This linden sillyness is misguided

Yumi, I like your post. <smile>


To assume that people will transact trades in exactly the same manner that they do in Real Life would most likely be a very foolish assumption. But, then...many assumptions are quite foolish, for that very reason. They are assumptions and not based on careful study.

This is why there are people who have made Economics an area of interest and study. To better understand what is going on. What things do have an impact on trades. What causes more, or less, trading. What creates more wealth and development, and what factors decrease it.

Here, in the virtual world, and economy, these studies are still in their infancy. Certainly it is reasonable to expect that quite a few factors will transfer from one world to the other, and even co-exist. After all....the LindeX is an interaction between the "real world" and Second LIfe virtual world. As John Madden would say, "Human factors effect the trade in all human economies". I refer to that as a "Maddenism". It is so obvious it is almost not even worth saying, but for some people, it must be said anyway.

The Second LIfe economy IS a human economy. Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism, are different human economic models. They each have their own distinct features that drive them. They are NOT the same. Yet, they are still forms of a Human Economy. Perhaps, here, in Second LIfe, we will discover and develop a new Economic Model. "Virtualism".

How different will it be? Is it even a viable model? The interactions, benefits, and weaknesses are not yet fully known or understood, and I suspect, will not be for quite some time. It is an evolving economic model.

Communism was strongly believed by many to be the perfect Economic Model. In reality, it has not quite worked out so well. Who knows what this economy will be?

"The Shadow Knows"

<wink>

hi, im a very green sl-player but i think even 250l$ arent enough to decide/find out if the game(?) suits my needs, on the other hand i dont like the aspect that reallife money can converted into ingame money or viceversa ... that transports the things into this world that i dont like in the other ... on the other hand i see litte bueatiful designed places most is bombed with advertising & gambleling evrywhere, there is no real help with scripts cause it sells better than giving tips away for free, and what the hell is sitting on chairs for money? ... thats borringnes pure what shouldnt be a part of any game ... just my impression of the first 2 days.

$250 is plenty to buy freebies from Yadni's Junkyard. There's enough content to keep you going for a while. A lot of those freebies are very well made content as well (check out the book item in there for instance. Second best I could find in SL. Second best only because my current version is the 1st best )
For tips and such your best bet would be the help forums on here, or to use the "Find" button and look for events that tutor in scripting and building. Yes, some people closely guard their secrets that they use in their condent, but not everyone does.
As for the chairs, here's a hint. Do a google search for "Auto Mouse Clicker." Or any sort of automated macro thing. Find a chair or a moneyball that gives out money. Sit your AV down, and set up the mouse clicker to poke some unused part of the screen, like the floor. Turn off your monitor, and go to bed. Wake up with more money that you woud get if you were getting a stippend. Just make sure not to tell anyone you're doing this.

Isn't reselling freebies morally repugnant to the vast majority of people? How does YadNi get a pass on this matter?

Sorry, I should've been clearer. He charges and uses $1L to keep track of his sales, not to make a profit. And that $1l can buy you about 250+ freebies, as opposed to just 1. Chances are Yadni will probably set his freebie boxes to $0L now. That, or ask someone for a script that can either give out the box contents for free while still keeping track of sales, or one that gives the $1L back as soon as it is paid. Yadni is one of the most generous people in SL I've met, so there's definitely a difference between him and a "freebie reseller."

So the profit is just a nice byproduct of his generosity? That's a good spin on it.

Bottom line is, some people make money off selling the free content provided by others. The amount isn't relevant to the morality of the situation. Either reselling freebies is okay or it isn't.

Ay up all,

Still getting used to my new keyboard so I apologise in advance for any uber-typos.

I started this account as an alt in order to seprate out some inventory objects and general get-away-from-it-all-ness. Upon skipping the tutorial and entering the welcome area (can't remember where it was now but hey, it doesn't matter) I noticed that I had zero cash. Not really a problem for me as I prefer to make rather than buy. So I pootled around for a bit and spoke to a few first timers. One of the people I spoke to said, "How long hve you been playing?" and I replied "This character is new but I've been playing for about a year.". The response was a slightly disheartened "So you're broke too.". They really wanted to go shopping and had no cash with which to do it.
On another occasion later that day, I noticed someone had become a camping chair zombie, and out of curiosity I checked how long they'd been playing. They had started their account the day before! One day is all it took for them to (I suppose I'm being a bit harsh here but) resort to camping to get cash. So I started thinking about what I did when I first joined.
When I first got into SL it was like WHOAH! In game modelling engine, in game scripting language!!!! WOOT (I'm a programmer so I had a head start)
I built a few products and sold a few units and it was all good, but for me, the fun was in the building, the scripting and the getting to know folk.
I, personally, will be fine with no start of account golden handshake, and to be honest, no stipend, but that's because I've already had time to try business in game (and tbh fail at it, but I'm not bitter) and find out that the best thing about the game, IS THE GAME. Socialising, Building, Playing, Being Silly, Escapism, Realism (to some degree)
It's all good. The best thing for a new player to receive, and in retrospect I would've given my L$250 back for, is support. Learning how to build, learning how to script, learning how to use second life, all these things turn you from being a consumer with no cash to s socialiser with a tendency to build whacky things. They may not sell, but you made them, and they suit you just fine.

So I say, support the new players. Teach them to use the force. Show them how awesome SL can be as a social network and a way to express onesself, and let them find their way from there.

Regarding the freebie boxes selling at L$1, the buy event is a bit of a bugger when trying to track sales. When my gf started selling things, I made her a script that when the buyer rezzes the product, it will IM her. At the time that was the only way round what we were trying to do. Dunno about the whole L$0 / L$1 thing. Just adding that scripting a buy tracker ain't that simple. (Or at least it wasn't in my mind when I had to do it)

Trick I thought of the other day:

When an item is bought or a freebie given out, have the object pay L$1 to yourself.

I believe this will show up on your transaction history (twice, in fact).

But is he making a profit? Or is he losing money? So if he is losing money over reselling freebies, would that change the "morality" of the situation?

At the current L$ price of 320L/1usd, he'd have to sell 3200L$ a month to pay his membership fee monthly. 7200L$ every three months to pay his membership fee quarterly. 23000L$ a year to pay for a yearly suscription. If he bought a lifetime suscription for 225, he has to sell 72000L$ to get his money back.

Now we start in on tier. Yadni's junkyard is 4,096sqm. That's 25$ a month or 8000L$. Beyond his membership fees.

This is just to break even.

Somehow, I don't think he's making a profit from selling freebies.

I think the amount is very much relevant. Same as the difference between $50US stolen from a granny's purse, and $500,000US stolen from a grany's retirement account, is relevant. Yadni is most definitely NOT profeteering off the $1L sales. He owns, and has owned, land that he pays money for for years. Even with the enormous influx of newbies, I doubt $1L per box covers his expenses. He has a lot of other stuff in his junkyard that's absolutely free as well. Boxes just make things more organized for him, that's all. Ugh. Why am I defending him. Go bug him about this yourself

Trick i thought of while reading this:

sit by such vendor (or five), and keep clicking on them every couple seconds or so. It doesn't cost you anything, you get free items, and the person who was trying to be nice to newbies is driven crazy with constant popups and the stream of transaction records messing up all their business logs.

Considering this, that 1L$ fee has probably a nice side effect i.e reduces the grief opportunity a tiny bit. Because while 1L$ isn't much in itself, pranks aren't so much fun when you actually have to pay for them out of your own pocket. o.O;

Huzzah! Great points Too many people here expect that the fun of the game is the money and the shopping.



Don't know if it charged since I last talked to Yadni, but from what he told me, he understands about as much about scripting as.... well... I can't come up with anything, but he REALLY doesn't get it. All his awesome scripty stuff that he build was scripted by someone else. Maybe someone should create a freebie "freebie disttribution" script for his junk yard

Crap. Sucks I don't have much time for SL, and already have a complicated project to work on (Thanks a lot Bloop). It should be fairly easy to write a script that, when a person touches it, stores their name in a list, gives them the items, and then e-mails the seller a note about the sale. Or adds the note to a list, and e-mails the list once it's full, incase the seller doesn't want to be spammed. Or even just shouts the sale on a hidden channel to another prim that can keep track of how many boxes were sold in the last however many days. Then if the person clicks on the box again, it does a llListFindList() check (or whatever that is) for his name, and doesn't work if the person is already in there. Then, once a week, have the list wipe itself and start over. Hell, this would take me 10 to 20 miunutes if I wasn't so lazy >.<

I think there is a fairly clear price limit. If the person is selling the freebies at a rate that does not equal the land teir fee or makes very close to the land teir fee (impossable for them to predict the exact amount they will make), then they are not profiteering. Handing out freebies is something that helps get people hooked on Second Life. It is a service that benefits all businesses in Second Life. If the freebies are made, but there is no effective distribution of the goods, those free items do nothing for anybody.

Profiteering is when the person sells the free goods to make a profit. If they are not falling slightly below and above the cost of land teir, but instead making a consistant amount of profit, then they are taking advantage of the situation. There is a moral distinction between the two situations.

So, what is the price limit? L$1 for a free item? L$2? L$10? What makes *you* the one who decides rather than the consumer?

According to your logic, it's okay to resell freebies as long as you're not too popular. If someone sells 100,000 free things a month at L$1 each, that's around $300. Should this person shut down their service before they reach that point? Maybe they can resell free items for L$500 each provided their vendors stop distributing items once they reach their monthly tier. Sound good?

Yes, yes, I get your point. Technically the "limit" is whatever the buyer is willing to pay for the service of someone actually spending their time to go around, collect freebies from around SL, organize them into boxes, provide the land to store those boxes, and provide the convenience service of being able to get those freebies. This is assuming that the creators of the freebies do not mind the person selling them. As far as I know, Yadni has permission to resell his freebies, and Yadni's $1L fee is very generous. I'm sure that pretty much everyone who designs content doesn't even look at that $1l as an actual "price." More of a pointer or placeholder or tracker. Seling a freebie, a single one, for $50 or $100, especially if it is without the creator's permission, is definitely questionable. There IS no specific cut-off point; but then in "morals" there never is one. You're just uselessly arguing semantics, which is a waste of time. I mean, where is the cutoff point for when killing switches between murder and justice, or mass killing and war?

You cannot resell freebies even for L$1 each and maintain that freebie reselling is wrong.

You either do it or you do not. There is no middle ground.

That's like saying, "You either murder, or you don't. When you kill someone there is no middle ground." or "You either steal, or you don't. There is no middle ground."
Sorry, but neither our established moral standards, nor our body of law, works that way. It's why we have 3 degrees of murder, as well as manslaughter, instead of just "Killed someone? Murdered. Death penalty."

Its all BS. Murder is murder. Nuff said Fred.

Murder is murder. Premeditated murder is premeditated murder. Accidental murder is accidental murder. Mass murder is mass murder. You're in a VERY tiny minority if you believe all things are black or white. You loose.

You can sell the intended freebies for whatever price you set, if the original creator of item in question is aware of it, and approves it. Because as the item creator _they_ have the say what's 'right' way to distribute their items.

This is why selling freebies for L$1 a pack with original creator's approval is still 'right', and doing it behind the creator's back and without their agreement --or especially when they make it clear they don't approve-- is not.

Do you think used book stores should be shut down? How about used record shops?

Book publishers have made the same argument as you in an attempt to outlaw used book stores. Record companies have made the same argument to try to get rid of second-hand music stores. It has consistently been upheld that once a customer is in possession of the material, they have the right to resell it for whatever price they wish. Why should consumers in SL have any less protection?

Ask me again when used book stores and used record shops are able to produce virtually unlimited amounts of items in question, in pristine condition, at no cost whatsoever.

Well if the point is to not profit, then they should lower their prices even further by bundling groups of friebies together. Even non-profit organizations in real life expect to have some way of covering their epenses without having to shell out their own cash. As for the who has the right to decide part; its a moral question, so its up to everybody to decide. If you feel there is nothing wrong with selling freebies for a profit, then your personal morals have been decided. Alot of people seem to be expressing that they do not personally view profit on freebies as moral. The price limit for profit is clear cut though. If you make more than you take in, you are profiting. The question of whether its moral or not is up to you.

If book stores or record shops are selling copies of the books or records, instead of the original books and record, that is copyright infringement, is very illegal, and yes, they should be shut down. If Jamie or whoever is selling nocopy freebie that was paid for once, and is simply being traded to a new owner, that's perfectly fine. If Jamie or whoever is selling copies of the product that was originally obtained somewhere else, and which is not her product, that's wrong. Especially if done without concent of the original creator.