Comparing two styles of social system

Just for the sake of discussion, supposing a group of folks with some cash in hand wanted to conduct an experiment comparing a Robert Nozick style minimal state with a social democracy . The group of participants would buy two sims and implement one style of social structure on each. Let 'er rip and see social change occur.

There is nothing special about the particular selections I made links to and they may not even be exactly the same category but I am doing the best I can so cut me some slack, ok?

Does a project like this have anything to do with the purpose of this forum?

If I am getting at the right idea, is there any way to even try to perform such a test with the program the way it is or would changes need to made to perform it and if so what kind?

I think this is a constructive idea,
although potentially expensive for the person or persons willing to be the first to put up the cash to conduct this type of scoial experimentation. It could be quite beneficial in both the short and long run to find out what kinds of actions work or not within the system we call Second Life.

After all, aren't most governments of these types started by groups or individuals with a set of values that they think are beneficial to themselves and the population at large?

The prospect of having a SL living enviornment that allows me to share a larger space with others who have similar esthetic values is appealing, as well as the prospect of living in a sim with less lag problems from large builds that attract large crowds. And both of the models that SuzeanneC proposes are viable options available to any group that can simply do some organizing.

If no one moves to either of these sims, it would simply be considered a failed experiment and we could all move on to other, fresher ideas, and if people move into the sims, then simple observations of sereral factors would be determining factors in the success or failure of the experiment. Factors I would watch for would include: populations turnover, land value, traffic, and if any other similar sims get started after the observations of it works or doesn't work.

edited for spelling

We have a private sim coming online at the end of this month (if LL ever gets back to us) for the second phase of the Nburg Projekt (it's a social democracy). I would welcome seeing a second private sim. It could even be placed it next to ours (in physical contact) and we could see how things go.

~Ulrika~

I must not have expressed myself clearly in my original post, the example of a competition was not really what I was trying to ask about at all. That's why I started out by saying "Just for the sake of discussion".

What I was trying to find out about would involve actually reading the two links mentioned in the original post, "Robert Nozick style minimal state" and "social democracy", and seeing if they are both descriptions of the same type of thing, and if they are the correct types of things to be concerned with in conection with the forum's purposes. For instance, one might be an economic theory and the other a theory of morality and thus not able to be compared because the are like apples and oranges, and they might both not be the kinds of things you would need to be thinking about in figuring out how to make a player run government. Where would one go to find examples or information that would enable one to design a customer run government?

The second question asked was whether or not the current set of tools are good enough to make a customer run government. Is the Group management portion of Second Life good enough as is , or do powers currently held by the Linden employees, such as the power to suspend or close accounts, read the contents of customer's scripts to determine if they are malicious (for example, chat repeaters), etc., need to be turned over to officials of player governments in order for the customer governments to function properly? There are probably many less contraversal questions that could be asked about improvements to the software to make it more flexible but I don't have enough experience with group work to know what the problems are. I do recall Ulrika posting about a vote using some kind of method of communicating outside of SL, indicating a deficiency in the software as is. For individual land owners the program recently greatly increased a landowner's ability to manage their land by producing a list showing who owns what objects on the landowner's land. Are there other software changes in the same sort of spirit that would improve the ability to operate a customer operated government?
As an example, gvernments all include many different branches and divisions, and it might be the case that the formation of Groups for communicating within one branch or division might be useful. Yet we are limited at present to 15 groups, and there is no ability to create a hierarchy of groups. For example one might want to have a group called Moldavia, and subgroups within it Moldavia.Senate, Moldavia.HouseOfRepresentatives, Moldavia.SupremeCourt. Fifteen groups with no subgrouping allowed is pretty constraining. This would require a significant change in the software.

I don't have any answers to these questions but I think they merit more discussion.

Suez, you're talking about doing some basic research, right? I'm happiest with less government, so 'minimalist' sounds good. It's obvious that Ulrika has done her homework on the government structure she crafted for Neualtenberg. Advocates for less government could certainly benefit from your suggestion for doing our homework.

Jincey, when I started reading this thread I had the same reaction: 'Is this a proposal for an experimental system to be tried out on some sim?'

Research into minimal government could be beneficial for all SL, not just players involved in an experimental sim. The benefit occurs when this research is used to strengthen arguments against the introduction of new governance functions that could become levers of power wielded by one player or one group over others.

I suspect that this preventative function would be appreciated by groups all over the political/apolitical spectrum. Wherever we are on that spectrum, most of us have our own particular example of a type of political personality that should NOT be given levers of power over the rest of us.

The twin safeguards of local scope and opt-in are necessary, but not sufficient to prevent newly introduced governance functions from being gamed. For example, an ego-driven empire-builder with a lot of financial clout might join SL, and replicate a local-scope opt-in system in every sim. As the monoculture spreads across SL, that individual obtains de facto SL-wide political power.

In RL ideologues or groups have obtained power by exploiting individuals' motivations of fear, anger and the desire for financial gain. If those motivations are exploited, individuals can make self-serving decisions at the expense of the wider community. We might want to prevent that from happening in SL, even if it means giving up the chance to see our own favorite group wielding levers of power.

I can’t really tell you what can or can’t be done. I can say it would be great to have some min places were it would be able to set up governments. Not a System wide government, but a small local government. Were if you step out of line you can be band. You can also give “Special Rights” to say the Law enforcement. This will let them LOCK your Avatar. You can’t even talk. Now that would work as a way of putting you in a form of jail. I don’t know if logging off will free that up or not.

Can I ask why we would have Sub groups? Would that in RL be more in line with.

World = SL
USA = Group of land
And so forth on down. So we are all by definition part of the World of SL but we don’t have to be part of the “Land” that would be the government area? If so I think that is the only way to do it. If I am off base here smack me around and tell me how I missed it. Thanks.

I have played many Government Sims. I was the Speaker of the house in one. I was also the Secretary General in one. So Yes I like governmental Sims and if we want to set one us I am game to play….. For now I have always left them because things have gone bad and the sim goes under. If we work hard I think we can do a really good one here in SL. I would suggest 2 different sims. So we can have a Multiple government political game going too.

Lupo, the reason for having Sub-Groups within a group would be to make communicating with the different parts of the government simple and organized. A person might wish to speak to just the Senate of Muldavia, so they would naviagate through their Group Folder to Muldavia, expand it, and select the Senate sub group. It is similar to the hierarchically organized folders in Windows Explorer or the new SL Inventory folders. My assumption is that there would be reason to create many subdivisions to carry out the disparate tasks of the various branches of the the pseudo-government.

As to my other question, nobody seems to understand what I am asking. Let me try again:
Some folks are social-democrats and some are democratic-socialists. I believe those are two examples of the same type, kind, or category of thing, but they are different instances of the type.

Time to leave work.

What about me? I dislike Democracy it is the country ruled by the rabble. Luckly the US is a Democratic Republic. Social has nothing to do with what I like. OK I am a smart ass but it is true. I can't stand when people call the US a Democracy. I just want to yell at them to go back to school and learn something. The Goverment people are the worst they should know what they hell they are. Sorry had to.


So you want to start up in SL a Goverment Sim? Yes?