Anshe, Ginko, Linden Research, MONEY!

Hi.

My name is Fox Diller. I help run a very successful sim here in Second Life and I do have quite a bit of time and money invested in this little world we all share. Now, my key point here is that I keep hearing these rants and raves around AnsheChung.com and Ginko, etc., etc., etc. and there is never any shred of decency in those accusations. It’s actually starting to get on my nerves; and I am going to talk about it. 

I run a few businesses in my sim as well as the general grid and most of the money (all of it) goes back into the sim to pay for it. That’s great, but once I start making extra cash on these endeavors, am I going to have to answer at the face of Anshe, when she (on her beckoned demand) asks what I might be “investing” my money in? Will I have to submit for a full Anshe army of audits; or simply be considered as having special treatment ala Fêted Core if I don’t submit?

Where do you people come up with these ideas and oddly amusing drama tidbits that I get to so blatantly read on OUR forms? If in the event that I do start making money and Anshe, or anyone, would like to know what I would “invest” my Second Life money in; it would be MARIJUANA. Basically, you would never know, and I would never tell you. I have no idea who Anshe Chung is from a brick in the wall. I know that she has been successful and that she is great with land, huzzah for her. I don’t want to know what she does with that money, and nor would I give a flying AV to know. So why does she care what I do with my money? Can you just take comfort in the fact that Linden Research would try and protect it’s tiny replica of an economy if something drastic were to happen? It’s what I do, even in Real Life.

There has to be a middle-ground of us folks who just enjoy manipulating this fine new platform; because who would I answer to in the future? There is always claim to democracy and united policy, but beyond the terminal TOS there is no shred of enforceable policy directly related to Linden Labs, so if I make my money there and do so in my own way, would I have to ‘issue’ a statement in regards to this transaction? No. I could, in essence, take the money and run; but I won’t.

In any overgrowing community, if a person has a bad reputation the sheer ratio of unknown people to him would shrink as the offenses got worse, and I am sure $60,000 USD is a _LARGE_ offense; before the idiot could dine and dash in SL the negativity would negate any opportunity to earn that KIND of cash quickly.

Anshe, please just enjoy your money and leave other’s alone. Let Linden Lab’s do their job and don’t indirectly sound like you think that Linden Lab’s doesn’t know what they are doing…they work _very_ hard and I trust them.

Ginko, I’ve used you and I have NEVER had a problem. I don’t know who you are, or what you do, but enjoy your money.

Other SL’ers, Keep your arrows high and be successful, aim for Mars and you might just hit the moon.

Linden’s, thank you.

.fox

Ah, good. A fresh thread on the subject.


Well.

We already had this debate several months ago, sans the "stop meddling in the affairs of others" overtones. I consider what's there now more or less a rehash of the prior dialog, with some of the usual hand-waving and chicanery we love on these forums.


So.

An investment is defined as "the commitment of funds with a view to minimizing risk and safeguarding capital while earning a return." In financial terms, it is based on the amount of the cashflow, the timing, and the risk involved.


In other words, investing in the market, be it future capital, land, or a company like Linden Labs, is just a crapshoot. Take it as you will, study the business, don't listen to the forum drama.

Easy, ya?


--------

Of course, this is coming from someone that makes no monetary investment in Second Life, nor has any take, because I distrust the lion's share of reporting practices and accountability in Second Life. But that's my opinion.

Well, is this something, you think, I am going to have to deal with in my future dealings with the Second Life economy? That's why I am a little ticked, because if Ginko can get yelled at by someone who won't even give any information in return, is there a point to trying to do some monitary successful things in Second Life...

From what I can tell, it's never about their own 'community' problems then an undertone of business survival. I just hope that I can do something interesting with this platform other then worrying what might be around the corner for me.



I just hope that when people claim to distrust things they do so with their own regard. I might still buy land from Anshe, and I still put my money into Ginko, but I don't want this to be anything more then it is, business survival. It's not going to 'help' the market to making Nic accountable for Ginko, it's just going to guarentee that Anshe won't loose her nest-egg.

.fox

Unfortunately, if human nature holds true, the answer is: Yes.



Without pointing fingers at either business, historical evidence proves large businesses will point fingers if it means marginal growth of market share or investment. Which is a shame, considering.

With regards to Second Life, the burden of proof typically devolves to "he said, she said." And it sucks.

The only way to get away from that, at present, is to fight fire with fire. This also sucks, because some statements I see on the forums here border on libel, which should be and are legally enforcable in a court of law.




At the end of the day, most businesses in Second Life do not compete at a level with the real world. The few that do should conform to real world standards for behavior. If they cannot or will not, I would invest elsewhere.





This bears repeating.

Remember, humanity is governed by the golden rule.

he who has the gold, makes the rules.

CCC

You are right, it is a shame. There could be so much potential in working together, it's what's working for us...instead of sitting behind a wall of money; we include everyone who wants to be included in how we spend out money, because it's basically theirs...but when we start making real cash, we don't really see a need to discuss the major points of the cash flow with anyone but our business managers.

In any case, if it comes to a point where you need to find facts or light a fire under me, I won't jump and I'll let it burn. I won't sling back, and I'll just smile.

Second Life Rocks.

.fox

That is so ungodly true that I must deposite 1 bajillion internet dollars into your account.

Very well said. I think the wall that people put up between Second Life and our real lives will slowly come down. It reminds me a lot of the issues we've overcome with the WWW and reality over the past several years. In the beginning many thought that business could and would get away with a lot more than they can offline, but the laws repeatedly held up and/or caught up enough to prevent this.

Regardless of if you're doing business in a virtual world or the real world, it still has real world effects on real people with real lives and the courts will clearly see this. No one should assume they are shielded of these real world consequences and should maintain themselves and their businesses to the same standards as those practiced in the real world or they will certainly bare the consequences of their actions in due time.

That's EXACTLY how I treat my business and my ideals. I treat it all as a unique but whole business. However, Second Life gives us the opertunity to be so much more. To go beyond what we would normally deal as real, and life. I just hope people don't start flinging the stinky stuff anytime soon, because that'd just ruin it for all of us.

.fox

If there's still a wall between some people's real lives and Second Life, I really don't see one anymore. In Anshe's case, it's (apparently) a fulltime job for her to maintain her communities (Read: Ensure the revenue flows, community or not. Remember The Forest). In my case, as FurNation's master builder, regarding his builds as a job while waiting for an accident-injury settlement and/or disability. For a lot of the big players, there's no distinction anymore, and I won't be the least bit surprised if some of the heavyweights take their slugging matches beyond FUD, into the courtroom. Granted, there's huge difficulties with international lawsuits, but hell, that raises some nasty issues.

1) How in hell did people manage to get into a slugging match over virtual businesses playing for virtual currency, and how quickly do you suppose the IRS would end up involved when there's real revenue surfacing?

2) Why, isn't anything done about the more blatant cases of FUD/libel/etc? Not even 'done' by the Lindens, but by the community. We -are- an anarcho-capitalist society, remember? Last I checked, those tended to be ruled by money, power, and sheer mass in a neat rock-paper-scissors arrangement.

3) Why the hell do I even end up having to comment on this sort of thing? The underlying issues here are seven green shades of foul.

Fox, I understand your concerns.

Thing is, I don't care what people do with their earnings. You earn money, you can cash out or invest or use to play.

In Nicholas' case, however, he is taking other people's money in one big scale.

I would agree, the wall is coming down brick by brick and will soon be gone, but I think it is still somewhat there, mainly due to the scale of economics. Once the economics become large enough to cover the costs of litigation the lawsuits will surely follow.

While its easy to question Linden Labs stance on many of these issues that often seem black and white, its clear their policy is simply to not get involved. You can't blame them for that, the liability is far to great if they do, it would drain them of resources. The less of these issues they are involved with, the better. Similarly to how the US will not negotiate with terrorists regardless of circumstance. They must maintain policy or the policy becomes wholey ineffective. Let's let the involved parties deal with it in the proper legal ways in the courtroom when it becomes significant enough to do so.

So, how is that any different of me starting a credit card business and charging interest. I am taking other people's money. If I started a bank and used that, who or what of your concern is it of yours what he does with that money?

How about you let the people who have placed their money in Ginko's care judge and decided if Ginko is trustworthy, and not because it might 'interfere' with your business?

Ginko WOULD NOT be around if it was untrustworthy, the people who have deposited their money into Ginko have done so willingly and I am sure that 90% of them understand that in Second Life nothing is for certain, nor is your business Anshe.

Let sleeping dogs lie, and I think the problems should resolve themselves instead of accenting a non-existant economic collapse.

.fox

With the way this comment sounds, your name could be reasonably interchanged for "Chicken Little" briefly. In reality, a credit card company has some of my money, a bank has some of my money, and a friend of mine has some money in the form of stuff lent. No different from Ginko, really, no matter how much you want to FUD about how it *might* be a scam, or *might* be a huge risk, or *might* be an elaborately concealed embezzlement scheme, et-cetera. I *might* be struck by lightning if I step outside, or I *might* be run over by a truck in the next twelve hours.

Guess I shouldn't go outside because something might happen. Oh, and I should forget about breathing; That rascally metabolic poison oxygen might cause cancer through the magic of free-radicals. I don't mean to be overly uh... nasty in saying this, Anshe, but I can think of better people to serve the role of "community watchdog". You know, ones that probably don't have conflicting business interests or other worries, eh?

Neutrally yours, Selkit.

/130/ec/72527/1.html#post754079

a previous post ive put up not long ago but extremly relevent to this as far as ive seen..

Mmmm, well, I tell you what: If Linden Lab and the community will just let this go on and do nothing, this Ginko thing grows bigger and bigger and maybe goes down with one big bang in one year or two years. THEN you may learn what regulation means! When all the RL regulatory institutions find out how Second Life has been used to scam people for... how much? 60000$ now, 250000$ in one year? 1 mio $ in two years? Once the first big scam happen here, the RL newspapers report about it, what will those government people regulate here? Do you think they will just stop with Ponzi schemes once they are at it?

By letting this problem grow bigger and bigger you only invite the RL government regulation!

publicity! YAAAAAY!

Perhaps we need government type agencies involved, anticompetitve behavior, monopolies and mergers?

well, the DOJ would find any anti-trust claims in second life rather amusing, I wager

I doubt we'll see government regulation there, but we may see the SEC taking a closer look at the sale of virtual securities, and we may see the DOJ/FBI getting interested in financial fraud in SL just like they do across the Internet.... especially if a messy situation breaks open.


There is no question that the bigger your business gets in SL or anywhere, the more public awareness there is, and the more critics will pop out of the woodwork. Just a fact of life.

As an idle note, Anshe, from what I understand you are a far likelier source of government intervention than Ginko will ever be.

1) Ginko is a distributed entity. You are an individual.

2) Are you reporting your SL income for tax purposes? I'd be willing to bet you don't.

3) Imagine the fun when legislation comes into play targeted specifically at your sort of case, Anshe. Not SL legislation, but real world tax law, for the sole purpose of ensuring the taxman gets his cut.

4) Watch it spill over, and I'll guarantee they will go after Linden Labs directly to ensure they get their cut.

5) Watch SL writhe.

I find you to be a far more credible threat than Ginko, particularly seeing as you continue to wave and flap your arms around with the buzzword "Ponzi" inserted every few lines; You are not here to inform us, you, are here to enforce an ulterior motive, and claw Ginko down a few notches for whatever personal reason you may have. However, I am not going to waste my time discussing this with you. You have patently shown you are beyond logic on this one. You're continuing to FUD, and in the real world, that's usually treated as libel, slander, market manipulation, or a combination of the above.

It's the 16 Million Dollar question.

I think the Linden's have answered the question I was having for me. It's nonscense and we can call go back to our regulary scheduled programming.

Thanks for your opinions guys, and insight.

.fox

Ah! All is now clear... Yes, I can see the root of Anshe's concern. She's worried that if regulation enters SL it might affect her little empire.

Glad that's been cleared up.

So if Charles Ponzi can go down in history associated with intentional pyramid confidence schemes, what do you call a business strategy that is focused on destroying a competitor by spreading unsubstantiable rumors abour the competitor's stability accusing said competitor of providiing no more information about their internal affairs and bookeeping than you yourself provide and then doggedly pusuing that agenda in the face of public disgust and censure even when it only serves to increase the competitor's recognition and allows them to secure new customers simply out of disgust for the slimeball tactics used by the libelous attacker?

I propose "Anshe Scheme".

How can you consider them competitors? *blinks* That's like comparing... well, not even apples to oranges, more Land Sales to Financial institutions. Thats what is called an Ad Hominem (sp?) attack. Anshe has approache the issue with facts, and research, and has called for a direct response. I can't say that I blame her, because when I first heard about it I had some serious doubts as well. She did some impressive research, has the facts, and is now asking for a response.

You on the other hand have just directly attacked her. *shrugs*

And I think the reason she shows concern is that the amount that is invested is very large. I have a friend who had over 30k in there, after many hours of work and effort. now you may think that its no big deal, and that not everyone will just pull out their cash, but if it did happen alot of people would be high and dry, unless all that cash is covered. Remember the Depression? I doubt it would reach those proportions, but thats what happened. If you've ever seen Its a Wonderful Life you know what I mean. The businesses didnt have the cash to pay back people. In real life there's insurance for that, but here there's not. Therefore its not safe. And I think that's all she wants to do. Is bring a real world prospective to all this.

And this could all be forstalled by a simple answer to her question that just isn't forthcoming so that should tell you something. When someone can only respond to a well-worded accusation with attacks, that normally means something.

That'd be if you were just comparing ANSHECHUNG.COM to Ginko Financial. Ginko Financial's parent company, Ginko Technologies, is currently working on projects/new developments that could possibly compete wtih services offered by ANSHECHUNG.COM and affiliates.

Quick example: we recently added Ginko City, and Ginko Island to our original sim. Both Ginko City, and Ginko Island are rental sims, one a resort-style sim, and one a futuristic city.

The aim of Ginko Technologies is quite different from that of ANSHECHUNG.COM. We're a bunch of people that enjoy a good time, and like to build stuff. Profit from Ginko Financial investments has given us the opportunity to invest in new sims, so we can continue to do what our motto says we do. "We build things. Things that do stuff." We'd likely offer services for a token sum, if we didn't have bills to pay ot support what we like to do.

Anyway, I hope this clears up why we're now considered competiters

CCC