Could the Lindens block SL from stabilising as a goldrush economy?

Would this be even possible? Would it be too painful if they did?

(By a "goldrush economy", I mean an economy that's largely driven by selling items bought in preparation for failed endeavours - as in the shops that made their fortunes by selling pickaxes to gold seekers, the vast majority of whom never found any gold)

By far the largest such item is virtual land, so: No. They couldn't do that. They'd be out of business.

No but the government can. just as they stopped the use of gold as currency
they can just start taxing the crap out of the ll to $ trade

There based in the usa sooo well you can paint the rest

They don't have to, but if it was necessary it would probably be at least as hard as convincing Yumi Murakami to stop posting messages declaring the sky was falling.

Even if the sky isn't falling, is it good for the economy to be that way?

And I'm quite convincable if it also helps me escape limits...

Sky falling is good for helmet business.

why do skydivers wear helmets? there's no tarmac in the sky.

'Cause the fricken' ground is so very unforgiving if you mess up. 'Course, the helmet don't help a great deal in these situations...

It helps make less of a mess for the clean up operation afterwards

Chutes don't make landing on the ground like stepping out of a car. Even if you're good and using a foil you can land pretty hard, catch a gust of wind, ...

Your assertion about the way the economy is doesn't make it that way.

So should we limit everyone so that no one can ever find gold?

No, but that's the question. Even if it isn't that way right now, it has the potential to end up stabilised that way, because nothing is there to stop it. And it has an increased risk of ending up that way, because no-one anywhere in SL is responsible end-to-end for the experience a consumer has - whereas in other virtual worlds they are. So do the Lindens need to include some kind of circuit breaker to prevent it turning out thet way?

Now you could argue quite fairly that there is no such circuit breaker in the real world, but the real world doesn't have the same need for end-to-end responsibility. Yes, no doubt there are real world guitar shops who make their whole living by selling guitars to people who end up frustrated and throwing them away, but a) that's only a very small percentage of the economy (because the definition of activities is greater IRL - you can be a 'dancer' IRL by just having a physical ability to dance well, while in SL that's just a matter of buying some animations which anyone can do), b) the guitar shop isn't responsible for how guitars are played (the community in SL is; if you build a world, it's your fault); and c) the real world doesn't have to worry about retention, as the frustrated guitarists (usually) do not kill themselves, but SL does, as people leave.

The thing is, this does affect me because I'm interested in helping new people, and I'm generally interested in education, as I work in education IRL. But in real life, education institutions are attacked for this kind of thing - many UK Universities were recently criticised by the games industry for offering courses in game design, which omitted programming, simply because they attract many students; but the games industry in the UK is far too small to employ them all and regardless there are no entry level jobs in design - the entry level jobs _require_ programming, which the courses explicitly omitted. They argued that, essentially, the universities were pocketing students' tuition fees to set them up for failure. That argument is still going on. And that's why I'm interested in how SL's newbie experience is constructively aligned, not the "education" (ie, classes) angle per se, but everything that comes up on the new user's screen while they are joining SL.

i agree with your last post Yumi.. this is a question I have often come up, related to user content and the SL economy. I think the hardest piece of the puzzle to get to fit is the collaboration needed for any sizeable project. I'm sure nearly everyone has tried working with others to make content for SL, often to have it end up in ruin. it could be due to many factors but at the root i think it has something to do with the RL/SL boundary. Trust issues run rampant which stems from the confusing and technically impossible to maintain permission system. Several of these factors breed an attitude that is counter productive to creating a rich environment for the average SL user. In my business permissions really get in the way, selling sculpties and textures means i have to take several hours extra per product release to set permission etc.


I think part of the issue is there needs to be a more clear cut provider/consumer structure, as it stands now the main goal of the game of SL for alot of people seems to be to make content and sell it often to other designers or creators. This can be very gratifying and fun in lots of ways, but you are 100% correct, it is a closed circle and allthough beneficial to some (me lol), in general stagnates both the economy and the creativity, especially for larger scale projects. Instead of working together with people we end up working at a distance and can only manage these mini transactions and micro projects.

Virtual worlds are a great place to be expressive, and the ecclecticisim that is SL will have its appeal, but it may turn into nothing more than a 3d media commerce platform, leaving all social and fun elements behind.

LL should take a more active role in building the mainland sim into something that resembles the metaverse that we all can close out eyes and imagine for a while. Bay city and nautilus are a good start.. but I think they can and should do much more..

...bump skulls doing relative work at 200 mph...

There's nothing there to stop it from turning into a grid-wide touch-football game, either, but I don't worry about that happening... even if I *do* prefer rugby to gridiron.
Good. Nobody is responsible for the end-to-end experience a consumer has in the US, either, but I'd still prefer that to a command economy like the old Soviet Union.
What makes you think *any* world does?

I really have no idea where you got the idea that any significant part of the SL economy consists of "guitar shops". Most of the things people sell in SL are products for end-users: sexy clothes, sexy animations, sexy avatars, and weapons. When I had a few "builder tools" out for sale, because they were things I found useful, they never moved. I mean, I get more sales for *screwball* stuff.
Um, because some schools in the UK decided to try and teach a course while omitting the core skills required for a job in that course, the SL economy is doomed to end up selling products for people to use to build stuff?

Usually I can figure out what your messages are about, but this time you seem to be speaking a completely different language.

What does that have to do with the economy?

That's it, I'm staying IN the plane.

Most other virtual worlds do. (Even the social ones.)



But _are_ those "end user" products? I don't think they are because they depend on other things. For example, most people do not buy a weapon just to have it to look at, they want to be able to fire it, and that means there also has to be a place that allows them to fire it and other people who are prepared to have it fired at them. I might even suggest that they expect to _hit_ with the weapon once or twice, so it requires that there are others who do not have defenses against it.

Ditto with sexy clothes, even - yes, there is no shortage of places you can go to wear sexy clothes, but still the clothes maker is not usually making such places and there is no mechanism to check that the number of clothes sold doesn't vastly exceed the number of places. And even then, are they buying them just to look a particular way or are they expecting a particular reaction from others, too?



The UK universities were an example of how it can become a problem when one sector (in that case, education), purely for popularity, sells a product which mismatches with the real world and argues (as the universities died) that they aren't responsible for the rest of the world.

So? There's a reason I don't hang out in those soi-disant "virtual worlds".
Yes.
Does it matter if they do? Maybe people want to wear a different outfit every time they go to a club. Hell, in SL I have already bought more *avatars* than I have outfits in real life. In fact I've got avatars of more *species* than I've ever had suits. And I'm definitely an end-user.

Even if it does, that's what the market is all about. The market has ALWAYS done a better job of matching supply and demand, over any but the shortest time-scales... and we're well past that point.
And THAT is what happens when you ignore the market.

Right, but the problem is when the demand is bogus - people buy weapons and then find they'll never get to fire them, or people buy outfits and then find they make no difference to how they're treated.

You mean like what happens in the real world? In real life I have a replica of a real Swiss mercenary sword that I'll never use as a weapon, and that I knew I'd never use as a weapon. I also spent some years learning karate, and crewing for hot air balloons, until I blew my knee and couldn't do that any more. Was that time somehow wasted? Why the hell are you even worrying about this?

Or do you mean like, oh, someone won't buy a gun in Blue Mars and then find you suck on the range, or discover that the outfit they spent 400 Quatloos on in Entropia doesn't wow the virtual babes? I don't know whether you're just making problems up here, or whether you're deliberately presenting a hypothetical problem without understanding that the solution to this problem in SL is the market... and it works BETTER than having Linden Labs try to micromanage the user experience.

I'm not worrying about when you buy a replica Swiss mercenary sword knowing that you'll never use it as a weapon.

I'm worrying about the newbie who buys a sword not knowing they'll NEVER use it as a weapon.

I'm worrying about the newbie who buys a 16384 to open a "kick-ass club" that is dead within the week.

I'm worrying HOW MUCH OF SL'S VOLUME OF TRANSACTIONS IS TAKEN UP BY THIS.



The solution isn't the market, because the market can happily pocket the money and then say that the rest of the situation isn't it's responsibility. The consumer has no way of clawing back the tier fees or the money for the sword after they've found out.

Again, a philosophical difference of opinions. You can discuss SL's free market, but really, you aren't going to agree on the value of any free market. SL or not.

Enjoy.

This isn't in particular about the free market. It's about the support systems that surround it.

The market will take care of it, the newbie will be out a month's tier and whatever the difference is in the land price when he sells the land, and over time the word will get around and you'll get fewer people starting up clubs like that.
And so can the command economy. The difference is that over the long term the command economy does it more often than the market. Really. It does.