patrick.net

You see, in the “people’s” republik, the dictatorshi of the proletariat doesn’t feel the need to inconvenience itself with such trivialities as, say, human rights, or FDA standards to protect people from rat poison in their food, much less their kitty’s chow-chow.

And you think DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Kalifornistan) is much better? ;)

Drive this thing into the ground with a good dose of San Francisco liberal values!!

LOL! We will require that at least 64% of all virtual housing be BMR units!

Or are we really just a housing bubble cult?

So we get a special tax status?

There are probably enough Gen-Y Losers out there for SL to be very successful.

I define Gen-Y as the class of people with Pluto in Scorpio.

I SUGGEST NEXT TIME SOMEONE ASKS A QUESTION YOU ALL TAKE HEED AND GIVE YOUR ANSWERS.

perhaps we did not see the question. i .have trouble reading caps. can you post your question again?

<i>ITALICS</i>

Tax breaks will make people do the strangest things.

Very true indeed. Hopefully people will donate more just for the deductions. :)

THERE SHOULD BE SET PRTICES ON HOUSING JUST LIKE THE GROCERY STORE

On the contrary, I think grocery store should have flexible "market prices". :)

Here's some motivation for fellow Second Life proletariatarians... ( If SL has a DNC, you'll find this in their founding documents, just like the one in the First Life. :)

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. "

Are you quoting the Communist Manifesto? Are you now or have you ever been a communist?

How hard would it be to make a 'watch for falling prices' insert to fit into the 'sold' slot on RE signs?

In this life, I'm a capitalist from the sole of my feet to the crown of my head. In the Second Life, I'm the most left-wing communist that you will ever meet.

And if we become a tax-exempt cult, who gets to write the Dyanetics parody?

In this life, I’m a capitalist from the sole of my feet to the crown of my head. In the Second Life, I’m the most left-wing communist that you will ever meet.

You got me worried. :)

Perhaps I will become the Casey Serin of the virtual world. Or maybe even a virtual NIMBYist!

@nanab301

Thanks for the compliment but keep in mind as soon as someone starts to think they are smarter than everyone else they just as surely aren't.

I kind of became an accidental SL "pundit". It's much more a statement about the lack of any serious scrutiny by the press and most of the wide eyed academics than it is about me. Except for a couple of exceptions, the bar wasn't really set that high when I came in.

I was really working on much wider online computer games stuff when the whole SL episode erupted. I actually believe there _is_ something pretty big developing in the realm of "online virtual reality", but I think the crowd that's now squatting on that intellectual realm aren't deserving all the hype; and maybe they're actually causing damage.

@Jimbo

Consider it a weekend distract then and wait for the next thread. A "virtual reality real estate agency" being offered by a real world major real estate agency is a crossover worth bitching about, at least on a slow weekend.

You guys are using limited imagination here. Someone needs to be a mortgage broker that is a giant talking alligator. Then when people are close to foreclosure, the alligator can eat them.

Maybe we should be Linden mortgage brokers. Then people don't have to pay up front. We could purchase their land and homes, and then rent it back to them indefinitely. The lack of a legal system wouldn't necessarily be a problem. You could always grief that person continuously.

Seriously, people are stupid. They will focus on the monthly payment instead of the total capital outlay. If you make it easy for them to live in SL in tiny little bites, then they would probably do so.

astrid Says:

"...Don’t blame China for what America does to itself."

Also - the Chinese don’t eat domesticated cats (even feral domesticated cats) and is any Chinese food more disgusting than what America serves in its school cafeterias?
_____

The problem is, is that too many fat cat's (Repub's and Dems) are doing big business with a big brother totalitarian regime, which is tantamount to the maintenance dictatorships, its sine qua non for existence.

Just follow the money, honey!

Yeah, I'll never forget Californa cafeteria food. And the smell of the cafeteria...

Mike, there is nothing wrong with totalitarian business partners. So long as we are not living under totalitarian rule who cares?

corrections:

cats (Repubs...)

...of a dictatorship...

...California

Peter P Says:

Mike, there is nothing wrong with totalitarian business partners. So long as we are not living under totalitarian rule who cares?
_____

You're joking, right?

Unless, of course, you're an advocate of the Brezhnev Doctrine of Sovereign Equality: all systems are validly equal and moral.

I guess money has no morality.

But then again, I was born and raised on the old-fashioned, American value that we all have a stake in the individual liberty of others, and I cannot simply be indifferent to the suffering of others.

Plus, instinctually, I abhor totalitarian dictatorships. And, like statist art, statist beer is simply intolerable...

I guess money has no morality.

Money is amoral. It is neither moral nor immoral.

I abhor totalitarian dictatorships.

I hate totalitarian dictatorships too. But again, we do not need to like everybody we deal with.

Patrick mentioned in LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-bloggers24mar24,0,2762858.story

Sorry if this was posted earlier but I scrolled back and didn't see it anywhere...

A BIG THANK YOU TO NONE OF YOU. I ASKED A SIMPLE QUESTION IN THE PREVIOUS THREAD ABOUT MAKING AN OFFER, AND WAS RIDICULED FOR USING CAPS, BUT NO ONE GAVE ME ANY HELP ABOUT MY QUESTION.

It's not a clique-iness issue here. Put it this way - If you walked into a coffee shop looking for directions to somewhere and just started yelling out to the crowd "TELL ME HOW TO GET TO BLAH BLAH BLAH NOW!" you would simply annoy people, and they would ignore you. It's a simple matter of etiquette. If you've followed this blog, plenty of "newbies" come on and ask questions or comment. There is no clique-iness I see.

I thought we agreed to only have interesting trolls on patrick.net.

PAR,
Thanks for the link. To me it's just another example of the MSM jumping on the bandwagon too little too late. For instance, the article fails to mention the possibility of the subprime mess spilling into Alt-A. When that happens in a few months, there will be yet another article claiming how shocking that trend is, and yet they could have predicted it now.

PAR:
March 25th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Patrick mentioned in LA Times

I disagree with the premise of the article that bloggers are the "alternative" voices. The MSM and the Realtors are now the "alternative" voices. You learn the truth on blogs long before the MSM and Realtors will tell you anything that is really going on. When the finally do, it's like skibum says above...too little too late.

It isn't the job of journalists to make economic predictions. It is their job to state facts that have already occured, and to quote experts about future predictions. If you want to complain about journalists writing that the subprime problems are isolated from Alt-A, then you have to fault the economists they are quoting.

Perhaps they don't get a sufficient sample when writing articles, but I don't expect someone with a Journalism degree to publish their own macroeconomic analysis of the mortgage market.

HELP

First and last warning to:

a) Stop using all-caps. Not only is it annoying, but it is hard to read for many people.

b) Offer some form of value; anything. But repeated name calling and flame baiting will just lead me to ban you and delete your comments.

Think carefully before your next comment.

Journalists are supposed to exercise editorial professionalism, though. That is in fact exactly what separates professional journalism from most infotainment and most blogs.

And I don't mean simply finding "the other side" for every issue. That adds no value. What does add value is when a news media develops a credible reputation for consistency in editorial power. That way whether you happen to agree or disagree with the information/message/opinions being reported, you do have confidence in the methods and reliability of that news.

What we largely have now is a mainstream media which is frantically chasing around individual, oft anonymous bloggers, in a doomed attempt to remain relevant. In the process, editorial consistency and journalistic method have been abandoned. My topic for this thread is a case-in-point. The media simply echoes whatever message is fed into the system.

I'm an economic efficiency girl in real life, but I can become an anarchist in my second life.

I want to know when we've become obligated to answer every freaking question ever posted here. If there's a post that says "Dr. Mogumbe requires your assistance with retrieval of US$50 million," do I need to reply to that so some Nigerian 419 scammers don't feel left out?

Michael,

It's free market that is pushing production overseas. There's no political conspiracy here, just the natural result of absolute price advantage on semi-skilled labor.

I had an idea to create Third Life. It can be a virtual getaway for your Second Life avatars when they tire of the daily virtual grind. Think of it as "meta".

Hey Randy H,

Hold off on the Third Life for a while. I'm just getting settled in to the Second Life. I just found a virtual refrigerator box and a virtual shopping cart, however I'm still looking for an virtual highway overpass before the next virtual rain. As if that were not enough, I'm still trying to find the Health and Avatar Services Department.

The First Life and the Second Life are a bit overwhelming right now. I appreciate the patience.

HELP Says:

"...A BIG THANK YOU TO NONE OF YOU. I ASKED A SIMPLE QUESTION IN THE PREVIOUS THREAD ABOUT MAKING AN OFFER, AND WAS RIDICULED FOR USING CAPS, BUT NO ONE GAVE ME ANY HELP ABOUT MY QUESTION..."
_____

Pats HELP on the head and hands him a chockychip cookie and cold glass of Hi-C fruit punch.

I'll adopt HELP as my little friend.

Everybody be nice to HELP. Don't make him yelp...with ALL CAPS. We must strive to remain relevant as a blog and no be insular, clannish and parochial in our treatment of newcomers.

Hell, even I feel not fully assimilated here.

Hell, even I feel not fully assimilated here.

Huh?

Hell, even I feel not fully assimilated here.

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

It isn’t the job of journalists to make economic predictions. It is their job to state facts that have already occured, and to quote experts about future predictions. If you want to complain about journalists writing that the subprime problems are isolated from Alt-A, then you have to fault the economists they are quoting.

Brand,
Yes, that' true to some extent. However, the "quote experts about future predictions" requires finding experts. What I see is that most MSM reporters are either too lazy or too in bed with the REIC to do anything other than quote the local Realtor (TM) as economic expert (gimme a friggin' break on that one!) or cut-and-paste Learah's disseminated sound bites as the "expert" opinion. How any journalist can use the opinion of an interested party as "fact" is just incomprehensible to me.

SFvulture

Remember, we can always create {n-1}'d Life where n is the total depth of abstract thought possible for the average virtual-world-resident. Such would create a perfect polynomial fit with R^2 = 1.0 (but zero degrees of freedom).

In the case of most of these folks I suspect that n=2 is already perhaps a bit too deep.

1-non interesting read in FT saying that the subprime mortgage problem in the US is that MB'S were making loans to black and hispanic people no mention of caucasions garnering anything toxic. tell me it ain't true
2- great reading on counterfeit wines being sold to the wealthy - didn't know you can buy a 1787 wine that thomas jefferson once owned in his collection
3-whole foods markets in fairfax va has a plastic tube that runs outside produce section to allow bees access to make real honey in the store
4-sony has a 3d virtual world called "home" for $995 playstation3 gamers coming out
5-usa obligations to socsec and medicare is running about $360k per person in liabilities
6-great vacation place is in BEQUIA near the grenadines for $79 a nite
7-walmart female adv exec and her cohort fired for scheming to give wmt ad acct to firm they were going to join--were busted because of their stupidiy with gmail email accounts they thought wouldn't be monitored
8-mcdonalds trying to have dictionary delete MCJOBS definition
9-minimalist homes rule if you can live without your junk
10-james crace the brit writer new book "The Pesthouse" worth a read coming out may1st
there is a recap of last week's FTimes for those 2busy to read--