The "ownership" system of Neualtenburg.

Or, how we've designed a system in which all participants "own" a share of the sim.

In RL, I live in New York City, where a common system for structuring the onwership of homes is the not-for-profit cooperative housing corporation. I'll describe it in a simple fashion here, and then show how we've modified it for the needs of Neualtenburg.

A coop is a not-for-profit corporation in which what a member owns is "shares", like shares in a commercial corporation. Lets say that the coop has divided itself up, what they call "offered", 64,000 shares. The complete value of the coop is represented by those 64,000 shares. Lets say that the only thing the coop owned was a building, worth $64,000. So, each share would be worth one dollar.

So, the coop divides up its apartment building by assigning numbers of shares to each apartment. Since they've issued 64,000, that's what the total has got to be. Each apartment then is related to a certain number of shares. Obviously, bigger apartment, more shares. Better apartment (like, higher floor, or, with balcony), more shares.

So, now the interesting part. Let's say you own that apartment. Well, you don't actually own the apartment. You own the number of shares represented by the apartment. You own those shares as a portion of the corporation. And, critical point, what goes with owning those shares is what's called a "Proprietary Lease". Ownership of the shares entitles you to a lease on that apartment. Naturally, there are terms to the lease. I mean, a lease is a lease. You're "renting" the apartment, so to speak, as an entitlement for owning those shares. But you still have to abide by the terms of the lease, regardless. And, those proprietary leases can be very restrictive.

Another interesting part. I've explained above how you figure the underlying value of the share(s). But, now you'd like to sell those shares to someone else who'd like to live in the apartment. The market value might be more or less than the underlying value of the shares. When those shares are sold, the intrinsic value of the property changes. The value of a share will go up or down, depending on each sale that happens in the coop.

Now, the corporation is, in many ways, like every other corporation. The shareholders elect a board of directors; one share, one vote. The board of directors manage the finances of the coop; they collect the monthly payments from the shareholders (called "maintenance fee", and they change that maintenance fee when they see fit. The maintenance fee is charged (they say assessed) by the share. If the maintenance fee is $1 per share, and you own 100 shares, then you're paying $100 per month. From time to time the board of directors decides that they need extra cash, so they levy an "extra assessment", also, by the share.

Of course, the board of directors is also responsible for all the other details of managing the building, such that the shareholders find their experience there suitable. If they don't like the way things are managed, they elect other directors.

A big difference between coops and normal for-profit corporations is that in the coop the Board members serve as volunteers. In addition, if the dealings of the coop result in more income than expenses, in other words, if they show a profit, nobody gets it. The profits stay in the coop system itself, and, in fact, help to improve the healthiness of the coop. The more cash the company has available, the more able it is to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of transactions.

However, in principle, a coop could collect too much cash, so what should it do? Obvious: lower the monthly fees.

An interesting detail of coop structure, is that a committee of the board of directors decides who may and who may not buy shares in the corporation. Even though the seller and the buyer are happily settling between themselves a great deal; if the committee doesn't feel that the buyer meets the standards that they have set, or may be unlikely or unable to abide by the rules, the deal is off. This is why, in general, banks don't like coops much, because of the extra level of difficulty involved in selling them. But in New York (well, Manhattan anyway), most owner occupied apartments are coops.


In Neualtenburg we've adopted this structure. Residents ("citizens" buy shares in the sim, which entitle them to use land. We assign one share for each square meter of land, so the number of shares in Neualtenburg is fixed at 64,000. No matter where your land is in the sim, your number of shares entitles you to that number of meter squares.

Where we depart from the policy of the New York coop is in the Monthly Fees. While in New York, a certain number of square meters might be worth various numbers of shares, and the Monthly Fee is the same for each share; in Neualtenburg the share is always equal to one square meter, but the Monthly Fee for that square meter could be different depending on where the square meter is located. Monthly fees for different properties will change, but, at the moment, the Monthly Fee for a square meter in the City Walls is one third more than the fee for a square meter outside the walls.

We don't use the words "Proprietary Lease" because Linden Labs themselves refer to the process we do as "Deeding the Parcel to the Group". So our equivalent document is called a "Deed".

Here is a sample deed: /103/ae/48796/1.html#post517923

But in many ways it is more like the Proprietary Lease. Residents are bound by the "Covenants" attached to the Deed, which are simply the rules for the ways in which you can use your land. This is identical to the "House Rules" of the New York coop. They are also bound by the ToS, Terms of Service, which we have adopted from the SL ToS. If a resident finds themselves unable or unwilling to abide by the covenants or the ToS, they are liable to have their "Deed" revoked and their land "Reclaimed".

Here are the Covenants: /103/ae/48796/1.html#post517928

and the Neualtenburg ToS: /103/aa/48797/1.html#post517935

And, Neualtenburg has its "Board of Directors", but ours is more elaborate than with a New York coop. Neualtenburg has three branches of government, the Representative Assembly, which is elected by everyone, the Scientific Council, who are appointed, and the Guild, which is composed of all "goods and services producing" residents. Each branch acts as a check on the others. The elected Representative Assembly is elected by "one-person/one-vote" rather than the "one-share/one-vote" system found in New York.

As in New York, no member of the governing groups receives pay or any other compensation for their work. Elections are held frequently; they were held in January, and they are due to be held again in the next few weeks.

Here is the constitution: /103/90/28557/1.html#post285815

In accordance with proper accounting procedures, the financial reports of the coop are public information. Here they are, as of June 6.

Balance Sheet: http://www.tospitimou.com/Neualtenburg/BalanceSheet.pdf

Income and Expenses: http://www.tospitimou.com/Neualtenburg/IncomeExpense.pdf


Visit www.neualtenburg.org for more information.


Sudane Erato

Sudane, that's a comprehensive system with a lot of thought behind it. How does it serve your community in practice? For example, do people show up for meetings, perform the needed volunteer tasks, and take the time to become informed for the purpose of making decisions within the system? All of these taken together would require a participant to make a significant committment of SL time to what might be considered overhead.

My first impression is that your system would appeal to those whose first love is systems, and they have no problem with the overhead involved. Is this what you find in practice?

Perhaps a system like this might serve as structure for social activities in a group. Same people, same amount of time, but more goal-directed than just hanging out together.

We have a much simpler, and abit older system in lusk for the lusk estates residental area...

essentially the group is a true 'land trust' co-op type group... in which residents share tier (usually 512 sqm, but basially equal to whichever size plot they have) and so long as they continue to share tier for a plot they wish to use, its theirs.

thats about it... the trust is linden over-seen so there is zero chance of it walking away an taking peoples land, and we never charge anyone for anything, so long as they share the tier (which most have as part of premium account status anyway) they are welcome to live there.

the small 10% land bonus the group has, just goes back to hold any plots that are empty at any given time.


Its *IMMENSELY* easier to manage, has no money involved, and runs pretty well, helping us to keep what was once a junk-pile of stray objects and random abandoned builds, into a nice little suburban place in a very well running sim right next to the welcome area

Neualtenburg is still very young, so any observations I describe will not have a fair representation of all people who will live in the city, but the citizens are already very diverse. There are those that love the co-op system and a representative government in VR. They tend to be highly active, show up to meetings, and maintain a very high level of neualtenburg information. Others, just enjoy the architecture and see Neualt as a great place to build a home. They stay to themselves, don't get involved in city politics, are great neighbors, and are just happy that there are rules against building giant pornographic monuments next door. There are also those that just enjoy the cost saving provided by the Co-Op. The land is cheaper than elsewhere on the Grid, and it doesn't require a premium account. Finnaly we have the good ole entrepreneurs, who see the Co-Op as a means to facilitate a booming city, with planned arcitecture and events. They realize this system will help promote foot traffic in the sim more so than a hodgepodge collection of builds, and thus shops in the city maintain a high visibility. Shops with high visibility tend to yield more sales.


Outside of the original city planners (who fall most definately into the systems group), there seems to be a very fair distribution of citizens who fall into all four of these categories.

In New York City, co-op boards are hated. They are notorious. They are the butt of salons and newspaper cartoons and tv sitcoms. Everyone knows about the fascistic co-op board that won't budge on an issue or not allow pets or terrorizes people trying to apply to get into their inner sanctum. Many yuppies have gone through the passage-of-life involving having to get past some dreaded co-op board that rules their life.

Often populated by wealthy or retired people with loads of time on their hand, co-op boards are nests of intrigue and spite and fascistic practice. They might volunteer, but you get what you pay for when you pay $0 for something -- nothing, and nothing but trouble. Paid professionals can perform services much better, and more equally. I'd much rather be renting in another type of program like Mitchell-Lama or any ordinary apartment complex where a corporation with paid staff is the what you deal with, and where there is review by city officials, as a means of oversight and accountability.

Why own shares when you can just own the thing itself? In New York, you could still have recourse to the courts and the law and the free media to pursue various complaints against these very problematic bodies.

In SL, you'll have none of that, and they'll be able to rein supreme with just the kind of busy-bodies that love "systems" and "process" especially when "systems" and "process" control other people but not themselves LOL.

Sudane, I was puzzled by your post in the Nberg group raving about the first day of sales and the possibility of how the shares or co-ops or whatever would increase in value from resales. Now, how does this square with the non-profit nature of the co-op, and the notions of socialism where there isn't supposed to be this profit motive and these windfalls of increased value? Am I missing something?

Prok, thanks for all the hearsay. There is nothing like invoking scary second hand stories about a big place called Manhatten. I'm involved in a very successful and loved Co-op here in New England. I also was born and raised in NY, where a few of my friends have bought into Co-Op's and just pleased to the core to see the real-estate value of there places continue to go up.

Woot! I just added my own hearsay. The first time I've ever been a troll on internet forums!

-Satch-

Yes.

You're missing something because (1) you obviously have read all the scuttle-butt about coops, but you're not actually familiar with them, and (2) you really didn't read closely where I described how both the New York coop and the Neualtenburg "ownership" system work.

To take the second point first. The coop is a not-for-profit corporation, organized for the benefit of its members. Its sole purpose is to manage and maintain housing for its members. As a company, it collects revenues, it pays expenses. Sometimes, it's income is positive, and it accumulates cash. Sometimes its revenues are negative, and it loses cash. Whatever. No one gets that money. It stays with the coop corporation. It is exactly like your favorite church or charity; and, legally, in the United States, it has the same standing.

The members, on the other hand, may benefit. They buy their shares, originally, from the coop. But from there, unless they break the rules, they sell on the open market. In the RL at least, this almost inevitably means that the value of their shares increases. In many areas, it is not really accurate to say simply: increases. A better word would be: sky-rockets. In SL, of course, we don't know what will happen. But, as the original purchase price of the sim is slowly paid off, there is no good reason why the Monthly Fees would not lower. On a simple level, that will increase the value of the shares.

Regarding the first point, it is certainly very dramatic to quote the many stories of coop transactions gone bad. That approach keeps many low quality newspapers in business, but it does not particularly contribute to an intelligent discussion of the topic. Keep in mind that perhaps 80% of owner-occupied housing in Manhattan, in New York City, is structured as coop's. That's thousands of buildings, and Manhattan contains but a small part of the US housing stock which might be covered by the not-for-profit cooperative housing corporation rules.

The rest, in Manhattan (Manhattan has relatively few single-family homes), are what are called condominiums, where the owner actually, legally, owns the square footage they live on. While that concept may be more emotionally satisfying to many, it turns out that condos end up being structured very much like coops, in order to manage the common structure which everyone shares (the apartment building). That common structure, like a coop, is a not-for-profit.

Coop's make more sense as a model for sharing a private sim in Neualtenburg, since, although the Lindens have persisted with the terminology of "Deeding" in describing the process of conveying the property to the new resident, the system as it's set up emphasizes the "dominant responsibility" of the "owner" as having final authority, both for control and for paying the bill. We have simply institutionalized the "owner" as the alt of a resident who is elected for a term as Treasurer. And we have incorporated into the budget the US$100 fee which the Lindens impose on transferring "ownership" to a different resident, which will happen when a new Treasurer is elected.

In the interests of full disclosure, in RL I am intimately familiar with the workings of the cooperative housing system. Like all systems, companies, governments, charities and institutions of every kind, it has examples where it is misused. In general, though, it is a long-tested concept, established on clear and solid law, and of great benefit to many millions of people.

Sudane

It's not scuttle-butt, Sudane, but reporting, and reporting in newspapers of record and popular websites -- here's an article about discrimination against minorities and coops.

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2005/02/10/more_fifth_avenue_coop_discrimination.php

Here's a book on the subject:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/06/05/RVGF3CULA31.DTL&type=printable



Or this:

http://www.demos-usa.org/page253.cfm



I'm fully and intimately aware of coops, believe me.

I think it's appalling you'd celebrate this model, and this New York City variant, as a model for SL. You can perhaps foist it on unsuspecting Europeans who aren't familiar with it in RL in its ugly manifestations, just like some Europeans can foist socialism on Americans who don't see the East European brand up close and personal Honestly, this is SUCH an old story!

I did indeed read closely but I *disagreed* with this as a model because it's simply not clear to any normal, common-sense person why they have to buy shares of something that is the collective's property, and why they can't get the thing itself to dispose of as they wish. Private property is something that people value. They don't favor socialism. You do, so you argue for it. Most people of common sense in New York City, America, and even this game, do not.

There are other types of ownership or rentals that can accommodate some of the social justice concerns you have but don't have to go on celebrating this pernicious social system you favor which creates not only nasty co-op boards but nasty governments.

It's not a model for SL, and I heartily reject, as do others.

Do not confuse *opposition to your views* with stupidity, confusion, lack of attention to deteails in your posts, etc. etc. Opposition is opposition, not lack of intelligence.

Um, I live right in midtown Manhattan, and the stories are not second-hand : )

.....heh.....

Private property is indeed something people value. In SL, it is simply not someting available on a private sim except to the owner.

I think that you would be very hard pressed to find anyone in the Neualtenburg group (in other words, people who actually know me) who feels that I favor socialism. That's a new one on me! And since "most people of common sense" who own homes in the area of RL called Manhattan own a coop, there clearly must be a lot of "common sense" to the idea.
Whew! Even nasty governments? Can we put away the soapbox and deal with the issues?

How you can put "rental" in the same phrase with "other types of ownership" escapes me. Rental is the temporary use of someone else's property, in this case your home. Government protections or not (and I can't believe you would advocate the kind of failed government rent protection provided in New York), the place you live in belongs to someone else. Ownership is self-evident. To quote you: "Private property is something that people value". In SL however, the Lindens have determined that that right is not directly available on a private sim to any but the "owner". Using a RL model, we've developed a system by which "ownership" rights on a private sim can be established.

BTW, I recommend to anyone interested the references you've provided, particularly the third. The first is an example of what I described. A news story about the super rich on Fifth Avenue where some of the subsidiary details made for a juicy headline, but where the real issues, having to do with a disputed tax lien, were much more boring, and buried in the copy.

The second is a review for a book from which you quoted only the part that you felt proved your point. In fact, reading the whole review, it turns out that the book is in fact celebrity-watching, gossipy stories. The reviewer regrets how poorly the book served its ostensible purpose of providing info about coop housing.

And the third is a rather intelligent column regarding many of the real issues in New York today around the issues of affordable housing. Not directly related to SL and the system at Neualtenburg, since ours is a system adapted from RL. But, interesting nonetheless.

Sudane

Traxx, these are all good questions. As Satchmo says, we're pretty new with this system, so we're going to have to see.

I'm sure you know that this is really "Neualtenburg Phase Two". Phase One was located in the mainland snow sim Anzere. It was where the original city was built, where the constitution was written, and where the first elections were held.

Many of your questions could be asked of that earlier phase. There were successes: there were as many as 50 members of Neualtenburg, and those members contributed a very substantial amount of tier in order to sustain the project. Many provided a great deal of work building the City and creating the goods and services which provided its upkeep.

But in January the Lindens decided that Neualtenburg must move, so we decided on our plan of a private sim. Only on June 5 did we have our system even minimally in place to begin to sell shares in the project.

We now have 14 people. But we need more in order to make a viable system of representative democracy, and, in order to maintain the sim financially. We hope to have elections in the next few weeks, as the number of members grows.

Hopefully, as the system becomes established, the "overhead time" for any one resident lessens. Some residents have already made it clear that they are not especially interested in the "system" part, as you suggest, but only in the environment which we have sought to establish. Others are really interested in the "system of government". Hopefully, all those interests will find a place together in Neualtenburg.

Sudane

I agree with Sudeene, that NYC is such a huge sample size, of course there will be mismanagement. I even had a crappy NY Bagel for the first time, when I was down there 2 weeks ago, although never a crappy slice of pizza There are mismanaged business' in NYC too, but I wouldn't try and discourage people in SL from starting a business...

I think there is a big difference between RL and SL and that is benefits Neualt. In RL, it is more difficult to get elected to a Co-Op board. It has very real time restraints, and most people feel they don't have the experience/resume to go for it. In Neualt anyone can run, and the time contstraints are minimal. If Neualt was to become a draconian co-op board that it's own residents hated, it would be easy for residents to run for elected officials. No resume's or experience required.

Don't think there is a deep entrenched beuracracy involved in Neualt.... I don't know the numbers, but I would bet that there are just as many average SL citizens living in the city as there are city founders. Probably even enough to overthrow the current government if elections were held today.

That being said... the current elected officials are doing a fantastic job. The appropriate issues are being discussed, and a lot of hard work is going into building the city and a failsafe co-op/government system.

honestly generally the larger a system gets, the more time it takes from everyone... income taxes anyone?

I do think its good to have community sims and people working together, and if you can get people interested enough to become active participants in your system thats great... tho ultimately i still feel overly complicated for a land co-op system in SL...

via group permissions its possible *now* to have a very simple co-op that essentially takes care of itself.. just make the 'elected board' the officers in the group, the members share tier to get their plots, an let people move in/out for free

i do understand it will clost a member slightly more money potentialy.. but then it will also take essentially no management or oversight beyond just popping someone out of the group if they drop their tier...

but then honestly i think theres room for both systems... some people would prefer a lower cost, and a little red tape.. while others would probably prefer no entry cost, a little more per month, and to be left alone... and who knows theres probably other active systems in SL right now we don't even know about because they work well enough that no ne needs to talk abuot them here

Who cares what people think in NYC or America? If it had any impact on things in SL, our VR world would look very different.

I for one would rather see people exploring their ideas, not using the views of the majority to whip up mass dissent and crush projects... there is enough of that in RL.

SL and RL are really two seperate things... Anything can happen here.

I totally understand and respect (and sometimes admire) your dissent Prok, but jumping up and down and telling everyone this is a bad idea, is sort of like people who always post thier products on competitors new products forum posts.

I could see if you think the Neualtenburg group are shady characters, who intend to build an awful place and take peoples moneys, but that really just isn't the case here...

yeah honestly i think thats also the most important thing... sl needs *MORE* group projects, more people working together to try new things... more interesting areas that come up as a result..

we have some amazingly talented designers, and artists, and coders, and sound engineers, and socialites, and promoters... and the more of them we can get together to do bigger things, the better off ALL of SL is going to be in the end.

There are lots of really good examples of individual talent in SL, but the best really comes out when people can put aside any little differences, and come together to pool those resources and talents, and come up with something bigger and better than any one person could ever have managed.

Theres been alot of people putting pressure on early groups, making it harder to start out and try riskin it all for a shot at somethin bigger and better.. which is a shame... we need to make it easier for people to try and do expiraments, projects, dreams.. like this co-op city, or a theme area, or any number of other cool things and kudos for you guys for havin that ambition to get it off the ground and keep it goin these 6+ months.

The way to help group projects is to fix the flaws in the group tools, especially the vulnerability to landowners and those who pay for purchases and pay tier. When those holes of risk are closed, you will see many more group projects.

Far from being "crushed" because it is "innovative," Neualtenberg has been feted from inception, having the purchase price waved because they were the sole winners of a contest that only had one entry and was never repeated. Its members enjoy constant access to Lindens and have ample opportunities to post here and gain the high prestige visibility of running the Thinkers club from their perch in Nberg. So far from the struggling innovate project facing a wall of indifference or difficulties, Nberg has had it 10 times easier than any other project I can think of.

What we need to see now is the same kind of incentives, access, and help to non-socialist projects because there are just going to be more of those in America and the world.

The idea isn't tenable that you can use the cloak of cyberspace and the cloak of the metaverse as "being different than RL" to foist on SL's community what you couldn't foist on RL people . You couldn't get socialism to stick in a lot of places in RL, and the same human beings of RL with the same common sense are here now in SL.

The group tools need to become free of risk and configurable to enable a wider variety of associations, businesses, projects, communities to come into being.

Not to mention the fact that Prok hates and tries to destroy/slander/ridicule any person or group that competes with his own business.

Point of information. Neualtenburg has purchased its sim for the same price and in the same manner that every other private sim owner has done. We owe the same monthly fee that very other private sim owner does. We have received absolutely no special treatment from the Lindens for this transaction.

Sudane

Prok, it wasn't a "contest." They didn't make an "entry" and they weren't "winners." LL wanted a bunch of proposals for winter-themed builds and was ready to accept more than just the one that was submitted. Your accusations are riduculous. You're attacking the Neualtenbergers for being the one group that got their act together -- for doing a good job. They are not to blame for other groups' lack of motivation, or time, or organization, or whatever it was that kept them from taking advantage of this opportunity.

Neither is it the fault of this group that LL does not have a program in place to foster other large group projects. LL posted their plans for such a program, but member response was largely negative and the plans were dropped. You don't know what you're talking about. Have a lovely afternoon.

When you give away an entire sim in this game that places a lot of value on land, and work it so that only one group seems to qualify, maybe there is something wrong with the contest? Maybe rethink it? Maybe retry it? Maybe give others a chance? How long was it run? I can think of many groups that would jump at the chance to enter a contest like that. How long did the application period last? How hard was the application? These are the questions you have to ask when you discover the Lindens had a contest *giving away a free sim with no purchase price* but only got one applicant.

Yes, that is a contest -- unless you want to call it a rigged giveaway to loyalists, which I'm sure you would NOT want to do.

Sudane, um you NOW purchased your sim -- JUST now -- but in the days when you were in the snow sim, you had a giveaway. I'm always amazed at how hard you work to play this down. IT's nothing terrible to admit. You got a free sim. You then had to pay tier on it. But sims don't come cheap!

The Lindens gave you a free sim. You got loads of cachet and help with the fact alone. So try not to discount it, and see how could the same thing be done, without encouraging favoritism, on a broader basis, to encourage good content in the game.

It was half a sim.

You should really learn facts about issues before you start trying to argue about it. You have continually gotten your facts wrong about Neualt, and while I know it gets you aroused to try and prove how horrid the Neualt project is, you should really understand that you only ever come out looking foolish.

If you want answers to your questions, Prok, either go do some research, or go ask a Linden. I already discussed this stuff when it came up the first time around and I'm not inclined to blow any more of my time trying to fill you in.

Um, I don't need any "filling in" or "Lindens" because I have eyes, and I see that not only did you all get a fete here, you got a fete from which you can position yourself to mount big attacks on others in the game -- Ulrika's gross attack on bulk discounts she started a few months ago, which occasioned my first major posts and my branding as anaethema to SL by some, coming right up to the present day with the current attacks. A free perch, and a perch to be used to throw the game your way. Nice work if you can get it!

Half a sim, whole sim? What's the difference? The purchase price was waived. I have never understood why this is so hard admit. You got a deal. You got a break. It helped considerably to get your social democracy toy running -- others could have done the same thing but didn't, but then nobody laid out the conditions for them and kept the contest running long enough.

Now why am I not surprised that SL's premier socialism experiment starts out with a handout lol?

I don't try to destroy anyone competing with my own business. Not at all. It's not me who slams and ridcules ads in classifies, it's not me who puts ads in Land and Economy and then AR's others who put in the same kind of text and get it called an "ad". Nope, not me at all.

And it's your friend Jauani Wu, your member and supporter, who is now engaged in a full-court press against my business, here in this section, and up on Hotline to the Lindens, and has been for weeks, citing "social usefulness" and "world building" and all that other Soviet-style dreck as a reason to run me into the ground and deliberately and maliciously misportraying my business to undercut me and destroy me.

So when people do that, I fight back. I don't care if there is a freebie socialist experiment if they can find enough wackos to sit in all the endless committee meetings that socialism always seems to demand of one. Let them. But when that nuthouse then tries to take me down, I sure do fight back hard.

What I do care about is when they harass me on the forums and try to take away my customers, which is what they've all been doing for months because I criticize their way of life.

Nberg poses no competition to me. I don't get why you'd think that. You actually think you will find people who are going to embrace the socialist way of life? You have got to be kidding.

People will chose a variety of private island arrangements with themes, whether furries or socialists. Let them. Others will chose the mainland. Let them. It's you and Jauani trying to savage mainland businesses by screaming for the end of the 10 percent incentive (just when YOU don't need it any more) and for an end to bulk tier discounts.

Honestly, you are so transparent, all of you. Shame on you! Somebody fights back, and you use the old Bolshevik propaganda techniques of trying to portray them as the problem. Shame on you again!

Since you feel the need to insult groups of people and slander them, I thought I'd give it a shot: Ravenglass Rentals rec'd a fete from Hitler, when they supported him in the Holocaust. Ravenglass then went on to appropriate millions of dollars in funds from UNICEF, and its founder has been known to eat babies.

The sad thing: what I just said is as true as the nonsense which you spew forth.