About welfare and the unemployment rate in SL?

I often wonder, why instead of "giving" away stipends, LL doesn't implement virtual employment as a viable means for people to "earn" money.

For example, instead of automatic cleanup of governor owned sandboxes, why not employ people to clean up these sandboxes by paying them to manually clean them up. For instance, LL can pay them 1 - 5L$ for each prim they delete from sandboxes.

Likewise, LL can take away the "auto cleanup" feature for resident owned land, thereby encouraging landowners to hire help to clean up their land. The same principle can be aplied to other duties that LL currently does automatically, and/or allows for residents to handle automatically.

I think this would have many benefits. Among them, the creation of a service industry, a sense of belonging, elimination of welfare (stipends), development of work ethic, and a clear delineation between those that are serious about "earning" L$, and the so-called "slacker."

P.S. - I know its a game and people don't want to come home from school or a job and go to work again in SL. But, SL is largely a game of economic strategy. Atleat thats what I find fun and attractive about it. A group of people from all parts of the world coming together online and simulating a real life economy, and working together to make it successful

Not just no, but heck no.

There's a number of universities, businesses, and other organizations working on projects in SL. I am not interested in paying or relying on those for whom SL is a game to pick up stray prims from my land where I am doing RL work for a university or EMS department. I play a lot while I'm in SL, and I participate in the L$ economy, but I have actual RL work to do here, as well.

cheyenne, there's no difference between what you've suggested as I see it, and getting paid to sit in a gnome factory and watch your avatar go through the motions.

However, if LL was getting real benefit out of something -- something that they couldn't automate and didn't have the staff for -- then I see nothing wrong with them paying users for a service.

But that leads me to another opinion -- LL should never pay Linden dollars for a service unless those are L$ they have purchased from the secondary market (the currency exchange). Sure, they can have ridiculously cheap labor simply by creating some L$ currency out of thin air, but by doing this they dilute the money supply and add inflationary pressure, and in the process gently slap the face of all the goods/service creators in Second Life.

I understand Forseti, but but...

Isn't LL already giving away money, in the form of stipends, for doing nothing.

And there are people alleging, and rightly so, that they may not have a means of "earning" L$ in SL due to lack of talent, thereby rendering their existence irrelevant.

And then there is the matter, as correctly alluded by others, that LL does not have a "so-called" blue collar service industry.

and, and... well you get my point.

Well, it's just a suggestion...albeit an unpopular one to this point lol.

It's a good idea. That said, I'd rather see residents pioneering new services and providing these jobs than LL.

I think LL made a bit of a mistake with parts of this. For the sake of getting rolling in the game, I can see having a stipend. Some very basic income to pay for the learning process and some starting funds for the content maker types, and an easy way to sample the world before getting too involved for those playing strictly for the sake of play. However, the extra pay for "good behavior" was a terrible mistake, as is - IMHO - the L$ for "traffic".
In the end, the point of the whole system is to provide a platform for small content creators who would never be able to set up shop otherwise to provide entertainment to those looking for something new and different. It is a market expander - in theory one could have a new flavor of entertainment each day all through the same clinet software, at your caprice and convenience.
The move by LL to provide a simpler method to purchace L$ is one of utter nessesity to perpetuate this model. It is what will give every SL resident the option to do what it is they want that day - it's the big ticket office for the most expansive entertainment park on the net.
So, providing these little nonjobs would effectively be repeating the earlier mistakes - the L$ should be geared entirely as the medium for exchange of actual services, and not be treated as the traditional MMO*s treat thier currency.

well, the stipends are a little more justifiable in my mind, especially for Premium accounts since you can bundle it into the monthly cost of Second Life. The $50 to basics I can also understand it's utility and accept it.

but paying out primary-issued currency for services rendered? that to me is just shifting the cost of Linden Lab labor onto the content/service creators (in the form of dilution to the currency) and I don't think it's necessary. If people want to give FREE stuff to LL, that's cool. But if LL needs to pay to get really good stuff, then they should pay for real.

as I said, to this point, it's been pretty small time (like the railroad stations) and wouldn't have a huge impact. I'd just hate to see this become a common habit.


and i'm not going to sit here and judge, but I still have a hard time grasping getting paid peanuts for non-fun blue-collar work in SL when you can get a much higher wage in RL. (If it's fun, then that's a different story.)

by the way, I fully expect that as the platform gets more advanced and the market opportunity gets bigger, most amateur creators (including myself) are going to feel a lot of pressure by bigger, better designers/coders/whatever... and either leave the market, keep prices extremely low, or else fight hard to stay on top of competition and carve out niches.

If I couldn't sell anything because the competition was too great, I wouldn't leave because it's too much fun making stuff and hanging out with my fellow SLers. And if someone made that whizbang fighter pilot game that I had to try! I would be willing to shell out for it just like I pay for any other form of entertainment -- that or be willing to have advertisements flashed at me.

I just joined SL. I'd probably leave if this policy was implemented.

I didn't join up because I wanted to participate in some libertarian fantasy thought experiment. I joined because it looked cool and fun. Making me, or a new user like me, who isn't producing anything for the SL economy yet work seriously reduces the fun factor.

I can get treated like this in the real world.

It wouldn't be mandatory Azrael. It wouldnt affect you one way or another if you wished to totally disregard it. Just another option for those who wish to partake in it, s'all.

If you are without talent, then how are you affording the high speed internet that lets you get on SL in the first place. If you used real life talent to get real life money to buy $L then you could make $L for your real life money on the currency exchange. You don't have to use your talent in Second Life to make money. Use your talent in Real Life to make money, and then give that money to those that have the talent to provide what you want.

First of all -- WHAT IS WITH YOU PEOPLE AND THIS WELFARE CONCEPT? You all threw fits when people complained about the removing of the rating bonuses now your trying to get them to take away another feature? Why are you trying to kill everyone else's secondlife experience, by ruining the fun? Besides welfare or not all of you who've been trying to get the removal of the stippends and rating bonus's have been benefiting for quite some time from it and yet now your begrudging others, especially those just coming into the game now for recieving the same treatment? Get off your high horses and leave things alone. Its just in the end -- SELFISHNESS!

Second of all -- Not everyone can afford the monthly fee's or have the spare cash to buy game cash. Not all of us have the super high paying jobs, and do good paying the rl bills, etc. And this proposed schooling system? Sorry but some of us have lives outside secondlife that have to come first.

If yolu can't afford to pay for the movie ticket, you don't get to see the movie. Same thing here, only instead of huge production companies with massive budgets, you have a bunch of small, often one-person productions.

I ask this again: who's actually being selfish when you ask for the free lunch?

If I buy a movie, I know exactly what I am getting. If I buy SL, what am I getting again?

whoa -- what other feature? the first poster wasn't talking about taking away a feature -- they were proposing a potential new feature.

as for me, I tangented off into saying that LL should pay their in-world subcontractors with US$ or existing L$ currency.

The World! (virutally)

Access?
That's why LL's no longer charging for basic accounts. Really, for just logging in there should be no charge, because at that level, there's nothing much to do.
However, if you buy any service or product from another resident in SL, you should be just as aware of the value of that entertainment as you are for any given movie.

Which means you will occasionally be dissapointed... just like with movies.

I can't wait for this! Then I can make a script that just generates prims and I can delete them (manually if necessary). Fame and fortune, here I come!

Addressing the specific cleanup proposal: you can only delete objects that you can edit, and you can only return objects on your own land. In order to allow someone to clean up objects on someone else's or Linden's land, LL would have to code a way around those restrictions. Such exemptions would be easily prone to abuse, and creating them would take developer time away from more pressing needs in return for questionable gain.

Of course it would affect him. It would affect everyone within the economy as individuals got paid to do things that have no actual value, thus putting yet more useless inflationary money sources into the economy.

Good God, this renders me almost speechless! What has happened to Second Life? I think this post alone validates what Catherine Cotton was trying to warn us about a year or more ago.

I used to exist in a virtual world which had an economy set up in such a way that work was mandatory. What did this lead to? People knocking themselves out in an attempt to better their virtual life. Employers taking advantage of the people who worked for them. Injustice, exploitation, loss of privacy, among other things.

Do I want to live in a virtual world where words like 'welfare' and 'slackers' are used?

If Second Life is not a priority for you, do not be surprised if you are not a priority for Second Life. I finished out my last months of college with my food bills paid entirely by the Second Life income I worked very hard to earn. Are you to tell me you deserve your free lunch more than I deserved my costly grocery bill paid?

In exchange for you to log in once or twice a week and buy something you'll never use with money you did not earn, I should have spent weeks and weeks of time and effort developing real, useful products? For what reward? Your enjoyment, at my expense? Your amusement, at my inability to obtain a fair value for my wares?

You bemoan selfishness, yet who among this discussion is the selfish one? The ones who have made amazing things at great personal expense and who need a fair value for the exchange for those amazing things? Or you, yourself, more interested in personal gratification than in fair exchange of value with people who work hard for it.

If this requirement for the exchange of value for value is too alien for you too grasp or too rational for you to accept, you will not be missed among the thousands of hard working individuals who ply their craft here.

Read up on the new deal makework jobs during the depression, read about the entire new deal, for that matter. Then look at the legacy of such insane economic engineering. Look around you and tell me that ditch digging with prims is actually a good idea. If you still think so, I suppose no one can help you.

This is traditionally known as "workfare." In exchange for a minimal amount of work a person rcvs a minimal amount of money. Both sides typically wind up resenting the arrangement (the workfare "employee" feels they should be paid more for their minimal effort and the employer feels the workfare "employee" needs to do more than just the bare minimum). Temper this with the fact that LL now offers free Basic accounts, which rcv a minimum of L$50 per week (as long as the player is logged in for more than five-minutes once per week) and this amount _still_ isn't enough to some players.

Virtual employment already exists within the game. At my bar I have three other people on staff as bartenders. We all work for tips. Some players belong to groups which have land where they hold events thus earning Dwell/Traffic monies and then dividends are paid out to the members of the group. SL is pretty vast and the employment opportunities within the game are just as vast. Can't find a virtual job? Create your own.



One aspect that any number of proposals overlook is that someone at LL either has to
A) Code the proposal into the game system
B) Enforce the proposal within the game system
C) both A and B

In a nutshell, the LL staff is already overworked. Before suggesting something it makes more sense to consider what the real world costs might be. That's not meant as a snipe, but that it's important to think about how much anything and everything costs and what resources are involved. We can't expect LL to add human resources soley for the benefit of a player class that joined for free or joined via a nominal payment of US$9.95.

However, if LL took away the "auto-return" feature I'd simply continue to clean up the litter on my land on my own.



Service industries already exist in-world. People make and sell clothing. Make and sell objects. Real estate. Scripting. Poses. Games. Erotic conversation. Etc. It's probably an endless list as people are thinking of new things to introduce into SL all the time. But one aspect to SL is that people bring their RL experience into the game. If you didn't have much of a work ethic before joining the game, you're probably not going to develop one while in-world. SL is not a "life skills seminar."

I certainly remember what it was like to be a new player on a Basic account with no income. It can be very frustrating. But part of the fun is the challenge. Players actually go through a cycle. For the first 30-days they socialize and go clubbing. The second 30-days they start to wonder what they want to do in SL and begin putting down roots. And during the next 30-day period they start to experiment with and implement their ideas and try to carve out a niche for themselves. It's a big part of the fun.