'building a country'

This forum is a good place to bring up a broader issue that surfaced in the P2P debate. I've participated in that debate at one Thinkers meeting, and in the Hotline thread. Currently it's devolved into a steady state system in which participants are either reiterating their entrenched positions or chiming in with yet another neat idea for repurposing the telehubs.

For the record I'm against forcing people to do something when those people are not causing problems for anyone else -- just going about their lives. In this case they're just trying to reach some destination. By far the most common opinion voiced by residents is that they don't like being trapped by slowly rezzing obstacles at telehubs, and they usually try to fly straight up so as to avoid this problem. My personal opinion is that I don't like being forced to see the blight. The average main grid telehub sim is a farrago of in-your-face billboards, stalls, and boxes in clashing styles. I'm not saying make the blight go away; I just don't want to be forced there by the telehub system.

The most interesting counterargument I've noticed is that the telehub system is crucial to 'building a country'. This fragmentary quotation, attributed to Phil, elicits visions of a huge community full of vitality and diversity. Presumably Phil didn't actually say all that vision stuff; it's the enthusiastic listeners who fill in the blanks with their own hopes. I think those hopes are great! How do we achieve them? By using the telehub system to force people to go through transportation bottlenecks?

That sounds like central planners imposing a sweeping solution that looks good on paper, but when implemented -- big surprise. We are not herd animals! Individuals react to the planners' changes in idiosyncratic ways, sometimes with a ripple of side effects, and the outcome is not what was intended. The planners' simple comprehensive solution turns out to have been a shortcut. The problem of building a country is complex, and requires more work than that.

It requires working with your neighbors in a continuous process of upgrading. For some of us that's just normal because our FL neighbors are really decent people. In SL we might not know our neighbors, but we can get a clue -- we can see what they do with x square meters of land having prim allotment f(x) within the context of a particular sim. The big unknown is whether that individual is wedded to what you see in front of you, or would prefer to upgrade. In my professional experience with reconstructing estate sims I've heard retail tenants vehemently resist changing their builds at the outset of reconstruction. When change is voluntary, not imposed, most take their time to see if the work in progress is any good. Then, if they see a benefit to getting upgraded premises, they end up happily accepting the reconstruction. The very best outcome occurs whenever an individual retailer joins in with the creative process of the upgrading, and then propagates the new improvements to other stores in other locations. This suggests that people who might resist 'country building' improvements initially will join in once they see a benefit.

On main grid sims there's a different process. Nobody can force a reconstruction on you, but their build can certainly influence the quality of life for you on your land. A buffer zone of trees is a wonderful solution to the problem of clashing builds. A more long range solution might be to move to a sim where there is a nucleus of the kind of design you're looking to achieve on your own land. You might not be lucky enough to buy land right next to that nucleus, but by working with your preferred neighbors, buying up land in that sim as it becomes available, bringing in friends who share your vision you can someday end up being part of a sim as good as Boardman or Taber.

It's not a sweeping plan for building a country; it's just an organic process for that vision to emerge due to efforts by individuals and clusters of neighbors. Does it have a hope of succeeding? Well, are you willing to invest your time and money long term in a sim that right now might look a bit chaotic (most do!), but has a few people who want to upgrade?

World building, not country building. There is a bit of a difference.

And I think that is at the crux of the issue.




We already *have* countries.

The Linden Mainland, Anshe's Land, Alliez Land, the Gor Land, and more (forgive me if I don't know the rest, or the proper names - I don't get out much).


I think it is already established that direct leasehold from the Company is *more* expensive than renting from a sim owner... so why bother have your own land?

Two reasons:
1) To live by your own rules (as far as land tools allow).
2) To set up your own manoral system with wealth-generating tenants.

Estate owners can choose to use hubs (or not) within their own sim's (country's) borders, so... what should be imposed upon the *world*?


I would say... little or nothing.

Because world-building is about making things *possible*, not impossible.

I would rather like to see the option for, say, multiple currencies - imagine the "$F", for example - the currency of a Fundamentalist Christian group of sims.

I'd daresay it would be a lot more stable than the $L, simply due to the extreme conservatism of the group with regard to finance.


Further, imagine a settable 'sim type', not just M or PG.

Perhaps within sim type "I", wearing a turban would be considered as natural and properly respectful as wearing clothes in a PG sim. Imagine the global inclusion such an option could create.

Or perhaps in a type "P" for Polynesia, the expectation would be clear that people can wear as little as they like without worrying about it.



More options, not less. Now *that* would be world-building.

Desmond, maybe I'm too inexperienced to understand the challenges, but if we expand thinking from parcels as the unit of construction, to sims (counties?), so much more becomes possible.

Desmond mentioned private currencies in addition to the Linden. I've heard (someone can correct or confirm) that one or more of the Elvish nations have started their own currency. If all the Elvish folks could agree on one (dwarvish gold pieces or DGPs?) and have all its vendors offer goods for DGPs, that could accomplish what you suggest. I know that Minerva has its own gold pieces as mediums of exchange, which is required to buy some of the implements there, and in which rewards are given out. They also have money changer vendos on the two Minerva sims where you can exchange Minervas for Lindens. And, like many smart merchants the world over, the dollar ... er, the Linden ... is always good to buy an outfit or a tool.

Of course, that required some design thought and implementation. But once it has been done by one designer, it could be ported/translated into a different style. Say, in the clothing-optional Polynesian sim, it might be seashell beads instead of gold. It just isn't handed to us in a menu by the Lindens.

As for encouraging or enforcing dress standards ... if you (or your guild) control an entire sim, with a little thought you can control access to invited persons only ... or make clear at the entrance funnel that certain behavior and dress are expected, or else banning may occur. I hear that is the way some of counties in the Gor nation welcome visitors.

Maybe I'm just dense, but why can't Desmond's suggestions be implemented with the tools the Lindens have already provided for us, to which is added some imagination and a little code written, copied or bought from another enterprising resident?

The "focus effect" of groups is important, and may have been what the Lindens were thinking of when they came up with Telehubs and rewarding gatherings. With a world as large as SL is, it can be easy for folks, especially newbies, to end up scattered in a vast landscape empty of people. Unless folks have regular interaction with people they recognize, cooperation and community building is less likely to emerge.

By devices to 'herd' people together, one generates interaction that simulates the community building effects of ancient markets, oases, transportation hubs and the like that then self-generated into towns and cities. In my FL, like many, I live near a city on a river that had been for untold centuries a place where the native Americans came to fish and trade. It became a trading post with the whites when they appeared, then a fort for their soldiers, then an inland port and agricultural exporter, then a industrial center, then a financial center, and now a fading former industrial and financial center with sprawling suburbs and a troubled core.

But Traxx is right, artificially herding people together with physical barriers and loss-leader subsidies has costs as well as benefits, and maintain a community only so long as the wall stays up. Ask the East Germans what happened to their "workers paradise community" when The Wall came down and their government no longer subsidized its ideal way of life.

Philip weighed in on this subject in his blog entry titled "Country or Platform or Both"

I don't have an issue with most of what you're saying, but having grown up attending an "F" school, and having had the experience of nearly everyone I know being "F", I can say with some confidence that I can't imagine a more debt ridden, class conscious and extravagantly spending group than those of the "F" persuasion. Appearance mattered a lot in that world.
I apologize for the digression.

Your other points are well taken.

Ah, with regard to Fundamentalist Christians - while I do not share their beliefs, I must admire many of them for their stance against all comers, in aspiration to higher principles and personal values.

Right or wrong, such devotion to duty to one's beliefs is honourable (at least as I view things). The person that knowingly violates their own values is the one that has no honour, regardless of belief.

Perhaps I erroneously assume this would carry into fiscal policy - perhaps their community is more corrupt than I am aware of, but the few that I have known have been quite dutiful to their beliefs in most aspects of their life.




Mmm... everything could be done within the system as it is now. I merely refer to the practical reality that global assistance via the Company would help tremendously. Smaller communities are not going to easily duplicate the Lindex exchange, for instance - practical realities make the $L the gateway currency, and thus the one true tool of commerce.

Better tools allow for more diversity, smaller social experimentation and more rapid evolution of societies - thus, the discovery of societies that 'work' for more people than what we have now.