The Rampant Anti-Business Climate in SL

As I've often mentioned, one of the worst things about the FIC is their refusal to understand and admit their own privileges LOL.

Paying up front to get land...well I'm glad you're like other mortals! Bet those prices were better back them before the GOM was at $4.25/1000 LL -- LOL!

And $225 a year is $18 in tier a month for that first year -- and then your cost drops out. I wish they still had deals like that!

USD$225 was money paid to a young company as a "hey, we trust in your product" kinda thing. Lifetime members were rewareded for investing their money in SL, early-on. Do you want to now deny those people the benefit of supporting SL early on?

Yep! It was a great deal - in hindsight. Oh.. and there was no GOM at that time, to my recollection. I could be wrong, so don't hold me to it.

Too bad you weren't here earlier Prokofy.. why, you could've bought a lifetime account for all your alts! Imagine that.

Yes, I'm convinced he/she does. Either that, or he/she loves to whine incessantly about it.

Oh I get it all right. I just think you blow it out of proportion. There are anti-business hate mongers in SL, because there are anti-business hate mongers in RL. There are also poets, artists, criminals, slackers, entrepreneurs, moguls, social butterflies, entertainers and any number of other personalities.

Roll with the punches. Life is good.

Changes to the event schedule seem to be aimed at making special events more "special". I think it's a miscalculation, not a conspiricy.

I really don't like doing tit-tat, but sometimes I just can't resist.


That's an entitlement attitude. Who says there should even BE group land or group tools in the first place? The reason for groups, according to LL, is to allow muiltiple people to collaborate, and to encourage people to collaborate and socialize. Not to give people with multiple accounts a 10% bonus or make it easier to run a business.

I think that the business angles on groups are an unintended side effect of the group system. The concept of groups is "overloaded" in tekspeak. Its being used for too many different things that it wasn't originally designed for.

I think I agree with specific suggestions you make about groups, but Linden's failure to immediately adopt your agenda is not evidence that they are anti-business. I think that over time, they will get it right, because they are actually PRO-business. They want the same end result you want, but I think there is disagreement over how to get there.

They didn't mean to hinder the process. They meant to make events more special. I think it was a goof, and I think they will fix it.

What stops you?

I think that would be good, if done right, but not everyone will agree with that.

Bottom line, Prok, is that I think the lack of pro-business activism by Linden is not evidence of "anti-business" bias.

On the 4096 thing, WHO CARES? There are people out there with free air travel for life because they bought stock in a fledgling airline. ZILLIONS of examples of that kind of thing. Linden rewards early adoptors.

(My only complaint is that I don't get anything for involuntarily beta testing and troubleshooting 1.6.)



Here's where you lost me. I don;t see a "climate of hatred". I see hatred, sure, because there is hatred everywhere. There is also love and understanding everywhere. You just have to be looking for the right thing.

Just tune out the fucktards.



OK, lemme see it. I'm skeptical that I will see what you see.

Buster

Good points Elle. I don't think it can be said that anyone has a monopoly on anything though. I don't see this kind of thing much because the clothing and skin business is really cordial and non-competitive. I have no idea how it is among land traders though since they're competing over a limited resource I could see that getting cutthroat. Clubs warring with each other I see more as mafia culture from TSO brought to SL and more roleplay than anything else. I could be way off on that though.



Weird. I could swear I saw that mentioned somewhere really recently.



People who elect themselves as self appointed freedom fighters for trumped up and exaggerated/imagined causes tend to be magnets for the disenfranchised looking to blame their alienation or lack of social graces on something. Look at the whole ridiculous FIC thing. It won't ever "kill" SL, but it's already made it less of a commuinty than it was. To hear Prok proclaim that he's providing some kind of noble service by doing all he can to cause division in the community is quite disgusting to me. SL was blissfully free of his brand of malcontent for a very long time. with very few exceptions... none of whom worked nearly as hard at inventing consipiracy theories and spreading their own special brand of bigotry.

That's the WORST? You want them to flaunt it or something? You're obviously just jealous.

You've never raised any children, have you. If you had, you'd know true meaning of "lack of appreciation".

Prok, your posts are getting tiresome. Practically everything you mention can be explained in a reasonable manner that does not lead to "hate environments" and "anti-business sentiment".

This does not mean that I APPROVE of everything that has been going on. Some recent LL decisions really have me shaking my head at their lack of foresight. But again, this is a far cry from your extremist reactions. You already know how I feel about group land issues and arbitration/recourse issues (need fixing).

I'd argue with you point by point, but the fact is that I've already discussed most of those issues in various posts over the past... months now... and you clearly are set on your mindset. And *again*, I'm not always saying there isn't a problem, I just disagree with your conclusions.

And told try to tell me I don't get it. I'm not going to shake my credentials at you, but I get it. I am willing to accept the challenge of breaking into a nascent market, with incumbants and inefficient market information/consumer behavior -- this is what a lot of entrepreneurs have to deal with and overcome. I am willing to accept that SL is in an early stage and LL is trying to figure some of it out as they go, making mistakes in the process. There are some remarkable barriers to entry and yet a ton of opportunity as well.

You could also claim I don't listen b/c I don't agree with you, and I can do the same.

You want to effect change? Tone down the hyperbole, get real, engage in a forceful but reasonable dialogue, and people will take you seriously.

but i've probably already said that too.

Yeah, I expected somebody to come along and try that "corporate welfare" line trying to make it sound that a slight incentive for groups who do projects on group land, or businesses in groups, are getting a "handout" like a "welfare queen". But the fact is, they deserve an incentive because, as you once said yourself IT IS HARD WORK.

I don't see why you can't encourage collaboration, but not punish investment. And that's what we have now. Any fucktard can trigger an officer recall, strip me of my land, maneuver some friend of theirs in and sell off my land. That's outrageous.

I don't see why we can't have at least a tacit workaround for that huge flaw which is LL saying: we will not let that happen to you, and we will look at your AR reports on that seriously.

I know the Lindens hear us about the group tools and I know they are working. But look some of the older posters right here have come and complained about no=action on these issues for a year or more. That is worrisome. That means they aren't really supporting groups, and their one contest to have a group project that wound up with Nberg isn't indicative that they figured out how to reward groups.

There is an easy way to reward groups. Change the dwelloper system so that it doesn't reward only one individual who has a lot of transaction, but leverages the entire group and adds up their transactions/traffic to give the group the boost.

I'm sure that's a lot easier to do that to change officer recall functions. I'm worried the Lindens aren't really thinking through the officer recall issue. IF they can still say "why just the other day it worked great" to solve a tyrant problem, they don't get our problems with its perniciousness in depriving a person of their land. They still keep admonishing us that it is "group" land when everyone knows that it is a device for cooperating, but whoever pays the tier and pays the up front purchase cost is generally recognized by the community as the leader/owner of group land.

There are many ways that people might want to collaborate without having to think of this as a "corporate entitlement". A person might want to pay most of the cost of a sim, but be willing to open up part of it for some non-profit project. He'd have to be able to have a group to make sense with that. Or perhaps one person can pay the purchase but 10 are needed to hold the tier. Or one person pays for the land, the other builds or scripts. People find division of labour that way. And the group tools rightly give them a bit of incentive.

If someone begins to scream about the 10 percent discount -- a negligible value in a large group, believe me! -- then they have to scream about it for non-profits as well as businesses, and they are unlikely to do that.

People need incentives to do the hard work of groups on land. They are so buggy now, frequently doing stuff like losing objects or making it so you can't even access your own object, that they need fixing. I realize this will take a year. I will wait. But I want the Lindens to give some basic acknowledgement that they understand the chief unit of value in our world: an individual and his right to property. If they are going to go on yammering about the chief value being "the community" or "the group" then I worry, I really do, as anyone with experience in the collectivist societies can tell you.

The individual and his right to property must be at the center of the SL experience and the group tools must enhance and multiple that right, NOT diminish it.

Forseti,

I would like to challenge you to find one "extremist" action on my part in the game. I spend an awful lot of time working to create residential communities in the game. I warrant you know little or nothing about this. You shouldn't confuse forcefulness of argument, or vehemence of expression, with some kind of "extremist action" when you can show none.

You and Buster seem to think this business with the events is just a glitch, a fixable thing. And sure, it might be. But what I find very troubling about it is the fact that it could happen in the first place. It sprang from the mind of game devs because it "fit" with their "mindset" and because they "heard the community" which in this case is the one percent of intelligentsia who bitched about too much Tringo.

I'm sorry, but I don't feel I have to tone down a thing to become effective. If I didn't jump up and down over things like Lindens putting cute little Linden card dispensors only on FIC land, that kind of constant feting and entitlement would continue to riddle this game. It's right to go on hammering the 4096 issue not to get parity or due to sour grapes but to get thos older players who have that to realize they are talking through their hats when they say people don't have real hardships in this game. They are cushioned from them.

Everyone understands that this is a risky, pioneer environment. And one should have a sense of joy in engaging in it. But too often people have to quit in disgust or take a break or flame out here describing awful problems. I'm amazed that Buster doesn't have more to complain about given his forced land dump recently.

I'm just not tuned that way. I think you have to burn and burn on these issues to get things done. There is a huge wall of hatred of business in this game. Every other person is spouting crap about the need to preserve nature, the need to have anti-capitalist visions, the crass culture of SL, blah blah. It's important to put the question to the Lindens and to the community at large: will they allow that anti-business invective to stand?

Or it could have happened because there was originally an idea of how groups were a part of the game, and as the game evolved over time the purpose groups played in it changed while the tools to use the groups stayed the same. Whether it was merely an oversight that is now a large problem, or malicious intent plotted from the very beginnings of sl... well i'll let Occam's Razor cover that one.

Well we know that. That's obvious. And it has been stated. The group tools were for something else.

And what *was* that something else? Well...look out...here it comes...cringe in advance, people...because that something else was...

THE TEKKIE WIKI.

Bleh.

Just bunches of kewl groovay peeps getting together to build kewl vehicles/giant builds/big visible games-within-games, etc.

Collaboration. Creativity. Innovation. Design. Wow, who could be against it?

Except...it's for Trustifarians and Daddy is covering all the bills.

Or it's for tekkies who are wealthy in RL, work 60 days weeks, and want this to be their utopian hobbie horse on weekends.

Well...why should the world only be populated by them?

The land has value...well, let it be valued! Server space costs something...well...let it be traded and sold in the marketplace!

So..let the groups evolve. What worries me about the histroy of groups is that yeah, groups were made for the tekkies' wiki. We got that. Pooling their knowledge, making beta versions, giving out free stuff, being helpful with putting scripts into the community, all that earnest, wholesome tekkie stuff that tekkies love to see praised in themselves and each other.

But...that's not the only thing we want in our world, is a lot of tekkies who want to just tek.
So the tekkie-centric group tools that did that stuff, making those early beta thingies and whatnot, well, they are flawed. Because they don't put the individual and his right to land ownership at the center of the process. Instead, they put tekkie collaboration in the sophisticated, urbane, and groovay way they are used to at the center of the process, and that culture spurns land valuation, hates commerce (except when they can personally benefit LOL), hates clubbing and malling, hates mass culture.

Buster might rightly say, well what does their hatred of mass culture have to do with group land tools?

Everything. Because it is in groups, with land tools, that you can have a mall or club work really well. Except now you can't because they borked the events thing.

People like to play Tringo, it's often their only source of income. And malls love it because it brings traffic. So I am for letting the people have their freedom of expression and announce as many games as often as they wish.



LL needs to help set a tone. When an entire New Continent is deluged with BOYCOTT ANSHE signs, LL needs to act to let people know that it is OK to buy and sell land. The shortest and mildest comment is needed to set the tone -- that's all. When LL doesn't encourage or seemingly not even permit a Better Business Bureau (due to their injunctions on "personal and group attacks in the forums", we can't do the job of defending ourselves.



But ratings could be not just gamed, but actually used during product demonstrations, views of builds, tours of property, etc. What a difference such a culture would make.



One of the most frequent newbie questions I find.



This is the pernicious anti-business, misinformed, prejudiced attitude of which I speak, and you, a businessman, exemplify it, and therefore I'm sorry, but you fit in one of the categories. I'm trying to understand why you as a skin seller would prevent someone from selling some other commodity but it has to do with a cultural conditioning to not seeing real estate business as legitimate. Land dealers in fact do add 100 values to the game in ways you can't even see sometimes. We've addressed this in other threads. They keep the economy liquid. They help cash people out. They help make land available faster. They provide "just in time" solutions for projects. There are a million ways in which they help people all over SL even if they "line their pockets".

And...why is it wrong to line your pockets? After all, you line your pockets doing something that the game gives us all for free, making appearances. That's acceptable. But someone selling land isn't? Why? Honestly, I don't know where these prejudices come from.




Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but the early days of the net are over now? The thrill is gone?



Huh? You don't get it. Weekly, the large mall owners get disruptive, griefing idiots who just trigger the recall vote out of malice, because they hate mall owners, because they are bored, because who the hell knows, they couldn't get a vendor to work. They are merchants in the system and get member status, and then misuse it to harass the officers. LL is talking about the founder being immune. But frankly, that doesn't cover all the bases. What if a group of 3 people all invest equally in a project and all pay tier. Why should only the one who founded the group benefit from these protections? I suggest making the category "investment officer" to solve this problem, but I bet you some communard somewhere will bitch that it sounds too "corporate".




No, I think LL really does have this need, and many players have it whther they admit it or not.



I dunno, I'm tired of citing specific examples and being slammed. Read the transcript if it ever comes out.




No, because a business person cannot have any recourse if some fucktard happens to run a campaign against him claiming he scams newbies (as has happened to me for no good reason). Players may have to resolve their own disputes, but we need better dispute tools an a green light for making a Better Business Bureau.




This is what bothers me. Anshe is mentioned by journalists who do their own research, but not publicly acknowledged by the Lindens, and they don't give even the slightest nod to help dispel the unfounded vicious attitude toward her.



You wonder how someone like that could ever have put officer recall in land groups.

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.

Not all telehubs are slow rezzers. Dependson the buildings and other factors. They are legitimate centers of commerce.



No, it's more typical of poor East European and Asian countries undergoing strenuous transitions than any "newness".


I

Don't confuse an effort to explain things and find words for them as paranoia. The chaibol is the term in Korea for businesses close to the state.


No, I never contradicted myself, because they should get promotion as much as vehicle makers.


I have them, but I'm tired of being slammed over specific examples.


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 $$$.

That's OK. The DO benefit the economy. When you can see your allergy to them and your hatred you can begin to see I'm right about the anti-business climate. Business isn't just YOUR business. It's THIS business too. Let them flip land! They peform a function.

If there was no need for them and their services, they'd dry up.



No, because I'm not talking about stealing, which is a separate issue. I'm talking about people flooding newbies in the WA with little shopping bags of freebies so that newbies don't really develop their own economy.



You're weong. Look at the thread about second hand goods, and see the fierce hatred of this notion of re-sale.



Often run by people who hate every kind of other business except their own.



Bah, this is silly. You can't "damage" SL by whining LOL



My beef about the anti-business climate isn't about me succeeding or failing in my business. I view that as just my own issue, not something I force on the community to do this or that. For you to personalize it and say that people who criticize the anti-business climate are just hopeless losers is to avoid the real need to criticize this anti-business climate, which you have exemplified with your sneer at land traders.

Yet another thread where Prok proposes something controversial and all we get are consistent personalization of the issues, often by people who should know better.

Is discussing something you disagree with so terrifying that you all have to constantly have to hijack the topic into the domain of ad hominem?

I disagree with the basic premise, though the facts are truly fascinating.

My experience is that there are few people who the non-technical side so well as Prokofy, and he's only been here a few months.

If you were a serious student of SL, you'd pay very close attention to his postings. They are littered with absolute gems of insight, though some of the conclusions are incorrect (which, btw, none of is right all the time so this shouldn't be a surprise).

However, as to the premise: I think SL is fascinating in how to leverage the business in order to grow the community. This is a careful balance that very few can maintain, but I personally think is vital.

Truthfully, a philosophy of serving others is the greatest goal, but the means are often always by serving oneself.

<falls to the floor, helpless with laughter>

<gasp>

<wheeze>

That's...

<starts laughing again>

<THUD>

Excellent post, Prokofy. Thank you for bring up these issues as I believe they do deserve attention of those in charge

I believe that Lindens, especially Philip, at their heart are very pro-business. They do excellent job compared to any other provider of online environment. But there have been some issues that you point out in your post I believe are worth to be reflect on.

Providing stability and safety to business is very important. This includes:

- preventing L$ inflation
- preventing land inflation
- protecting business owners from fraudulent use of group functions
- protecting business owners from blackmail and bullying
- considering businesses' needs when designing new change to the system, such as the event calendar

Considering anti-business climate let me also say some words about this recent boycott sign issue. I just take it as one example as it is very typical and by far not the only incident. Freedom of political expression is one thing. But blackmail and bullying another.

Those signs are the "punishment" I received from one resident and his gang after I refused to do him favors he asked for. He tried bully me into give him land he wanted for below my cost. It is not first time this happen. Oh no! Since August last year there have been many such cases. There are people who expect me to or even try force me sell land to them cheaper than I sell it to other people. Some consider themselves very "feted" or are mafia boss and expect special deal because of their "status". Others are just simply asshole. Well, I don't give in to this, everybody get same price no matter if clueless newbie or mafia boss or beta tester. So, expect more boycott signs and people complain about my "bad business practise". Just keep in mind that the business practise that was bad for them might indeed be good for you and most of everyone else

As for the Lindens involved: Pathfinder Linden was cool and did his job. But not his colleague from Australia. I can only say that I consider it one bad joke to be told by her to remove those signs myself and turn on auto return on all of my land. Mmmm, yes, I was effectively asked to remove all trees, grass and other default vegetation from 2 million sqm of land, limit the functioning of 15 malls, 3 clubs and the free-to-play nature of the land I manage. I expect to be protected from harassment and not be told to cripple my own land use

Some of what you say I agree with Prok, but you really must try to avoid really serious errors of fact.

"7. When Ryan Linden sent out a letter about providing essentially subsidized "first-sims" for as low as $981 on the auction"

This is absolutely and totally incorrect. You must know this because it was pointed out to you very clearly in the forum where it originated.

The proposal involved no subsidy and no price of $981. Just an open auction with $981 as the STARTING PRICE. And one of the requesters pre-entered as first bidder simply to ensure that someone was committed to buying it.

How can you expect us to respect your intelligence if you stubbornly insist on disseminating slanted misinformation like this, just to boost some case you want to make ?

To be clear Prok, I'm not calling your actions extremist at all. It's your invective that I dislike. And while Blaze can ooh and ahh from the sidelines, I am hardly so enamored with the tone of discourse and the rampant, wide sweaping accusations that come pouring out.

Again, the things you are concerned with ARE real concerns. It is your conclusions and language that are extremist and hate-filled. I mean look at your paragraph:



"huge wall of hatred" ? "every other person"?

again I ask -- who the HECK are you hanging out with?

Well, maybe I expect you to take me seriously because I'm NOT presenting "serious errors of fact" but in fact putting down a *very likely outcome of this dubious practice* and you are not *getting it* that in fact these ARE the facts given the likely behaviour of this auction!

And I'm not "absolutely and totally incorrect" but in fact CORRECT and you're not getting it, and you're personalizing it and trying to slam my character, when what you need to do is understand how things work better.

So, in...how can I expect to respect YOUR intelligence when you are not capable of understanding subtleties?

There's nothing incorrect in what I say. I raised *the most likely* outcome of *some* auctions. To prove a point. I pushed it to its rather obvious conclusion.

The market reaction that concluded that essentially private islands with mainland grid attractions on them would now be available for as low as $981 -- because such micro auctions would not have sufficient competition! -- is PRECISELY what caused the market to PLUMMET the next day!

Let's walk through it.

I'm not stupid. I read his letter. And I saw that he suggested that an auction open at $980 (actualy he said that). Duh. That's pretty obvious.

Anyone who bids on an auction knows that an opening price, or an opening bid triggered to get the auction going of $981, is just that, not the final price, and not the last word on value. So I don't present $981 as a final price because I'm not stupid.

But...I can say that in fact these sims will in a sense really be available now for $981 or $991 because...what can happen on THIS auction and often DOES happen on this auction, even when it is wide open and not a micro-auction of a few select players interested in big projects, is that the item SITS THERE and NOBODY BIDS ON IT

Yeah. GO and read the auction history before you blast me.

That means that yes, indeedy, you, too, can own your very own sim for $981 BECAUSE NOBODY WILL BID ON THAT.

How can that be? Weren't 2-3 people interested in that sim who e-mailed Ryan able to step up to the plate and bid now? But...they don't. Because...RL intervenes, they're on a different time zone or they get cold feet or they worry when they see that a flurry of bids come in like this: 982, 987, 999, 1005 -- because it suggests there could be more people than are expected in the auction (you have no way of knowing whether it is a live bidder behind those numbers rising or someone who did the automatic increments function of placing in their high bid and walking away until it's over).

So they may drop out quick -- again, study the history of the auctions! Look at what really happens! People drop out quick! And then some lucky person walks away with a steal, a find, a windfall -- an entire sim for $999 or $1001.

Just ask Anshe or Blue Burke or any number of people playing the auction every day if they don't "get it".

You don't see Ryan Linden stepping up here to slam me personally and undermine me in front of everybody -- not only because he's a Linden and one hopes Lindens don't behave like that. You don't see him doing that because he, of anybody, knows full well what happens on his auction, and knows full well that one *very likely* outcome of this micro-auction "first-sim" stuff is that sims will sit there and get taken for $981 or $999. Indeed, I can't help thinking that deep inside his hypothetical was a way to figure out how to appear to keep auctioning things, but have them go for less so that more people could access them. If he isn't motivated by that altruistic (but unrealistic) goal, he sure as hell knows what happened to his markets the next day.

They collapsed at the news that the Lindens would be micro-managing the auction instead of leaving their social engineering out of it and letting it be free. They collapsed at the news that sims might be engineered into place to be had for $981 by a few project leaders IM'ing their buddy Ryan and asking him to put a sim up there. One wonders what the lead time would be...would it be the 7-10 days that the community if interested gets to see that a sim is around lying there getting ready for auction? Or would it be just 3 days? Or?? The fact is, the markets reacted, and the land barons reacted with annoyance because all their land, and all their bidding, was just undermined by the news that $981 socially-engineered micro-auctioned sims would be coming on line.

I personally am pretty annoyed at what Ryan Linden did. He devalued my land and many others in one careless, inconsiderate act. Now, it recovers and is not such a big deal. But it's like Alan Greenspan sneezing and everyone reaching for their handkerchief. He has to be more considerate.

Some people had already by that time refused to play the Linden auction because a) there was an unrealistic bubble of overpriced New Continent land and b) the Lindens hadn't come clean on their telehub policy. So for those more diehard, less idealistic types, there was a killing to be had in $2/m near-telehub mature that day but a huge shudder and a lowering of prices then all over the continent. Some anti-business types say, great, those barons had it coming. Some pragmatic business types say, good, the bubble is bursting and we're seeing the true valuation of land that is pretty and wild, but may never have telehubs dotted around it.

I'm saying but this didn't happen for natural, free-market, corrective reasons which one welcomes in a free market, they happened for manipulative social-engineering reasons of a guy trying to figure out how to get more players with more "civilized" or "artistic" or "aesthetic" or "useful" visions for sims into the queue to get these sims. He hates the results of the free market -- malls, clubs, thousands playing house, sexay avatars, blights. So he is trying to figure out how to "prettify" it.

You have to wonder why they don't just buy private islands. You have to wonder why the Lindens don't just put grid sims up at a fixed price, too, if there are fixed requirements, i.e. you must have 10 people, they must have already contributed $195 in tier, blah blah. They could do that. But they don't. Because they instinctively know that will devalue their own land market and cost them other business. They are trying to square a circle.

God, markets are pretty smart. They represent a visible reflection of the aggregate decisions of numerous individuals. They usually don't lie. When they present a picture like that, even if those decisions are distorted (and they often are) by perceptions and fears, the aggregate actions of many *acting on* those perceptions and fears *makes them come into being*. This is the "theory of reflexivity" that George Soros, the famous hedge funder, developed in his various books. I might add that his insight is merely a reworking of the old "Niles Bohr Effect," that is, that the observer affects the outcome of the experiment he is trying to record impartially.

If you do not understand the subtle points I've made here, and don't understand why in fact I was right to stay things exactly as I did, then you don't get it, you don't understand enough about how markets and auctions work, from RL knowledge or from SL experience, and I suggest you just move on.

I'm no RL market expert, but I do understand from amateur SL experience. Why? Because I saw somebody buy a piece of expensive land near what is near the new telehub for a mere $58US though it was over 5000k m2. They were able to do that because *nobody bid against them on the day the market plunged to $2/meter*. I know what that results in. Because I later bought that piece of land for more. That's life in the big city. It was a killing by an oligarch, enabled by someone with social-engineering pretentions upsetting the normal free market. And you wonder why I compare SL to Russia sometimes.

Um...I'm sitting on the forums and reading every other post, especially those like PLEASE LINDENS DON'T AUCTION IRIS?

Or...I'm sitting in the game in Dore and listening to a bunch of people spout off against Anshe.

Or...I'm sitting in the meeting with the Lindens and hearing every other person spout some ecological or artistic vision that has to precede every articulation with a sneer about malls, clubs, and mass culture.

Could you just skim around these forums? You'll see it. Should I go and paste it all for you? Maybe I'll get some time later to do that.

I feel I have to be very, very forceful on this issue. Because I think the Lindens do need to be confronted and that they are at a very critical junction at their very historical and importrant and world-burning exercise.

They need to decide whether they keep this as an experimental "lab" for their friends, a very hard-to-learn elaborate passtime for high-tech hobbyists, or whether they open it up to the general public.

Why, thank you, blaze, that's sweet.

What I think is helpful to think about is that I'm not anybody that different or that special. It's just that I'm not from the very closeknit and tribal set of the tekkie wiki-ists. There are bunches more people like me out there in real-world land. If you open SL more they will all walk in here and say the same thing. In fact a lot of them DO say the same thing in a 100 different ways but just say it in one short often ungrammatical post so you don't take it seriously.

My own sense is that it is going to take an incredibly hard push to get the tekkies and the Lindens, who are also from Geekworld, to "get it" about the points I am making. I'm just out here making them forcefully and even in lurid, hyperbolic fashion because I see what a wall of prejudice is involved when you have a bunch of people who genuinely think they are God's gift to the modern world, genuinely think they are more intelligent than the rest of us by virtue of their technical skill, and genuinely suffering from a huge shortfall of awareness about their own behaviour, its consequences, and the other fields out there that could be informing SL and the general public about what is right and what is wrong with this game.

It's interesting to me that in two years, there don't seem to have appeared some brilliant anthropologist to write about all the fascinating things going on in here...and they are only now just appearing. That's because it was viewed as a tekkie hobbyist machine, not really a world.

In fact, admission to the FIC often involves a sarcastic and cynical expression of your unwillingness to make this an immersive virtual world. The dues you pay to get into some of the most inner-sanctions of the FIC are a frank scoffing at anyone who makes an avatar character, dresses him or her, lives in a house, and tries to make it a world. Instead, you find savvy tekkies who either strip out this world for whatever profits they can make off the masses, have a more service-oriented role and see themselves as "in the background" making it possible for others to have their immersive world, or dipping in and out of it as it suits them, always with a sneer to anyone who makes it seem like more than a brief fling.

If my conclusions about Linden behaviour are false and exaggerated, well, whatever. I try to call it as I see it. I sure as hell don't have enough information about what they do. I don't know why they are so coquettish about telehub placement for example. Sheesh. One Linden tumbled me to the fact that putting in telehubs was as easy as pie technically. I thought it required weeks of planning and technical scaffoldry and repeat testing, the way they are so fucking secretative and misleading about them. They have enormous value and their land sells for more and the Lindens know that.

So they can't help trying to tinker with this and not leave it alone. They don't like to see what happens in their own game, are filled with dismay at some things, and want to tinker. I wish they'd not do that and let more player-based solutions emerge.

It's pointless discussing anything with you Prokofy because any time valid counter arguments are presented to you you simply put your fingers in your ears and yell "lalalalalalala" at the top of your lungs and go right on spouting your uninformed narrow minded and irrational ravings. If you want to have a discussion, great. If all you want to do is preach, build a church.

OK. Granted. There are voices out there that I tune out because they are naive or irrational. But then there always are in policy discourse (thinks back to many of the shrill, hyperventilating voices during our last presidential election). I am reluctant to tune out your voice because of your intelligence, but the relentless negativity (the selected lobbying style) is problematic. Look, you are a grown-up. You are aware of implications and cost/benefits of your style. I do not intend to be condescending.

Back to the issues at hand, I just don't believe that change can be effected quite so fast, and I don't ascribe the slow pace of change to ulterior motives or anti-business/favoritism attitudes.

I ALSO have found that, outside of the land/club world (where I do not wander), a LOT of the older, well-established creators are very good people and remarkedly open to competition and new talent. You neither see hippie feel-good anti-commercialism, nor oligarchical anti-competitive thuggery.

I don't disagree with some of your "small town/guild" analogies, but continue to argue that this is an inevitable result of the lack of arbitration/recourse solutions.

I also consider the choice to give free products out, or to assign various IP-restrictions on products to be business decisions. Sure, some do it based on ideology. But there are business reasons as well. Some experiments are effective marketing, some are dumb business moves. But all within the rights of the entrepreneur to try.

One of these days we should meet in world. I do enjoy a good hearty debate.

placing or removing telehubs is not anti-business. There are entrenched business interests that have invested in telehub land, and will fight to protect that. That is a given. However, if telehubs disappeared, the majority of businesses would continue on and adjust themselves and their tactics to the new environment.

A little more transparency in telehub policy would be nice, but interesting and valid arguments exist on both sides of the "for/against telehubs" debate and LL is happy leaving us with the impression that things will continue to evolve as the system grows and they/we learn about the dynamics (i.e. make it up as we go along)