What is Your Favorite Thing About SL Capitalism?

Ah, but you invited that vampire into your home by giving him your email address, therefore... solicited.

Anyway... semantic arguments suck. I won't quibble on this point any further.

The problem is that there are always some number of people who are actually keen to contribute, or make things that are wanted, or similar - but find they can't do so because they either don't want to do, or aren't good at, the skills required to get these noticed in a capitalism. Furthermore, the capitalism effectively divides these people into haves and have-nots according to whether they are losing RL money to provide their services or not. I have seen several places where people have basically posted views that basically, if a location isn't making money to paying its tier then it is obviously substandard and should be avoided. The thought that maybe the person just doesn't want to make money doesn't arise.

Well, in the wikipedia, the 'characteristics of capitalist economies' is defined as: "a private sector, private property, free enterprise, profit, unequal distribution of wealth, competition, self-organization (or catallaxy), the existence of markets (including the labor market) and the pursuit of self-interest."

I can't speak for everyone, but making or not making tier just doesn't factor into my choices the few times I actually go 'shopping'. I look for the unusual usually. (I'm not making tier myself, but most of my land isn't dedicated to generating revenue, so I suppose it doesn't count).

Personally I think there needs to be an unequal distribution of wealth, skills and need for an economy to exist... if everyone was equal what need would there be for jobs or shopping? I'm not saying that self-sufficiency would be a bad thing for individuals (capitalists and governments would certainly not like it though).

(sorry.. haven't had my coffee yet, my thoughts are still kinda random and unstructured! )

Probably 99% of players with land of any size are not making money or covering their tier. That's the wierd thing - how that tiny tiny minority of capitalists seem to be considered the whole reason for SL existing (given the push on its money making potential in advertising) is way beyond me.

Lewis

I've never had to pay for a lady, but I can understand why you might have to. We seem to have nailed your real reasons for loving capitalism. When everything's for sale, even you can get laid !

That's true, and there's going to be an unequal distribution of skills whatever SL does.

The problem is that making art requires certain skills. When you add a capitalist economy, the capitalist economy brings in a whole bunch of other skills which aren't anything to do with art and are just needed by capitalist economies, but become critical to success.

The problem with capitalism is that it doesn't reward people who are hard working, or who are talented, or who are helpful, or who are creative. The people who do get rewarded may be all these things but there will always be others with the same traits who get nothing. Capitalism rewards, above all, people who are good at getting rewarded by capitalism.

Translation..you're saying it is beter to steal the hard work of others, claim it as your own and then steal the take from it.

No no.. the proper translation is: "It's better to make wild claims that you know will outrage your opponents because the reaction is often funnier than saying something boring and sensible."

Unfortunately... there is no way for skilled workers to provide limited resell items. For example:

I sell create and sell particle textures.

You want to use my particle textures for your sell-able creation.

But by giving you a transfer/copy version... I've effectively made my work public domain because you can easily (and even by mistake) distribute copy+trans versions of the texture you paid me for license to include in your product.

And then suddenly anyone can buy your product once, pull my texture out and sell it as their own.

(unless I'm overlooking something)

So what do I do? I have a few public domain textures... and a 'break the wrapper' price for the ones that aren't public domain, which is *significantly* higher. So far I've only had one person take me up on it.

Since this seems to be a problem with a lot of content creation I can understand why the 'job' market in SL is somewhat limping.

Lack of royalties and lack of limited release discourage contractors from contributing to products.

There was talk of wrappers, which sort of resolved part of this problem... but there's been no talk about them for months.

I think that in the case of particle textures, you can write a script that checks the object is created by the buyer, then sets the particle texture on the object to match yours. The actual texture key is hidden in the script and there's no way to read the particle system settings, so your texture key is safe.

You can't do this with regular textures because their keys can be read back by the creator of the object they're applied to, unfortunately..

I like the fact that capitalism causes people to actively work at making things that others will enjoy instead of just making things for themselves and their friends. I also like the fact that it gives every person an equal opportunity to earn cash for their work.

I wish capitalism addressed underpaid talented people getting paid less than undertalented overpaid people. That is a subjective measure, but in my opinion the trend in capitalism. I also wish that the masses had better taste than the tacky garbage that appeals to a person's drive for sex, acceptance, superiorty, or some other psychological factor. You tend to get a low quality high quantity output from capitalism. There are just some things that would be better the opposite way, and there are wonderful things that will never make money, because they don't appeal to the masses. No way to have everything though. We are a world full of individuals with different ideals of what paradise should be. Its why I don't believe in heaven.

True... assuming I also write the particle script for them and make it no-mod

Ultimately, what I'm looking to do is create a kit for sale that people can use to assemble and customize their own scripted re-sellable items more easily than creating them from scratch... but without the ability to turn around and re-sell the modable kit itself.

If only there were a way to force off the "modable by next owner" after the first ownership transfer.

When did Caveat Emptor go from being a warning to the buyer to being permission to the seller to act unethically? Selling something to another resident that they could get for free is unethical. Selling something that was intended to be freely distributed by its creator is unethical. You don't own the right to resell the item. Period. If I give away items and I tell you that you can't resell them, you can't. Period. End of discussion.