Government in SL - General Discussion

Hi,

I recently closed this old thread:

"Government Comes to SL"
/120/8c/27411/1.html

I did so because the thread was very old and focused on the Neualtenburg project. Most of the information on that thread about Neualtenburg was out of date (posted when the project was just starting), and I pointed people to the Neualtenburg Forum for current information about the project:

/103/1.html

However, I've realized that residents may still wish to discuss "Government in SL" in a more general and open-topic way.

I didn't want anyone to think I was squelching that type of discussion, so I've started this new thread proactively to give you a place to have these conversations.

All I ask is that you steer clear of personal attacks. Conflicting ideologies are fine, if discussed maturely. Agree to disagree and walk away if need be. Thank you all in advance for helping out in this way.


Take care.
-Pathfinder

You're welcome.

No "Player" powers = No Player Government. A government won't work without the ability to enforce it's governance(sp?).

Players with enforcement powers = A real bad idea. Opens things for abuse, corruption, griefing, etc.


Thus, by this equation, you can pretend to have a government in SL, especially if you can find like-minded folks willing to play along, but you can't have an actual working government unless LL employees take on the roles of the govenors.

Real life Governments cant steer clear of these things why would you think SL people can?

Last year in Japan fist fights broke out... there was a stabbing in another asian parliment...and god knows the british love a good fight while in parliment

Well put, David. My sentiments exactly.

governments=power=corruption

I'm casting another ditto vote for David. Player governments are an intriguing idea but implemented they will always be an illusion. Linden Labs will retain the final authority on any decision regardless of the kind of player government in place (and I consider this a good thing).

Yup so I say wax all the polititions and start from scratch...hehe.

It could be a National SL Wax Museum...

Shadow

Also echo Davids sentiment

Oooo waxing could be a good thing

When the threads burst forth re: player governments, as David said (and many, many others) enforcement is the issue and all players are, shall be, and must continue to function equally, ie. no special enforcement for inWorld AV's, 'cept Lindens.

The amazing thing in SL is the working together among players of like hearts and minds - efforts given and taken freely.

Thus our community blossoms - and we all prosper.

Exactly - Hi Toy!

*commits Hari Kari and bleeds all over nice new thread*

We already have the minimum organizational government that is required to function. It is called the Lindens. SIM oriented player government is fine providing, and this is a critical provisal, that all current owners in the SIM sign on to it and all future ownership is contingent upon being aware of it. Personally I would not sign on to such an arrangement unless someone really convinced me that it truly brought value in the sense of resolving a problem that could not be resolved otherwise. So far in all the discussions I have read, the whole idea of resolving a problem has rarely if ever come up. I happen to believe that government in RL actually does have very critical roles to play. I do not yet see that being the case here. Most of those critical roles simply do not exist here, and those that do can be handled at the Linden level for the time being.

I am opposed to SL wide user government and will remain so until someone can convince me of a problem exists and can only be solved through such an institution.

Don't tread on me.

No representation without taxation!

Awwww, you know you love it, Lecktor




Hiya, Merwan

I think that about sums up what we have with SL: A minimalist government in the form of the Lindens... their governmental powers being necessary for the maintance of the Grid (by nature of the server cluster's centralized design as opposed to server ownership by individuals, connected via the internet) and to deal with folks that do not play well with others.

As far as I can tell, so long as a person does not cause problems (breaking the social contract that is the TOS) they are free to do as they please.

It's freedom, baby! And freedom is a beautiful thing.

You're even free to experiment with other forms of government in your own private space, just as the rest of us are free FROM the same.

-Ghoti

I fully agree with that, Ghoti. Well said.

This discussion thread has some relevance to the one in Land and Economy on residents associations and zoning. One way Linden Labs could support these is by including tools that give special powers to certain people, e.g. group founders. A different way is to make small steady improvements in the tools used by all players. Personally I hope LL follows the second alternative.

You guys seen 'A tale in the desert'? That has a democratic government that has skills to be able to make votes to be called. Its pretty boring though - the game has the serious flaw that it can take a week to walk the whole map and then people move up north with no way back and the government just acknowledges individual petitions to get rid of what people left behind.

Im a bit anti-democracy anywho since people can become corrupt. If someone payed me 10k to change sides over a land dispute, im not arguing.

Pathfinder, dude, you are one crazy interventionist linden.
Just when I thought I had seen everything, in comes the finder of paths to prove me wrong.
Five stars *****

I know! Can you believe that a Linden just started a thread on government?

~Ulrika~

There was just a fistfight the otherday in the Russian government.

Are you sure that shouldn't read: SLEX=power=corruption

~Ulrika~

At the risk of stepping in front of the anti-government train, I would like to suggest that if all governments were all bad all the time, we'd already have done away with them IRL. It leads me to suspect, then, that maybe some GOOD could be accomplished by a limited inworld government. I confess I have not much followed the successes and failures of Neuealtenberg [sic] probably as much as I should (i.e. I went there once, said, "oh, this is neat," and forgot to return). So if there's a big controversy over all that or no, I dunno. Anyway, my point is that governments do in some way provide services to their constituencies, and I think that could be true for SL governments as well.

If I had to bluesky about how it might take shape, I'd imagine something closer to neighborhood organizations versus Big Brother (who has time to be evil and overbearing these days, anyway?). For example, I currently hold nearly a quarter of a sim and several of my neighbors are totally absentee, with random prim trash slowly accumulating on their no-return-enabled land. It'd be nice to have a little more leverage to politely ask them to police up their land toward the end of having a nontrashy sim. That's about as far as I'm personally interested in seeing government in SL; it appears to me that most of the other functions of government are already handled by scattered benevolent user groups, i.e. newbie education groups, business grant / funding groups, philosophical groups, scripting research teams, etc.

Of course, all of this is only one opinion. Frankly, I'm not fully decided on how I stand wrt inworld government. I look forward to more constructive debate.

(I love Despair.com - hopefully it displays with the direct link)

On a serious note, player governance is already in play, we just could use better tools for it. For now, though, owners that rent their property to others are in many ways tiny fiefdoms. The enforcement factor being "it's my land."

I think that, if we're serious about this sort of thing, a more fleshed out renting or "shared ownership" system would need to exist. The irony is measures of this form would almost constitute a form of socialism, and last time I checked, we were still in the "greedy capitalist" period.

At any rate, government should remain one of those consensual things in Second Life short of the Lindens having the power to enforce the rules. I certainly don't want to pay the SLIRS (that is, Second Life Internal Revenue Service) unless I've consented to doing so.

I think that we are being extremely short-sighted if we assume that governance in a virtual world would have to ape the forms of real-world governments.

The world-wide-web has governance, broken down as near as I can see to three, maybe 4 levels.

-At the highest level, a website is responsible to the country from which it is hosted, that its activities not be breaking any laws of that country (sometimes also international laws, if that country also assists in enforcing them).

-Next, the owner of the domain is responsible to their hosting service to abide by the terms of service for the hosting; bandwidth, legality, usage, etc.

-Below that, the owner of the domain can set up their website pretty much however they wish to; they may encourage, tolerate, discourage or completely disallow content that they deem offensive but not illegal. They may do the same with the behavior of the site visitors, if they have any ways of interacting with each other.

-The owner of the site may also designate others with admin powers, probably limited in scope but enough to effect the rules they have decided on for their domain.


If Secondlife remains as-is, what will limit it in the long run will be the fact that people who host content on LL servers will not have the option of going elswhere; searching among competitors for better rates or for the ability to host content which is not illegal but is against LL's terms of service. People will also remain unsatisfied with the ability to designate varying amounts of admin powers to others over their meta-space, or being forced into a geographic continuity with their neighbors.

Governance in a metaverse, if it is to mimic anything, should mimic the forms of governance already in existence on the internet. You have exactly as much "power" as you pay for, and which does not breach the laws of your real-world community.