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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.
Especially in the world's oldest profession.
DN
Well, let me detail my own situation then: I'm an IT engineer in a country where unemployment is in the double digits. In my specific age and education class it's over 25%. I only ever get few-month-long missions for ever-varying employers. I can be laid off in a single day with no compensation, and I know a pay rise won't be happening in years. Social care ensures I get a revenue in between, but only for a few months.
And aside from that, I make about half as much as my salary in Second Life using my programmation and innovation skills. I really consider this additional revenue to be my insurance against misery, should I not manage to get a new job after the current one, mainly because I can work at it from most places in the world, anytime, for almost as long as I want or can afford. That's some significant security in my opinion.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Troll? I'm not trolling,
I've been in-world for over a year, and this is my honest opinion.
That's the most amazing thing about Second Life; its delusional players. Heaven forbid anyone critique -anything-.
The Lindens generate a Reality Distortion Field that puts Steve Jobs to shame.
I almost think that 'wealth' is like economic energy: just as energy is "the ability to do work", 'wealth' provides the means to do (economic) work - that is, provide services. Here's an odd example: farming is a service that produces food - wealth - that can be used to perform more farming (by keeping people alive).
Markets are a service in that they distribute wealth, but they do not create it. Markets have value, though, in that people are willing to trade wealth for the presence of the market.
Ah, that seems a little like it could use some further development, but I think it's sufficient for now.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Just another example of Dick being ahead of his time. What a crazy world we live in.
Life doesn't come with guarantees... not the first, nor the second.
A friend of mine started a shop. No, a real shop. It cost a crapload of cash, and in the end due to a road that changed direction and changed the entire flow of people through the area (from busy to deserted) his investment crashed, and he lost all his invested cash, because...
When you invest, your money is rarely insured at all. This is just as true in the real world. If you want your money to be insured, then keep them in the bank... and hope the insurance company don't go bankrupt or decide to change the policy or something.
If you are afraid for your earnings, be clever and don't accumulate to much loose change in game. A million is definatly too much, unless you are planning on some major purchases. Do as most people do in real life - withdraw your earnings on a regular base, and put it in a bank.
If you are not interested in those risks... then this game is not for you. And neither is any real life investement or business start-up.
Ideally, this is done in a democratic fashion, and the people making these decisions have just as much of a mandate to mitigate the pitfalls of a lawless/free economy as much as they do a lawless/free society with laws against harming others. In my opinion, the government should encourage free markets wherever private goods or club goods are involved unless there a life-need (e.g. healthcare), predatory practices (e.g. credit & investment), or both (e.g. utilities) are frequently present. However, whenever common goods or public goods are involved, government must step in to regulate because the free market can only make things worse.
For those who wonder what I'm talking about, there are four classical types of goods that economists define based on whether or not you can exclude others from use and whether or not use diminishes the good. They are:
The definition of degrading a good can vary, but the general idea is that adding or subtracting a single user does not signficantly affect the enjoyment of other users. A concert hall might fill up, but me listening to the music doesn't take away your ability to listen to it. Excludability is more about making sure that people who don't pay for a good can't use it without requiring government coercion. DRM can only exclude goods with government measures to prevent making tools to crack it.
The problem with common and public goods is in the fact that you can't effectively charge people for them. You can't make people stop polluting without coercive force. If you stop paying your taxes and hole up in a compound in Montana, the US military still protects you. The free market cannot effectively solve problems related to these types of goods. Only government can because the effective management and creation of these goods requires that people be forced to play along even if they don't want to.
Government can do this in ways that encourages more or less free market-like behavior. For example, emission trading schemes are more free market like than mandated technologies. However, without government force, there would be no market for emission trading because companies would continue to treat things that they get for free as externalities that free market cost pressures prevent them from worrying about. In fact, the free market makes things worse because competition forces actors in the market to cut costs wherever possible. People wouldn't pollute if it wasn't profitable, and a free market only makes things worse by giving incentives to bad behavior.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").