The same can be said of the Linden dollar. The difference is that while the US dollar has been around for a very long time and many tens of thousands of economists have debated it’s true and representative value to the point that a very stable market has evolved, the Linden dollar is in its infancy and the market value is determined in large part by a group of gamers who are relative novices at FOREX speculation. The fact that the US dollar can currently be used in exchange for real commodities is a moot point, because the instant a currency, virtual or otherwise attains a market value which people are prepared to pay (in any other currency), that currency can be compared directly in value to the US dollar. This is the phenomenon which we are facing in the technology world today. If people are prepared to pay real cash for virtual land then the virtual land has a real cash value. If the game were to collapse or Linden Labs to go out of business then the virtual property would immediately cease to have any value and the Linden dollars would plummet to zero against the US dollar. However, if you bought real land with your US dollars and then the land you bought ended up underwater in ten years because of gliobal warming then you would find your very real land worth absolutely jack as well. Theoretically, the commodities which you say back the US dollar could become worthless tomorrow. They won’t, but that is only because the US dollar is a very mature currency with many many years of market driven growth and value analaysis. The Linden dollar is immature in the extreme in terms of currencies by comarison, but it cannot be argued logically that it does not have value based on the same economic principles as the US dollar. The point is that any commodity, real or virtual, has a market value determined in a capitalist economy by the people who are prepared to pay for that commodity. The fact that you can buy real stuff with US dollars and not with Linden dollars is irrelevant as long as you can buy US dollars with Linden dollars, which you will be able to do as long as people are prepared to pay real money for virtual property in Second Life.

No one said that either. Like I just said, I don’t think anyone here is shorting dollar or hoarding gold and shiney stones. The point is just that a dollar isn’t backed in the sense of it being an IOU or a certificate that entitles you to gold or silver or anything else. It commands goods and services because it has value, but that value is determined by a kind of tacit social convention and the exact value relative to various commodities and other currencies is determined by the markets. This doesn’t make dollars worthless and it doesn’t mean they are going down the tubes. It is a perfectly acceptable way for something to come to have value, and the resulting value can be quite stable.

Linden dollars, despite all the social engineering from the Lab, do have their value too. People are funny. Even with all kinds of socialist interventions and atttempts to behave-mod them, they still ascribe value to what they really find valuable and find ways to pay for it in the currency they accept.

Coco, no one is saying that Linden Dollars are as stable as the US Dollar. That isn’t really a fair comparison — comparing Lindens to one of the most stable currencies in the world. There are many other currencies and the Linden Dollar compares very favorably to some of them in terms of stability and long term prospects, whether or not those “real word” currencies are “backed” by gold or not doesn’t make a lick of difference.

I don’t understand why you are mistaking the fact that some times in some places, cash gets worthless when governments collapse, with some extremist, tekki-wikian notion that all money is worthless then. It isn’t. It has value people ascribe to it because it commands goods and services. COMMANDS.

Okay, let’s go back to a few years ago (before the Iraq/Afghan war). Let’s say I give you a choice oh either having L$ 100 000 or Iraq or Afghanistan money of the same value.

Which would you choose? The “virtual money” or the “money that’s backed by land, oil, etc”.

Which would you choose if you knew the country will have war and then fall into chaos?

The L$ would still be worth almost the same USDs after those years.. while the old Iraqi/Afghan money is worth nothing. That’s what backed by land and valuables means to the average person. If you’d try to go to banks there, they’d probably laugh at your ‘old money’ and kick you out.

So yes, that’s how important is “stuff”.

Yes, there’s nothing backing up our world. The Lindens even rent the servers, did you know that? Talk about backed by nothing. Some other company leases them the stuff the game is on. So other than their building and the infamous hack saws and somebody’s old CD of Battle Bots or WTF, it’s all pretty worthless. And frankly, the “intellectual property” is worthless too, because most of it could only function and be of value within the game context. A vehicle scripted in LSL isn’t something you can sell on ebay to use in another game. Maybe some day they will work it so there will be enough uniformities of all the coding and whatnot that you could take the Helm of Runescape and bring it over to World of Warcraft, them maybe take it back to the shop in SL to be honed a little more and polished and reissued, and there will be some kind of big bazaar and a commodities exchange among all the different games and playspaces (I’ve decided this is what I’m going to call SL now, a playspace, you know, like the kind you take your toddler to lol).

I’m well aware that I SL is like a RL boat, about which it is said that “it is a hole in the water into which you pour money”. SL is a hole in the Internet into which I pour money. But it’s fun and interesting. I think it beats old Roseanne re-runs, most nights, don’t you think? Or having to read “The Economist” all the way to the back pages about German car production?

Still, they do a lot to devalue our stuff, constantly. Diluting the land value with dumping off the land auction constantly, diluting your faith in the game by announcing all the scripts are going to die one day, etc. It really takes a hardy game perennial to withstand all the slings and arrows of SL fate.

Yes, you can take Lindens and turn them into real money – as of this second. Ten minutes from now, that may not be possible.

And the only thing physical backing up Lindens is the building and equipment the Lindens themselves have, and that is exempt, I’m sure, from being used to repay people’s game losses should the Lindens go out of business.

There IS nothing we are buying or selling IN the game that is real. Maybe somebody could make a case about intellectual property, regarding a script, or a design, or whatever, so that they could then keep it to themselves to resell in the future – but there is no actual physical item to keep them warm at night if and when they lose all their Lindens.

It is undeniable, however that real life money is backed by precious metals, and is insured in banks. Lacking that, let’s say this country all of a sudden owed another country twenty kajillion dollars. Well, if worse came to worse, we could at least give them all our TV sets or let them have half our land, or whatever. We have STUFF.

While I understand about intellectual content and copyright and everything, I don’t believe you can say game money is in any way shape or form equivalent to real life money, because there IS nothing real backing it up.

And unlike the publishing company who rips off your entire novel, in which case you can sue them for everything they are worth, if our virtual items go poof in this game and our virtual investments and virtual money become worthless, we can’t sue anyone for anything.

Therefore, it’s not the same.

coco