What we really need to do is to work on the economy.

We need to create a price structure that makes the price of purchasing land from the Lindens more expensive per square meter for those who buy the most, thus rewarding those with real world incomes that are lower and hence able to buy less land, and punishing those with higher real world incomes, who can easily afford the higher price per square meter. This is a simple matter of social justice.

The land-auction system allows middlepersons to make a profit off of those who don't have large RL purchasing power and needs to be changed so that as few people as possible can profit. Profit is theft.

We need a system of income redistribution so that the large amounts invested by a small number of people can be tranferred into the hands of those with the least income and wealth in game. This provides a desirable egalitarian distribution of wealth and discourages the undesirable concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

These economic changes need to be imposed grid wide and universally. The wealthy will not surrender their unearned wealth and income voluntarily. History has demonstated this time and time again. Economic equality can only be achieved by the application of centralized force.

I totally disagree with all of the above.

1. Why should those with more land pay more than you or I? They have paid for the land, they will then pay very high tier to LL.

2. Profit is not theft.

3. There are those who create items on SL for us to buy. I am working towards having an SL business but its a hard slog. Why should those who do nothing but socialise, go to clubs and bingo/tringo/slingo, be able to share in the rewards of the creators without contributing anything? I have nothing against people who do this. However I am damned if I would hand over money I have made through my own efforts to those who make no effort to contribute.

Also, not all creators make a lot of money. Let me give you an example. It can take me over 3 hours to prepare a plant texture in Paint Shop Pro. I then upload the image which costs 10L. I then create the prims on which to use the textures. If I'm lucky after all that, I may be able to sell the finished article for 30L. I will leave it to you to work out how much I earn hourly.

I know people who can and do make clothes or write excellent scripts or great skins earn much more and rightly so. They have a skill which others, including me, don't have and I do not begrudge them 1L of their money.

Come down from cloud cookoo land and see the reality.

Alexa

ps - If I wanted to live in a communist state I would go and live in one.

Invect, go and read all the voluminous threads with Ulrika and realize that efforts to instill socialism and communism of this nature under the guise of some "work on the economy" or "generic government" will never fly.



No, social justice should also be relevant to those who can work the hardest handling large amounts of land and getting the most value out of it for themselves and for others.

Bulk discounts for those who purchase greater amounts and assume higher tier and higher responsibilities are a legitimate and normal means of promoting both entrepreneurial activity and general civilization in the game.

A scheme that punishes those who spend more and do more merely freezes initiative and makes the society turn into those drab, ineffective, and crime-ridden areas that we saw in the Soviet Union and its allies.



This is the basic fallacy in the socialist and communist ideology. It is based on a false idea of scarcity which usually leads totalitarians to profit on people's fears for scarcity and security to flock to them. But profit is in fact addition of value and creation of value.



This is just communism served up once again as something "attractive for the masses". "Small numbers of people" aren't going to "invest large amounts" if a vicious state is going to seize their assets and profits and redistribute them around to those who did not apply work or investment to them.

You communists are never able to explain why wealth needs to be hijacked and redistributed to those who didn't create it. Your systems never work when you do that. Meanwhile, democratic liberal market economies and capitalist states do far better about actually getting the society's wealth moved around in the forum of insurance, social security, job creation, infrastructure, etc. RL experience and knowledge proves that. Communists are never able to justify their original act of violence and class hatred in seizing the wealth of one class to give it to others, helping themselves generously to large dollops of it along the way. Violence and hatred are violence and hatred, and those who try to make societies based on them fail to get people's support in the long run.



Undesirable to...whom? The Bolshevik view who manage this system and make themselves benefit in "the New Class"? You're hilarious. Have you not read history?



Yes, history has illustrated time and again that not only will the wealthy not surrender their legitimate wealth, regardless of your characterization of it, the people will not surrender their freedom, nor endorse violence and hatred, to achieve these actually dubious goals you cite of "equality". Democratic societies have evolved many less harsh schemes with less disastrous consequences to cope with the inequities that appear in society due to actual differences in talent, abilities, circumstances of birth, etc. Protective laws, as well as a host of social institutions ranging from charity to social insurance to voluntary social responsibility solutions by businesses have all far more successfully addresses these issues than any oppressive communist government.

Okay, so to condense your post to its essence you're saying "some people have more money than me and I resent them for it, therefore it should be taken away from them and given to me instead." Does that about cover it?

Not to me, Chip. To the entire underpriveleged class. And not just money, land and inventory contents should be included as well.

There is no underprivileged class in SL. Each resident comes in here and has freedom of choice as to how they spend their time in the world. Whether they choose to create or party or a bit of both is entirely up to them.

They are welcome to delve into my inventory, other than a skin I bought from Chip, the rest is either made up of freebies picked up when i first joined, or stuff I have made which is not going to make anyone rich lol.

If this were ever to happen what do you think those who create would do? Yup, they would stop creating and probably leave SL. LL would get less money from land sales and tiers and SL would grind to a halt. Goodbye SL.

Alexa

It's not just your money the proletarian should get, it's all the well off class's money, especially the major land barons, whose greater RL weath has enabled them to profit at the expense of the poor masses.

Income redistribution doesn't happen overnight. It takes relentless propaganda, endless proselytizing, a constant education of the masses to the injustce that explains their poverty and the wealth of a tiny handful. But it will happen. It is being promulgated constantly here. The resistance of the weathy elite is broken down by the continuous bargage of propaganda while the masses grow strong by steady enlightenment on the true nature of class struggle.

Please see my additional point above.

I am almost inclined to think you are joking because what you suggest is ludicrous and preposterous and will never happen.

Alexa

There is no free lunch. If you want something, work for it. I'm currently number 10 on the net worth list. It is in no way a result of my having real world wealth. I worked for every L$ of it. And no, you can't have it

I don't have much. I work hard for what I do have. There is a good possibility I may never be able to retire (unless I want to live in a packing crate in an alley somewhere). But it will be a cold day in Hades when I ever say to someone, "Hey, you have more money than me, so hand it over."

Lunch is not only not free, it's not guaranteed to be good when you get it.

Capitalism may be a flawed system; but so is Communism, which has historically resulted in more "equal poverty" than "equal wealth".

I sure as heck don't want to live in a communist society, in RL or in SL.

Invect, once again you're asserting that "we need" something that you want. When will you realize that you wanting something has nothing to do with what we need?

If you forcibly take legitimately earned wealth from players, guess what will happen? They will quit SL. This isn't the real world, where a violent revolution can actually force people to do things against their will... it's SL, and if the players don't like what's going on, they'll stop playing. And since you will be targeting the "rich" in game for persecution, the very ones who's RL money is subsidizing the play of the so-called underprivelidged class, that will effectively destroy SL. Do you think they can run the game on just the one-time $10 fee of the landless? No way, Jose... they are making their money, and thus keeping the game running, with the tier and subscription fees of the "upper class" in game. Take the wealth that they have earned away, and you will not have a happy underpriveledged class... you will have a bunch of unhappy players as SL folds up like a card table. You won't be freeing anyone from the tyranny of capitalism, as the existence of SL depends on it!

And just for the sake of argument... how would you go about seizing the assets of the rich and redistributing it? LL sure as hell won't be party to that... Its been beaten to death that there will not be a grid-wide player-run government of any kind. Just how are you going to pull off your "revolution", Invect? Do you really think its possible, or are all your posts just meaningless reguritation of your communist wishes?

I am not alone in my views. Ulrika Zugzwang believes we have a system of

and Ulriika does not approve of our current
And she dislikes the fact that we do not have a

In fact it was her post that inspired me to add my support to her admirable goals.

Invect, what Ulrika says or believes is not the issue, and you did not address anything that I said. I'm not sure why that surprises me, because you have never actually addressed anything I've said... just spouted more rhetoric.

When you punish the people that work hard to make wealth in this game, why would they want to do it any more? To please you? You can't make them pay hundreds of real life dollars for the priveledge of having everything they work for taken away... they would quit in droves, and kill SL in the process.

Now, please... address this point without using Ulrika as a shield, if you would be so kind. Prove to me that all the people spending US$200 a month would enjoy having their hard earned cash taken away from them. Because no matter how you slice it, they don't have to put up with that kind of treatment, and no amount of propaganda will change that.

Invect Hasp:

(Emphasis is mine)

Tell you what: if imposing changes and application of centralized force appeal to you, why not play a single player game like Sim City? You can impose whatever centralized force you like on NPCs. Here in SL, there's a real person behind the pixels, and most of us will leave the game rather than submit to changes imposed by another player.

Traxx, your plan to use the voting system to govern the future of the new continent, while done to impose the will of one part of the wealthy elite over another, is an excellent addition to the arsenal of proletarian struggle. Your plan to weight the voting in favor of the bourgeoisie was brilliant, though accidental; it would lull them into a false sense of complacency while building the resentment needed to fuel an army of the voting low income residents.


Promise the many the wealth of the few, provide a voting system for deciding the direction of change. and the centralization of power and redistribution of wealth will follow inexorably.

The "federal" government phraseology used by Philip Linden fits perfectly into the scheme. "Federal" government starts out with minimal powers, then through constant agitiation, a need is made to be perceived, a need to which the solution is broadly felt to be available only by increasing the power of the federal government. Perhaps stabilization of land prices or the value of the linden dollar.

The forums's part in the process is working out quite well, the anti-central government ideoloogues are all in here, wasting their time arguing with harden advocates of increased government power, instead of expressing their views in a more palatible manner in the general and off topic forums where more of those who would benefit from a redistribution of wealth and income spend their time.


Yes, a few of the stingier of the well off might quit supporting the game entirely, but in any revolution some of the wealth of the former elite is destroyed while the talents some of the former elite are lost when the former ruling class loses their lives. So a loss of a few big investers is no big thing in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, they're now two of you.

Hey, Invect, you want to even up my assets and yours so that we will be economic equals in SL, unaffected by our RL finances? Great! Send me RL cash to get health insurance and stuff and I won't cash out my SL income through GOM to pay RL bills. I mean, doing that really limits my ability to purchase SL land, and it's, like, you know, socially unjust and shit. Come on, comrade, I gotta pay my ISP 30 bucks and I have a doctor appointment next week, too, so hurry up and kick down some economic redistribution! BTW, is it okay if I spend some of it on grass?

This is inaccurate, and the implied context is also inaccurate. Invect, are you familiar with the format of a Thinker's discussion? The host chooses a topic that might be controversial or emotionally charged, and tries to keep order if the ensuing discussion gets heated. Our last meeting was very contentious. Eloise's topic focussed on the new pope. Yet she is not religious in the conventional sense. She just chose a timely topic.

My choice of topic was how the feature voting sytem might be repurposed as a mechanism to let players getting some say over land use decisions in the new continent. That doesn't mean I support a government in SL. Check my other posts in this forum!

I'm very happy that LL has implemented the feature voting system, and I strongly support taking the time to get it right and keep it in good repair when the inevitable 'gaming the system' occurs and must be counteracted. I'm also happy that forum watchers are noticing hints that LL is open to player suggestions regarding land use decisions on the new continent. This has nothing to do with imposing the will of some wealthy elite on the rest, Invect. The new voting system is an example of direct democracy, and we sure need more of that in RL, not more ruling groups.

Now although I post rarely ... I do follow these forums. I am almost certain that Invect Wasp is "just kidding". I read it and giggled assuming it was very dry parody. It's so over the top - it's just silly! Well ... just my quick insert. I cringe to see others responding so passionately and thoughtfully to something I thought was such obvious quirky humor.

It would be even funnier if I was wrong. (yikes)

-discordia

Yes, discordia, I, too, wondered if he was trying to be a parody of himself, and whether it was conscious. The classic sectarian communist views are so predictably laid out, and in such a stilted manner, that it is either parody or lack of awarenes.

\

I think we need to be very scared that this highly, highly flawed voting system, something that has functioned only like a week, is being touted by Philip Linden and implied as somehow influencing his board of directors.

The problem with the voting system isn't that it is flawed, i.e. people have obviously pointed out that alts can work it, and certain propositions float to the top and get attention, and others mistakenly get retired, etc.

Let's begin with a very basic flaw in its construction, which is that you cannot vote yes or no, and that your way of answering it is to pull down a menu of numbers from 0-10. That suggests that you can repeatedly vote on the same proposition many times, i.e. use up all your points on one vote, which flies in the face of all the world's democratic voting systems which try to prevent multiple voting on the same vote. It also sets up confusion in voters -- are they merely giving a nod? If they wanted to vote but sink it and they put in 0, does their 0 count as a no to offset the yeses? These puzzlements add to the confusion of the voting mechanism.

Next, there's the issue of "direct democracy," which even in the most democratic systems is "easily directed" LOL. Most obviously, there's the problem that only 10 percent of the players read the forums -- the Lindens themselves will tell you that (some people think the figure is more like 5 percent.) Of these 10 percent, as we've seen from some straw polls, 25-35 are computer/IT/Internet. That means that a tiny biased minority of players are setting up the very propositions themselves. This is the problem calling "staying the dyer's hand." If you pour in purple dye upstream, all the people downstream, regardless of their proximity to fresh water, etc. are going to have purple-coloured water. How can you prevent a tiny minority of people of imposing on all the others downstream that their issue has to be getting the purple out of the water?

Another obvious problem is voter education. Any democracy work always focuses on this problem. You can have all the direct, unencumbered, free, fast, and effective "direct-voting" system. But what do people know when they vote? How informed are they? Who presented the issues to them? What venues did they have to discuss the issues? I find it highly problematic that you can have voting without voter education, voting without discussions, voting without focus groups, etc. i.e. all the checks and balances and scaffolding that make democratic societies work better than non-democratic societies. Unmediated, direct voting systems might seem like the latest ne plus ultra, but they are engines of fascism and jihadism for those who simply know how to pour in the purple dye upstream.

For Philip to be running off to a board meeting with something he thinks is "the community speaking" is troublesome to me -- what he has isn't full-fledged, educated, informed democratic opinion, what he has is an iffy aggregate opinion that doesn't follow the basic rules of a professional opinion poll or sociological survey, i.e. as to error margins, weighting for geographical location or whatever. What percentage of LL's polls are errors, i.e. people not figuring out what to put and pulling down the wrong levers?

In a relatively small community like SL, where many people have accepted a common lexicon, it might be generally felt to be legitimate that a few issues like "fix the messed up events system" or "ban bounce scripts" are going to be tacitly accepted as the burning issues of the day.

But how do we know? What if it turns out that 90 percent of the players, who don't read the forums, who might or might not be tekkies, have as their burning issue that they actually want job objects like TSO that produce basic income? We'll never know.

Let's take the issue of land use on the new continent. Let's say we put the issue of the telehubs on the New Continent up to a plebiscite. What would we have? We'd have 10 percent of the players, persuaded by the 25-35 percent of tekkies (if our straw polls are accurate, which of course they aren't) or 15-25 percent of that 10 percent who are artists voting that "telehubs are ebil" consistent with their pastoralist utopian notions. Would that be fair as a factor inducing a Linden response?

When Robin Linden said that "2/3 of the forums in a poll said no to telehubs" and that only "2 landowners said they were for telehubs" I immediately went out and sent IMs to probably 50 people on the new continent. I thought it would just be interesting to see what they thought. I right-clicked on land to see the owner and sent them an IM. Of all those I contacted, only 7 responded and joined my group New Continent Pioneers which took as its platform a position that "at least one TH" was desirable, i.e. in the moth temple where the Lindens had already indicated it was scheduled. So I added to the "only 2" and showed that the "2/3" could be suspect if it was made up of a) people who didn't own land on the new continent b) people who wouldn't even buy land on the new continent even if it was telehub-free.

But where were the other 43 people I contacted? Offline, on vacation, having log-in and crash problems, indifferent, opposed to the telehub but not inclined to answer, etc. etc. People generally don't want you to bother them with play government stuff in LL!

As you fly around the new continent you see a mixture of people trying to do their businesses, newbie or established, in prettier but more rugged land, and you can't know if they want a telehub or not. One of my tenants said she felt that people were coming to the New Continent to live, as a kind of "bedroom community" I might add, and not worried about telehubs there because they could just click on the mainland and get out to a shop or mall any time they want -- it was only the flight home that was a bit rugged.

Given that a very large percentage of New Continent land is unsold...and unsold because people aren't sure if there are or aren't telehubs!...do we have an accurate readout on this issue from anyone, whether my straw poll or a proposition on the voting mechanism or the forums or the Lindens' anecdotal messages?

A major problem is lack of voter awareness and informedness. There's a good chunk of people who don't know or think about the consequences or benefits of telehubs.

I think Invect's goal is to undermine Ulrika's position and to have a laugh while doing it.

So Linden labs should reward people who pay them less money, and punish people who pay them more money. And this would be "working on the economy".

Yeah, OK, that makes a lot of sense.

Poor people can't afford computers and high speed connections, so it's unfair that the rich can play SL. We need to come up with ways to put Linden Labs out of business in order to address this unfairness.

Buster

Someone might have bought their computer before their finances took a dive, might have net access where they happen to be couch surfing, might be staying with relatives or friends who have computers and a high-speed connection, they might borrow a computer or use one at a library, might be unemployed and uninsured and living on potatoes but they already have a computer and their net connection's included in the rent they're barely able to pay, or perhaps they have been reduced to living in a car but still have a computer with a wireless modem and they're into war driving. Since the economy plummeted in Silicon Valley a while back, I know a lot of poor people with computers and access to high speed connections, many of them eking out an existence on the occasional contract programming gig while they live in someone's garage.

That said . . . Invect's call for action is still a joke. I'm waiting for him to tell us that when we go out to a restaurant we must all share what's on our plates with the other diners, so no one's meal is unfairly affected by their economic status.

BTW, Invect, still waiting for you to send some cash, comrade! I wanna rent a movie, so hurry it up.

I've said it in other threads, and I'll say it here... Invect is either kidding, or he's delusional.

If he actually expects people to pay US$200 a month so that other people playing get to have more play money... I mean, come on... get real. The "rich" players are already subsidizing all the basic accounts. How much more does he want? There is no underpriveldged class in SL... even a basic account can produce content, sell his wares, and become part of the rich elite, all without ever paying more than the original $10 to get in. How is that so unfair?

But it all boils down to this... LL has already decided the economic model of SL... its coded into the very core of its existence, and it ain't communism. The "revolution" Invect apparently believes is inevitable can't happen. No player government can force the coding of the whole of SL to change, no matter how much they rant about it. There is no way for a group of players to sieze control of SL and force a new economic model to happen, short of actually going to SF and taking over LL by force, and that's just a whole 'nother level of crazy.

Kim gets a gold star.

Remember, don't feed the trolls. Their appetite is infinite, while your time is finite.

~Ulrika~