Ginko vis-a-vis Northern Rock

Your opinion. Non-natural disasters can be major financial disasters.

Maybe, you can use google cache to see Andy's old website again. You'll probably only just get the text, so that doesn't really give a clear picture of it. =)

I supose I'm reading too much into "your world, your imagination"

Is it not time we had some sort of resident council or govenment?

Yes. I would make it for citizens, however, not just residents. That being those who can be fully verified. The new restricted flag can help with that movement. =)

Elitism at its finest.

No thanks I dont need other "citizens" telling me what to do or how to act.

LOL, democracy is not elitism.



Don't verify yourself, then.

Democracy might not be, but what is described below sure is -

Elitism is something that, by its nature, is restricted to a small percentage of the population; say owning a Porsche or a private jet.

I'd hardly call dropping $10 a month into Second Life - to offset the costs to Linden Lab of having the privilege of logging in - beyond the means of 99.999999% of the playerbase, to be perfectly honest, when you take into account the $1000 computer and $80 a month internet connection needed to run Second Life in the first place.

Broccoli

If those people that pay the 10$ get to make decisions for those who dont - Its Elitist.

And either way, I don't think that democracy would be a particularly good way of governing SL, since it has the effect of norming everyone towards the majority views (if you don't agree with the majority, you _lose_). That's rather the opposite of the goal of SL of everyone being able to express themselves, even in ways that the majority might not like.

Great point.

It would be wise for you to consider the possibilities of bot actions in votes. Without being verified, bots can change the vote pretty easily. You have your choice, you can either be choose to except decisions made by real humans or you can be told what to do by bots. Right now you have choosen the later.

My intention with the restricted flag check would be so real humans can know that the votes are cast by real humans. You call that elitism, go right ahead. I say this prooves you lack insight or just refuse to be positive to any reply with me. That is something I'll just have to accept as just you, Colette.

That's more of a failure of the vote system rather than democracy. The old popular vote method sucks.

How the heck would it do that?

You will not be limited to verifying only one account.

I suppose one is free to govern one's Estate in any way one likes; enlightened despotism seems most popular. But of course the authority of such a government is limited to whatever the Lindens grant Estates.

In the entropic Mainland miasma, residents have rather less authority available at present, even to a landowner who may delegate authority to others who consent to the governance of the parcel they rent or visit.

But all authority devolves from the Lindens, who get it by the "consent" of those who agree to the ToS. So presumably (perhaps obviously), the intent would be to give the Lindens some cause to delegate more of their authority. And I suppose that cause would be advanced by a track record of responsible exercise of authorities that are currently delegated.

Not sure how one would go about that. To demonstrate any scalability, it would seem a large Estate (Caledon-like, perhaps) would have to be the proving-ground. This might be an interesting exercise in empirical Political Science... but not my forte... and (I think) not exactly on-point to the thread.

There are projects out there that deal with local governance - like the metaverse republic spearheaded by Ashcroft Burnham (metaverserepublic.org). If you are serious about developing that kind of system, go there.

Democracy is just tyranny with a vote.

Actually democracy is a vote for more bread for the masses. It always is until the bread runs out.

The best form of government is a semi benign dictatorship. That is a dictatorship who realises that in principle it is better that a majority of people do not hate you, that way making it a little easier to remain in power.

However people are not like that. Power is something some people want and to obtain it and maintain it they will kill for it. Therefore some people say if you have absolute power the best way of protecting and preserving yourself is to make people fear you. An extreme example was Stalin, but he was clever and unique enough to realise in extreme circumstances it was also fairly effective to make people love him too. (Great Patriotic War)

A functioning dictatorship that has more or less stood the text of time was the Age of Kings. A sovereign who chooses to delegate power can both make people love him and enjoy the fruits of power without direct personal responsibility. And again in extreme circumstances he can retrieve executive power.

For a more detailed analysis of this thesis I would recommend you all consult the book Machiavelli 's The Prince http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince

Neville Shute in one of his novels proposed a new type of democracy that had the potential to avoid the issue of more bread for the masses. It was called multiple voting and worked on the principle that each citizen was awarded votes according to his or her achievements in life. So therefore as I recall you had a basic vote which everybody got, and additional votes for obtaining a degree, being a minister of religion, a family vote for bringing up children, a vote dependent on your net monetary worth, for working overseas, for government services (Civil Service, Police, Military etc) and a final vote given on the Crowns authority as a type of medal. This has never been tried in real life and I sometimes wonder if it would work.

By rewarding people with ability by additional franchise the theory was you got better government

All off topic I know

You Must have read Tomas More.



I disagree.

I think the best form of government is a libertarian constitutionally limited repbulic That exists primarily to protect its citizens from the abuses of other citizens and the aggression of other nations.

It's not really so much about a particular method of election, or government, though. It's more about the fact that:

a) in any form of government, some people lose out;
b) this is a virtual world and all of its laws are malleable.

So rather than requiring governance, it seems better (given that we have the ability to), to "hack the virtual reality" to make it unnecessary and so that no-one loses out.

Some people had already proposed, for example, just being able to hide builds that you didn't like and that were next to you, so that your client wouldn't display them. Going further than that, since SL doesn't really have any geography (in cold, hard reality, it's just a database) someone could write a client which lets you build your own environment by patching together bits of the standard one. You could put Svarga in your front garden and NCI in your backyard just by using a client that downloaded the necessary data from the servers for Svarga, Kuula, and the sim your house was in, and drew them all in the appropriate places on your screen, and when your avatar flew into them, it'd just be like a regular sim crossing. Of course nobody would be forced to do this, so for those who wanted absolute consistency, they could fly the grid as provided.

The best form of government for Second Life is Payers perogative.

If you paid for the land - you make the rules.

I dont see how in Second Life it could work any differently and encourage anything but account cancelations by those footing the bill.

That would be a Gibson novel. No actually, the technocracy started before Gibson.

The only financial disaster I can identify in connection with WW2 is the hyperinflation that hit Germany in the 1920's and wiped out the savings of many German households.



And that has nothing to do with the British government issuing war bonds.

Except that you can only make the rules the technology-as-provided enables (Yumi's point), and those that the Lindens have granted--that is, a landowner doesn't get to molest defenseless woodland creatures on their PG land (or whatever the ToS & Community Standards say... substitute something Godwin-worthy, perhaps). I think the issue is whether some greater freedoms could be granted a "responsible assembly" somehow constituted, which liberties would be unacceptable if granted to each individual landowner. And for "liberties" substitute "regulation"--two sides of the same coin.

I posted this before, it gives all the dates back to 1883.

http://www.sen.parl.gc.ca/sjoyal/e/debates/bonds_government_perpetual.html

Now, the remarkable bit about this is how they decided to reinvest ("force", just like in Ginko's "force" the debt.

That doesn't even cover them all, as that history notes how Canada was affected by them.

Its very possible that eventually there will be no PG land - this is going in favor of self flagged parcels.

Daniel L said as much in that long interview.

LL will only be policing the Main Grid .. Estate level governance will be taking over for the rest of SL

He has also said that eventually there will be no such thing as being "banned" from Second Life.

So I do not see things going in the direction you mention

- Rather than a Virtual world with virtual community, etc, basically a Second World

- Its more moving in the direction that SL is collection of 3D Websites wearing a virtual world suit.