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world of democracycraft
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and largest bank balances possible (this sounds like a pretty good
election platform to me!), then what’s left to do?
Oh sure, in Second Life they have an interesting crafting econ-
omy based on creating and exchanging virtual objects. But these
objects are
also
artificially scarce — that is, the ability of these
objects to propagate freely throughout the world is limited only
by the software that supports them. It’s basically the same eco-
nomics of the music industry, but applied to every field of human
endeavor in the entire (virtual) world.
Fun matters. Real world currencies rise and fall based, in part,
by the economic might of the nations that issue them. Virtual
world currencies are more strongly tied to whether there’s any
reason to spend the virtual currency on the objects that are de-
nominated in it. Ten thousand EverQuest golds might trade for
$100 on a day when that same sum will buy you a magic EQ sword
that enables you to play alongside the most interesting people
online, running the most fun missions online. But if all those
players out-migrate to World of Warcraft, and word gets around
that Warlord’s Command is way more fun than anything in poor
old creaky EverQuest, your EverQuest gold turns into Weimar
Deutschemarks, a devalued currency that you can’t even give
away.
This is where the plausibility of my democratic, co-operative,
open source virtual world starts to break down. Elected govern-
ments can field armies, run schools, provide health care (I’m a Ca-
nadian), and bring acid lakes back to health. But I’ve never done
anything run by a government agency that was a lot of
fun.
It’s
my sneaking suspicion that the only people who’d enjoy playing
World of Democracycraft would be the people running for office
there. The players would soon find themselves playing IRSQuest,
Second Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Life, and Caves of 27
Stroke B.
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