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SecondLife Bans Unregistered In-World Banks
GuruBuckaroo writes "Virtual Ponzi schemes — pardon, "Banks" — have finally been given the boot by the policymakers at Linden Lab's Second Life. According to the company's latest blog post: 'As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment (whether in L$ or other currency) from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter. We're implementing this policy after reviewing Resident complaints, banking activities, and the law, and we're doing it to protect our Residents and the integrity of our economy.'"
LL should have had exclusive control over their currency and the exchange thereof to begin with. Allowing other parties to do this for them was an open invitation for them and their users to get shafted.
Morons.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have never, EVER, met a person who 'plays' this game, I am probably the only one in my circle who has even heard of it, and I only hear about it here on slashdot.
Of course what really just happened is that they have triggered a massive run on the banks now. Is it better to wait for all the different banks to fail or ban them causing everyone to withdraw their money at once? You are giong to see every bank going the way of Ginko in the very near future now. (even that tiny minority that wasnt offering ponzi scheme style interest rates)
In the US, the Federal Reserve has the right to create money out of thin air. They don't want anyone encroaching on that power. In SL, Linden has the power. They should be cracking down. Both worlds need some hard currency in my opinion.
Being a bank in Second Life isn't very attractive to real banks, because they can't create money in Second Life, like they can in the real world.
Anybody that converts real world assets to virtual ones deserves what they get. Seriously, what's on your mind when you convert your hard earned cold cash into bits in some virtual world ?
Don't you have a better way of spending your money ? Most fads on the internet I can sort of understand what they're about and what their 'pull' is but second life is one step too many for me to follow.
MP3 Search Engine
Now it's the banks.
What good is 2L if you can't virtually explore the things there that aren't possible, safe, legal, or some combination of all of these virtually? I don't need every part of my life to have training wheels.
So how long before virtual sex entirely is gone too?
Followed by avatars who are too sexy, or provacative.
2L was a place were you could learn life lessons by being stupid. Now it seems intending to become one of the more restrictive Middle East countries instead.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That's more like a law of government than like a law of nature.
We're seeing the exact process by which people create governments to protect our rights. Since SL already had what was equivalent to tribal and voluntary governments, we are seeing something much like the process SL'ers learned about in history.
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make install -not war
The word you want is 'currencies'--and aluminum is just as shiny. 'matter of fact, at one point, aluminum (or 'aluminium' for our foreign friends) was worth -more- than gold.
In the end, currency is only worth what people agree it is worth. It bears repeating: Currency is only worth as much as someone else will give you for it. It's a symbol--it's like a variable, as it were.
I find gold to be more or less worthless in my life, save only as a plating agent for electrical contacts. I don't see any reason why a currency should be based on something that's pretty much useless outside the electronics and jewelery industries. If you want to base a currency on something intrinsically valuable to a large number of people, how about, say, fresh water? Sure, it's not worth that much, but if you don't have it you'll certainly notice it.
Do not mistake the symbol for the thing. Currency of any sort--even gold--is only a symbol for a certain amount of a product or service that you can trade it for with someone else.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
I must disagree. There are any number of ways in which a 'gold-based' currency could be rendered completely valueless, not the least of which (but the one that would make the best movie, in my opinion) would be the forcible removal of said gold from whatever repository it was being held in. In addition, the currency will be a fiat currency de facto in that it will be the world of the government in question (or organization, if it is a non-governmentally issued currency) that:
A) There is enough gold to 'cover' it (because really, how can you be -sure- that there's really a dollar's worth of gold in there?) and
B) Said currency or gold will be accepted as a valid form of payment by anyone within the country. Fiat currencies are at least honest about this: there are various laws on the books that state that the currency is to be considered valid payment for debt. Legally, in the US, I must accept a dollar as valid payment; I need not accept any amount of gold as payment, as there is no legal requirement that I do so--I might choose to deal only in platinum, or iridium, or some schist or other.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
"What is the intrinsic value of gold?"
The value is based on the the belief of the millions of idiots that spout the line about "intrinsic value of gold" - it's effectively self sustaining.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
1. Fiat currency isn't based on debt growth. The US has a debt because we sell treasury bonds (t-bills) to bring more money into the country from foreign sources (largely, lately, China)
2. Adam Smith solved this problem about 300 years ago... Tell me: What is China going to do with that money except buy things from us? Fiat currency is only valuable if you spend it. The doomsday scenarios people here love to espouse where China intentionally devalues the US dollar make absolutely no sense. They simply wouldn't be in Chinas best interest.
3. Fiat currency really works remarkably well. It's based on the potential of an economy, not the potential of the gold supply. Just use right now as an example.
People here lament the weak dollar. But everything pushes and pulls until it's all back in balance... As the dollar weakens, American-produced products are more affordable overseas. So, they purchase more of our products, which puts more Americans to work and increases American GDP. This results in the dollar rising in value. It will continue to rise until American products become too expensive, which depresses demand for American goods, which causes the dollar to stabilize or weaken again, and the cycle continues...
No, its not. Even if it was, so what?
What fly-by-night idea are you referring to that Adam Smith came up with?
China may have leverage because our government currently wants to keep selling them debt, but they debt they already own gives us leverage over them, more than the other way around: they are counting on us to pay it, so who has the leverage?
Fiat currency has, on balance, everywhere in the world, worked better than commodity or representational currency ever has, because it isn't as subject to short-term extreme fluctuations based on the market for a single commodity of any commodity or representational system, doesn't have the exchange value problems of multicommodity systems, and doesn't have the limited range of values for which exchanges are practical and logistical issues faced by commodity systems, particularly single commodity systems.
This is independent, largely, of who is "holding cards". Clearly, anyone holding dominant power in the world economy or over critical resources can disrupt any fiat, representational, or commodity system—though this is easier with representational or commodity systems, where they are vulnerable to most of the same attacks that are possible against a fiat system (particularly a representational system) as well as efforts directed at disrupting or distorting the market for the underlying commodity.
No, the fact is fiat currency is real (and pure currency). Commodity and representational currency is far more unstable in the short-term because it is something other than currency, and is therefore more exposed to particular external uncertainties.
No on is being "robbed" of anything. Money is a medium of exchange. Failing to exchange it for something of value may result in its value changing before you do so. The extreme short-term volatility of commodity money is not preferable the gradual long-term decline in value of most fiat money, since the latter much more than the former can be managed by purchasing productive assets with the money in some reasonable time.
No, its much more volatile, though the more extreme fluctuations may have a greater tendency to average out over the extremely long-term. But short-term volatility is more damaging than long-term decline in value, because the long-term decline can be managed by purchasing productive assets, while the more extreme short-term volatility of commodity prices is harder to manage. There are plenty of long-term stores of value available to participants in the economy: the essential and indispensable role of government-issued money is in a medium of exchange, not a long-term store of value.
That's because people are stupid.
Changing to commodity or representational money will not change that (if anything, it will be a symptom that that problem has gotten worse.)
That's elitist and more importantly inaccurate. It's because people don't have a choice. If they don't invest, they lose their savings. That's what will change. It will remove the NEED to invest. So the only time that people will invest will be when they are sure. Given that the most damaging bubble (and its subsequent bursting) in the history of the US economy occurred while the US was on the gold standard with free convertibility -- and gold/silver currency is the only part here that isn't part of the current system, free exchange of property is not, contrary to your misinformation, illegal -- I see no reason to believe this. I assume you are referring to the crash of 1929. That is an interesting argument. But it only goes to prove that 1913-1933 we were on gold standard in name only. The largest effect on the general public from the crash was not loss of investment (most people didn't invest then). It was the collapse of banks. Had the fed not issued credit which was not trully backed by gold, the banks wouldn't be able to lend out so much money and wouldn't have collapsed. On a personal note, please, stay away from ad hominems such as "your misinformation". I wasn't aware you were advocating compelling people to retain their earnings as cash. But, feel free to make the case for that if you wish. eeehh... ad hominem. skip. People are arrested for no valid reason whatsoever. So what? I'll leave that one alone. By your own claim, this didn't happen until sometime after the 1980s, while the US dropped convertibility of gold in the 1930s. Something is out of whack here. The changes that have encouraged speculation as the main route of retirement savings have little to do with the monetary system. It is the confluence of trends that causes singularities. Had people kept their savings in gold, the trend of having to invest when everyone else is wouldn't be there -- people would be perfectly happy with moderate rate of savings their gold provided them. I don't know why you keep insisting that we were still on a gold standard until 1930s. Can you outline the exact procedure one would have to go through to get the gold equivalent of their money in 1925 from the federal reserve? Or at least provide a link to it? Because I haven't been able to find out if it was practically possible to actually get your dollar's worth in gold. To me that's an indication of zero trust.Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
If you think any of that has any truth to it at all, I've got another paranoid delusion to show you.
http://www.loosechange911.com/I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion