The Rampant Anti-Business Climate in SL

There is a rampant anti-business climate and allergy to commerce in this game and it raises really serious questions about Linden Labs' positioning of itself as a gateway to the metaverse and the "WWW of Worlds" or however they'd like to style themselves.

Whenever I make this statement, based now on numerous experiences over six months, and a great deal of thinking and reading, people act incredulous. Their usual response is to say: "But Linden Labs itself is a business -- how can they be anti-commerce?" Or they scoff and say, "But I make and sell skins for a profit, nobody gets in my way!"

So let me describe in more detail what I mean.

1. LL constantly hobbles commerce. One of the ways in which they've just illustrated this is with these foolish restrictions on the number of events anyone can schedule per day, and the restrictions that you can only hold events on land you or your group own, with a forced draw-down menu. This is ostensibly to end "clutter" or "seaminess" in events listening and "too much Tringo" but these are anti-business judgements that have no place in a game promoting business.

2. LL tolerates anti-business hate campaigns. While LL was willing to take the anti-gay signs off my property and a neighbour's property instantly and take further effective measures, when I complained about hate signs against Anshe Chung in the new continent, urging the boycott of her land, they shrugged. While one Linden said "this is bullshit" and removed them (he got it), another said "we are not garbage men." All Lindens merely pointed out that you should press autoreturn, although that wasn't said about anti-gay signs. The signs urging people to hate and boycott Anshe, and claiming her land was for sale for extortionist prices (it was not) were the kind of tone-setters that the Lindens seem willing to tolerate for the sake of "freedom of expression". While we could argue that someone could put such signs on their own land, this was placed on Anshe's land without her consent, making use of the 0 autoreturn.

3. LL forces the events calendar to contain only certain types of events and only provides grants for "educational events". We are strictly admonished never to hold events that involve something like "here's my new build" or "here's land or vendor spaces for sale" or "here's a posrate". LL has caved to the vocal minority that hates "commercialization" of the game and made all events fit its social-engineering agenda. While we can recognize the important of a clutter-free educational events calendar, there's a simple way to solve this problem: make a *separate* ingame system for listing commercial items like merchandise for sale, land for rent, and events that are promotions, i.e. product demonstrations, real estate tours, etc. That LL has failed to do this in 2 years, and listened to the angry elitist minority on this issue is a very troublesome sign of their failure to envision a robust, commercial economy on the Internet that investors could be interested in.

4. While LL allows its own "top listings" slots to be sold on ebay, it never discourages this very, very widespread "urban myth" among players that "selling LL land or Linden dollars on ebay is illegal and a TOS violation." There is nothing illegal about selling land or Linden dollars on ebay, but LL simply pointedly refuses to comment on this issue.

5. While LL is fixing the group tools, and we appreciate that, there is a certain failure to recognize the basics here: that a person who pays the upfront purchase price for land and pays tier on it must have more rights and privileges in a group than someone who does not. This kind of robust liberal capitalist notion, the basis for RL freedom in many countries, is one that LL gets squeamish about because, again, players clamoring with their socialist or fascist visions of all animals being equal and some being more equal than others -- that is, any idiot can deprive me of my land I paid for by triggering a pernicious officer recall. LL admonishes players that group land is group land "owned by the group," forgetting that a few people paying for it should have some more entitlement to it. While we're likely to see improvements, LL is very likely to do things like withdraw the 10 percent discount on group land in those more hierarchical arrangements privileging those who pay more, and spend that 10 percent discount to encourage "equal group officer" arrangements with "really group land" to try to tinker more with their social engineering.

6. Over the years, LL has shown signs of a certain vulnerability to various crackpot ideologies of the socialist/utopian/wikian variety. They talk a good game about "letting you, the user, create the content" and they promote content-creation copyright but one is left with the distinct impression that land rights especially in group land is not as well protected. They've been indulging some players with various subsidies over time, and while they are removing these crutches now, they haven't been very clear on what it is they are going to do to provide a tolerant climate for business and incentive for commerce.

7. When Ryan Linden sent out a letter about providing essentially subsidized "first-sims" for as low as $981 on the auction, he immediate raised an alarm among land traders about the value of land which caused prices to plummet to $2 on the auction that day! While it was just a hypothetical project, there was no awareness that such a scheme to reward the communards would hurt land barons on which LL relies for much of their business.

8. Often one gets the impression that while listening to players about things like zoned residential sims, their answer to these problems appears to lie in the same old direction of feting older established players who gained their prominence and wealth under different game conditions, and seems to lie in the direction of subsidizing

9. The kinds of people featured on the website are generally those who have achieved some technological feat, i.e. making a first-person shooter site, a vehicle, a technically-proficient Disney-like sim, a game-within-the-game they have sold to the "real world". But they never feature business people, i.e. very successful skins creators or animations creators, club owners, mall owners. (IF they did before this last 6 months, ok, shoot me, but you get the idea). Their messages seems to be "If you help LL sell game subscriptions, if you advance the LL technology itself, you get a boost. But if you just appeal to the masses and their desire to play house and have fun, if you develop the in-game player economy, we ignore or even disdain you."

10. A statement once made by Robin Linden, "Many players feel that Anshe Chung is a symbol of a lot of what is wrong with this game" is allowed to circulate endlessly on people's forum siggies, but it never rebutted by a frank admission of the role Anshe Chung has played in developing this very difficult and often hobbled land-based game.

11. LL recently set up a very troublesome precedent by seeming to open up their own business decision-making process about telehubs, a feature of their past performance as a company, to a clamoring minority of treehuggers who wanted to do away with telehubs. They've put one in finally in the new continent, but done nothing to dispel the sense that they are tinkering again with social-engineering schemes, trying to get people to get rid of telehubs and live using mass transit -- which I might add, they've allowed to fall into the hands of at least one private resident.

I'm sure others will come up with many more concrete examples. So how can it be that all these people have no trouble running businesses in this game, and think I'm just a whiner and a bleater? Let me suggest the explanations, which have to do with the player bases' own considerable allergies to commerce -- especially anybody's commerce but their own.
(And if you're thinking of answering this post with "Hon, I'm just in this game to have fun and make a little money on the side -- start your own thread, please.)

o Ebay grannies. These are people willing to work hard and make little doll clothing to sell on ebay for a fortune, while grandpa is at work and they wait to pick up the grandkids at school. Such grannies cry poor if you ask them to pay for something right away, like a land sale, but rack up big bucks themselves in large businesses. They are typical of the rank-and-file person who subsidizes the kind of state-capitalist/subsidized system of LL, and these grannies can be the fiercest protectors of LL and brook no dissent when it comes to questioning any anti-business climate.

o sex slavists. These are people who either buy or sell sex and therefore try to keep out of the limelight when it comes to questioning the anti-business climate in SL -- but the fact that sex work is the main entry-level job in this world says a lot about the failure to promote other kinds of business.

o chaibolists. These are companies that might be nominally private but are so intertwined with the state, i.e. LL, so that they never complain about it. Their businesses run fine...because they have free 4096 for life, or free scripting and advertising help from Lindens, or a free sim, or whatever they have, but it's enough to keep them both convinced they are running actual liberal private businesses unallergenic to commerce, when in fact they are perfect exemplaries of state-run "capitalism".

o protectionists. These are people who have a monopoly over some good or service in SL, often achieved under different rules of the game, and they are determined not to let any other business interrupt their flow.

o oligarchs. These are large businessmen of the mall baron or land baron variety that believe they stabilize prices and provide a solid entrepreneurial presence in the game, so they think small businessmen and even medium traders need to be discouraged because they "hurt the economy" by "driving up prices".

o wikiists and freebie-givers. These people constantly turn up their nose at anyone charging even $10 for something, especially to newbies. They are often people who fit in one of these other categories, but give away freebies as a loss-leader. They are absolutely zealous, too, about providing freebies that aren't really in the public domain because you can't modify them, i.e. improve on them, nor ask for a license to resell.

o anti-yard-salers. Those who click off resell so that a customer can't resell a good are among the greatest hobbles or free commerce in the second-hand market. Their ideologies are of the artisan/medieval guild type in that they usually believe the game is about them crafting something they sell to others in different guilds, or to docile serfs who will agree never to resell their precious product.

o club and mall haters. The minority who hate clubs and malls are the most vocal, and the most vociferous against this very vibrant form of commerce in the game.

o other assorted whiners about "commercialization" of this game. You know who you are.

What's sad is that some people who'd like to see commerce at least for themselves, are often busy trying to stamp it out for someone else, i.e. someone selling architectural commissions and prefabs wants to kill clubs and Tringo, somebody selling animations want landowners to be cut out of the land sale list if they list their deeded private island land essentially for rent in the list.

The current overall anti-business climate in this game makes it possible to pit players against each other in that way.

People who fit into these categories often grandstand and say they are "quitting" because it's "all about the money" (especially after they've cashed out their land and can sit on the forums lol). But the real losses for LL are going to be the serious businessmen and entrepreneurs who begin to walk from this game. They are increasingly seeing it as a place with a heavy bias against business, and a heavy tilt toward utopian social engineering.

$$$ sigh

It's the violence inherent in the system.

Your post has some merit... though almost Michael Moore-ish on other Linden "conspiracy theories". It is true that LL does act in a puzzling manner at times, most notably in the Real Estate Industry.

And yes, it does seem as if many of the forum residents are rabidly anti-business. But maybe thats why they are reading the forums (community exposure activities) as opposed to banging out plowshares.

*shrug*

It's good to have an intelligent and savvy business interlocutor like yourself that understands my post has "some merit" instead of the usual screaming entitlement fucktards we get on here.

Michael Moore? Yikes! Ugh. I loathe that man. I find him definitely insidious. What a phony, working for one day on the line, donning a worker's cap, and spending the rest of his life on the rubber chicken circuit. For shame! His movie should never have won--it's only due to racist anti-Americanism that it can win.

I originally embraced Michael Moore, thinking he was more the genuine article, really challenging big business. Then I found he was the usual leftist sectarian in sheep's clothing.

Yes, I'm very willing to admit I've gone over the top in suspecting Linden conspiracy theories. But read Philip Linden's blogs and stuff, and you'll start to worry a tad, too. I know they are well-meaning gardeners of sorts and maintenance men. But some of them have some big ideas, often of which they are unconscious. And some exemplify that youth tekkie culture that is unlettered and inconsiderate of the traditions of Western civilization.

For a person like you Profky, it's very simple...


(Muzzled Himself)

Hank has a unique money making plan you should ask about.

I'm pro business, I want businesses to thrive in SL.

That's just... Feted.

I doubt it's that simple. One of the unique things about digital media is the ability to make near-infinate copies of your pixilated objects at little or no cost. If a seller wants to give a person copy perms but doesn't uncheck the "transfer" option, there's little to stop a person from going beyond yardselling and selling copies of the item, perhaps claiming it as their own. Which is more or less theft. You prolly knew all that but it doesn't show in the above passage.

Now if you're refering to people who sell it no copy and no transfer, you may or may not have a point.

There's something to be said, however, for people who sell things that are essentialy open source. The person I buy my furniture animations from, for example, targets resellers by offering all her animations with full perms and open source scripts.



And yet freebie givers and commercial sellers can exist in the same world...including but not limited to commercial sellers that give out freebies alongside their commercial retail. Even in RL: The GIMP vs. Photoshop, Linux vs. Windows/Mac...each of those compete on the market. Sometimes the free product ends up being superior to the commercial one (Firefox vs. Internet Exploder) and *then* the bite into the commercial business. And sometimes free isn't "free as in speach"...Winamp comes to mind. Winamp 2.9, IMO, is still the best media player in existance. It works flawlessly and doesn't try to sell me the services of the company that made it.

Which brings up a point...commercialism on the internet in general has tended to gain a bad rap, often deservedly so. For example: I respect a company's right to try and make money and to try and pursuade me to consider buying their stuff, but I draw the line when they try shoving their adds in my face via popups. Which is why even major ISPs are bundling pop-up blockers with their internet packages these days.

But I degress. Back to freebies, open source and the like...ya know, sometimes freebies often help newer businesspeople? I point to my collections of free textures and scripts as evidence

Then again, yes, there are people who give out freebies for the reason you state. I know a few. I don't agree with them, although they might produce fantastic stuff.

Then again...it's not just SL. It's impossible to give exaxct numbers, but it's safe to say half or more of the world's population harbors such anti-commercial sentiments. No amount of social engeneering or long forum posts or the like is going to take that element out of the SL population.

But it is fair and potentialy more usefull to criticize the Lindens for any real anti-business slant whether that's their intent or not...I can't presume to know what their personal economic and political philosophies are, nor how they apply to their management of SL. But the points you made that refer to LL in particular are preaty darn valid, insofar as the actual effects of the stuff LL does. (*Belches at the new event calalder*)

People will do as they wish............ I make some free items, why? Because I want to. Free items are not against the TOS or CS. Ranting about them may cause me to make and give away all I make, simply because I may wish to do so.
The ranting against this is simply some peoples opinions, nothing more. And we all know about opinions

They are all WRONG!!!

Seconded.

I can see I've probed a nerve and hit the nail on the head with the two who are saying so delightfully FUCK YOU. It's no accident they say this forum belongs to the FUCK YOU AND DIE school of game forums. Thanks for your support!

Elle, this is what indeed I meant:

If you are going to give something out for free, and you give people unlimited copy for it, but no mods, that seems fair enough. In exchange for getting a free thing, and being able to copy it endlessly, let's say, chairs and tables, well, you don't get to modify it. Many people would defend a designer.

But since more often than not, SL designers are merely copying images from the Internet in general to make stuff, off auction, texture, fabric, design, etc. sites where they often steal others' work LOL, I guess I don't think they should be so precious about no-mod.

Because if they put stuff out in the public domain, they ought to be willing to suffer the public's modifications and improvements on their free thing. That's how it is with patents or ideas put in the public domain.

People often give a free thing, but then don't let you transfer it. And that just seems plain pernicious if the free thing came in only one copy, not copyable. Why can't you resell it? The anti-yard-sale sentiment is wrong.

These are my opinions. I voice them. Others don't agree. That's fine. I view them as a significant obstacle to making this what I would call a "normal" economy. What happens is that creators are so privileged in this game of content kings that the consumers' rights and privileges are entirely overlooked. The customer-server manners stink -- there is often an arrogant and snotty attitude and live helpers and mentors are allowed to run rampant over customers. People who just go around and get or buy a lot of stuff don't have a whole lot of rights or privileges in this game, and I'm interested in seeing that imbalance addressed.

Freebies as loss-leaders, helping businesses, helping newbies -- who could be against them? I'm not against them for that purpose.

I'm against TOO MUCH of them and SO MUCH of them that they undermine the newbie creation market and sap creativity.

I'm also against giving a free thing, but making it non-transferable, forcing somebody to go back to that freebie-giver if nothing else -- which makes it pretty nasty as an av-trap of sorts. And I'm against styling yourself of a friend of newbs, giving out freebies, but no putting mods on the freebies to enable innovation in the public domain.

I think there is a horrible culture of freebie wiki-ism that is entirely unchallenged in this game and on the Internet at large and I'd like to challenge it.

Our economy is as horribly stratified as it is because it is not free. Freebies are part of what makes it not free.

Lordy lordy a silver dollar just hit me on the forehead -- sonbitch!

Siggy.

I think you nailed it as to why they chose to do this, but I don't see it as anti-business. Quite the contrary. Clubs with lots of employees who host a dozen events (usually non-events) every day, day in and day out, drown out people who are trying to host more legitimate events (not to say that all club events are illegitimate, but if you're hosting tring0 six times a day, seven days a week, is it really necessary to post it as an event when it's really just business as usual? That kind of flooding of the event listings is anti-competitive. I'm sure you'll disagree, but that's how I see it.



It's not LL's job to silence everyone with an axe to grind. It's a business owner's responsibility to stay on favorable terms with the community and their customers. LL shouldn't be involved in that in any way whatsoever unless people are specifically violating the TOS. If you (the figurative you) develop a bad reputation and word spreads about it, it's not LL's job to defend you.



You really confuse me with this one. Giving subsidies to for-profit events WAS anti-business. It's up to event hosts and venue owners to be viable and profitable. They shouldn't be existing on the government cheese. Rating parties were always against the TOS because they were a complete misuse of the ratings system, rendering it meaningless. I agree that there should be more categories and better filtering capabilities in the event listings.



I've never heard anyone say anything of the kind. That's not to say there aren't people with that mistaken belief but I don't think it's widespread (guessing). There are a lot of people with negative views of land resellers. My own views on them have softened a bit over time but land resellers, unlike content creators, don't add anything to the world. They take advantage of SL's only limited resource for the sole purpose of lining their pockets while adding nothing of value. That's not to say all land resellers are that way. I think things like trying to provide zoned communities and the like for people who want them is a genuine service. Much of the anti profit making sentiment (which extends to all business, not just land resale) is very similar to the early days of the internet when business interests first started finding ways to use the net for profit and people freaked out about it because it was contrary to the free for all open source attitude of the early net. I think that will fade over time. It hasn't been all that long since the ability to make real money in SL started. It was a lot worse before we had a huge influx of ex There players who were already used to the idea of paying for things ala carte.



I pretty much agree with all of this (minus the exaggeration). Didn't LL say they were going to introduce the ability to form groups where the group founder was immune from recall or did they already? That said, if you get kicked out of your own group through a recall that actually gets enough votes to succeed, I think your (the figurative you) problem has more to do with bad people skills than poor group tools.



Not really sure what you're getting at there. Seems to be mostly hyperbole. Earlier you were complaining about subsidies only being paid for educational events, and here you seem to be complaining that there were ever subsidies at all. They don't need to provide incentive for commerce. The ability to make real money is incentive enough.



I think you're overstating LL's need for land resellers. If there was insufficient end users to buy the land from the resellers, the resellers would go out of business anyway. Unless you're saying you hold lots of land out of charity for LL



Huh? Care to cite specific examples of this? Are you suggesting LL subsidizes Anshe? hehe.



I think you'll find this is not the case in the very near future



As mentioned earlier, a business owner's reputation is their own responsibility, not LL's. Considering Anshe gets mentioned in almost every press article about SL, including interviews with Philip, I don't think this is the case. Players are allowed to hold their own opinions of Anshe. I personally think she gets way more grief than she deserves, but much of that comes from the anti profit making sentiment I talked about before, which I believe will fade with time. She was the first person to do it in a big way so it's not surprising that she has plenty of detractors. Philip seems to mention land reselling as a viable way to make money just about every time he's interviewed.



Should LL only cater to players of a single mindset or should they try to offer something for everyone? A lot of people would like to do away with telehubs altogether and return to the days when we had direct point to point teleporting. LL has always rebuffed that suggestion, feeling that telehubs make for natural city/retail areas. I don't think that's going to change any time soon. Personally I think hub land is one of the worst places to have a business, since almost no one waits for anything around the hub to rez before launching themselves to cloud level to fly to their ultimate destination.



My guess is they reject any notion of an anti-business climate because they have successful businesses. Another reason they may not agree with things like I bolded is because it's gibberish.



Nope, I think says more about the SL world being young. Not everyone is a genius at coming up with new and innovative businesses so it stands to reason that the world's oldest profession is among SL's oldest professions.



I guess I need a better dictionary because damned if I can find out what a chaibolist is. This seems to be more paranoid conspiracy theory than anything else. Yes, some early adopters have free 4096 for life as a reward for paying in a substantial sum of money back when SL's future was very uncertain. They were offered a risky investment and reaped a reward for it. Had you been there at the time you could have gotten the same deal. Sucks to be you I guess. If you think having some free land somehow makes people more able to run a successful and profitable business then you must think it's special land that imbues talent on its inhabitant. There are plenty of people in SL who've only ever paid the one time fee of $9.95 and have very successful and profitable in world businesses. Again you seem to contradict yourself. You previously stated that LL doesn't feature people like skin makers in their promotional material, but now you turn around and call just that sort of thing free advertising that they shouldn't do. Which is it? I assume it would be fine if it was your business being highlighted.



Examples please.



They have a point. Someone like Anshe who deals in high volume is able to turn a profit while still offering very reasonable prices. Meanwhile there are tons of people who only care about making the biggest profit in the least amount of time who don't benefit the economy as they only care about $$$.



You're misrepresenting this issue. What makers of free items are against is people selling their free items, that they didn't make, to unsuspecting newbies in order to scam them out of money. You don't have a right to profit from other people's work without their consent. If you have sour grapes that you can't rip off content creators and newbs by charging them for something they could get free elsewhere you're not going to find much sympathy. Free items don't hurt the economy anyway, they help it. They give new people fun things to play with and wear which helps keep them interested and more likely to stick around and start actually buying things.



You're once again completely misrepresenting this issue. The vast majority of content creators don't have any problem with people selling items they no longer use. What they object to is people selling open source items, exploiting permissions bugs for profit, and seeking to profit from the labor of others without compensation. All of which is very anti-business, unless your business is rip-off artist.



Agreed, but so? Clubs remain among the most popular destinations in SL so the vocal detractors hardly hurt them.



agreed (and with the remainder of your post) though I don't think those people have any affect on businesses whatsoever. There are hundreds of successful and profitable businesses in world.

That said, your incessant whining about people who don't share your particular view is every bit as annoying and potentially damaging to SL and the ongoing livelihood of the entrepeneurs who inhabit it. There are hugely successful players operating in every conceivable market niche. If you're having a hard time becoming successful it probably has a lot more to do with you than all the things you preceive as hindering you.

Again though, there's the issue of dishonest people taking a copyable transferable freebie and marketing it as their own for proffit on stuff they didn't make. I personaly know at least one freebie maker who started giving her stuff no-transfer for that very reason.

I can think of particular conversations I've had with certian SL businesspeople where they have exibited extremely protectionist attitudes toward their newer compitition, but I'm not at liberty to divulge the details of such private conversations here or elsewhere. A more public example...back when the Hidden Lakes sims were released, a bunch of people with interest in the land resale business complained that LL ought to give advance warning of new land releases so they could plan. At the extreme but probably less related end, you have the occasional club owners who "go to war" and grief each other over various things...but I can hardly call that "business".



Don't think so. Some mystery person tries to throw a recall in the CentreVille Merchants group every month or so. They always fail, and by now it's handled by the person whom the recall was for leaving the group and being invited back by another officer. But it's still annoying.


Who's to say that Prok *isn't* sucessfull?

The only thing a person's constant complaining (regardless if they're right or wrong) generaly hurts is one's precieved sense of a "friendly community". Complaining goes on all the time in various degrees in every convievable niche of the internet, but no game has ever been 'killed' because of it.

Not that I'm trying to be pedantic, but I think that it's important to note that this 4096 meters is tier -- and not land.. All land had to be purchased in the (now) usual manner.

Again, not trying to be pedantic, but it's been a misrepresented point in the past in these arguments (one of several points.).

Siggy.

I don't hold events and my experience and knowledge regarding them is limited, at best, but I'll toss in a comment on this one anyway. Government subsidies of events seem to me to be anti-business. :hrugs:: I don't know... I think it's possible that this is another step to a self-sustaining environment.


I can see this would be an issue in certain cases (sounds like it was for you). I think this may be a case of designing a system to meet the needs of the people at one point in SL's history, but fast forward 18-24 months and the same system helps to create problems in certain situations. Maybe they need to implement some system where the # of votes is tied to the % of land donated.


I think this one is open for debate, but I would be happy to see new sims come on the grid with some 'zoned' aspect to them. Not all of them, mind you, but similar to how we have a split PG/M setup, we could also include zone/no zone sims. It could be an interesting experiment.



Well, it *is* marketing. They have limited exposure on the site, so it only makes sense to highlight projects that will help LL gain more customers. True, a highly successful skin creator is someone worthy of praise, but it might be that they are tyring to show that within SL it is possible to create otherworldly environments. Just a guess, mind you.


It could be, but as we all know - sex sells. Being that the SL is comprised of more men than women, I don't find it surprising in the least.


I think this is an off comment and I have to disagree. Most of the freebie creators I've known don't thumb thier noses at people selling goods for a price - you have to make money somehow, right? In my case, freebies are fully open - copy/mod/trans. This allows for the user to tinker and improve building/texturing skills, replace the item if they really mess it up or need another copy for any other reason, and allows them to give it away to thier friends. My only request, as noted in all my info cards, is that they NOT resell them. Give away for free, but not for money.


I have to strongly disagree with this one too. In my case, my prefab homes are set to copy/mod/NO trans. This allows for tinkering with the home to modify to the tastes of the new owner without fear of a complete meltdown. If they 'ruin' a part, simply rez another copy. If I opened up 'resel', I would have to close down 'copy' or run the risk of having someone buy one of my homes and make an infinite number of copies which they could then turn around and resell.

Maybe, I should offer to perms settings on my homes: copy/mod/NO trans -or- no copy/mod/trans.

Awww jeez. Now all we need is a FIC flash animation. I wonder if Weebl is available for hire?

I think you're off base, Prok. Not to counterpointing each of your points, but in general:

- Some of your points refer to innocent, if not foolish mistakes on the part of LL. (Like the Ryan letter), or the occasional unfortunate choice of wording. But hey, they're human.

- Some of your points may be true to some extent, but do not constitute "anti-business" behavior. ("We are not garbage men" is not anti-business. Its an expression of exasperation by some poor soul who is probably tired of being nagged about junk on land and just expressed himself.)

- There's a whole whack of Lindens. Don't expect them all to have the same point of view.

- Been to any World Bank meetings lately? Or maybe in the same city with a G7/G8 meeting? There are TRUE anti-business lunatics out there. Gimme a break, I just don't see any Lindens among them.

- At least half your points have nothing to do with anti-business or pro-something else. Completely non-sequitor.

- Playing favorites with insiders, early-adoptors or anyone else they choose isn't "anti-business". It is a very common practice for companies to give product samples and special deals to opinion leaders, friendly journalists, politically influential, etc. Companies give sample product to target customers ALL THE TIME in order to test ideas, illicit feedback, reward loyalty, etc.

I could go on but it wouldn't do any good. There is no anti-business conspiricy. There are plenty of anti-business nutcases around, there HAS to be because its a game that appeals to a broad spectrum of people. Of COURSE there will be anti-business fruit loops. I don't see Linden Labs, or any Lindens I know among them.

Buster

I'm glad I've got everybody writing posts JUST AS LONG as mine usually are. That's how we like to see them!

I'm going to take on Buster first. Buster, you really aren't getting it. You haven't felt enough of the hatred of the land trading class to get it, I guess. You yourself were saying what hard work it is, and then getting slammed by people who said it isn't work blah blah. Didn't that show you something?

And you don't grapple with the main issues I bring out:

-- that group tools must reflect a hierachy of values, that is, he who pays for the land and pays for the tier runs it

-- they must stop hindering the events announcement process

-- ratings parties are a gaming of the system, but to restore their meaning, we should have ratings for good merchandise and services. And that can't always get done unless you have product demonstrations and tours and so on and ratings to go with.

-- there has to be more in-game advertising capacity

Siggy, I long ago understood that 4096 is tier, not land. But it's free tier. Month after month. To put on land. Duh, I got that, and I have no idea why you think this was "misrepresented" because it was just a shorthand-speak like "the 4096 land" or something but duh, I got it long ago. Honestly, I hate that condescending assumption that someone is that stupid, they don't get it is tier, not land, and is separate. But still to be applied to land.



Um, he made prices drop down to 2. I can elaborate about the nasty side effects IW if you want. Sure, they make mistakes. I don't mean to whack them. I just try to cut through this cloying atmosphere created by the fanboyz and fangirlz and teddybearz and stuff...



OH, that I agree, totally. They can't clean up junk endlessly. But I guess I'm not making myself clear. I guess if I were running this railroad I'd make sure that some little newsletter went out once a week "From the Desk Of..." and it had little tone-setters like "We've seen a lot of signs against Anshe this week. While freedom of expression is one thing, inciting hatred is another. Buying and selling land on the auction is something that Linden Labs encourages. Every player has the right to put the price he wants on his land, and any other player is free to buy it or not."

Honestly, this Civics 101 is something we really need on here to overcome the affects of all that meth and Internet on the brain, people are such fucktards.

- There's a whole whack of Lindens. Don't expect them all to have the same point of view.

Um??? I'd expect them to have a basic point of view like this: "We've seen a lot of hate signs against Anshe this week. Buhing and selling land on the auction is something that Linden Labs encourages. Every player has the right to put the price he wants on his land, and any other player is free to buy it or not."

It should be a message that repeats over and over to dispel this idiotic climate of hatred everywhere where a lot of people do not get it. And need to get it.



There's an anti-business climate in the game. Some of it is deliberate policies like the stupid events thing. Other is just tolerating that crazy player sentiment that is like the nutcases that smash Starbucks windows.



No, they fit, but I try to keep it short.



Sure, people create feedback centers like that in business. I know the Lindens do that too. What I'm talking about though is their deliberate and constant feting precisely of those who are though most hateful of business and griping the loudest about the "commercial atmosphere". That bothers me. This listening to the social democracy nutters, the utopianists, etc. -- it's troublesome, Buster. You weren't at that meeting. When the transcript comes out, you'll see what I mean.

Good, then you can say it is free tier and not free land - one of these statements is correct - the other isn't..

Not to mention that I was replying to Chip - what he had said - but if you want to apply that to yourself, then sweet... it's all good.

If you read that as condescending, and labels someone as stupid - so be it.. But I personally didn't say or imply that. I only asked that a clarification be made so that true and accurate information be passed on.

Siggy.

Technically speaking the 4096 wasn't *free* either in tier or in acquisition costs. We had to pay to get the land and we had to pay $225 for the tier. If you stay around long enough, it's not a bad deal - but not everyone will.....