Gambling ban = end of Second Life? This article thinks so.

I had a friend who has since left SL who got sickly lucky playing the casinos. He was just so damned lucky, would win tens of thousands of L at a time, and won $32k in one night playing slingo or slots or some other game. It was nuts. I was jealous! It truly is better to be lucky than to be good. But he's a rare case.

You'd be hard pressed to find a more biased source of information than that idiot. This is the guy who argued that the entire SL economy is a Ponzi scheme because he thought SL was some kind of investment scheme and he failed to make a heap of money by simply spending it. He simply couldn't grasp that the SL economy is completely real world skill and service based. Your typical self-proclaimed expert opining about things he doesn't really understand. In short, the guy is a complete dolt.

I know that he did argue that SL is a Ponzi scheme, but I thought that was because of his argument about most L$ purchases coming from new users (which I mentioned earlier), but I didn't know anything about him trying to treat SL as an investment scheme.

I do know that on his blog he has a lengthy row with someone who's making money and cashing out from SL, arguing that they are not in fact making money, but spending it. Which is kind of psychedelic. (I think the argument might be that they're spending money because the work they're doing on SL would be worth more in the real world, but that didn't come over coherently.)

But, um, yea, he's obviously biased and hates SL. I mean, anyone who names their article "Deathwatch" is kind of putting their cards on the table right there.

I had a long back and forth with him in his comments section on the aforementioned Ponzi scheme article and was extremely unimpressed by his arguments. The feeling, I gather, was rather mutual.

Okay -

If gambling is the end of the SL economy-


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Why is it the LindenX Activity flattened out / with the corresponding sales drop off ------

months BEFORE the ban?



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In Fact its been relatively flat after the ban as well - The effect of banning gambling actually fades in the noise of the general trend of spending less per capita which had already been established.

Its like cutting your pay in Half and then telling you that they are going to take 5% more away.

Compared to the big drop - the second little drop that is gambling is hardly noticeable.

I get the objection to Gambling Bans on Freedom grounds - but not the SL economy demise stuff.

So did I, and so was I. A poorly constructed initial thesis and very poor attempts at defending it, which rather made me think "this man doesn't actually understand what he's talking about, and doesn't care to either".