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

Invect sent me some L$ today, earmarked for movie rental, but I sent it back. It's the thought that counts, right?

I don't understand this at all. Why should our hard work and our hard-earned real life money go to benefit you? Urusula's point is a great one -- "If you forcibly take legitimately earned wealth from players, guess what will happen? They will quit SL."

There's a line between SL and RL that many people seem to have trouble grasping -- it's tied in very closely with the "is SL a game?" debate (and I know EVERYONE has a different point of view on this).

While I believe that most of us regard SL as "place" rather than a "game" -- for all practical purposes, it IS a game. It's something you pay to play and ENJOY. And for many people, earning real-life money IS a benefit from playing this game.

And maybe you should think of it this way: people who pay more to play this game -- namely, land owners, and many land owners are also creators and therefore the "richest" people in the game -- are paying for your servers, your connection to SL, the very environment in which your avatar stands. Got it? You don't get more by paying less. Besides, LL pays you a stipend. Not satisfied with it? Sell something. Not selling things? Make it better so people will actually want to buy it. In this way, it's sort of like RL -- the quality of the product will ultimately decide how successful you are in SL.