Why it wont work.....Player Government.

Consequences....you mess with the system and you get banned,thats the ultimate consequence of ignoring the TOS.

Just saying a player government would work really is not enough,nor is thinking that Second Life players are reasonable people - just look at the joke that the rating system is for proof of that.

In THEORY the rating system is good - and yet the players kill it stone dead.In short - it's open to abuse and misuse.

Take a prime example of an online game with a player run 'government' - World WarII Online.This is how it works - you prove to be an able leader over a period of time and you can then apply to join one of the High Commands(Axis or Allied).The HC's in the game run virtually everything,from telling you where you can and cannot fight to actually removing griefers from the game - and it works,and the reason that it works is because of the consequences.

If your a member of one of the HC's and you abuse the power that your given then you are at the very least removed form HC or,in some cases,fromt the game itself.The same goes for players - you mess with the TOS and your booted - it's as simple as that

Anything but local government in Second Life will not work because we dont HAVE to be here - we dont HAVE to accept the consequences set up by another player.Linden Labs set the terms we have to live by and we all accept those when we sign on.

Another reason - and this goes hand in hand as to why we have so many griefers here - many people have nothing to actually LOOSE by not being 'law abiding citizens' is because they pay $9.95 once and then hey, thats it.

Local governments - ie two or three sims set up this way with those living there actually buying into it by agreement would work and would be a very very interesting experiment indeed.You cannot FORCE someone who pays into something to do anything,it HAS to be voluntary basis only.

Linden Labs would never allow a player run government for the simple reason that people would vote with their $ - and go play something else.

the question may be whether or not the consequences of not offloading some of the adminstrative tasks to the residents is sustainable for ll.

while there will be problems with a resident government, there are already problems with a primarily ll government (e.g. land scanners, death threats, repeat offender griefers, etc).

there will be no perfect system of governance. however, that should not be an impediment to trying to improve things (if they can be improved).

the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.
the good should not be the enemy of the perfect.

While a great post, some things people need to keep in mind. Like Sox said it may be great on paper but the implimentation is what generally screws it up. Seconding the noting about the ratings system it does point out the primary weakness of a player run government across the board in SL.

Stone you only see "good" and the possibilities of what a utopian government "Could" provide.
Unfortunately, 28 months and reality have proven that Utopian philosophy falls a far cry short of reality be it Real life or Virtual reality.
Griefers have proven that most engineered systems can be circumvented and thus ultimately more detrimental to a system than its worth.

Shadow

On the Carrot and the Stick approach, realistically, no system will work without enough of both to keep balance. Giving residents new "powers" is relatively easy; setting up a proper punishment is drastically more problematic.

If the issue existed in a bubble, I would say permabanning and permadeleting residents should be an option against extreme abuse. Unfortunately, because LL has opted to use a system that allows residents to maintain intellectual property rights and real income streams from their products, you run the risk of pissing a wealthy abuser off enough that they would actually sue, and be well within their right to do so. Naturally, this has the long-term in mind.

That said, what is an effective punishment for rampant abuse? I feel the answer would be a "mime" account. By mime, I mean an account that is basically in complete stasis. The account would lose all persistent, in-sim access to the Linden Asset System beyond avatar effects. While communications would still work, the account would essentially be unable to create or access new content. Furthermore, all content rezzed by this person would be perma-masked "Temp On Rez," "Die at Edge," "No Transfer," and "No Modify." Attached scripts are disabled.

Now, what would this do? For consumers, it means losing access to all those expensive attachment scripts they've bought or stolen. This is allowable, since the consumer objects are not the intellectual property of this creator. Rezzed content would be unable to exist for long in any respect. For content-creation abusers, this would be a kiss of death for the account. Basically, you kill the account without actually killing it - while giving the resident sufficient recourse to sustain existing IP rights and income.

This would be a big thing. Suppose the person has an alt. It would force the person to create the objects again from scratch or backup data. It would force the person to put a public announcement out about the incident to retain the same "friends," and recreating those lists. The only thing this leaves out are certain brands of scripts... and I feel controls over script usage will eventually take care of that.

Anyway, this sort of thing would only be needed for extreme cases like huge-scale fraud, conspiracy at the real-world level, or global attacks that cannot be dissuaded. I think it would constitute enough of a "penalty" to keep sovereigns from the "extremes" posited on this forum.

not at all.

i just point out good to you because you argument is based on only the bad things government do.

my position much more nuanced than that.

it's a strawman argument to call my position a utopian one. easy to knockdown because there is no utopian solution. because you defeat the strawman, it doesn't mean you defeat my argument. but then you don't even understand the argument.

Actually Stone I base my argument on experience of past happenings in Second Life. I base them on the Tax revolution and many other instances where your precious player run government philosophy in play enacted changes that ultimately had to be re-revised.

Then again are you sure you’re in the same ballpark as I am.
My whole point thus far has been about not allowing other players any form of control over other players. If this is something you advocate and feel that you need to be in control over someone, then I sincerely have a grievance against your viewpoints.

So then again why offer up strawman tactics if your going to turn right around and try to belittle it when someone else posts it.

Since you say your position has much more nuance than that. Please elaborate, so that I may understand your point of view rather than to sit here and debate semantics with you. Especially when it’s over trivial points that you like to pull out of context from my postings.