About welfare and the unemployment rate in SL?

I just had a great idea, let's take down every RL factory and force people to do everything by hand! Just like in the good old days!

It's a true old statement. If you introduce money into ANYTHING, it automatically turns toxic and corrupt.

This isn't a game, true. It's a community. A collection of people. Now the premise of any community is what will allow that community to thrive and stay strong.

LL made the premise of this community money and the acquisition of items and virtual materials to further the money aspect.

You can say this is about 'creativity' all you want, but at the end of the day, it is about money.

Do I agree with this premise? Do I think it's right? Honestly, no. We've got our virtual world here, and tell me honestly, looking at the troubles money causes in the real world, why on earth would you want to bring it into the virtual world?

I mean, that'd be like introducing condoms into cybersex. There's a lot of things a virtual community just does not need and STD's is one of them, so why bring it in?

I noticed in the previous thread on this same subject 'Worth a Shot', that the majority of people whining about basic accounts getting a stipend were paying accounts and land owners. And this next message is for them.

Suck it up. Deal with it alright? In a single day theres approximately $200k PLUS being thrown around in game. That's what? L$66,666,666 ? At a rough calculation... And you're pissing yourself because basic accounts are getting L$50 per week? What? Are you serious?

"Oh but they don't pay for their accounts!" - yeah but you still want their L$ don't ya. Sure they can get a job, they can create content, they can give into the male dominated societial structure and strip off so a few people can masterbate to pixels, sure, but without new players, without them, you won't get your L$. You want SL to thrive, it needs more players, and those players need to be helped to survive, just as an infant is given what it needs until it's old enough and smart enough to survive on it's own.

- Rayne -

I would argue that SL is a game more than community. Calling the people in SL a community is like saying Black Unity with a straight face, really hard to pull off. People pay for a service here, there is no damn community.

You're absolutely right. No one should be able to be rewarded for their efforts. No one should be creating cool SL products. Let's strip out the money completely, then no one will make anything for wide distribution. Why have a unit of exchange? It's obviously just corrupting people, by allowing them to create things that hundreds or thousands of people want to have, and are willing to compensate creators to use.

Yeah. The grid would be a much better place without money.


edit:



Money causes no problems in the real world. Ignorance, laziness, criminality and paracitism causes the world's problems, and those who perpetuate those problems invariably shift the blame to the "evil money" they either aren't fit to earn or aren't worthy of keeping.

com·mu·ni·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-myn-t)
n. pl. com·mu·ni·ties

A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
The district or locality in which such a group lives.

A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international business community.
A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society: the gay community; the community of color.

Similarity or identity: a community of interests.
Sharing, participation, and fellowship.
Society as a whole; the public.


Yup, sounds like a community to me.
You have communities in RL, and the members of which pay taxes (which would be the RL equivelent of reg fees)

Wtg missing the point of my post.

wtg making your point so poorly, whatever it happened to be. Yours is an anti-capitalist rant we've all heard before. Not a big deal, though, the world left that sort of thinking behind as a necessity long ago.

In any case, the existence of the Linden Dollar is an expedient that allows free trade. Trade would exist in SL no matter what -- just be glad we get to do it with a fictional currency instead of having to PayPal USD micropayments to everyone who sells neat things.

1) We don't live here, or ever really occupy the space. I know some people like to take it further, but you dont live in SL anymore than I live on a webpage. We pay for internet hosting here, not housing.

2) There is no similarity, no common identity, no common interests. The residents of SL are very varied and there are various groups that have agenda that completely contradict the agendas of others.

3)Sharing content and resources in SL is extremely limited and difficult do to limitations in the software.


You can believe SL is a community if you want to but, I have to respectfully disagree.

Heh, anti-capitalist... oh dear, talking without engaging brain really isn't a good thing to do Enabran. I own my own small business in RL for starters.

Not once did I say that the use of money in SL as it's premise should change, I merely voiced my opinion that money does cause greed and toxic attitudes. Damn me for having an opinion. Yes, indeed I must be given a nice little title like anti-capitalist so that you can point and laugh at me, yay..

And you kinda made a self defeating point there mate. 'Trade would exist in SL no matter what'. You're right, even without L$ trade would still exist, but that wasn't the point of my post. My post was design to quash those who say SL shouldn't have money. Note I agreed that I didn't like the primary concept of SL being money, but I also stated that it is what SL is based on, that isn't going to change. The second part of my post was to quash some of the posts in the previous thread.

There, are you happy now or do I get a spiffy new title this time? Anti-SL? Anti-Enabran?

Sorry, I guess I really shouldn't be splitting time between my spreadsheets and the SL forums.

I must disagree with the sentiment that money causes nastiness, "toxicity," in any case. I still say nastiness would manifest itself in any case, and that money is just another value neutral tool.

Feel free to be anti-Enabran. My curmudgeonry of late has inspired more than a few to follow that route.

So your RL business is toxic and corrupt? Bah. This is a destructive cliche that I've seen disproven more often than I've seen it hold true.



I say it's about both.



Look at all the benefits of the use of money in the real world. Barter is a pain in the ass.



Condoms don't cause STDs, and they aren't the only reason people wear condoms. I've seen pregnant avatars, babies, and even a box of avatar tampons for sale. In fact, I've seen condoms in SL, so someone wanted them. Aside from humor, or realism, someone might want them for educational purposes. Similarly, money has a role in SL beyond facilitating trade or paying content creators. For some people, it's their "game." For others . . . well heck, there's Stagecoach Island.

What free lunch? We pay to be residents in Second Life. Part of that payment is returned in game as stipends. That is our way of buying lindens. Lindens we spend in world as we please. Stipends aren't free, they're paid for in real world money. Take my stipend and Linden Labs had better reduce my subscription rate. Then Linden Labs loses money. Maybe to make up for it they could charge for prims? Why should the content creators be able to create for free? Shouldn't they pay for prims? Why should they get a free lunch? Does anyone see how silly this is getting?

Michael,

Please direct me to the post suggesting stipends be removed for premium subscribers.

Yes, it's getting silly - but not for the reasons you think.

If you read my posts, I'm always in favor of keeping stipends, especially for the residents who aren't playing to create - the consumer. I've suggested the stipend be adjusted down for those who are making L$ - just as a way to keep control over the total float. (A healthy economy benifits all.)

There are people asking for a "free lunch" - and if you are trying to convince me that your payment to LL does anything to compensate me for my time and effort, then you're among them.

And for those about to scream at me about the fact that I can sell an object I created ad infinitum, I offer my retort to that now to save time:
1) That's why they cost so little.
2) That's why you get free upgrades.
3) Products have a limited life span. I still need to make the next cool thing to stay in business.

And I still have the ongoing cost of land in order to have my stuff out where it can be bought. Weather it's USD to LL I pay or L$ to a mall owner, it's still an ongoing cost. Content creators aren't getting a free ride by any stretch of the imagination.

Damn straight.

I pay US$18.10 every month (or an equivilent amount in L$, as determined by GOM at that time) towards Neualtenburg. In return, I have a replica of the Dark-friggin-Tower, a place to have meetings, and I get to yell and be yelled at by 21 other people.

Furthermore, I pay $35 every month to Linden Labs - $10 premium, plus $25 tier - for my main-grid home and shop in Eldora, where I sell stuff and hang out when I don't want to be anywhere else in particular.

And all I ask - all I ask - is that the money I get in-world be useful in helping to meet these expenses. I mean, I'm making stuff for people, and a lot of it is the sheer joy of making stuff, but if I don't have to worry so much about making tier, I'm happier and in a better mood to make cooler stuff, right?

I'm hardly rich. I keep enough on hand to pay a couple of month's tier in Neualtenburg (since, if I had to choose between Eldora and Neualten, it's Neualten all the way) and I've maybe cashed out a total of US$80 since I've first started SL... and not counting tier fees, I've spent maybe half that much on GOM when I first started to initially buy land.

Anyone who can look at that and think "free ride" is, in the immortal words of Gene Ray the Timecube Guy, "educated stupid". And I ain't apologizing for that view; it's simple arithmetic. I'm not exactly getting rich off SL, here.

All you ask is that the players pay to support your game. If it's the "sheer joy of making stuff" then you're not making it for people, you're making it for yourself. I agree, it's hard worrying about meeting high tier costs, but can't you make the same stuff with less land? If you can't afford to have a replica of the Dark Tower on your own then maybe you shouldn't have it. I don't worry about making my tier cost because I play within my means so I'm happy and in a good mood all the time.

See, I just don't understand the attitude of joining SL to be compensated for the time you spend there. Yes you deserve to be paid in $L if you create an object that people want to buy, but you should not EXPECT to make a RL profit off these items and EXPECT LL to create policy to make this possible for you but affect the way other people come to SL. Most of us come to SL to have fun.

Heya Cheyenne. Automation is practical, and serves a very good purpose in this example. It's one example of efficiency (cleanup) that we don't have available offline. There are too many logistical problems with cleaning up sandboxes. For example, you could just dump 1000 of your own prims and then clean them up hours later. Or what about permissions? Would you be allowed to clean up someone else's prims? Would they even want to let you? The cleanup timeframe is approx. 15 minutes so you'd have a lot of people cleaning up, adding to lag and possibly even causing worse disruptions. Cleaning up would make more sense if it cost L$10 to rez a prim like it did historically, but time has since moved on.

There are some very useful opportunities which could be exploited—and I use this term in the most positive of ways—more. One of these is finding bug bounties, each one nets ya L$2500!

/3/f1/47970/1.html

Or what about the referral bonus, still in full effect? Get your friends into SL... it's a win-win.

Some initiatives are put out by Residents too! Go to Welsh, see that YUGE beanstalk? Read the rules and climb it, and bag L$500.

I don't unerstand why the hell you're suggesting I'm wrong for expecting to be compensated for my time and effort. There are a lot of people who put a great deal of effort into making the things and events that you're here to have fun doing. What makes you deserving of that effort?
Do you demand to be able to view movies for free? Or to play an arcade game for free? Read books for free? Get a music CD for free?

I mean, those people are all artists - directors, actors, cinematographers, game designers, authors, musicians, sound engineers - they chose thier feilds for the fun they have. By the logic I see you presenting, they should none of them charge for thier services.

Just becasue SL is vritual in setting doesn't change the fact that we put time and effort into what we do here. Your payment to Linden Lab buys you only access to the platform - log in rights. It comes with some nice fringe benifits - a stipend, for one.

It does not grant you access to my or anyone else's work. That's negotiated individually. And so far, every last content provider allows access to thier work for pennies! PENNIES! And most of us (including myself) has plenty of work available to you for nothing at all or very, very close to nothing at all.

"Most of us come to SL to have fun." - So what? I come to SL to have fun, too. What relevance is this?

What is this about not expecting to make a RL profit? Where did that come from? Straw man argument, I think.

Gods above and below! It infuriates me that you want content makers to provide for a valuless L$.

that kind of statement makes me explode ,you have a high speed internet connection paid monthly and you couldnt afford 10usd a month? 10 USD??? a Mc DOnald menu is around 7-8$ in france, you mean that you cannot DIET ONE DAY PER MONTH ? (if you are really that tight)

ooh ok you pay other online games too? well in life you have to make choices and determinate what is worth to be paid and what isnt, but do not exept free token when you go to an amusement park.

you have no talent in SL? maybe, but there is peoples that does and it takes to them lot of time and sweat to produce something worth to be bought.

there is two ways to make extra linden$ in SL
- work hard on something and sell it
- buy L$ with your RL money

the second one is way less painfull

Long ago, when the world was very different, we did get paid to clean up. But, like I said, the world was very different.

Before Land Tiers, we used to have to pay L$10 to simply rez a prim. There was also this plentiful thing available called, public land. If someone left something on public land, the object would slowly decay and become public, with no owner. If you found a public object on public land, you could delete it, free the resources, and get paid the L$10 the prim was worth.

I spent a lot of my earliest time in SL flying around looking for public decay. It was like a game, because you had competitors. It wasnt a major sport or anything, but all the decay hunters knew each other. It was always a race to be the first to find the decay. A lost vehicle was a major score, because it might be made of 30 prims and be worth L$300.

The game of it was you almost never found it as public. You would find it in the state of decay, maybe at 20% or 45% or something. It took a couple of days for an object to completely decay and become public. Other people looking for decay would know about it too, and it would be a game to be the one to be there once it finally became public. The owner could always come and claim it before it completely decayed too, so that was another rub in the game.

Fun times. Technology advances has removed the need for this type of resident service, but its fun to look back on.

Wow Loki that's interesting !

That was fun reading. Thanks

Hey, man. Step off. You know why? Most people play musical instruments to have fun. You shouldn't expect to be paid because you know how to play musical instruments and other people don't. Just because you have something over on people doesn't mean you deserve to profit on it. Because, come on, these guys aren't going to be on Billboard anytime soon.

They just learn for fun.

So screw your profits and your nasty greed. Stop hoarding all that musical knowledge.

It's filthy.

Wait just a second.

Long ago in the year 2003, ya'll made L$300 for finding a rusty car?

No fair, I demand compensation

*claps*
I have a f-ing jooooooooob maaaaaaan, and if I couldn't afford a measly one hour's pay a month to play SL and own land I still wouldn't want to run errands or take surveys or some criteria that isn't in either a bad porno movie or a wonderous faerie tale. My stipend is just about right, if I want more I'll buy it, I already bought 150KL$ with US$ and spent it all,

I was quite incensed the other day when some bitch demanded I pluck off my wings and rip my hair off at their event, hello, if your bandwidth problems are that shitty, just invite your friends don't make it a public event then jump on our asses if we have prim hair, fuck you, this is my story, you're damn fortunate I chose to attend your random event, I give you dwell and you shit on me, bah to you, there are plenty of cool places to go in my continuing adventure. Will I find love? will I actually build something worth a crap and quit relying on my 2D art skills for love and adoration? will I stop feeling like Cindy Brady or that dude in the gratefull dead who's been there for 20 years but they all call him the new guy, arrrrgh

a job in SL? what if you are a pig and your whole life is running across the length of England on a magical journey? It scares me that there are many clinical/analytical/mathematical minded people out there, maybe they aren't the drama queens but I don't want to have to interupt my little fantasy to be a willing participant in a level 4 diagnostic of SL even if it is for my own good. My job sucks, the total opposite of where you'd see a hot lesbian vampyre artist lap-dancing. It is so hard they have new people everyday, that is not an exageration, people quit because they physically cannot take the strain on their muscles, and yet it pays for me to play SL and I will squeeze the last drop of non-work out of it and milk it for all of it's entertainment value. I really only use my L$ to take pictures and shop for something to do when I'm chatting with a friend, and if I do sell something it is from a lemonade stand CEO perspective, you don't have to buy my lemonade but you will because I am cute, it's an homage to moi, you are paying me for my graciousness and talents not because it is worth anything.

I woudn't want to be in a SL wurk-camp as a tiny, they have better things to do than unwillingly participate in other peoples aventures, and my character refuses to work, she is an artist, paid in love, give her money for her lemonade, all the cool people are doing it.

Here's my avi and Wynx Whiplash awww.