August 2004 Land Chat With Corey Linden

I passed a newstand today in-world and picked up an interesting pamphlet with the transcript of what is described as a "chat" with Corey Linden about land from August 2004.
Go to the News Stand by the tracks in Ocula in the New Continent to pick up

What we see here is that some individuals with very firmly-held views -- that match up with very well-known types of worldviews like venture capitalism, Marxism, etc. -- are seeking to hold sway over the discussion. They're some of the same ones that participate -- or invade -- all the threads on land here, and then when you counter them, turn around and accuse you of riding hobby horses. The great thing about transcripts is that it creates a record of people's hobby horses and you can go back and see them and then match that to their queries and posts today.


Highlights: Corey Linden says the intent was to sell islands and make it possible for residents to sell whole islands, but not to sell parcels off the islands.

Note how the LL plan is to release more land when prices get too high. It pays to remember that in the land business.

Another interesting point is that people suggested a name/count function to control griefer prims on land and within 7 months, they got it.

I hope that Corey Linden will have another "land chat" like this and he will have it not just with people with *ideas* and *ideologies* about land which they want to impose on others but people who *own land*. I think it's a really thing for the Lindens to be doing now -- meeting with landowners who have many questions about the Lindens short-term and long-term policies.



Land Issues Group Chat With Cory "Exposition" Linden - 8/12/2004

Exposition Linden: 1) We will put about twice as much land online in August as we did in July

Exposition Linden: 2) The SL economy is growing in a very healthy way and we've seen great overall GDP growth separate from the land prices [NOTE: This statement preceded a huge land crash with the introduction of snowsims, a devaluation of the GOM, and panic selling last summer--PN]

Exposition Linden: 3) 1.5 will be out "soon" so look for preview in the next couple of weeks

Ice Brodie: will we get Havok 2?

Rickard Roentgen: lol land discussion ice

Exposition Linden: 4) We're going to change one of the rules for private islands so you'll be able to sell your islands to other residents

Lit Noir: Who-hoo!

Rickard Roentgen: nice

Rickard Roentgen: oooh

Ice Brodie: pfft, I've been waiting for Havok 2 since I got to SL

Rickard Roentgen: parcels of it or only the whole thing?

Exposition Linden: That's it for me .. . the topic for today is land in SL, land for users, how it goes into the world, how users sell it to each other, &c

Christopher Omega: Will any more sandbox simulators be added into the grid?

Exposition Linden: So, feel free to raise points . . . if you are in the middle of a thought, please end your line with elipses so that people . . .

Ice Brodie: the cost increase happened right after the last Reuters article, land barrons popped up like mad.

Exposition Linden: know that you are still typing

Exposition Linden: whole thing, not parcels, Rickard

Exposition Linden: Ice, we're going to try to deply twice as much land to drop the prices

Salazar Jack: Can you tell us about any land management features that will be in 1.5?

Lit Noir: Will gorups be able to apply land tiers to rpivate isalnds, or will that still be a nog go?

Rickard Roentgen: oh ya, since we can sell them can groups buy them?

Salazar Jack: New land mangement features...

Exposition Linden: Salazar, 1.5 will fix the various buggy features from 1.4 and give the owners way more flexibility about managing guests . . .

Exposition Linden: visibility, &c

Jay Fairplay: When you say private Island, you mean whole sim, right?

Lumiere Noir: speaking of groups, will the largest share of dwell go to the largest contributor of land to the group (including the developer's incentive bonus) as Hanley brought up in forums?

Exposition Linden: Lit, that will still be a no, go

Adam Zaius: So, the Estate options, which were visible in preview 1.4, are coming in 1.5?

Lumiere Noir: Haney*

Exposition Linden: Rickard, no still individuals from our perspective, but you can work together to buy sims (a la the Uru Live folks)

Exposition Linden: ok, let me catch up a bit

Salazar Jack: Any specifics on guest management?

Exposition Linden: Jay, I mean private islands bought from LL as a private island, not from auciton

Exposition Linden: Adam, yes

Exposition Linden: Lumiere, for purposes of developer rewards dwell will be split by land allocation

Ice Brodie: will bans effect higher altitudes, Luskwood's decks are right around the current ban height.

Exposition Linden: Salazar, kicking people, ban lists, &c

Lumiere Noir: thanks Exposition

Exposition Linden: Ice, bans on private islands are the whole sim

Ice Brodie: I'm trying to find out about on general grid.

Jay Fairplay: Exposition: but that is a whole sim, right?

Exposition Linden: Ice, we hadn't planned on elevating the ban height since it makes crossing the world hard, however that's an interesting point

Reitsuki Kojima: Ice; I think the reason they dont ban higher is to try to keep a general "clear fly" zone, but I have to agree... Some places just dont work right as it is.

Ice Brodie: give a 15 second warning like when someone's added to the ban list?

Exposition Linden: Jay, yes

Salazar Jack: Any expanded ability for people, designatged by the land owner, to be able to kick/ban peopple from parcels (beyond group officers)?

Ice Brodie: land officers would be nice.

Exposition Linden: Salazar, no, only group officers for now, but that is an active topic of discussion for 1.6

Salazar Jack: Thank you.

Reitsuki Kojima: Exposition, are expanded object management tools (Sort by owner, etc) on the list of new land tools?

Ice Brodie: specifically assigned powers to people is something I've seen in administration of a MUCK I run, you can give someone some powers without fearing that they may put the land up for sale.

Adam Zaius: Salzar: That raises an interesting issue with LSL. Since LSL makes those options availible to the general audience, prehaps adding the ability to edit PIE MENU options from LSL would solve this problem, and more.

Exposition Linden: Reitsuki, no, but I'd like to hear what you would want so that we can get them into the queue for 1.6

Rickard Roentgen: will the land management functions work for group officers in 1.5 without having to be put in an object deeded to the group?

Exposition Linden: Ice, good point

Reitsuki Kojima: Well, the big one is, some way to sort-by and as a result return-by user name, but as a lump... For when a griefer litters a mall or some such, that has a ton of people's objects on it for legitimate reasons.

Exposition Linden: Rickard, could you clarify the quesitons slightly . . . do you mean with associated objects?

Ice Brodie: yes, individual user return of all objects would be nice.

Reitsuki Kojima: Also as a way to find objects that griefers do their best to hide, like inside other prims, up in the sky, etc.

Exposition Linden: Reitsuki, ah . . . good point . . . let me write that one down

Adam Zaius: Another idea; that would be usefull for Town hall, and other 'formal Q&A' style enviroments would be the ability to set an IRC-style Moderation Mode over a parcel of land, which restricts chat to a few certain privlidged people.

Salazar Jack: Or when you are leasing land and want to check that a renter hasn't gone over their prim limit.

Rickard Roentgen: for instance, group owned land, unsit called from something attached to me won't work

Rickard Roentgen: I have to put it in a cube and then deed the cube to the group

Salazar Jack: If there are mutlipl erenters on one parcel.

Salazar Jack: multiple renters, lol

Reitsuki Kojima: Ahh, good point Rick... The parcelmusic change lsl command is another one you have to do that for, sadly

Exposition Linden: Rickard, ok, I get it . . .noted

Exposition Linden: Adam, great idea

Christopher Omega: Any additional sandbox simulators planned soon? Will there be any changes to the way sandboxes are run in the coming days?

Exposition Linden: Do you guys want more sandboxes? How would you change how they run?

Christopher Omega: (sorry, not sure if it was heard before ^_^)

Salazar Jack: I agree about adding morre sandboxes if possible.

Adam Zaius: Yeah, another sandbox or two, would be good. Ice Brodie: a physics experiement crippled Cordova, which is crowded to begin with.

Strife Onizuka: (yes another sandbox would be good)

Adam Zaius: Maybe seperate it as a completely different island, consisting of four sims, so that any escaped self replicating accidents, dont take down the entire grid.

Salazar Jack: These are great areas for new people to try things out in.

Christopher Omega agrees with Adam

Ice Brodie: how about group members' objects having the same permissions as the group itself.

Rickard Roentgen: what adam said, sandbox islands

Reitsuki Kojima: Exposition, one thing I would like to see is a pure-building sandbox. No scripts allowed, if possible even no physics allowed. Its annoying to try to be building something and have the sandbox ruined by people who turn it into their personal playground

Ice Brodie: llSetMusicURL only allows the group to set the music URL, an officer's object can't, for example.

Ice Brodie: there are more serious ones, that one's been my most recent problem, however.

Exposition Linden: Ice, the balance we're trying to find is how much should you automatically trust your group members . . .

Exposition Linden: But I agree that the script run stuff is a problem

Rickard Roentgen: ya ice, that's in there with the parcel fuctions not working for group leaders on group land

Nidonocu Gullwing: Yeah, it can be annoying to be building having a sudden gunshot go off in the background or music to start up.

Strife Onizuka: (i would like to see a no object physics sandbox

Adam Zaius: As an officer, in a group, they can 'sell' the land, being able to change the options is trivial compared to that.

Ice Brodie: I would like to see functions able to be assigned.

Ice Brodie: just something that came to mind.

Exposition Linden: "no object physics sandbox"? not sure what you mean

Rickard Roentgen: lol well, you start a group, deed the land, you probably should trust the people you make group leaders, or not make them group leaders

Adam Zaius: Exposition: no people making torii chains.

Ice Brodie: Unable to enable physics in this parcel.

Reitsuki Kojima: Exposition, a sandbox where physics enabled objects just wont work Adam Zaius: I think Rei means however, completely disable the ability to set an object physical in that box

Christopher Omega: That would be quite interesting, a group of four sandboxes, each with a different "style", not connected to the grid...

Reitsuki Kojima: No vehicles, no falling cubes, etc.

Exposition Linden: so, only for script experimentation?

Ice Brodie: possibly.

Jay Fairplay: no physics, not no object.

Reitsuki Kojima: No scripts either. I'd like to see a pure building, no scripts, no physics, sandbox.

Ice Brodie: that and to stop people setting up 1000 dominos like in Cordova this morning.

Exposition Linden: or building in general . . . no physical objects

Christopher Omega: style, meaning one would only allow building without scripts or physics... another would be free-for-all...

Strife Onizuka: yes

Exposition Linden: ok, good idea

Ice Brodie: perhaps a list of who's objects are on the land, as part of the return all objects of individual?

Exposition Linden: Ice, yes got that one already . .. it's a good idea

Ice Brodie: cool ^.^

Exposition Linden: Any comments on real estate agents aka land barons? Think they add value? Thinkt hat they could add value?

Adam Zaius: Exposition: Only if land becomes more liquid.

Adam Zaius: SL at the current stage, lacks enough tools to manage lots of land, to enable a real 'real estate' agent.

Exposition Linden: How would you want land ot be more liquid, Adam?

Salazar Jack: I like the idea of land devewlopers, people who create something on the land as part of selling the land.
Lit Noir: I have no issues with land barons per se, as long as the supply is enought that no one or no cartel can control prices

Ice Brodie: I think they should have to sit on the land for a certain ammount of time or return it to the seller for a refund, makes them think before they buy the land, look at it, then sell it for twice as much.

Exposition Linden: What kind of tools would you want?

Nidonocu Gullwing: Oh yes, I like the idea of land development

Reitsuki Kojima: Exposition, I'll be blunt. In my opinion, they do worse than add value; they detract it.

Adam Zaius: I've been looking into this personally; I've got a system I'm building to allow user land auctions, and the only solution to the management, is to hire an external entity to do the management side.

Adam Zaius: Rei: Only when it's a simple markup.

Adam Zaius: There is a certain value in having the land market very liquid. Especially on the selling end.

Ice Brodie: I don't want to buy land because it's usually over 8 lindens a square meter or auction.

Exposition Linden: Ah, so you'd like tools to allow users to buy land at auction and then compete with the auctions

Reitsuki Kojima: Adam, I'm tlaking on a broader level. Spinning signs, cutting up plots, holding plots hostage, you name it.

Reitsuki Kojima: I dont just mean for the land itself, I mean from the experience of the game in general.

Jay Fairplay: Ya, like you pay extra tax here if you don't live in the place you buy for at least a year before you sell it.

Adam Zaius: Rei: Again, there's no service added, I'd call that more baroning, than real estate.

Salazar Jack: I'd like to make it aq bit easier to sell a parcel 's contents when the parcel is sold. So you could sell a house or builing and it's contents when you sell the land (all at once).

Gabriel Spinnaker: I figure land barons are just a result of having a free market, so I don't really understand the objection, unless you'd prefer that the market be less free.

Lit Noir: Land brokers can do a service by adding liquidity, buying then holding so the final buyer and seller don't need to be looking at the same time, consider it inventory

Exposition Linden: you can sell the parcels contents

Adam Zaius: The problem is any 'baron solution' ultimately, harms the players, if it's removing rights.

Gabriel Spinnaker: Although not being a landowner I suppose I don't have the perspective of those who DO own land.

Reitsuki Kojima: Adam: I've never seen any example of service added, so the point is moot.

Lit Noir: But if one or a cartel holds enough inventory, then pricing can get out of whack

Ice Brodie: the game's generally become, flatten it, put up a casino/mall/mature hangout... or sell it for twice the buying price, good builds are loosing support and the place's turning into a badly run Vegas without a gambling commission.

Salazar Jack: Don't the parrcel's have to be sold separatley?

Adam Zaius: Ideally: The land addition process should be sped up significantly. So much so, that creating huge markups is impossible, due to the glut of land.

Salazar Jack: From the objects on them?

Adam Zaius: It can be normalised again, after there's a glut in the system.

Ice Brodie: dropping support for group builds was something I saw several friends effected by.

Adam Zaius: But there are going to be problems while the user growth rate, is not proportional to the land growth rate.

Exposition Linden: Remember, we are going to greatly accelerate land addition

Adam Zaius: I suspect over time, that will help.

Reitsuki Kojima: I agree with adam on one point: most of the proposed solutions hurt the players as much as the barons. But I think there are valid solutions out there, its just a matter of finding them.

Too large to fit here, for the full text, see my blog.

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.

5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM

6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.

7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by "leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 20th century.

9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY

10. By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities. The terms "negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick" for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. "Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine equivalents of "guy," "dude" or "fellow." The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights advocates have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and insist on its replacement by "animal companion." Leftist anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the word "primitive" by "nonliterate." They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white males from middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist's real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative", "enterprise," "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is "inferior" it is not his fault, but society's, because he has not been brought up properly.

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

OVERSOCIALIZATION

24. Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.

LOL Mal. I was about to write a seething response and then I saw where your link went Nice one!

I need pandastrong to pop in with an amusing sign declaring the thread closed.

Well done, Malachi.

Sorry that I am late... was in the bathroom!

That man looks entirely too content...

But this is a good idea, it is better land management tools. This particular conversation mentioned for the reason for controlling objects for griefer reasons, but it simply equals knowing who has left objects on your land. We used to know that X number of objects belonged to others but not who they belonged too. Now we can review the objects and decide to leave things that need to be there.

It was a good idea that got a lot of discussion, and it took seven months. This one conversation is not the reason we now that that functionality. And besides, is it a bad thing? Should we not know who has objects on our land? Why is this point so interesting?

There is a feature suggestion forum and it gets used all the time. I have made a lot of suggestions and some have gotten some support and some havent. Anyone is welcome to make a suggestion. We now even have voting for suggestions, so make some proposals and lobby for them.

As for even better land tools, I would like to be able to simply move things on my land that belong to others. A lot of people have said they would like to be able to do that as well. Right now say your friend leaves you a nice present (or whatever) but he put it right in the way of the door. Your only option is to leave it there, delete it or return it. Why cant we simply move it? I suspect that some day we will be able to do this. When (or if) it happens, do you think it will be done as a personal favor to me? Of course not, it will happen because it was a good idea that had support and was able to be implemented.

There is no great conspiracy, there are only people making suggestions.

What makes you think that the people in the chat *weren't* landowners? As far as I know, they all own land themselves or in a group. That sounded like a great chat -- full of good ideas.

It was a good chat, full of good ideas.

And maybe some or all were landowners. But they were also the kind of landowners that hate those who deal in land, and make no bones about it -- read the text.

They are for the Lindens deliberately pouring in loads of land to depress prices, and keep landowners off balance -- even though at least one of them is in the land and mall business for a profit.

They hate those who mark up prices -- the very act of marking up a price after you bought it at auction is "evil".

Just read the text, highlightened in places for the more interesting remarks.

Fact is, what i've come to find out in SL, is you could be a huge businessman yourself, you could even own lots of land, but you will hate the landowner class. Why? Well, becaues it is something you can't control?

Excellent job condensing this difficult subject down to just a few simple pages.

I think this also explains why there aren't as many raisins as there should be in Raisin English Muffins. Wiki-leftists have conspired to force english muffin bakers to cater to their specific tastes, which include far fewer raisins than capitalists need.

Buster

They're all toast now tho, Buster LOL.

This was held at the very height of the land shortage (where land prices of $20.0/sqm or higher were considered normal) - it was at this point in time, it was impossible for new players to join SL's landowners without serious expenditure of cash to buy land.

I dont have any problem with land barons myself, they do provide a service of creating liquidity in the land market - however at this point in time, they had managed to push land prices to insustainable levels.

In that climate, this discussion was quite normal, and did reflect the majority opinion at the time.

-Adam

__________________

Well, Adam, how do you account for the fact that Corey Linden then said in this meeting that the subscribers were growing, and they were pouring out new land?



I'm all for analyzing documents in their historical context. I appreciate what you're bringing to the table.

But if this was just "the majority opinion back then" and if the Lindens addressed this problem by dumping loads of land -- twice as much! -- into the mix, then WHY is there STILL a minority (not majority) of very influential older players STILL BITCHING about land barons?

The "problem" was corrected 7 months ago. The Lindens have kept up a brisk pace of dumping land into the world to keep pace with new subscriptions and greater older-player demand. We could have a separate theoretical argument that your notion -- and theirs -- of dumping land constantly to devalue barons' land and give players a lower price is the kind of statist intervention that will eventually kill this world.

I"ve heard the scare stories of how expensive land got back then, and of the snow land, and the Snowcrash (har har har) when overvalued snow land crashed (and never fully recovered).

But why do they persist? In fact, if that Snowcrash hadn't been acccompanied by a GOM fraud attempt that rocked the GOM, it might have gone away through natural cycles (if one can even speak about "natural" on an artificial thing like a virtual world).

And new players could have always gotten the $512, couldn't they? Or taken advantage of the much-maligned but evidently viable Land Angels program? Or?

The fact of the matter is, Adam, this discussion, held part by land owners and part by not-land-owners, or-free-4096-owners, is indicative of a climate even today. It's that climate that drove the events calendar bork and the island zoned sims ads bork.

Precisely. But some people can't hear that, as it would take from them the only thing that gives them meaning here.

At that point in time, The 512 for L$512 hadnt started yet. Even land angels wasnt around (no snow sims either). Pumping twice as much land took nearly 3 months before it met an equilibrium because the shortage was so large. This is a long time ago (over a year now), the opinions there reflect a very different climate from today.

Today people complain about barons for other reasons, like say spinning flashing signs, or unethical business practices. Back then, it was because they capitalised on a monopoly to the point that it choked the economy.

At that point in time, it was out of control, and the opinions reflected there are going to be different today, now the problem has been fixed, that conversation should not be held in parallel to today.

The events calendar was so-called 'borked' because it was being abused to get free money - even yourself recognises the value of a free market, and that's precisely the reason the events calendar has been changed. More recently it was changed to prevent the mass spamming that was occuring (since it had gotten beyond LL's ability to handle).

Likewise, the zoned sim for-sale debate is over another topic completely, that's over whether you can define subleasing as leasing, and the need to recognise that your land is not backed by LL themselves. Not related.

-Adam

What Adam said about this being in an entierly different climate is true. I stand by the statements I made then. They are not, entierly, relevent today however. The land baron back then was an entierly different animal than it is today. There were more land barons it seemed than land owners. They had caused land to climb to an unrealistic, unsustainable price, and like most of us predicted, their little house-of-cards empire crumpled around them as soon as the weekness they were exploiting was removed.

That said, I need to address something Prok said in his post that Adam quoted... Prok, I'm not adressing this to you, I have you on ignore to avoid fighting with you. But the record needs to be cleared. So I'm adressing this to any who reads this thread:

A grand total of two people in that chat are eligable to have the lifer account (PN's much-maligned "free 4092". I dont know if either actually does, but they may. And they were not the ones you were highlighting.

Nor do I "hate" land barons, or think they are "evil", nor do I think people shouldn't be allowed to sell land at a markup. Prok indirectly targed those remarks at me, but they are lies if he actually intended them to apply to me. If not, well, they still may be lies, or they may not. I dunno. Depends where his vauge attack was going. But they don't apply to me. I hated the land baron situation back then. But it has no relevence to todays market. Even then, I didn't think anyone was 'evil'. That's so much overly-dramatic nonsense it's comical.

I'm so glad I've gotten you on the record here as saying you do not hate land barons. That goes an important step towards helping to dispel the hatred of this class of people.

Now, how do you feel about this statement today:



Do land barons detract value?

I don't think that can be answered with a simple yes or no. I would say that people who buy land that they don't intend to use without developing it, improviing it, or providing some other service to their customers do detract value since they don't do anything but act as a middleman and take a cut. There has to be a genuine value added which just isn't there all too often. If the land baron actually provides a desired service, like providing zoned or managed communities or truly improving the land then I'd say they add value for some people as long as they're not marking things up too much. If someone just wants to buy some land to build on and develop themselves there's no reason for them to have to go to a reseller, and if they end up having to do that and paying a markup then they've lost some value.

Sorry to bump a kinda old topic. But I found this while searching for transcripts.

This Town Hall was actualy 1 of 5 different town halls held at the same time, all on the topic of Land.

Cory's/Expedition's can be found here: http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Town_Hall_8/12/04/C

Philip's here: http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Town_Hall_8/12/04/P

Haney's here: http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Town_Hall_8/12/04/H

And lastly but not leastly...

Robin's here: http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Town_Hall_8/12/04/R

The fifth town hall was held by Daniel Linden, but no one seems to have kept or posted a transcript of his.

What I found most interesting about these town halls was more how each crowd reacted to each Linden and how the town halls went based on this.

But yeah, so if you're more interested about what was going on then and what was said concerning the land issue of that time check those out.