People making ALOT in second life

Just out of curiousity, what is the exchange rate in gil to real money on FFXI?

 

All depends on server with ige.com
Ive never used the site at all, funny to see the rate exchange. Second life isnt that bad at all. 34 dollars gets you 10k in L$

Gil 2,000K
$35.99

 

K, so yo want advanced economics? well you got SEGA with the DC.

The machine was better than PS2, but why did the last one won? easy, becos SEGA didnt had enough money for payin ads, events, exlusivity deals, etc...

Now, if we lived in a society were things like speculation (ex: thos exclusivity deals) were prohibited by the government we wont had to see the big guys bashing the little guy.

In the scandinavian countries the more you have the more you pay in taxes: big cars pay an additional tax according to their fuel efficiency, big CEOs have to cash like more than 60% of their salaries in taxes. And, their salaries are less than 30-25 times those of their workers, while in the US those bastards do more than 500 times what their employees do.

And why does that happen? easy, BECAUSE THERE'S NO LAW AGAINST THAT.

You know what kind of laws exist? according to the US law you (as the head of a corporation) have to do whatever you can in order to increase the profits of the shareholders.

In fact it would be illegal to refuse, for example there's the case of henry ford who wanted to reduce their shareholders benefits in order to increase those of his workers and also reduce the prices of his cars, thus helping the average buyer.

You wanna know what happned? well his shareholders went to a courthouse sued the crap out of him...

Technically you could destroy the world and get away with it, but only if you made a profit of it....

 

The DC was better? in what way, may I ask, so I can respond appropriatly.

 

PS2 was superior than the DC and the second generation games started to show off the capabilities of the PS2 that the DC could not pull off and Sega's marketing team sucked ass. Games such as FFX, Metal Gear Solid. You're talking about highschool level economics.

The reason western european (as well as eastern europeean) countries pay a lot of taxes is simply because they are a mostly social democratic countries where taxes are high, but you have things like free healthcare, great welfare, low cost housing developments, and free higher-education. And most importantly, their physical land mass is much, much smaller than that of the USA's land mass, so such public/municipal works are achievable in an efficient manner, which is how any government can survive (being efficient as possible). Having all of those things cost money, so you have to have high taxes in order to pay for it all. What we saw with the Paris Riots as well as some other small ones was really because unemployment rate in Europe is growing and more Immigrants (majority of them Muslim) keep moving in but how are they going to live there if they don't have a job and they are discriminated because of the color of their skin? Thats when you get riots and terrorist attacks, unfortunately. What's happening now is that the government is slowly shifting from a social democratic infrastructure to where they are cutting back on things like public healthcare, etc.

What the US has is a free enterprise system. We don't pay a lot of taxes because we don't have a full fledged free public healthcare and employing such things on a country that is physically big is a daunting task for a federal government and will cost more than it would to employ it. Of course studies are being made so that the federal government can employ such things without having to have its legal citizens pay out the ass on taxes.

The reason Ford was sued was because it broke a law. That is true. A publicly traded company has to follow such laws because the head of the corporation is not really the head of the corporation if he is trading it on the stock market. The shareholder owns the company and if the CEO (manager) of the company is doing things the shareholders don't like, then the shareholders have a right to sue. It's a double edged sword, all of these laws are. That is where business ethics come in, which is now starting to be an important class to teach. Capitalism is much better IMO because the way I see it, is that communism feeds off the rich, but what happens wh en the rich are no longer rich? It's also the same with pure capitalism, which exploits cheap labor and resources for a high profit, but what happens when such things run dry? What we will end up with, hopefully, is a system that is balanced, where no one really gets screwed.... that hard.

 

Jeez, Shadowlayer, even I could come up with a better example to refute my own argument than Sega vs. Sony. I mean, you're dealing with two corporations here, both of them rely on the models of neo-capitalism. They're both swine. Sega spent tons of money on product placement, hype events, tie-ins and all that shit. They just didn't spend as much as Sony, nor did they have the already dominant postion that Sony had coming into 1999-2001. You have to go much further away from structure you're still thinking in before you can understand how the things I'm talking about will work.

Now, am I saying that the Dreamcast would have been successful if only Sega hadn't done so much marketing and hype-building and had just relied on honesty, fair-dealing and they intelligence of the marketplace? No, certainly not. At least not if we're talking about mass-market success. But the thing is, the concept of mass-market success is a central part of the problem. It is a part of the neo-capitalist model that we have to get away from. Look at a company like Gamepark (or Gamepark Holdings) who's taking an entirely different route, they're not trying to compete with Sony or Nintendo. They're creating a new market, so their standard for success is entirely different. I would say that the GP32 was certainly a success and the GP2X is looking like it will be one too.

Mind you, I'm not saying that Gamepark is any better than Sony or Sega. They, too, are strictly looking at their bottom line and trying to make a profit off other people's backs. They're just doing it in a different way, but essentially operating in the same paradigm.

For a better example, one that really does introduce a whole new way of thinking about success we can go back to the Dreamcast. Sega may have lost big on the Dreamcast, but homebrewers found success. Think of success that way. Open markets, not free markets.

I don't care about good multi-billion dollar corporations vs bad multi-billion dollar corporations or good CEOs vs bad CEOs. All multi-billion dollar corporations are bad. All CEOs are bad. What I'm talking about is human beings living rightly and for one another vs CEOs and multi-billion dollar corporations.


...word is bondage...

 

I made over US$100 on it by doing almost nothing. I had a t-shirt store open for a while and just logged in. People would buy the t-shirts for their characters, and they took me around 10 minutes to make in photoshop (basically just creating a texture then importing it into the game with a few adjustments). Also, I got into the game early and set up a subscription account and in the beginning I got a fairly large stipend, but they have since changed it to almost nothing.

This change has made Linden $ worth a great deal more, and since people still want to buy up land on the servers so they can build things they buy Linden $ for a crazy exchange rate.

Or at least, they did when I sold mine. Bwahaha!

Despite the monthly subscription, I still made a little bit back. It's a fun game, but it's full of perverts. I heard they have a teen-safe version now though...

 

Maybe I read wrong in the thread, but these people are making "Real" money in the "Real" world from this game?

I went to the main site, and read something different that probably confused me more, as I'm clueless in the order these type of games run...

 

Like I pointed out with www.ige.com this goes on with every single MMO what is the suprise here?

 

SFD, you should know that when neoliberalism started to appear in the reagan ages it was hyped as "the new thing" when in fact it was just a repackaged version of corporativism, a system loved by evil-crazy dictators and facist regimes.

What was the premise of neoliberalism? well, that laws didnt work (they were "obsolete" they said) nor government control over the market, resources (both human and natural) nor trade. The point was that those systems of control didnt work at all, and that market should be completely free. They said that under these circumstances the world would progress based on the good will of the international trade.

Now as you can see today, it was a recipe for disaster: both america and most countries of latinamerica are at the verge of bankruptcy, the quality of life has declined since the 80s and today the poor pay more taxes than the rich.

What you propose is what neoliberals say, and the problem is that we cant live in a world without law. But there's a heck of a difference between a world with laws made for the rich and another with laws made for the people and the community.

Utopias doesnt exist, those are impossible, but a better world than the one we see today is more than possible, is a reality...

 

Sweater Fish, I think you're reading a lot more into this than there actually is going on. So an MMO lets you make real money, so what? If anything the virtual world of Second Life is more of a level playing field than the real world is.

You use examples of companies like Enron, big oil, etc. Thing is here in the real world there's no way an average guy like you or me could wake up and decide to break into the energy business, not without billions of dollars in capital. But let's take a smaller example, let's say you want to open your own Head Shop (selling bongs, black light posters, etc. ) In real life you need thousands of dollars in capital and years of time to invest, things that most of us have no access to. In Second Life anyone with an account can start thier own business, and get paid real money. I don't see how that's wrong on a moral level. In fact I'd say it's even more moral. In a virtual world, there's no pollution from manufacturing, no Chinese sweatshops or Ivory Coast coco slaves, no South American workers risking thier lives to sneak over the border just to be treated like shit, no factories spewing greenhouse gasses, no wars over oil. Looks to me like Second life is indeed, sustainable.

So to sell stuff you find in an MMO cheapens the experience, I agree. But what if you made that item you're selling yourself? It's not something that the game gives you for free, you didn't go through some duengon and kill a dragon to get it, you spent time you would otherwise use to be doing something else (probably related to making money, like working) making this item. To gain an item by killing the 37th level troll in the dungeon that everyone has to go through and then sell it on Ebay is exploitation. To sell an item you spent time and energy desgining and rendering is work, and you deserve to profit from that work. (Although some people may think that leveling up your character enough to get that Super golden barbarian axe of chopping of the light is work, to whom I say "Get a life. Loser.

Let's face it Sweater Fish, capitalism is where it's at. What you're talking about is oligarchy, out of control corporations, cartels, etc, which are destroying everything. On this point I totally agree with you. But being able to make money by taking raw materials and turning them into something else in a videogame, I don't see what's so wrong with that.

 

I totally agree with you Hawanja, while I cant say I'm not mad becos this dude with his virtual real state is making more money than a lot of people doing REAL work, on the other hand there are other individuals making even more money with the death and suffering of millons.

By contrast, that guy's bussines in SL look pretty good...

Yeah but the problem is SL runs inside the real world, and unless the people in the game are living in a 6x6 foot case with a life support system, they consume goods that come from the real world, and therefore they need the real world in order to live.

I say we may see a matrix-like world in the future, but it wont be made by machines.....

 

Well, yeah. That goes without saying. I just don't understand how having a "job" in an MMRPG is unethical, to the extent that SFD thinks it is. Perhaps it does cheapen the experience to have to use real money to get items in a game. But then we shouldn't call the game an MMRPG, maybe we should call it something else, like a "Life Simulator."

 

I dont see how it is unethical if someone is willing to pay.

 

I think you're all missing his point. If I'm right then he's saying that the capitalist ideology is dangerous because the bottom line is cash rather than people. He's not criticising the workings of this one MMORPG in particular, rather the whole system it's a part of and the ideology represented - money at any expense.

I don't want to be putting words into other people's mouths, so please correct me if I'm wrong SFD...

 

Is not, it makes me kinda mad cuz these fuckers are making more than people who does REAL work.

But at the same time, you can see the same type of speculation in a stock exchange, or the board of directors of any world corporation. And they hurt several humans and the enviroment in order to get their profits.

These "losers" (cuz their lifestyle may be lame, but making 150k a year is not..) dont hurt anyone, or at least no yet, becos SL is not big enough to cause any problems to the real world.

But who knows whats in reserve for the future...

 

An MMO where you pay for equipment and stuff with real money? Killing monsters could only give you experience.

 

See, I don't see how someting like SL could possibly negatively impact the real world, unless somewhow everyone in the world had thier brains removed into jars and hooked themselves into the matrix that is Second Life.... on second thought that wouldn't be so bad.

I'll tell you when it gets bad - when someone in SL creates a corporation and begins buying off everything in SL to exploit the people there. But unlike the real world, in SL in order to escape that all you have to do is turn the computer off.

 

Well indeed, that's what I said in my last post: SL could only hurt the real world if it gets bigger.

Let's say half of the developed world is hooked on SL, that would be bad as shit becos you'll have a ton of people living of theoretical speculation (becos is entirely a virtual world) and the economy (the real one) would be at the edge.

But if you had an automatised world and a virtual one running above it, and everyone (or at least the mayor part) of the population were always online in this vrtual enviroment, only then it would be sustainable.

 

I understand your point, but I think you haven't articulated it for the masses

Shadowlayer is making a statement against speculation style markets where people make money without providing a service or physical product. I suppose on some level people selling stuff on second life are providing a service and not a product, pending on your perspective. I am on the fence as I have made money in the speculation market, but I completely understand the instability of it all. In fact long term its best not to have a market with speculation type profits from the "average joe's" perspective. The reason is because the "average joe's" retirement is entirely out of his hands and bad speculation focasts of others can wipe out something the "average joe" has worked for decades to get. Most of us here earn quite a bit in the tech industry, so speculation benefits us directly, but I think for everyday working people this stuff is very bad for them as it can devalue currency and lockout available jobs based on technology skill sets. I personally hope this trend does not catch on becasause soon after corporations will get in on it. Sales and profits based on imaginary products is very unstable, remember they are not selling software or a real service. Bad speculation can ruin the value of currency and I definately am a supporter of strong currency at the expense of growth. So it really depends on the type of economy you want to see in the future.

Let me give you a simple example of the average joe in america who is really the majority of the workforce (remember this does not really apply to people on this board because we have the knowledge, job skills and money to make changes to our retirements at any time)

A walmart employee works there for 20 years and puts money into his 401k. Remember he has no other jobs or retirement options so he takes what he can get and has a very rudimentary understanding of his 401k anyway. This 401k is decent and his employer matches, since he can't put much into it, it takes a really long time for him to reach his maximum investment for the 401k. Just before his retirement walmart decides to either directly get into the virtual retail market or invests heavily in companies that do. In a couple years the virtual retail market crashes. What do you think happens to the 401k of the walmart worker? Its gone and because he was uneducated, low on money and ignorant. He no longer has a retirment and relies on you an me to pay taxes and support him until he dies. Speculation is very bad for the average worker who relies on hard work to suvive and if the average joe makes a big investment mistake the working upper middle class pay for it, period. Poor people generally don't recover from financial crisises, just look at how many people owe money for medical expenses they needed to live but can never pay off in thier lifetime. Also with the new bankrupcy laws I really have no idea how bad its going to get for the average joe.