The Republic of Second Life

Suprisingly, I think this would be a great idea! It would add a whole other level to the game, and open up new venues for international trading and business. Businesses can offer products targeting the specific classes and countries according to income. Maybe this can be SL V2.0?

Your in the wrong MMO for that.

As long as I only answer to the lindens, have your government. Leave me out of it.

Much better economy? All of that would just make trade more complicated and, thus, hurt the economy. The unified money-system we have now is a good thing. We also already have regional mini-states such as Neualtenberg.

The answer to improving any economy is to find and eliminate barriers to trade, not erect new ones.

Why Judea? A tiny, inconsequential strip of land filled up with goats and shouts of Jehova...

You must be able to do better than that... What about the Parthian Empire? The Seleukid Realm? The Ptolemanians?

Anyway, I don't like it so no matter...

Even the Trablanian Empire of Estoff III would be better!

The only reason I can see this being suggested for... is exchange rates.

Creating multiple currencies and removing the L$ would be a wet dream for people who would like to control the value of cash. The ability to play off the various markets and make a killing in trading currencies would make a lot of people a lot of money... and cost a lot of people a lot of money.

I, however, would rather see the L$ economy flourish. I am not interested in seeing multiple economies introduced into SL. I mean... for the love of all that is purple... you want to talk about confusing newbies??

You guys are such anarchists. There are only 30k people playing this game. That means that we are smaller than Luxemborg. We need a strong central government for so many reasons. One of which might be to control the economy (unless you want to return to the barter system).

BS

It is common practice for producers of MMORPG's to inflate the number of "active users" by failing to filter out alternate accounts. While I am somewhat skeptical that there are only 30k active players, I certainly do not think there are 320k individual people in SL. That would make SL one of the power players in the MMORPG world... in the top 5. And if that is the case... talk about bad marketing... I found SL on a random backwater MMO links page for "free MMO's" including some of the text/turn based freebie browser games.

I do *not* believe introducing alternate currencies into the SL world is such a great idea. Not at this point in time. Maybe if a few million people start playing... such a thing could be done, but could see it confusing the hell out people.

Just go totally fast-forward.

You know what I'm talking about. 'Snowcrash' style. Burbclaves, franchulates and sovereigns with their own side-car nukes.

I wouldn't want to cross Uncle Enzo, though.

I think of Neualtenburg as a franchulate. Caledeon is another. Now we need Mr. Lee's greater Hong Kong.

We also need "The Hoosegow" and "The Clink"...

PS: Who wants to build "The Black Sun" on the Main Grid?

Several people have already tried to build the Black Sun.

Not attractive.

Clink, scrip, bars, and orbs.

wonders if Dublin qualifies as a Franchulate?

OK how about a more democracy type "republic", add a few things like some sort of republic runed police force or something, but then I guess things could get out of control there. Still, I think a democracy would be best, with the whole thing with the that and the yeah.

strangely enough I really like this idea. but I don't think it will happen in SL. I'm way to jaded about good ideas now .

...And?

Does this mean I can start a major resistance group?

Oh yes,

Shove the poor people out of the picture.... yeal right.... Time to form the Resistance

Amen

Is Neualtenburg....

First of all... the addition of multiple different currencies into SL is a horrible idea due to the extremely simple, and painfully obvious fact:

TOO CONFUSING FOR MOST PEOPLE

How would someone from one place purchase something from another region? Integrating a wide range of LSL functions for vendor currency conversion? What the hell is the point?

Ooooh, profits.

Imagine the cash people could make... theoretically... if they could buy and sell different currencies within SL. Yet another way for the select few to control the value of money in world.

No thanks.

Viva La Resistance!

This is, simply put, a terible idea. Just imagine the problems created when someone from one region wants to buy from another. This is what almost destroyed the United States in its infancy. If it weren't for the creation of a unifying currency, there is a good possiblity that there would be 50 unusable curencies today. Another example of this is the Euro. Just look at the climb it has taken since its introduction. Common currencies benefit all.

With that being said, if you do form the republics, I will personally make it my ambition to build the golden horde and take it all over. All hail your new khan =)

A common currency benefits all who want to participate in a free market. But the current problems experienced by SL business owners are actually caused by that free market economy.

The SL world is HUGE, but if you open up the map and look at where all the people are, you'll find that despite it's size, Second Life is actually very sparsly populated. There are 'popular areas' which are made popular only by a few things:

♥ Free money or items (eg camping chairs)
♥ Monopolisation of an industry niche (eg Gurl 6 for hair, Xcite for adult products)
♥ Unique scripting that is usable by the public (eg theme parks or Heaven Above the Clouds)

How is this a proper market? To me it seems extremely basic, and tends to disadvantage new business owners as they try to make a mark on the industry they specialise in.

There is nothing to encourage consumers to venture out of the markets/regions they have grown loyal to. Nothing at all. In a game without purpose, save entertainment, that is so large in terms of space, it becomes a matter of "being seen" rather than "being unique".

A division of currency may just be the answer. Regions need to be able to support the businesses and consumers that reside in them, and what better way than to separate that region from the rest of the Second Life world by imposing a foreign economic policy?


If you really want to analyse SL politics, you'll soon realise that the SL world has not grown into a 'developed state'. Far from it. The people who create the SL world merely imposed 'developed' (ie first world) policy on the enitre thing, and neglected to appreciate the need for the population to reach a level of maturity that would actually use that developed state to the best of its ability. Of couse this means people just pour large amounts of money into playing SL without getting much money back on their investment. In the first life, we call that a 'dictatorship', even if the entire thing does have a single currency.

I really believe that a division of regions into free standing socio-economic political states could actually be the answer to keeping the game alive on the long term. Those states will grow, naturally, but they will do it along the classic core-periphery line of economic and political expansion. How is that a negative thing?

If anything it will encourage players to actually participate in a region because they are actually getting something back for it. Even if its just more value for their SL money.


I totally support the idea, but would like to know more about the senate's ideas on how to logistically convert currencies.