Ulrika is Hitler

Congrats on the upcoming addition Ulrika!

I've been out on travel, so I'm just getting back to this thread. Here comes my avalanche of replies.

Pirate, this is a brilliant idea and exactly what I was hoping I'd see in this thread. We are entertaining allowing private sales (as opposed to just collaborative sales) in the second phase of the city. Such a proposal would be a wonderful way to encourage artisans to stick to a code of conduct. Consider it officially rolled into the second phase of our city.

~Ulrika~

Ha ha! This caught me by suprise. It was my first laugh of the day.

~Ulrika~

In regard to a statement where I referenced the "three horsemen of the apocolypse": Oops. I must admit, that I am not well versed on Christian mythology. My mistake.

~Ulrika~

I had to look up Albert Speer on google. He's a fascinating character -- a well-educated architect that during the war called upon the use of slave labor to increase the output of the German economy. He received 20 years for that (and other crimes) at the Nuremberg trials.

If he had instead paid slave wages and called the project "Walmart", instead of jail time they would have called him efficient. I guess that's the difference between National Socialism and unregulated Capitalism. (That's right. I just compared Nazi slave labor to Walmart. Understand that I don't think they're morally equivalent, rather it was a hyperbolic statement meant to raise awareness of Walmart's many abuses and secondary effects on our society. Shazam!)

On another topic -- howdy Kendra!

~Ulrika~

Another illustration of why social democracy is social fascism, as Lenin himself said.

Best if YOU regulate the capitalism, hmm, Ulrika? That will put you in the BEST possible position LOL.

Walmart's is about a willing buyer and a willing seller in a free economy. Their exploitation of third-world labour as in China is open to criticism but there are Chinese who believe the higher wages they get from such Western operations is justified. These issues are heatedly debated. They are worlds apart from someone who makes a slave camp for Jews, Roma, gays and others, in which many die. Worlds apart. It's scary to think someone wouldn't know who Albert Speer is, with all their interest in "social democracy". Even scarier to think they would facilely compare him to Walmart's founder.

This isn't a baby-announcement thread! This is an unintentional baby-announcement, self-promotion, project-promotion, justified to be in the General forum with a tacked-on government-discussion thread.

As you'd expect with me, it walks the line on the ToS (using Hitler and a name in the title) and posting policies (mixing non-General content with General content) but it's not a simple misplaced thread. That is a mistake I would never make.

Jeska rules! (Attempt at ingratiation to keep the thread in General after admitting I crafted a borderline post.)

~Ulrika~

She explicitly stated that was a hyperbolic statement. It's scarier to think that you would even once give up an opportunity to preen on your high-horse and actually look at somebody's actual words.

I didn't mean for this to be an announcement post, as I'm really a private person. Thank you though for the kind words everyone.

As long as we're on the subject, I have an interesting anecdote. I had always wanted to give my daughter (I still don't know the sex of the critter on the way) the name "Ulrika". I never thought I'd have a baby, so I used it in SL. Now that I have, the name is off the table as it has been used in a game. *sigh* I'm still trying to negotiate it as a middle name though.

~Ulrika~

If he actually used that thing between his ears for something besides posting reactionary, confrontational, palaverous posts, he wouldn't bee the kook we all know and love.

(Why the use of the word "palaverous"? I like to get out the thesaurus when posting even in passing reference to Prokofy. It just seems appropriate.)

~Ulrika~

I'm impressed. This is the first forum thread I've seen that invokes Godwin's Law right from the get-go. It usually takes at least a dozen posts before someone is compared to Hitler.

Ha ha! I have never heard of Godwin's law before. Thanks for the post.
The title of this thread was a parody of that very phenomenon. During long forum discussions about SL government (the topic of this thread), it was only a matter of time before I was compared to Hitler. I find it fascinating that it's so wide-spread that it actually has been named.

~Ulrika~

Government? I thought you were compared to Hitler because Hitler was so good at Internet forums back in the day.

Until he was overwhelmed by the outernet

Well regulated trade is an interesting notion, and the counter balance between free trade, and fair trade dominates the global market today. SL has the unique issue in the political power has as its root economic power, since ultimately we all have the choice of leaveing what ever society is created. The freedom, responsibility, etc. are meaningless concepts because there is no downside to non participation.

Now the nice side is that all this means we can create, from scratch, what ever our Ideal market/government structure. But really there is, in SL no restraint on the part of the haves, for they have not have no recourse other than non participation. In otherwords Ulrika can be marie antoinette (or better louis XIV) because the only choice we have is whether to particpate in the experiment.

What I am saying is the dynamic of personal violence that create liberte Eglaite and franternite on the part of the poor starving masses does not exist in SL. So any governement is likely to be tryannical as long as one person owns the sim. Ulrika at least seems like a reasonable tyrant. But she will never have to deal with War, famine, revolution or disgruntled masses. Nor does any governemnt need an extensive judiciary and justice system, because there is no real way to enforce the dictates of the government.

It would be interesting to see if group dynamics get sorted out in the new version..i for one would like to see an athenian type democracy.

Ohhh that's up for debate Panda. He was a bit of a forum troll...

Ha ha! Absolutely brilliant. I could see this as a Monty Python sketch.

~Ulrika~

This statement is in its antecedent incorrect (1) and in its conclusion illogical (2).

1. There is nothing about liberté, fraternité, et égalité (liberty, fellowship, and equality) that requires poor and starving masses to exist. I am neither poor nor starving and I require and promote liberty, fellowship, and equality in everything I do both in SL and RL.

2. Even assuming that poverty and starvation are required for the existence of liberty, fellowship and equality, it does not follow that it makes a single-sim one-person government without exception tyrannical.

I do not own a sim nor am I one of the many elected officials in the representative branch within our governmental sim. Instead I hold a seat under Kathy Yamamoto in our judicial branch. I'm just a pawn in this game of chess.

Despite giving you a hard time above, this statement has value. How does one enforce laws in virtual government? It's an important question.

I feel that there is an obvious answer and one has to look no further than LL to find the answer. SL enforces the ToS in SL and the forums by blocking access either temporarily or permanently (access) and reserving the right to confiscate land and assets (money).

Note that Pirate Cotton posted this very recommendation a few pages back, where he suggested collecting L$500 bonds from artisans to encourage adherence to standards.

I regards to our project, we are currently planning the second phase of the city as a group (it's a fantastic group of people), that will have these very motivators (access and money) built into the system. The right to block access, confiscate land, and take deposits will be a part of a contract with citizens (owners, renters, and artisans) -- just like it is with SL. For those who place value in their access and money (as well as their commitment to the group and personal image), they will be motivated to follow the laws.

~Ulrika~

I think that had the people of france just prior to the revolution been able to simple cancel their account, then there would have been no french revolution. And in truth, democracy in our world has been paid for at great cost by the "poor starving masses" In SL we dont have to do that..which was where i was trying to go. it would be interesting to see what would happen in a hard core sl..if the whole server was pvp and you could simply kill off other player characters and acquire thier holdings....then government would take on a more vital role.

If one person owns the sim, and can cancell the account it is tied to..then they are a tyrant, as they have ulitmate authority (sort of tryant in the Classical sense. I did not mean to suggest you were an arbitrary despot). They cancel thier account and the sim reverts hehehe. thus my comment was about governent in general and not directly tied to your expereiment.

I was being more musing than critical. I can only sustain one flame war at a time, and did not mean to start one here. I think the project you are discussing is very worthwile and promoste interesting thought. Thats all. There is logic in my thoughts, just not may articulation.

As far as enforcing laws..i suppose you could make a conctract a core requirement of participation. Then you could enforce a ban for violating the contract..sort of a virtuall CCR on steriods.

Exactly! Still LL has so much more leverage than we will. Like you said, one could simply leave SL and be done with it. Given that we are a subset of SL we have the same problem only worse in that people could just leave our sim for SL. In a way perhaps that's good, as it's then in the interest of the government to serve the citizens.

By the way I missed the tone of your previous post but I didn't think it was a flame -- I respond to everyone that way. Thanks for your posts!

~Ulrika~

Pirate, can you point me to other threads where you've discussed this idea? I tried running a search on all forums for "bonded sellers" and came up with just this post.

There's a group called RATE which has experimented with ways to develop a 'trusted merchant' seal. I'm not sure how much progress they've made lately. Juro Kathari and Siobhan Taylor are among the members looking at such a program.

Whoa! The Lindens are here! Quick hide the beer!

Joking aside, our SL political organization, the SDF endorses the concepts behind RATE and would very much like to duplicate their efforts in the next phase of the City. For more information, their group forum can be found here, although it looks like it hasn't had a new post in a couple of months.

~Ulrika~

What we need is a group of people who can find ways to increase commerce in LL, not regulate it.

This group would pretty much have two jobs:

First - attracting people with $$ to SL
Second - matching up what people want to buy with people who can make

Some quality control is helpful, but the first and second should be the main priorities.