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Making A Living In Second Life
Wired has an article looking at folks who have dropped out of the whole 'meatspace moneymaking' thing, and are now making their living in Second Life. From the article: "Within a month, Grinnell was making more in Second Life than in her real-world job as a dispatcher. And after three months she realized she could quit her day job altogether. Now Second Life is her primary source of income, and Grinnell, whose avatar answers to the name Janie Marlowe, claims she earns more than four times her previous salary. Grinnell isn't alone. Artists and designers, landowners and currency speculators, are turning the virtual environment of Second Life into a real-world profit center." Interesting, and with a respectability lacking in gold farming.
I'm worried that people like this could well be in for a nasty surprise in the next few years. While they may well be making several times their previous salaries in MMORPGs, what happens if the game is simply closed by its manufacturers, or something better comes along that players flock to? If they can't then map their skills from one game to another, they're suddenly out of luck and out of a job - how sustainable is this sort of job? I certainly wouldn't quit my day job simply out of the security it would afford me - if the game ends tomorrow, at least I still have a paycheque.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
This is just an example of how free markets create wealth.
What value did Second Life have before people moved in and started exercising their rights to engage in unrestricted trade? Absolutely nothing, except a bunch of promise.
But when people began exchanging goods and services without restriction, they begin to build something beautiful.
Imagine for a moment that the owners of Second Life tried something other than free market economics. What if they decided they would dictate the direction of growth? Or what if they controlled the money supply and gave it only to people they liked? Or what if they banned certain transactions? What if Second Life had a board of very smart and highly educated economists trying to create the ideal economy? What if they had onerous taxes and regulations?
If you think that anything but free markets work, you haven't had much experience in the real world.
I would hope that we can take some of the principles that makes Second Life so wonderful (IE, free trade) and bring it into our real world so that we can create even more wealth.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Those making money are nothing but sheep farmers, harvesting from n00bs that wanna play with their paper dolls simulating getting laid.
Despite the claims, it's a closed system with a very limited future, a collapsing eternal economy, and more bugs than a bait shop.
The claim of "A user created community" is Linden/Rosedale just playing everyone for suckers, missing it's potential and merely focusing on profit,
while wrapping themselves in a blanket of lazy, scamming altruism. There's a few interesting builds, but for the most part, it's more BigLots than Metaverse.
The quality of the graphics looks like a game from 5 years ago, and they haven't improved on the look in well over a year, other than adding a water shader.
Can't wait for someone to do it right.
This is just an example of how free markets create wealth.
No. This is an example of a free market redistributing wealth earned in another external economy under completely different rules. All it is doing is rewarding someone for the fruits of their labors with the money others have earned elsewhere under different rules. All this is is someone earning a living under our existing non-free market system just like a flea market or yard sale.
It's a fine example of how well a free market economy works when no one has essential needs and every purchase is a luxury purchase. SL characters don't die of starvation if they can't earn money. They don't die of exposure without the ability to afford housing. They don't need medical care. They don't grow old and infirm and require retirement. Not only would you never have to kill to survive, you couldn't kill for money even if you wanted to. Violent crime is impossible. You can't cause serious harm to people deliberately or even indifferently by way of pollution, foreclosure, or anything else.
In other words, SL is nothing like reality. It is a world without disease, aging, or any other infirmity, non-consensual violence, and starvation or deprivation of any other sort. Well sure it works as a free market economy! All the hazards of the free market and human nature don't exist there.
If you think that anything but free markets work, you haven't had much experience in the real world.
If you think that free markets work, you haven't had much experience with reality. People who think free markets solve everything honestly don't understand the ramifications of the non-exclusive nature of public and common goods nor do they understand the net negative effects of the extreme poverty of others on oneself.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Same thing with stocks, bonds, houses, foreign currency, and most of the stuff we invest in daily. Yet they are the subject of trillions of dollars in investments every year. That these happen to reside on a server in California makes little difference to their worth or value.
Oh and in another great depression like senario do you really think the FDIC is going to bail out all the banks that could fail?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
When you leave the world of paycheck + benefits, life gets a lot mre expensive. You have to shell out for your own medical, dental, vision insurance.
Dude, she worked as a furniture delivery dispatcher. She probably had to buy her own pens for work, nevermind health care.