How To Destroy Secondlife and The Secondlife Economy

[Tari Landar]

sorry to derail your topic back to the op for a moment....

 

I like making, selling and giving away cheap stuff. And by cheap I mean in price and yes, sometimes, even in quality. Because I am not a top notch designer/creator just yet, i can't really expect people to pay me top notch. That would be plain silly. Not to mention a tad arrogant of me. I won't pay top dollar for work that's not top notch, why would I charge it? Seems...weird.

There was a time some years ago when I would spend the few hours out of the week not tending to my house and children (one of which needed more constant care due to 'round the clock feeding pump, normally I would not share this but I feel I must in order for this to make any sense, so I apologize for the rl intrusion...), working from home. What did I do, you might ask? Well I was a Jane of all trades. From web design to graphics, healthy and beauty items to candles, cloth diapers to clothing, toys to craft packs for educational centers. I made and sold anything and everything I could to keep my little family afloat. I did it too. It was hard as all get out, but I managed. I didn't do so by starting off charging top dollar though. I wasn't stupid enough to believe that my very first cloth diaper, or my very first soy candles, or my very first website designs were going to be top notch. No, they were most definitely not. Where did I start off? I started off with offering free items to testers. Yep, that's right, testers. Some call it an alpha or beta phase these days, in fact that's what I called it back then too, and what I still call it to this day. As my skills grew, my prices, and therefore income, did as well. There came a time when eventually my income actually supported us, got us up and out of the ghetto, paid for my daughter's treatments and the most god awful expensive formula I have ever seen....you get my point. But the fact of the matter remains if it hadn't been for those "freeloaders" and the people who were willing to pay little to nothing for my not so perfect stuff, I never would have gotten off the ground floor. Even once my skills got better I still kept some things at those lower levels. Why? Because I had a better handle on things and felt it was wise to cover as many bases and budgets as I possibly could. It worked to my advantage too.

My sl business is no different than any rl business I have ever done. It never occurred to me that it ought to be. As my skills get better in sl, my prices will likely go up. Or maybe they won't, who knows. Maybe I'll stick with the area I'm at, lol. I can't say for certain since at the moment what I do, and make, is all over the board and I really don't even sell all of the things I make to be honest(a great deal, but not all, I'm always working on things). But I can tell you that my lower prices are surely not harming anyone, nor are they putting anyone else out of business or making them shake in their panties/knickers/under-roos/tighty whities/banana hammocks or whatever other term you deem appropriate. I am far from competition for others. I have a hodge podge of things and don't stick to just one area. I probably never will, I couldn't do it in rl either. I don't have a good enough attention span to focus on one area

My sl business isn't just for fun, though I do enjoy every moment of it, the good, bad and even the downright ugly. It actually does serve a much larger purpose than that. Eventually it wil sustain my family full time in the way that my rl business used to(and would still if there weren't a heck of a lot more cost involved in it). But I've been watching ralph, and people like him, say that people who charge less are "ruining" things for years in sl. It doesn't matter what market they're talking about in sl, or even who is saying it. People with that mindset are a dime a dozen here. I've yet to see a whole lot of merit to their thought process because they've yet to provide much to back it up with. Sure they've got an opinion, I can dig that, everyone's got one. But proof, nah, haven't seen a lick of it yet. Yeah product placement sucks, marketplace needs an overhaul, search sucks(inworld and marketplace). But what exactly does that have to do with what people charge for their things? Also, why exactly does charging less than, say $50L for your item automatically mean you believe your item, your time or your skill is really worthless? I don't get that. For me, that may be the case at times(not necessarily worthless, but perhaps not worth more than that amount, at that time, yeah) But maybe, just maybe, for some people they feel that with the added benefit of multiple purchases over time they will get back what they believe their time, their product and their skill is worth...and then some. Maybe they aren't looking to make it all back on that very first purchase, and then some. But maybe that's just too wild of a concept for some folks to understand.

We need people on this grid charging prices of all kinds. That's one of the beautiful things about this place. You really can find things of great, good, mediocre and even plain awful quality in all price ranges. There truly is something out there for everyone, no matter your budget. I personally think that's awesome. It leaves room for the folks who want to play for free, the folks who have a very limited budget and even the folks who really don't have a limited budget(and everyone else who might not fit into any of those). What's so wrong with that? Honestly. Aside from all the jibber jabber about the flaws with search, product placement and the things we know are wrong as far as functionality with mp and sl are concerned. How exactly is having a diverse economy in sl such a terrible no good awful thing when it offers something that *could potentially attract pretty much anyone, and everyone, no matter their financial situation? (again, this is barring the technical issues which have absolutely nothing to do with how people price merchandise)

[Anaiya Arnold]

/me shakes fist at the fiesty misguided youths.

 

 

[ralph Alderton]

THIS

I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.
Marilyn Monroe

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
Abraham Lincoln

For I can raise no money by vile means.
William Shakespeare

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
Andy Warhol

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
Lana Turner

Time is more value than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.
Jim Rohn

Pretty much,   Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
Steve Jobs

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
Theodore Isaac Rubin

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
Lord Acton

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
Tom Brokaw

Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away products.
Scott McNealy

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Steve Jobs

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.
Thomas J. Watson

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain　

The quality of your work, in the long run, is the deciding factor on how much your services are valued by the world.
Orison Swett Marden 

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.
Ayn Rand

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
Og Mandino

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.
Mohandas Gandhi

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
Leonardo da Vinci

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Tari Landar]

Anyone can find a quote somewhere on the web that will say for them that which they wish to say. Or in your case that which they don't wish to say, because I still can't tell what the heck it is you're actually trying to say. Some of your quotes there contradict the others, but then your quotes contradict pretty much everything you said in your OP too. So, like I said, I have no clue what you were going for in the first place. But I am beginning to think you're going to need a much larger spoon for this one buddy.

 

[Stella Carver]

I hate quotations, tell me what you know. ~Emerson

That's my favorite quote. It's the quaker oatmeal box with the guy on the box holding the box with the picture of the guy on box of quotes.

Or maybe the mobius strip of quotes.

Anywho, I think you're a bit of a whack-a-doo and I'm not going to try to argue you out of you opinions any longer.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Awesome plan you've got there, Tari - enjoyed reading

have you used Etsy for your rl products?  great community there, very supportive

[Josh Susanto]

1) I'm actually using images from Etsy to sculpt out planes and columns, by permission of artist Selena Anne Wells. I put the URL for her Etsy page on the description line inside every object, so it's win-win. A major reason I come to SL is that I can't in any practical way pursue painting or sculpting or similar activities in RL. They use up a lot of space and materials and create a big mess. And if something doesn't come out right or sell, I can't just delete it. I think this is true of a lot of people here. Not that everyone is making a bunch of junk in SL as Ralph says. But even if we are, isn't that in some way better than congesting future RL landfill projects with stuff that looks like thousands of art and craft supply stores were summarily bulldozed? If there's no long-term demand for what we make in SL, it just gets lost into nothingness when accounts are closed and inventories deleted from servers. OTOH, the continuing proliferation of object options for SL users provides a greater and greater utility every year for people who want to model something in cyberspace and have it critiqued by others before making something similar in RL. That and the fact that SL lets people practice and learn creative and aesthetic principles in a low-material-cost environment contributes to a more efficient use of RL resources. Maybe ralph can clarify why he'd be against that.

2) Of course a lot of the protestors are total hypocrites. But their demands (when stated) are very reasonable. If you're going to start judging people's demands purely in light of the rest of their character, you'll quickly find that practically no one is morally entitled to anything. The moral value of the protests seems to be that they address things that, under examination, are clearly not good either by socialists standards or by the standards of sincere caplitalists (such as myself). The relationship between corporations and government in the US clearly is not socialism, but it also is not capitalism in any normal sense of the word. As long as the people in charge are willing to keep the pie shallow just to keep their own slice wide, the real market will never be able to develop.

3) "Price", "quality" and "value" are all different things, and none of them should be conflated with cost. If no one will buy something for a price higher than the cost, that thing probably should not exist. If something is of the highest possible quality and nobody wants it, it has no value. I can make a perfectly machined nail out of the world's must supple, durable rubber, and a hammer out of the world's clearest, most translucent, pure quartz crystal glass. But as a hammer and a nail, they fail. T.S. for me. I need to recognize my mistake and move on. OTOH, maybe I can sell the design specs to Ralph, eh?

 

[Luna Bliss]

I think it's so amazing how creating art in SL can give us a better appreciation of the beauty in RL.

 

The protestors - it's interesting how they are portrayed differently by various media outlets - on LinkTV (Democracy Now program) they are seen in a more postive light.

[Josh Susanto]

Well the "reporter" seems to have his own mind made up just as firmly as do the protestors.

Maybe that's why he doesn't show any doubts about pulling the mic away from them before they've finished their statements.

His own statements are clearly practiced and not the result of the kind of immediate cognition and articulation he's expecting from the protestors. 

I'm a little cheesed off at Obama myself (I voted for him), but chastising people in interviews for their unwillingness to somehow try to apply U.S. law inside Yemen in order to define the strike action as some kind of crime just isn't good journalism, and I have seen a lot of this elsewhere as well.

Again, the protestors are probably a bunch of spoiled hypocrites and whatnot, sure. 

But "that's what a government is", troubling as it may be to contemplate, is a point that an interviewer should be able to refute rather than just cutting away from it as if it does not require refutation. Maybe he DID try to refute it? I'd pay a dollar to see that little analytic faceplant.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

To the OP I would say that I agree with you in spirit, but that the culprit is misplaced.

It's not the freebies and low cost items, it's that no measures are being taken to cater to a group of professionals on that level. SL is what it is, so you can't exclude free and low cost without drastic changes and a different type of SL.

My take is that programmers, graphic artists, 3D people and those who do achieve a professional level of sales should be worth their time. We're lacking all of the things that keep us from being professionals, such as consumer protection, better IP tools, certain restrictions (and benefits) available to higher end merchants, solid advertising vehicles that work, consumer data, tracking and reporting, afilliate sales, being able to sell products on external websites, strong sign up perks with merchant goods, gifting L$, etc.

If LL learns how to turn virtual goods professional, and yet retain the level of free they have today, you won't have to worry about things like freebies. It's a long road from here to there, though.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

wow, that's very interesting Josh!  about using the sculpts.  great opportunity for both of you.

Were you around here when M. Linden talked about meshing the worlds as far as the retail aspect goes?  he had great vision on that, and it was very exciting.  was looking forward to that panning out to combine worlds of products, but seems that vision has been dropped and focus is on another aspect entirely.

I'm kind of in same position on not being able to do the rl painting/creating.  Mostly because of appearance to those around me - financially strapped and it does not appear acceptable to work that - but can get away with the creating part on a computer screen, as operating a computer has better appearance of legitimacy for income.  (even as bizarre as the virtual world concept is) - seems that plugging away on computer all day is better accepted.

Can you give links to the items that you are connecting in that way?  to the etsy artist?  (I mean to your products)  want to check that out.  On twitter, have seen a few SL artists also selling some graphic design work on etsy.  I think that's great when you can mix the two.

[Medhue Simoni]

Although I do like to watch Democracy Now, and Amy Goodman, especially the debates, they are a seriously left wing, socialist, news show. I have no problem at all with socialist, and actually like quite a few of them, like Micheal Moore, but they are not thinkers. They react with emotion instead of their brain. Emotion is their best tool. The protests and the protestor's attitudes go right along with their ideology. They act as if they are against violence, but the reality is that they just are against violence against themselves. They are perfectly willing to pay government to force people to believe what they believe. Our educational system is saturated with this same ideology, hence why these students are all saying the same thing, and their solution is for larger government to steal more money for their ideas. If you have a good idea, you don't need government to fund it.

[Medhue Simoni]

Look at what happened when LL cut off educational benefits for regions. We had professors that make over 200k a year with crazy benefits and tenure, who bitched about paying 300/month for a region. They claimed their students make the best stuff in SL, but somehow could not fund the region. All of their arguements were based on emotion.

[Luna Bliss]

---

"If you have a good idea, you don't need government to fund it."

Medhue..apparently Wallstreet and the financial institutions that ran off with our retirement and jobs had a good idea?

We need restrictions.

 

I have known a lot of professors and none of them ever approached a salary of $200,000, and even if they did why should they fund "school supples" -  that's the schools responsibility.

[Luna Bliss]

Medhue - having emotions AND a brain are not mutually exclusive.

[Josh Susanto]

@Mickey

The artist is Selena Anne Wells. It's easy to find her on Etsy, and it's easy to find my corresponding (NOT identical) products on SLM just by searching the cheapies for "Selena".

I went to highschool with her, but I only asked her to let me use the images because the distribution of color regions makes them pretty easy to sculpt out. The columns are mostly straight cutouts, so they're of lesser quality. With the planes, I had got her to agree to greater manipulation of the images, so I have been using more like 512 and less like 256, which make s big difference. I think some are better than others, but I'm often totally wrong about what my customers want and what they don't, so unless I'm totally ashamed of something, I'll tend to load it and list it eventually. 

@Medhue

Socialsts are often people of great integrity; sad, hopelessly confused integrity. If you were to really analyze what voters and consumers want in the U.S., it would probably be some kind of market capitalism, but with specific things being addressed with socialism where market behavior just isn't going to do the trick (such as allowing competition on the question of on which side of the street people should drive; good luck with that). A reason this doesn't go perfectly smoothly is that people disagree as to what need to be socialized and what doesn't. People like me think that nutrition and health care for children should probably be socialized because our future workers don't get a vote yet and can't demand such things at the polls or by other means, such as by going on strike 20 years after the fact.  Corporatists think that corporate losses should be socialized, but corporate profits should remain privatized. That's why I don't like to call them "conservatives". They're only conservative about taking responsibility for the cost of benefits provided to them.

People upset about student loans makes me ask where they (or their parents) were 10 years ago or more when I was trying to pay off over 60K in student loans with multiple minimum wage jobs. I guess they want Obama to wave his magic wand and make the whole problem just go away for them. Great- but HOW? If they don't pay up on those loans, who does? Shouldn't it be the fraudulent party or parties? I wasn't defrauded by my fellow taxpayers, and especially not those who didn't get the educational opportunities that I did. I also wasn't defrauded by the loan company as to the terms of the loan. I suppose I was defrauded by the educational institutions as to the value of the degrees I got, but they were essentially ancillary parties to the loans and would have been happy to take cash if I had provided that instead. I suppose I could file suit against them for the lost hours I spent learning useless things. But the federal government WAS a party to the loans, and, I think, was defrauded by allowing me to get useless degrees partly financed by the federal government. If the loan companies wanted me to pay up, they could have been helping me find better jobs for 10 years. Instead, they were trying to "help" me to "buy" a house and a car (um... no thanks) and otherwise trying to increase the size of my principal so they could sell a larger debt instrument to the next debt servicing entity. Maybe I made a mistake by not trusting my gut before taking the loans on the question of whether I'd ever get jobs that would allow me to pay up, but I'm not the math expert; they are. If the loan company is profitable without me paying up, then my default is just one of the well-calculated costs of doing business and they don't have that much to be upset about. If the loan company isn't profitable, then someone calculated wrong and was paid to do it (and probably paid more than was paid out to me). So, really, no one should pay those loans. Obama needs to make a deal that those companies at least need to show a net profit on the total operation before he negotiates settlements of the outstanding loans. Failing that (and it WILL fail) he should just tell them to file for bankruptcy, themselves, and let the federal government seize and destroy the outstanding debt instruments as part of the settlement agreement. 

The protestors may or may not agree with this plan, but how would we know? Have they given any indication of how they intend to resolve the outstanding debts?

If I were there, it might be easy to just join in with them waving a sign that says "I don't like to honor my agreements", but I think the irony would be wasted on people from both sides of the issue.

When that woman in the video has no good anwer for the question "why is education so expensive", it's a moot point because the wrong question is being asked. The correct question being "why is so much education so useless?"

 

[Anaiya Arnold]

You're right Josh, it's not socialism or capaitalism.  It's corporatism merging into corporate fascism served with lashings of corporate welfare.

 

@Medhue:  Most rhetoric intended to appeal to or interest a large demographic comprised of the "general public" is based on emotional appeal or manipulation.  Certainly all effective rhetoric aimed at such a demographic is.

[Josh Susanto]

(cue Howard Beale)

[Medhue Simoni]

Just a few vague points I'd like to make.

A corporation is not a free market concept, it is a socialist concept. It spreads risk so that no1 is responsible. Also, corporations are creations of government and are, there for, an entity of the government. To think of them as part of the private free market is completely and totally wrong. Wallstreet and the stockmarket are also a socialist concept to centralize investment, at least IMHO.

Anytime you see/hear some1 or group appealing strictly to your emotions, you should squeeze your butt cheeks and never bendover.

[Madeliefste Oh]

---

Medhue Simoni wrote:

Anytime you see/hear some1 or group appealing strictly to your emotions, you should squeeze your butt cheeks and never bendover.

---

That is how a lot of virtual products are sold, by appealing to peoples emotions.

[Anaiya Arnold]

That is hilarious.

Gambling does not become a socialist concept if I and a friend go halves on a bet, even though we would share the risk and any resulting profit or loss. 

 

Do you not understand that free markets cannot exist if actors in the market cannot enter freely into contracts with other actors, or do you not understand that a corporation is simply a group of co-parties to a contract (specifically the corporation charter)?

[Medhue Simoni]

Perceptions, hmmm, I try to see things as they really are, not just how they are taught to me by institutions that rely on these perceptions to even exist.

Look up corporation.

Wikipedia:

A corporation is a legal entity that is created under the laws of a state designed to establish the entity as a separate legal entity having its own privileges and liabilities distinct from those of its members.

A truely free market entity requires no state, nor do they require special privileges, nor would they need limited liabilities. The state, by it's very definition, is a socialist concept.

So you think you are just gambling when you put your fiat money into the Stockmarket, which is comprised of corporations who's shareholders are shielded by the state? How many of these shareholders does the state put in jail every year for their crimes of fraud? Yeah, not many, yet there are endless amounts of fraud. Why do you think that is? Boy, the state loves people like yourself.

[Anaiya Arnold]

Oh yes, wikipedia, where all the free thinker go for their tibits and soundbites.  Clearly anyone who wants to see the world as it really is should look no further than wikipedia.

Corportations do not necessitate special priviledges (the extension of such to corporations is a policy issue, not a necessity of corporations).  The only priviledges that are a necessity for the participation of corporations in a market, are not special at all, but the same as other participants in a market have.  This is because without such priviledges as the right to own and dispose of property, to petition and respond to petitions in a court of law, to contract with other parties,  etc, none of which are special priviledges granted only to corporations, a corporation could not do business in the market, be that market free or otherwise.

The market itself is innately socialist if you want to be silly about it (and it seems you do).  A less socially cooperative being would just take what they wanted if they could and would be too busy staying away from you to trade with you if they thought you could just take what you wanted.  Trade is an innately cooperative venture, and no less socialist that nation states.

Your notion of a free market is as pragmatic and appropriate for application to humans as rampant Communism. 

There are corporations all over the world who have never had any kind of government bale out.  That was a policy decision and not an innate or required characteristic of corporations.  Your comments on that count are as sensible as an attempt to convince me all humans are murderers because Jack the Ripper was human.

[Medhue Simoni]

Are you refuting the definition, or just trying to smere Wikipedia? Choose your own desired dictionary, and post the definition and a link or searchable term. I hope that intelligent people can see when some1 is simply attacking the source, instead of making a valid arguement against the content.

I gave you a source, which i generally do not do, as I really do not care enough to do so. This time, I felt it was important to actually show the real definition. If you have an actual definition from a source that refutes mine, please post it.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

So I have a more important question to ask regarding this thread that seems to never end in discussion....

I want to maintain EMAIL NOTIFIES for all MERCHANT forum updates to topics.... but how can I ban or block all notifies from a specific thread???

I dont want any more email notifies on this topic in email.  Short of an Email filter in my email system, cant I bypass the set notifies for the forum to not notify for a topic?