The utopia at the end of history will be… awkward at best.
I just discovered this response from Nate Combs, a TN writer, to an earlier post of mine. Mr Combs says,
“A player’s ‘profit’ in Eve-Online may not, in significant part, be the same profit they would seek in a real world market. This, I think, is the fallacy of comparing virtual world markets with real ones.”
My [...]
Big hat tip to 3pointD.com: Step aside Liberty Dollar, the Linden dollar is now available for physical transactions!
Other news I discovered is that John List, an economics professor at U. Chicago and former UCF professor, has been investigating experimental possibilities in Second Life. Here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education from July [...]
Marginal Revolution scooped Terra Nova in this news break: EVE Online hired a full time economist. Granted, his Ph.D. is in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, but nonetheless this is a significant milestone in virtual worlds.
I can’t find his full name, but the post refers to him as Dr. EyjoG. Anyway, he will apparently issue [...]
Go Outside. Membership is Free! From one addict (myself) to others; Read the full review. Via TN.
Although we at AU need no convincing, Julian Dibbell argues that virtual currencies are no less real than the dollars we use every day. What interested me was one particular piece of evidence he brought up….
e-gold is a private electronic currency. This currency is backed by real gold and issued by a private corporation (founded [...]
I am considering writing a paper on this topic. There is a lot of material out there. I have just started accumulating it all and if any of you have interesting thoughts, perspectives, or links, I would love to hear from you.
Here’s an article about the “inevitable” taxation of virtual economies:
“Given growth rates of 10 [...]
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