Economic Implications of Open Enrollment

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I would like to explore something that occurred to me reading the open enrollment discussions. And that's the implication on the Second Life economy.

In Real Life, most business relationships except for the simplest cover a period of time during which there are imbalances that are not balanced out till the close of the relationship. Example, I pay Sam to paint my house, and he paints it next week. Until the house is painted Sam has his gain but I do not. Now why doesn't Sam just walk off with the money? There are a huge number of social, moral and legal reasons why he doesn't in real life, but all of them are tied to identifying who Sam is. In addition, Sam may have gotten the job because I could establish trust, again tied to identifying Sam.

Now as business deals and relationships get more complex (and rewarding), this type of temporary inequity becomes more and more prevalent. Temporary enequities are not a problem if contracts are assured completion, but what if they are not?

So my question is, what are the alternate mechanisms for complex business relationships if identity becomes problematic? How can Second Life build a rich and vibrant economy if there is no foundations in identity? Ideas? Suggestions?

The open-enrolment accounts are pretty much forced to buy L$ from the get-go, so that's a few extra pennies in the bank for LL. Also, the few new arrivals who can create content have an even greater motivation to get started, so that's also a 'plus' for the SL economy. Having lots of 'members' looks good when they're trying to get money off investors.

Marla, thank you for raising this issue.
I'd like to inject my morning opinion by saying that in SecondLife, we don't beat dead horses. We beat dead ponies.

But they're not buying more money.

There are still a few truly new accounts arriving every day. The are getting in, looking around, realizing they need money and THEN giving their CC and buying it. But they are the people who still would have enrolled under the previous method.

All the rest taking advantage of the easier registration aren't ever giving their CC's either because they are alts of people who can just transfer money from one account to another or they are underage players who can't give a CC. In fact the greatest majority of the new accounts are just people creating silly joke accounts for the fun of it.

LL's enrollment numbers may be skyrocketing, but they're not making any more money off new accounts than they were before and they're not selling any more L$ than they were before.

The one and only benefit to LL throughout all of this is the inflated enrollment numbers.