Aimee's important post about SL player-run democracies

Yes. It lends credence to the fact that our "rights" are temporary.

Yes. Circling the wagons could be another possible response to the emergence of a special interest superpower.

Are we protected from outside interference and in-world griefing now? I'm not convinced that's true.

How do you think the Lindens might be inspired to make such a change? Theoretically, could we as players work with the Lindens to make it happen?

And when the hoards arrive, what then?

If I wanted government, I'd play RealLife.

O

Thanks, I'll inform the papers.

i wished to thank snowcrash for repeating aimee's message, 'cuz i would've missed it otherwise...

it's funny, 'cuz here in the forums, i feel there's a much greater concern for -these- concerns, than 'inside', where people are just busy getting on with their sl-lives... just like in rl, where there's a huge divide between the american govt. and the public living with it/under it. and each has huge, -huge- mis-expectations/assumptions of the other.

democracy... it's a big subject to chew, and especially for those who don't always assume that the richest people are the 'rightest' people to listen to (that's a cheap shortcut for those who don't want to deal with the whole messy business). that's only 'capitalism', not 'democracy'. just like the ludicrousness of comparing 'communism vs. democracy': the former is (in theory a monetary system; the latter's purely (in theory a form of governance.

and speak o'which... 'socialism'... so why d'ya think it's called 'social security'?? that's it's -purpose-... privatizing would be -non- social-security... just, what, 'security?' 'old-age security'? ignores so much history behind that program...

well, just no easy way to discuss sl governance issues, without bringing in rl weirdness... no way to leave all those expectations behind, no matter how 'virtual' it all might seem.

no easy answers, because a real democracy doesn't pander to the majority... it -protects the minorities.- just like american caucs. aren't the majority anymore (if i remember right, last census had blacks/hispanics as a larger pop. than whiteys doesn't mean it's time to reinstitutionalize slavery... and if it was, caucs would be the enslaved. (and that has a whole weird tie-in to the discussion of 'wage-slavery'...)

don't mean to be inflamatory about it; i'm writing with an open heart and mind, and if you read with the same, i hope you don't feel anger/rage at that. if it inflamed you, then i most certainly didn't mean to make you so. as i understand my own family history, it has blood on both sides of the civil war... very deep for me to consider, but i fully, fully stand upon the the principles of human freedom. all humans. all avis.

(oy, though i've also seen threads/questions regarding 'sex-slavery' - the -chosen- kind, not the nasty kidnapped/forced kind - though there's play forms of that too, that should only occur in private. that is also its own large topic. under the governmental issue, i don't think that applies.)

sorry; a bit disjointed... i'd edited out/wrote new stuff along the way, and didn't intend to create a solution out of thin air. one thing i'll say, is that i'm still awfully new to sl, and don't completely understand the concerns regarding a 'user's bill of rights' ... or that one specifically needs created. i sure see a lot of threads pertaining to such... but what specifically, can i ask, is -needed- by those concerned with such??

I have to agree.

Keeping in mind that what constitutes "progressive" is a pretty vague concept, there was bit of chat recently that makes me wonder just how "progressive" the user-base is.

A mentor was going off to serve in Iraq, and there was some spam in the mentor group chat related to saying goodbye and good wishes.

One mentor's way of sending them off was to say "I hope she kicks towel!!!!"

This didn't strike me as very "progressive", and evidence of a lack of awareness of or concern that we have have an international user-base, and that we have in the U.S. a population that might well include people from the culture of those people this mentor was wishing bad things upon.

Player run government would have no credibility in a world where you may have one person = five votes (i.e. alts). Aimee's hypothetical is just and even more so if those so-called Bible thumpers organize and each has five votes. Ahhhh, I know what you are thinking -- "The Lindens can control it so that only the main account holder can vote." One Visa = one vote. That wouldn't be fair as many couples have two 'main' accounts on one family Visa.

To me all this thoughtful discussion is worthwhile as we learn from one another as we go through this process. However, the practical application of player run government would not work. Or, if it did even with the potential for five votes per player, you would have an illegitimate regime.

I'm assuming the player run government people have in-mind would be democratic in nature. If not, then this post is meaningless and I can work on my next post on why the Linden dictatorship is a good thing.

Although a legitimate concern, the existence of alts has not stopped LL from implementing a feature voting system.

I think Aimee is right that a player run government will be good for those that can get their ideas to happen, but possibly horrible for SL as a whole.

I think a player run government will not look out for the good of Second Life as a whole. This is not real llife. We are living in a world that only exists as long as it makes Linden Labs enough money for them to want it to exist.

The resident population does not have the information they need to make informed decisions about the fate of SL. Linden Labs does. Linden Labs has a dollar figure come in every month that gives them an idea of whether what they are doing is favored by the residents or not. When they do well, they make lots of money. When they do poorly, they wish they never made the changes they did. Why do we need to vote for some popular residents to hope what the population wants will allow Second Life to continue to exist. What if the decisions made cut Linden Labs income in half. Do you really think Second Life would exist much longer if Linden Labs took hits that large? Leave Linden Labs in charge. It doesn't need to be run by the popular.

Okay, this is about the umpteenth time that someone has painted a "player government = doomsday for Linden Lab" scenario without any details to back it up. Unless you can get more specific about this, you're just spreading FUD.

To illustrate, I can turn it around and say "If LL does not turn over complete control of SL to a player-run government, users are going to cancel their premium accounts in droves, which will result in LL losing two-thirds of their revenue annually, guaranteeing they go out of business within six months." I have absolutely no evidence to back up this absurd contention, but it sure sounds dramatic!

What if a player-run government prevented the popular (or the rich, or the Baptists, etc.) from controlling Second Life?

I can tell you specifically why a player run government poses a danger. The playing field is not the same in Second Life as it is in Real Life.

Scenario #1 Residents get elected who told the public everything they wanted to hear. They told the people they would protect their rights to speach, money, and happiness. They tell them they will make sure the right to bear arms is kept, but griefers will be banned. They tell them that the freedom to trade will be improved through miracle policies that will bring in more revenues through perfect regulation of sinks and sources. They make almost everybody happy, and then get elected. Unknown to you, over half of the people elected turn out to be the alts or friends of a large land baron. These people still unknown to the public as frauds get rid of first land, ban competitors for false allegations, create policies to make the economy more turbulant to create more potential for profit. Obviously, none of this works for anybody but them. You don't want to re-elect them, they just run under different names the next time around, using the current names in office as a reason you should vote for their new names.

Scenario #2 Group of players go campaigning in Second Life to be members of a democratic player run government. These people have pure intentions and run on the basis that first land should be given out in 2048meter2 parcels. They guess that the extra teir fees from this first land will make up for any losses Linden Labs experience in auctions. A vote is held, and these people win. Linden Labs listens to the government, and they increase first land size. People buy less land from residents as a result. Residents that buy and sell land then stop buying in auctions, since it is not worth it. Linden Labs then looses peices of their income in US$1000 chunks. Linden Labs finds out that the extra teir fees from first land fall US$1000's short of making up for the loss in auctions. They now want to raise everyone's teir fees to make up for this loss. Are they allowed to protect themselves, or do they have to go to the government. The government says no, higher teir fees hurt the residents, so Linden Labs is stuck making less and less money with every new server of first land they put out instead of auctioning it. The government continues to make other changes guessing that they can help the residents without hurting Linden Labs, and the cycle continues.

There is a chance you can get lucky and have the government work, but are the risks worth the benefits you might recieve? Right now I don't see Linden Labs doing anything that favors only one group. If they were just interested in Land Barons, why do they do First Land. If they are just interested in Content Creators, why do they do Stipends. If they are just interested in the masses, why do they sometimes lower sources like stipends and rating bonuses to help the Content Creators and Land Barons.

If they ever do hurt you in some way, then vote with your dollar. Stop paying teir fees if they make it impossible to afford them. Stop paying for stipends if they start giving you less than you can get elsewhere. You can even go to other games if things get too impossible. These types of votes terrify a company. Your freedom to leave or stop paying is what keeps them looking at your best interests. A player run government on the other hand is completely unpredictable.

First off, there's no reason that an elected government would be made up of people wielding absolute power to arbitrarily make "laws," that would be silly. First line of defense against this sort of thing would be a Bill of Rights establishing the guiding principles of SL government, including the protection of the citizenry from "rule from above." The government could be constructed so that the elected representatives were subject to the decisions of their constituents. It is also unlikely that a player-government would be able to dictate something like the removal of first land; by necessity there will be some areas of Linden Lab's business and SL administration that would remain untouchable.

While alts are definitely a unique challenge, they are less of a concern as candidates than they are as voters. People are unlikely to vote for someone they've never heard of who has only been in the game for three months. Character will be important, and avs without a history will be regarded with mistrust.

Though alts will likely always be an issue, it can be made so that creating alts for voting would be more trouble than it's worth. Creating unpredictable voting districts by grouping together mainland sims at random could be one useful technique, as would assigning non-land owners to the lower population voting districts, again at random. For every new election, districts are randomized all over again. I'm sure some more effective techniques could be devised; this is just off the top of my head.

Again, it's highly unlikely that a player-government would have this kind of control over LL's operations, and if they did have any input it would certainly heavily involve LL's participation. Honestly, I'm not sure where the idea came from, that a player-government would be able to indiscriminately dictate to Linden Lab. It's pretty implausible.

Land barons love First Land...there's no cheaper source of land than a naive noob.

So what you are saying is that the government could be something like a High School government. You have people that get to have titles like President and Treasurer, but the policy decisions for Second Life still remain in Linden Labs hands. That I wouldn't mind. When people talk about a government, I assume that they are talking about an entity that creates and enforces policy over those within their sovereign borders.

What type of policy would exist that Linden Labs would not enforce? You come up with the policy that people should have a right to trial, doesn't Linden Labs have to be the one to carry out the decisions of the trial. You come up with the policy that people should have freedom of speech. Who has the power to regulate freedom of speech in the first place other than Linden Labs. You come up with the policy that people should not make spinning for sale signs. Who stops people from making for sale signs other than Linden Labs.

Either the government is just a suggestive force like a high school government, or they are an actual government that both creates and enforces the policies within SL.

Now features that could allow fully functioning local governments for specific areas would be a much more intereting creation that wouldn't have to involve Linden Labs. An SL wide government has no need or purpose other than suggestions when Linden Labs runs the show anyway.

No, what I'm saying is that a player-run government would not have control over everything in SL; it can't. LL's business decisions have to be taken into consideration. This does not mean a government would be toothless. It just means there would have to be a clear division of resonsibilities.

A couple off the top of my head:
Management of public works projects and allocation of public land, including roadways, railways, parks, public builds, and telehub land.
Creation of a Chamber of Commerce to establish proper business practices and mediate commercial disputes, as well as to promote well-behaved SL businesses to interested RL entities.
Establishment of an Endowment for the Arts.
Rethink/replacement of the feature voting system.

A criminal justice system is a whole other can of bees. Probably behavior that was suspected of being truly criminal would have to be brought to the attention of RL authorities.

In this case it would be an agreement with Linden Lab to define protected speech and to protect it moving forward. It would be up to LL to enforce "harmful speech" violations, with advisement from the government.

If it were decided that part of the government's responsibility was to clean up people's yards (I'm not convinced it should be), they would have to be given the tools to enforce the policy. Tools that come to mind might be the ability to level fines, or to temporarily remove the ability to sell or list the land until the offensive objects were removed.

"Player-Run" governments will have actual powers when we can run our own servers, or run a company that can host their servers in their own colos.

Until then it's a nice, fluffy pipe dream.

The closest you're going to see in SL as it is now is interest groups running around declaring their interests "For the good of all". See concerned residents, MJW (not RAC, because RAC doesn't have a set agenda). Those are the folks that are going to be the "dangerous" ones. But not too bad, because the lindens won't allow their more ridiculous things to go through.

At the end of the day, we're all here on the whim of the Lindens. Get used to it.

LF

Or if Linden Lab decides to grant it power.

You bring up some interesting ideas. Some of them, I think are things that are actually needed and not provided.

The public works and public areas being controlled by residents some does not bother me that much as long as it was assured these areas would remain non-profit for anyone.

I do think a chamber of commerce could have some use. There are some scam issues that would not be covered in any country's law, because of the fact that virtual items are the ones at risk. I know that there are newbie traps that border abuse without actually being abusive enough to be stopped by Linden Labs as well.

I'm not completely sure what you are getting at with the endowment of Arts, and revisement of the voting system. Art is already promoted, provided, and created for the public by residents for free. Why would you want someone controlling the providing of arts? As for the voting system, as far as I understand it is only meant as a suggestion box with votes used to weight public opinion. I suppose they could do a different type of suggestion box, but are you wanting to have votes actually carried out if they are passed?

The implementation and enforcement still seems the biggest obstacle for any of these however. Linden Labs surpasses player implementation and enforcement of any type of policy by being unaffected by the things residents are effected by. Linden Labs is not dependant on things like the price of the $L, the price of land in certain areas, the competition or demand for certain types of goods like all residents. They have the least conflict of interest of everybody in Second Life. What reason do they have to unfairly push the $L one direction on purpose, or purposely increase or decrease the value of someone's land without good reason, or to make a specific market in SL be effected in a negative way without good reason.

Now residents on the other hand have to be watched extremely carefully when given the same powers. You give a resident the power to act as a judge, and you risk them acting in ways that benefit themselves. Get into the problem of someone finding competitors guilty again to raise the price of your goods. You give a residents with the power to make changes to public areas, roads, and trade, and you have the chance of one group getting an unfair advantage. You give a resident the power to clean up areas, and you risk someone just deleting the stuff of someone they don't like.

The problem is that it is harder to trust residents with interests that compete with other residents than it is for me to trust a company that will lose everything if the wrong policies are implemented or enforced. I believe they have made huge mistakes in the past, but at least it hits them in their wallets giving them incentive to do better the next time. What teaches a player run government that it has done things horribly wrong. About the only thing I can think of is a Linden Labs person getting rid of them or correcting them.

If you need Linden Labs watching the residents doing these types of jobs, why not just have Linden Labs do it instead. No need to risk resident government abuse, when you have impartial Linden Labs employees to take care of things already. They have a real life job to lose if they do something wrong. What does a player have to loose, getting fired from a virtual government? Which do you think is the stronger incentive to be just?

Thank goodness! This is tough work trying to cobble together a plausible player government. I'm glad I've been able to generate at least a couple of decent ideas.

I wouldn't want anyone controlling the providing of arts; rather, I'd like to see more and better opportunities for artists. I agree with you that there are a large number of artists working in SL, but for the most part they work singly or in small groups. I would like to see more events on the scale of Burning Life, big events that promote large-scale collaboration. These happenings are good for SL, and there are not enough of them. They showcase talent and possibilities, and are also large enough to be RL newsworthy.

Additionally, an Endowment for the Arts could resuscitate the moribund state of the events calendar, encouraging longer and more varied events. Government support could also give people interested in hosting events time and space to figure out how to develop events that people would actually pay to attend. Right now, no one wants to pay admission to events, and experimenting to figure out how to surmount this obstacle requires more money and effort than event hosts can be reasonably expected to spend. The Linden-provided tools and encouragement are there to sell land and creations, but they are not there for event holders.

This idea goes hand-in-hand with the public works idea. One of SL's weaknesses is collaboration, i.e. what collaboration there is tends to be limited, and the large-scale stuff is coordinated by the Lindens, who are just too freakin' busy as it is. If we want to, for instance, have a grid-wide railroad system, it would be impossible to do given our current environment. A player government however could coordinate player resources to plan the thing, map it out, accept and evaluate construction bids, offer incentives for land-owners to host tracks or stations on their land, accept donations of land/time/money. I'm not saying it would be easy, but it would at least be possible. And it would all be above board and transparent; people would know who won the construction bids and why.

In my previous post I spoke of the division between Linden and player government responsibilities. I see the voting system as a way for citizens to have a say in how the Linden responsibilities are prioritized. But the current voting system is messy and lacks the gravitas of a real decision-making process. For any given idea, there are twenty differently-worded proposals all asking for basically the same thing.

The feature voting system could be merged with government elections. Proposals could be organized so as to eliminate duplicates and to make them more focused, combining the best ideas of what would be a dozen proposals in the current system. There would be a limited number of proposals accepted for consideration per election, and even fewer ratified, but those that were ratified would have the weight of being put through a carefully thought out process, subject to public scrutiny, and representing the voice of the people. Ultimately, LL would still have final say, but this would be a way to let them know what we really want, without the white noise.

It can be argued that it would suit Linden Lab's business needs if the $L went in a particular direction, if certain kinds of creations were in demand, if there was a thriving land market, or if a superstar creator gets a gig making something for a RL company. All of these things can affect the LL business, either positively or negatively.

More importantly, I think LL is an incredibly busy, quite possibly overworked company. A player government could work in partnership with LL to administrate many of the things they just don't have time handle themselves. As SL grows, it will continue to become more complex, and a player government could actually make things easier for LL in the long run.

I think I'll just boil this down to one last short post. I think you have a good idea with the need for Linden Labs to use the resources of their residents better to take the load off of their system. I'm sure that there are plenty of builders, scripters, and other content creators that would be more than happy to work on public works for free. The fact that we have so many free goodies given away everywhere is a sign of this.

It still will scare me to death if residents ever get enough power to start being able to do similar things to what Lindens can already do, however. There is some favortism that can't be eliminated from the fact that some people pay more than others, the thing is that the higher paying customer also has everything to lose if everyone other than them starts leaving. If Linden Labs played everything in favor of one person paying thousands of dollars, and everyone else left because they couldn't get their chance in SL, Linden Labs will still be hurt financially. Ecspecially if that one customer ends up leaving in the end from lack of their own personal customers.

Anyway, good points, think I'm going to go script now.

If you can write a good, grid-wide voting script, you may just have a big, fat government contract coming your way. Actually, if Diebold is any indication, it doesn't even have to be good.

Cheers!

I'm definitely biased (see my signature ) but I must also say that after one year (and a bit) of Second Life, I've changed my opinion.

By reading Dark Korvin's post, I couldn't figure out what is specific about his scenario #1 — he is describing my first life experience fully This lead me to think that the similarities between SL and RL are so great that there is no point in separating both. We're the same kind of human beings, after all.

I challenge any of you to provide proof that you have lived "outside" of government. Actually, almost all of you live currently under a government of some sorts. While most will probably complain and grumble and prefer an alternative, the truth is, almost all of you have been born, raised, and are living under a government. That's the hard facts. Governments exist, and the reason why human beings need a government would require me a 20-page essay to describe. Rest assured, like all rules, there are exceptions, but for the sake of argument, around 13-15 billion people have ever lived under a government (7 of which are still alive ) and perhaps only a few millions have been the exception. That should make you think a bit about the why question.

SL, of course, can (or could) be different. What I see here as being the issue is not if there will be "governments" or not. There are already governments in SL — some working for over a year now. What there isn't is a world government. This is not unsurprising. After all, 13-15 billion people, and 150,000 years later, we still don't have a world government in RL. So why should we have that in SL?

What we seem to have in RL is a state of affairs where there are continent-wide or even world-wide unions and alliances. This is something which has started, say, since the 18th century or so, became proeminent during the Napoleonic Wars (at least in Europe), and grew to economic alliances since the 1980s at least. What I mean is that it's hard to have "one world, one government". The best we humans seem to be able to achieve is "many governments, eventually one alliance". The Cold War split the world about evenly; remove one of the sides, and there seems not to be "the other side" any more. But this also doesn't mean that we are nearing a "world government" despite our evolution in politico-economic thinking. See the European example — economic unions are fine, delegating sovereignity responsabilities towards a "Federal Europe" is not (at least for the next few generations, I guess).

I would like to think that the same will happen to Second Life. Right now, a few "governed" communities (mostly isolated spots but with some sort of self-governance, with more or less complexity) talk about "trading" among themselves (exercise to the reader: search the forums to see what I'm talking about ). They're not talking about creating a "federation", or "joining governments", or something similar. No, the first approach, not unsurprisingly to me, was "a trade union". This, I think, will be what happens next in terms of self-organisation in SL: the current self-governed communities — being greater than the sum of their individual residents — will slowly work together, here and there, to improve their own situations. First, perhaps an economic venture together ("your citizens will get the same discounts in our land, and vice-versa". Secondly, "joined statements" in some SL-wide issues, like a common Bill of Rights (yes, self-governed communities already have bills of rights, courts, and ways to deal with all the abuse...). This would mean that citizens under a certain government would be granted a special status under other government-controlled communities. For the citizens, this would mean that a certain amount of rules and laws and civil rights in one place would, to an extent, also be valid under "friendly governments". So, when considering simple things, like buying more land, a citizen used to a certain government would more likely buy land on a "friendly" government than to try their luck in the wild, anarchic ocean out there.

Perhaps in a year, all these things that are being discussed over and over again, at the SL-wide level, will make sense under the self-governed communities. Let's see a few examples. A Bill of Rights needs someone to "protect" it, and someone to provide that protection. Since SL does not have a "world government" besides LL, it seems reasonable to admit that only LL would protect the Bill of Rights. But there is no legal way to extend protection beyond that. You can't hardly expect that a smallish group of some friends is able to promote a Bill of Rights and have a way to make it worth something — it will be only something "cool" for the ones that would claim to abide by the Bill of Rights, but you could simply forget about that if you wished, and no harm would come to you (except eventually some reputation loss in the forums... who are only read by a tiny minority, anyway).

The same applies to things like mediation, a "court system" (that could appeal to the AR system as a "supreme court", a Better Business Bureau, and so on. At the end of the day, the issue is simple: either the Lindens endorse these projects and enforce their use, or they will remain "niceties" — something to discuss lively in the forums and not much more beyond that. If you wish to see an RL example, just take a look at the International Court of Justice — and see if you can find your country there, willing to submit their own "sovereignity" to a supranational organisation. So, with nobody to "enforce" a given system, it's just a waste of human resources and paperwork.

In contrast, look at what the current SL governments are doing. They don't need the Linden AR system — they deal with abuse locally. They don't need people to endlessly discuss a "Bill of Rights" or the way to enforce it — they have their own constitutions, their own courts, their appeal systems. They don't need a Better Business Bureau, or a Society for the Promotion of Aesthetically-Pleasing Buildings — they have their own structures in place to deal with that. And better than all of these things put together — they have tried it out in the field with willing citizens, who always knew what they expected: some protection and a bit of order in exchange of dismissing absolute anarchy.

So, for the ones that claim "more rights" and "more protection" or "better dispute resolution", I can only say — instead of asking for a world-wide government to provide those things to benefit you, well, join a self-organised community instead, where you have access to all those things at a local scale.

At the end of the day, I really think that SL is not ready for a world government — but neither is RL, although for different reasons. In SL, anarchy reigns supreme. The freedom to do whatever you wish to do ("your world, your imagination" - ahem) is more important than "organisation", which consumes time, paperwork, and apparently does not give much in return, except a bit of order among the chaos. So right now I only believe in "islands of order and organisation" in a vast sea of chaos and anarchy. These islands will grow, they will become small continents, but in the mean time, SL will grow as well — both in land mass and in population. The best that these self-organised governments are going to achieve is a "pocket" of stability that is appealing to a few. If you have been repeatedly abused in the wilderness, perhaps a switch to an organised city is something you wouldn't mind so much. But if your experience in the wilderness is great — why should you change? As almost everything in the world, it's a cost/benefit ratio. What are you willing to abdicate, now, in exchange for a bit of stability? If you ask around, most (and by this I mean probably over 90% of all residents), will answer "I make no compromises on my freedom". And that, fellow residents, is why I don't truly believe in a "world government" in SL any more.

SL is not a world or planet, and it's not a country. It's a resort town, with a small number of full-time residents and an enormous number of part-time residents, visitors, "tourists", and out-of-towners who come and go.

Government in SL would face some similar issues as governments in Vail, Colorado, or Park City, Utah. Not plumbing, perhaps, but zoning. Not felony crime, perhaps, but spamming ordinances. Not the suffering of the impoverished, perhaps, but the variable relationships between "natives" and those from "away".

Before SL can become a world or a country, it has to become a "locality". It hasn't, yet, and part of that issue is that it has no common local order and no local social contract between residents.
The ToS and CS do not qualify as orders and contracts, except between the residents and God - they are "religious" documents in the comparative hierarchy of things.

Am I advocating government? No. I'm defining a context. To me, all of these political discussions are too "large-scale" to mean much at this point.

Given the preponderance of U.S. citizens it seems likely that an SL government would be dominated by Americans. The political views of SL folks may be skewed from normal but that could change any time. Urging each others to go kill some foreigners with different religions and customs , as that statement "I hope she kicks towel!!!!" meant, could become the norm. Given a government with power and an American patriotric user base we might see things like discussing evolution in off topic being outlawed. Who knows, the way Americans are about immigration control, maybe an American controlled SL government would outlaw non-Americans from entering.

Once again (for those who, in their rush to post a diatribe, may have skipped over page one in this thread), one of the first goals of a player-run government should be to prevent any single interest group from having undue influence on Second Life and Linden Lab policies.

Not every post that disagrees with some aspect of one's thought constitutes a diatribe.

What a government supposedly should do has been known to not coincide precisely with what a government actually does.