The Adventure Capitalists

Dear Philip,

All of us who pay tier, collectively, pay Linden Lab something like $9.5-$10 million a year (I'm not sure how many total hidden/non-hidden sims there are with tier and island billing). It's as much as a venture capitalist. We're the adventure capitalists.

Could we as a group get a seat on your board? We could run elections among the 42,000 mainland landowners and the thousands of island owners (about 50,000 total perhaps?) The person who was acclaimed by assembly or voted for by direct ballot could serve on your board. At least you could consider having that seat in an advisory, non-voting capacity --though the stake is real. It's 70 percent of your revenue, correct?

I personally would vote for someone with a strong computer programming/marketing/entrepreneurial background or alternatively, an educational/scholarly background (i.e. I wouldn't vote for myself lol).

I just wonder what you think of this idea. Trying to get people together to accomplish anything in SL is like herding cats but sometimes they do herd up into groups of 40 : )

Prokofy Neva

Comments

[Allana Dion]

Dear Wallmart CEO,

All of us who shop in your store, collectively, pay your company something like $9.5-$10 million a year (I'm not sure of the exact figures). It's as much as a venture capitalist. We're the adventure capitalists.

Could we as a group get a seat on your board? We could run elections among the 42,000 daily shoppers and the thousands of weekly shoppers (about 50,000 total perhaps?) The person who was acclaimed by assembly or voted for by direct ballot could serve on your board. At least you could consider having that seat in an advisory, non-voting capacity --though the stake is real. It's 70 percent of your revenue, correct?

I personally would vote for someone with a strong computer programming/marketing/entrepreneurial background or alternatively, an educational/scholarly background or maybe the person who spends the most every day. (i.e. I wouldn't vote for myself lol).

I just wonder what you think of this idea. Trying to get people together to accomplish anything is like herding cats but sometimes they do herd up into groups of 40 : )

(I'm not saying it's a bad idea. In fact I think it's a great idea. I'd vote for it. I'm just pointing out why it's unlikely.)

[Allana Dion]

I meant to end that post with "unfortunately". It's unfortunately unlikely.

[Prokofy Neva]

Second Life isn't like Wal-mart; it's a world, it's a place, as Philip Linden himself says. Your vision is short-sighted, and merely premised on the idea that content-creators can go on keeping de-factor unrepresentative rule over our world, as can the Linden Entity. Why?

We pay huge amounts of tier, that are way more than the $1.49 we pay for a sponge or the $11.99 we pay for boys' jeans at Walmarts. At Walmarts, we buy a product, and take it home. Wal-mart's job is to buy the merchandise in bulk, price it, and distribute it. Our relationship with them is extremely narrow -- it involves buying a product and taking it home. We don't live at Wal-marts in Aisle 49 in the Ladies' Lingerie. We do not eat endlessly the tired hotdogs endlessly rotating in their luncheonette rotisserie. We go home.

In Second Life, we *are* home. Indeed, we are *helping to make the world itself*. We are *co-creators* with the Linden game gods.

The relationship is far more robust, complex, multileveled, and diverse.

It's very much like the old American slogan "no taxation without representation". We pay fees, yet we have no say in how the world is to proceed, given the immense stake we have in it.

I don't care if it is unlikely; I don't care if a thousand fanboyz worried about losing their power as existing, unelected, and often non-paying advisors and confidentes and feted ones don't like it and sneer that it's software and a platform, not a world (that's what they say to keep controlling it on their fast tracks to LL).

We pay. As much as venture capitalists. And we deserve a seat on this board, which, for better or worse, is the governing body of our world.

[Lorelei Patel]

"We don't live at Wal-marts in Aisle 49 in the Ladies' Lingerie. We do not eat endlessly the tired hotdogs endlessly rotating in their luncheonette rotisserie. We go home.

In Second Life, we *are* home. Indeed, we are *helping to make the world itself*. We are *co-creators* with the Linden game gods."

Whoa. I'm starting to think you and I have very different ideas of what "to live" means.

No one lives in Second Life. You live in New York, I live in Michigan, Allana lives wherever Allana lives. If the plug were pulled on Second Life right now, none of us would die.

That said, I think all companies would be smart to listen more to their customers. Linden Lab's recent history has shown that this doesn't seem to be their highest priority.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Actually, I am the sort of person who thinks that we _should_ have a seat on the board of Walmart; not just shoppers there, but also those affected by its practices. And in theory, US citizens do, since there are supposed to be regulatory bodies which monitor its activities and prohibit some of them, set up and funded by their representatives. In practice we all know it doesn't quite work like that, but the basic theory that entities should not necessarily be free to do whatever they like and should pay attention to the effects on others is not exactly a new or challenging one.

That sort of influence isn't something that just arose out of nowhere, though.

[Desmond Shang]

Likely, anyone fairly well known is likely to win said seat in an 'election', simply by virtue of having a little celebrity.

My guess is that most people would vote for somebody they have heard of, such as Amy or Flipper.

Wouldn't phase me much, but I doubt that is a result you would personally care to see.

[Cocoanut Koala]

Well, if you are going to take the words "to live" narrowly.

If you are going to divide the world into "the home wherein we physically reside" and "those places where we don't physically reside."

Otherwise, there's a great deal of difference between a place where one goes to buy a light bulb, and a place where one works, has a business, takes care of customers, builds a home, runs a nightclub, socializes, and so on.

Even the place where one goes to buy a light bulb has to answer to the community in which it resides.

coco

[Lorelei Patel]

"Even the place where one goes to buy a light bulb has to answer to the community in which it resides."

Does it? As long as it isn't breaking any laws, how does it have to answer to anyone?

[Victoria Kelly]

The day I begin to belive I live in second life is the day they need to come get me in the padded van and unplug my internet

[Cocoanut Koala]

The laws are what I'm talking about.

[Prokofy Neva]

Aimee is not a tier-payer of significance, nor is Flipper. Aimee is a content-creator and metaversal consulting agent. They can form their own lobbies and ask for their own seats. I think a seat for those that pay -- collectively -- huge amounts of money into LL coffers would be just.

It depends on who runs for the elections, we would have to see. I offer the concept of "acclaim by assembly" simply because running truly democratic, enfranchised, informed elections would be very difficult with the atomized, apathetic, and disempowered electorate.

What could well happen is that groups of powerful people -- the oligarchs -- decide (like they do in, say, Russia) that this or that FIC has to be put forward. Not a good option, but still, it's that first fragile baby-step toward justice and democracy, and that on the whole would be a good thing.

We do live in Second Life. Whether online for 5 minutes or 5 hours, our attention is immersed there, and while divided with an ear to first life to a greater or lesser extent (if you have kids and jobs like me, you're simply AFK a lot or multi-tasking), you still live there. You live and move and have your being. That has to be accepted. Jumping up and down and getting Puritanical and judgemental about it won't change that reality for millions of people.

I think Coco has captured the idea that a world with so much plasticity and interaction, as Philip is always saying, commands your fuller attention and immersion and makes a greater claim on your being.

[Erbo Evans]

While this is a good idea on its face, I doubt I'd stand for election as The Official Resident Representative(R)(C)(tm). It strikes me as a bit of a thankless job...whoever takes it would become an instant lightning rod for all manner of criticism about SL and LL.

I wonder if the answer might lie, instead, in a "Resident Advisory Board" composed of a number of fairly long-term landowner/business owner types? Not the folks from the big metaverse design companies (who presumably already have LL's ear in sufficient measure), and not Joe Camper who just walked in off the Internet, but the people who are known stakeholders in SL as a whole. I'm sure you can think of any number of names that would be suited for such; they'd be drawn from that same group of landholders and island owners you suggested as an electorate for the single representative. You'd still get the "lightning rod" effect, but it'd be more diffuse...and perhaps this group could supply LL with reasonably coherent feedback.

[Yumi Murakami]

The problem is, how in the world will you come up with an equitable election for this?

If you base number of votes on amount of land owned, then we already know who the winner will be. If you base it on a ballot, then the winner will be whoever is most effective at mobilising their friends to pay attention to the ballot, which will probably be an escort of some type (witness in-world ratings :) ).

[Lorelei Patel]

"We do live in Second Life. Whether online for 5 minutes or 5 hours, our attention is immersed there, and while divided with an ear to first life to a greater or lesser extent (if you have kids and jobs like me, you're simply AFK a lot or multi-tasking), you still live there. You live and move and have your being."

Oooh, no, sorry, I don't. I don't live in Second Life, much as I don't live in an engrossing novel or well-made movie or any other video game. A lot of things can hold our attention. Doesn't mean we "live" there. It's something I do, not who I am.

[Desmond Shang]

The Company does already quietly invite people to share their views with them, via the SL Views program.

Not everyone invited accepts, and some who go don't advertise the fact. But the Company does continue to look for highly detailed feedback from its paying customers.

What it does with that feedback remains to be seen; perhaps some great disasters have been averted already. I don't really know.

[Allana Dion]

>"Second Life isn't like Wal-mart"

Well I know SL isn't like walmart. I was giving a tongue-in-cheek analogy. :p Sorry it didn't quite come across.

I do actually think it's a good idea if it can be done right. I just don't think that A) it would be done in the manner you are intending and B) that the Lindens are willing to put themselves in the position of being forced to either listen to their customers or explain why they won't listen.

>"I think a seat for those that pay -- collectively -- huge amounts of money into LL coffers would be just."

And see, this is where you would run into huge problems. Some of us feel that as business owners we contribute as much to the LL coffers as landowners.

What you are basically saying is only landowners get to vote. Sound familiar? Is that how a democracy works? So Joe Resident who bought a premium account and owns a little 512 piece of land but only logs in to hang out with his friends, has a greater stake and a greater say in how LL is run than a storeowner who spends 8 hours a day running a store that is her primary income in the real world simply because he's a landowner and she's a renter?

In my case my partner owns the islands and we both make use of them. There is no point to paying tier from two accounts if we're already sharing everything. So basically my vote would have to be his vote?

You know that you and I disagree on the view of LL as a government and SL as a world. For me LL is a company and SL is a product, a tool I can use to accomplish other things like run a business and enjoy contact with people I wouldn't meet otherwise.

That said, I still think you have a decent idea here, I just wouldn't hold my breath for it to happen and if it did happen, I doubt it would be what you had in mind.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, I'm not for having the little kids' table, and the big people's table on Thanksgiving. Everyone should get to sit at the same table. Spin says we shouldn't have different drinking fountains. Ok, we need a seat on the board, not a seat to the side of it.

I don't pretend that elections for the board of LL, should they accept the concept of having the resident tier-payers' seat, will be easy. But I don't dismiss it out of hand, just because it's hard. I don't think basing it on square meters is necessarily legitimate, though someone might like to make a parliament or governing body made up of people with lots of meters.

Of course, as in any election, the popular and the mobilized win, but that isn't a bad thing; it's a start. By putting THAT down, you devolve to the quiet whisperers and the feted.

The "quiet SL views" concept is exactly what I think has to be overridden with a demand for some kind of equity in this company in which we've all invested so heavily in one way or another.

What I would anticipate would be Philip's objection is that he won't recognize tier as stake. Even though it creates his bottom line. Even though it enables him to survive. Even though his own business model is based on it. And that's because he doesn't believe in land as stake deep in his heart, he only believes as knowledge/engineering/creativity as stake.

But that's just it -- creativity is great, but it needs land to display it; most creative people sell stuff or do stuff on land. Land still means something. And if creativity has to be conceived as a stake, so does land. Creativity already has its channels and its voice; land -- which is service -- does not.

yes, only landowners get to vote *for the seat on this board* which is about *a company whose bottom line is made up 70 percent of tier payments*. That's absolutely correct.

If newbie fly-bys want to make a parliament of those who fly around, let them. They could claim a stake too, in the contribution to the sheer numbers of SL that LL uses to advertise itself and get media hits. Each and every lowly alt or newbie who logs on and even logs off an hour later in frustration is contributing to the awesome edifice of SL, which is like the ancient pyramids. So newbies on unverified accounts need to organize, too. They can demand their own seat, too, or some kind of participatory right be virtue of sheer mass.

But they don't deserve a seat that is to be occupied by those who pay.

After all, we're not pretending that Linden Lab, the company, the board of which we're trying to get a seat on, is a democracy, are we? Heavens, no. They've told us 100 times it's no democracy and won't become one. But even non-democracies like corporations have governing bodies with boards. So we can demand a seat on that board.

The job of making a democracy out of the anarcho-totalitarian world of SL is still to come -- and boy, is that hard work. But you'll never get to that bright future without first democratizing even a teensy bit the Linden Entity.

Ultimately, feedback that is given in quiet, in secret, like Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night, doesn't count. It's the self-referential talking to the self-satisfied. Only genuine feedback and transparency could work.

[VictoriaKelly]

ummm... didn't realize that you were advocating that only a priviliged few were going to be given the right to vote.

So basically what you are proposing is the establishment of a priviledged group of people who have a greater say in how things are run in world.....oh wait, I thought there already was a group like that....what was it? I believe it was called the FIC?? Ring a Bell?

So, let me get this straight, just so I am not confused, you are a landowner, and you want a group composed only of landowners to have a position on the board so to speak of SL. And you actually think that would be acceptable to all the rest of the SL community. Do you honestly believe that person would look out for anyones interests other than landowners?

I just have to wonder, if a group such as this was allowed to exist, but was elected only from the Gorean community, would you be okay with that also???

[Prokofy Neva]

No, it isn't about "giving a privileged few the right to vote". That's ridiculous. Everybody should have the right to vote, landowner or not, newbie, or oldbie. or whatever.

But that's if you make a world government. Resident government. Government on a sim. Socialism-on-one-sim, like Frieswiththat, the stuff that Gwyn and company play with.

That's a lot of work, and I'm all for that, but I personally have a much smaller and scaled down project for SL -- just making a large mainland rentals company work under fair rules to keep sims looking good and people happy in their homes and shops.

The task I'm talking about here with the seat on the board is not about resident government. We don't have that; some people don't want it; and as we're told over and over again ad nauseum, Linden Lab is not a democracy.

So what is the correct response to this non-democracy? It has a board. With seats. So we should ask for a seat on it.

Should this be a seat that all the people of Second Life hold elections for? Well, I dunno, maybe, but LL is always saying it's not a democracy, not interested in making a government for the world, and so on. They want residents to government themselves. So let them!

No, this is a shorter-term, less ambitious, more doable, and more realistic goal: a seat for those who pay 70 percent of the company's bottom line, based on the premise that they are like venture capitalists. They are on a grand adventure. They've thrown in their chips. They are adventure capitalists who get nothing but their own satisfaction out of it. They aren't on a board; they don't get stock options; they don't grace the masthead or the letterhead or get to go to Sun Valley. They're just paying for the thing.

If the rest of SL doesn't like the idea of only tier-payers -- landlowners, people who pay for this company -- getting a seat on the board, they could complain, lobby, form parties, and demand a seat, too, based on some other attractive proposition to LL. I've already outlined the concept of those who make up sheer numbers making up the Sheer Numbers Party. And the creators could make up the Pixels Party or whatever.

But landowners, seeing as how they pay should have as much rights as Mitch Kapor or Jeff Bezos. Don't they pay nearly as much as these guys do? Don't they care more? Aren't they living in the world 24/7 way more than those folks (as a class, especially).

Goreans, if they own land, would be among those who might wish to run in the elections or be considered for a rotating seat or whatever form seemed to serve the community's purpose. Just by virtue of being Goreans, they get nothing -- that would be if they decided to say, hey, all the RPers give this planet its content and interest value, so we need a seat too.

But...a seat to do what? See, a seat isn't rational for everyone -- if they don't care about Linden Lab the company.

Asking for a seat on the board is about one thing only: value.

It's about determining the company's plan vis-a-vis value of land and its business model. It's saying, no, you can't just fleece us, take our money, then open source everything and recast yourselves as metaversal PayPals or hosting services or whatever they imagine, and shuffle us off.

By having this seat, we can be privy to the inner councils of this entity. We can say, you know, we realize you may have to completely fold the land tent, but do it in a fair and equitable way.

[Baba]

You're a customer. You get what you pay for. You get to decide if you pay for service or not. If you're not happy, leave.

[VictoriaKelly]

But you see... if your idea is accepted, only landowners have a voice. And whose voice would carry the most weight, the landowners with the most property, regardess of whom ever might in fact be elected. Does anyone believe that Anshe Chung doesn't have a direct line into SL aready. All the landowners with 1096m plots would have no more of a voice under your proposal than they do now. The only people that would benifit would be the land moguls. There is already a group dedicated to island sim owners, which gives them a larger voice.

And whose is to say than any group has some sort of priority in the way things are run in SL. I imagine the goreans and furries would disagree that they are in fact second class citizens. Actually you would probably find a larger percentage of "payment info on file" in these communities than you do in the more mainstream ones.

And by having this seat and being privy to the inner councils, why do you (actully I own land and think this is bogus) believe only the priviledged group should be heard and have knowledge of upcoming decisions? I guess everyone else are just poor serfs who have to accept the scraps that the ruling class throws down to them?

I pay for this, just like I pay for many other things in this life, but that dosen't give me a illusion that I am entitled to benifits others are denied.

This is LL's game, and there rules. Now if they want it to be succesfull, common sense says listen to the masses, because with out them, there won't be anyone here for the landowners to sell thier goods to or rent propery to.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Baba, I don't accept the tekkie "exit option" argument. It's as old as the hills, and discredited. I don't do that in America, and I don't do that in SL. No, payment=right to participate. Or did you think we're all endlessly supposed to pay for you to sandbox in SL for free and crash the grid every now and then and destroy our business? Hell, no.

Victoria, you have a keen sense of democracy, justice, and fairness. So run with it! Make a political party out of all the people you feel are disenfranchised. Help them have a voice! Perhaps, all those who program or all those who grief, or some other identifiable characteristic could be used to make a political party/civic group. Go for it! Don't deprive people of their voice. Help them to have it!

My idea is merely about giving voice to an important sector of the Second Life population that pays the bills. We currently have *no say* in the management of SL, let alone LL, other than an often confusing and non-functioning set of land controls.

Meanwhile, those in SL Views, as Desmond pointed out, have their channels and their secret confabs.

It's silly to natter on about how unfair it is that those who pay bunches would get to have one -- when in fact nobody has any voice whatsoever (except the SL Views Octocracy).

That's why I'm for getting started with the obvious -- the people who pay, because they are like venture capitalists.

In your view, with your keen sense of fairness and democracy, it's not fair that venture capitalists get to have all the fun and run stuff and decide everything. But, it's because they pay. You'll concede them that. You, along with Alana and others, will say, but LL is a company, and they get to do what they want.

So by that logic, I say we're a part of that company too, seeing as how we pay as much as venture capitalists in tier.

Landowners with 1096 get as much voice as Anshe Chung with the concept of one seat. It will have to rotate. People will have to find a way to elect that person. Perhaps all 1096 (that's an odd size) owners will band together, and their numbers and their zeal will be greater than Anshe Chung for whatever agenda they have. That's the great thing about democracy. It keeps going. You can sit around and fret about how only the rich and powerful get to play it, but that's stupid, because if you use THAT as an excuse, everyone is barred from participation until the Bolsheviks create equality and usher in the Bright Future *cough*.

Nope, the best place to get started is your own interest group and your affinity of interest with the Lindens. They have a bottom line; we help meet it. It's a match made in heaven.

The way it is now, only the privileged FIC and SL Views gang have knowledge of the forthcoming decisions. It already IS unfair, Victoria! And you, with your oh-so-keen sense of justice and democracy must know that!

So, one thing at a time here. It's hard work. First, try to chisel away at all that special privilege stuff, I say. And start by at least making the privileged circle of those at the board table a little larger, a little more sort of long-haired and holey-sweatered, as it were, ok?

Masses don't talk, except in some feverish tekkie utopian dream where they are crowd-wisdoming and crowd-sourcing and whatnot. In reality, in SL, they're more likely shopping or cybering. So various elements of the masses, as it were, coalesce, become conscious, go after their interests. The Sheer Numbers Party; the Pixel Party; the Metaversal Myrmidons Party, etc.

So, landowners, traditionally -- like the Smallholders Party of Hungary -- have always been able to identify their intersts -- hey, land is land, even in SL! Everybody needs land, to spread out their stuff on.

Hiro Pendragon said a disturbing thing at the Society for Virtual Architecture talk, when the discussion came around to hosting and making terrain on people's own servers, and how that would devalue land. Oh, no, Hiro says, land is what "the community says it is". This is creepy. It means only collectives get to decide what has value -- and knowing Hiro et. al, what will have value is likely to be "high-end content that Hiro makes" or "my Metaversal contracts and big business" or whatever a small group of people think has value.

But land should be able to have value because individuals value it -- for whatever reason -- and because it has intrinsic value. How can land, which is just server space have value? Well, even server space costs something! But land isn't just "compelling content". Land is land -- space, contiguity, association, geography. As much as the neo-Bolsheviks try to take the value of land away and say geographic contiguity means nothing, it can be rolled out like shelf paper for their sandboxes, guess what, people keep popping up and valuing it, advertising their islands as being "next to IBM" on the map, for example.

I predict that just as the RL Bolsheviks ruined the economy and the farmlands of Russia with collectivization, nationalization, devaluation of land, making it "everybody's and nobody's" and "the state's" so that nobody felt like working on it, or merely crapped it up, so making lots and lots of worlds all over on various hosts will ruin the economy of virtual worlds too -- and make people not wish to go to them.

And just as those hardy Russian peasants on their little kitchen garden plots were able to provide 1/3 of the entire country's food supply unofficially, outside the unproductive state farm system, and keep their families alive, so those people who are able to provide secure land value that is intrinsinc in land as well as in "compelling content" will be able to retain value and attract customers. It just stands to reason. As much as everybody scorns the walled garden of SL, when it is completely ripped apart, many will want the walls to be restored, and there will be some who will recreate them, because it is part of what creates value.

Massive, forced nationalization/globalization is not in people's interests. All these anarchists march against that kind of globalization in RL, that rips through countries protective layers of economy. Yet they're all for globalizing virtual worlds and ripping apart their economies -- it's merely because they are loafers and criminals.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

There is a big difference between a client that pay you for goods and services and an investor that give you a huge amount of money in the perspective of investment payback.

[Ace Albion]

Something like

http://www.co-op.co.uk/

Would be an interesting concept for this. Basically any customer can become a shareholder.

It's easy to just wave off ideas of consumer empowerment sticking to a business is business perspective, but it's not really useful except as a way to tell someone to shut up.

SL is pretty interesting. It's only a question of your personal metaphors as to how you see it. If you see SL like your cable TV subscription you just shrug and say "I'll go log into There or WoW instead". If you see SL as a place in itself, the whole game changes. Built and owned by its residents, so they say. The good ship Linden may have been funded by city backers, but when they made landfall and the groggy and slightly scurvied new world travellers disembarked and put their stakes in the ground, it's hard to imagine they'd carry on toiling to pay rent without insisting on some kind of say.

The "consumers" of SL could be seen as franchisees(?) There are a lot of business models you could think of that apply to how SL is run (and paid for). No business can run without customers, but neither does walmart expect its customers to pay it to build its stores and create its products.

In the real world, you're free to leave your rented apartment at any time too (exit clause), but we still have tenant associations, laws and rights for tenants. The main sticking point with insisting on anything in terms of SL is that, compared to a roof over your actual head, most would see access to a virtual world as hugely trivial.

If 42,000 people got together and said to Linden Lab "We keep you alive and we speak with one voice" they would listen, I'm sure.

Fragmentation and partisanship of the customer base, in this respect, is a safe thing to nurture. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of businesses being pressured by a united customer group, not only all those class action lawsuits you read about.

I tend to bury my head in the sand with these things, but I can see there is a debate to be had. More than some thoughtless assertion about customer/provider relationships at least.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

thing is thzat the only pressure "customers" can do is to leave sl and stop membership, but how many of you are really willing to do this in one unique voice?

Not a lot, and its also what makes you powerless over Linden Labs