Vasudha seems to have lost interest in a discussion she started in Land and Economy, but I think it's sort of important to understand her intentions so I'd like to reiterate my questions here. Sorry for being so lengthy, I know you're all busy, but what she hints at is a vast departure from Linden Lab's traditional hands-off approach to Second Life's culture and markets and the consequences could be absolutely terrifying. Thanks for your attention on this.
Without going in to boring details of economic analysis, employment and hence income are pretty much what sustain economies. If we as a community can make "work" fun, easy and play-like, we are creating and increasing the value of the SL economy. Hence, we want to explore and create more low-skilled money-making opportunities for SL residents.
I'm very concerned with Linden Lab attempting to push or sponsor such things. The exchange rate for the L$ is already at a pretty low ebb, and well off of the ideal targets initially established by LL in the past.
My question for you, then, is this: Where does the money come from? Does Linden Lab generate more of it to pay such jobs? Or are these jobs to be funded by money that already exists within the currency pool? Jobs funded, that is, by resident interest and resident money.
The concern, obviously, is that if Linden Lab is paying out for these jobs, the jobs themselves won't have value except to Linden Lab, who will be compensating new customers at the cost of inflation. If the jobs actually had value within the economy beyond lining the pockets of the unskilled, there would be no problem getting the market to pay for them.
Thus, if the market saw any value at all in unskilled labor, wouldn't this be a non-issue? Wouldn't there already be jobs-aplenty for the unskilled?
The problem I see here is that most of SL's economy is driven forward by knowledge workers. In order to generate value here, you need to know how to generate experiences that make SL more interesting. Again, if this were possible without having any skill, wouldn't the market have already solved the problem itself?
I'd implore you to please put aside your reluctance to discuss "boring" details of economic theory. I assure you, we can handle them. The devil is going to very much be in those details, and they're absolutely germane to the discussion at hand.
If your motivation is to establish what will amount to dressed up, Linden-sanctioned and -funded camping chairs with pretty titles, I think that's absolutely critical for us to know up front. If your intent, on the other hand, is to find ways to squeeze real, market-driven value out of "unskilled" labor, that's a very different discussion indeed.
I'm very worried about anyone trying "make" work fun, easy and play-like. That sounds a whole lot like some nasty meddling is going to go down. I really hope I don't have to shift over to a third-party micropayment system because of a valueless Linden this year.
