Well, I don't know very much about Second Life, but here's what I find scary about the Linden Dollar: - People are beginning to take this online virtual world almost as seriously (or even more seriously) as the real world, as evidenced by their willingness to pay real-world money for virtual money. The human imagination is free. Why pay someone to "help" you imagine things? Even if you consider Second Life to be just a communication tool, to share imagined things, we already have that at far cheaper prices (email, the web, etc.) - I am somewhat afraid that the above indicates that people are practicing escapism into their avatars. Rather than putting effort into becoming who they want to be in real life, or valuing who they are already in real life, they channel this effort into a virtual world which cannot provide what the real one does. - One of the primary determinants of the value of real-world goods and services is what economists call "land" - that is resources whose supply is fixed, and "labor" - the human effort required for production or service. This (almost) doesn't exist in a virtual world. Creating extra "land" requires nothing more than disk space and processor time. "Labor" may or may not equate to actual human effort (copying a file takes only processor time, not human effort, although creating computer art involves some human effort). This should mean that the goods and services in a virtual world become very inexpensive (limited by the cost of disk space and processor time), but it seems to me that this is not the case, indicating some kind of price control by the creators of Second Life. Sean On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:49 PM, wrote: > > As for Linden Dollars (the online thing) it's not that scary. It's just > paying in dollars for some service or product. It's the same as buying a > downloadable computer game. You don't get a physical item there either. > > -- > Ian Smith > > > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist