again.
Nobody is asking any economy, especially this one which is half very much made up of gift and hobby and consumer currency buying like a third-world country to start supporting every teenager. But it can support a lot of them. Hell, my son makes money from his SL store many weeks more than I pay him in allowance for his RL chores.
Seriously, you apparently haven’t been brought up to appreciate the value of a dollar.
