[...] Days. How YOU Can Too! Sponsored by: http://www.FilthyRichTips.com/ [Found on LookSmart] 11. Raph’s Website » Second Life under an economic microscope It’s a club 18-30 holiday resort and they want to spend some change on looking great and living [...]

[...] are plenty of other “experts” – including Edward Castronova, who literally wrote the book on virtual word economies – who [...]

[...] may recall that his last article alleged that Second Life is a Ponzi scheme (I discussed it here). This time, he moderates the rhetoric a little bit, considering it instead a HYIP, or high-yield [...]

[...] to learn Chinese… Source: Terra Nova – Academics playground Categories: Bloggers 17:54 Second Life under an economic microscope The headline is all over the Net today: whether Second life is a Ponzi scheme. It’s a [...]

I don’t tolerate this sort of extremism on my land, and I also have limited means to deal with this in any event given the limited tools we are provided.

I don’t get why I have to be slammed, and bullied, and ridiculed for running a business in a virtual world and tarred with the same brush as those running sex clubs. This isn’t playing in a sick fantasy; this is running a business in a virtual world. If I run the rentals building on W. 39th St, it makes me completely irrelevant to the porn palace on W. 42nd St.

Any single article on Reuters or The Herald of TheStreet.com about the way the economy works and all the scams and high-stakes capers going on would substitute as “science” by contrast to this “journalism” as the Randolfe admits when I confronted him on his blog — the weakest point in his piece is that he provides no names of avatars or businesses and merely provides his own anecdotal experience. And he has only the LindEx speculation as a proof of any “pyramid” — flimsky indeed.

No, the challenge is to you to come up with some proof that Sl is the pyramid scheme he claims. It’s not. Whatever the bait and switch going on now with selling real estate that they plan to devalue, as Mitch Kapor made abundantly clear yesterday in an interview with Reuters in Davos, it may not rise to the qualification under law as a Ponzi.

There are many ways to make money in SL. Most people will never approximate anything like the fortunes of Anshe Chung or Adam Zaius because they are either unable to work 24/7 and not bill their hours, have no investment capital, nor are they programming whizzes with close tie to the Lindens. Those are the ingredients to become rich in SL. Even to eek out a few hundred or few thousand dollars a month, you have to not bill your time at RL standard wages, and you have to fight Supply Linden, who is depressing even the paltry wages you do make by selling Lindens printed out of thin air on the LindEx (Supply Linden became a millionaire himself last month, selling his first batch of US million dollars in printed money).

You’re right; it happens all the time. But when you DON’T pay me on Tuesday guess what happens?

OMG I think Jujutsu’s in the mob and he’s going to have Andy’s legs broken….poor Andy

Raph’s blog is getting better than reality TV and the Soprano’s.

This is Andy posting:

If you start a Web business and don’t understand SEO, same thing.

- If you accept VC money and don’t get what kind of control they have over you, same thing.

Which is nefariously close to real-life, eh?

Hmmmm… Reminds me of the “First Life” post. I wonder if real life is a Pyramid Scheme? That’s an argument that I’d seriously consider…

And I endorse this Message!

I hope SL can avoid the derail, but you know its one of those case studies waiting to happen: At what point should the organization been proactive about self-regulating prior to the supoenas(?) flying….

Nevertheless, the Lindens do explicitly hype SL as a way to make money. Which is dishonest.

But not a ponzi or pyramid. It might be intellectually dishonest in the same way that the real estate seminars mentioned in the article are, but certainly not illegal. Strip away the ponzi/pyramid stuff and its just another article about Second Life hoopla.

One last kick at the dead horse. The counterparty risk the author discussed is gonna make the news at some point. It doesn’t require big bucks. Just a financial loss combined with an attorney willing to do some work for a short interview on CNN…

Lest we forget… all money is virtual. I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

You’re right; it happens all the time. But when you DON’T pay me on Tuesday guess what happens?

We call it advertising. Hype. Marketing. Spin. Fluff. “Results not typical.”

It is *possible* to make money in SL. Some people do. Quite a few people make a little money at it. A few people make “hobby income” at it. A very, very few people make a decent living at it.

I fail to see how this makes SL a pyramid, Ponzi or any other kind of “scheme.” It’s all extremely transparent. It may end up being regulated out of existence. It may not be to your taste. It may be that a few connected or particularly vigorous or talented (?) or unscrupulous players do the best at the money portion of the game.

The business side is one aspect of the thing. You don’t have to pay to play, or prim to play or buy to play. You can. And you can do it a little or a lot on either side. And like any (and I mean *any*) business venture, if you go in all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed (and in SL, you can be really bushy-tailed), believing 100% of the hype of the promoters of the higher-level of the platform… well… you get what you deserve.

- If you buy space for your business in a mall without a full understanding of how traffic there works, same thing.

- If you start a Web business and don’t understand SEO, same thing.

- If you accept VC money and don’t get what kind of control they have over you, same thing.

- If you use copyrighted materials and don’t get the extent to which you vs. the artists own the content, same thing.

ALL business involves risk. ALL business involves work. That’s why they call it “work.” If it was fun all the time, they’d call it “camp” and make you pay. Which is the game side of SL. If you want to have fun 24/7, you get to play it that way, pay for clothes, hair, skin, bling, games, sex, what-not, and be on that side of the equation.

Which is nefariously close to real-life, eh?

Hmmmm… Reminds me of the “First Life” post. I wonder if real life is a Pyramid Scheme? That’s an argument that I’d seriously consider…

[...] Life as Ponzi Scheme Second Life as Ponzi Scheme: “Raph links to a great article about Second Life, which comes to the conclusion that SecondLife is a Ponzi scheme, or something similar. No, SecondLife is a classic pyramid scheme. Or, more of an Amway-like pyramid: partially legitimate, partially ponzi. Sure, there are plenty of legitimate SecondLife customers who just like to go there to get their kicks, spend a couple dollars, and be on their way. [...]

Actually, i found the whole thing relatively encouraging since it means that the standard money-laundering practises we’ve all been anticipating won’t pad anyone bank account except for Philip Rosedale’s.