Last Saturday, in a quaint little medeival Bavarian-themed island sim somewhere in the West of the grid, a group of people met to discuss, and then agreed upon, a proposal. It had been discussed and debated for the previous two months, and, although had caused some controversy, had garnered considerable support. It was a proposal which many hope will revolutionise parts of SecondLife, and bring law to a hitherto unruly world. The place was Neufreistadt (formally Neualtenburg), and the proposal was the creation of a professional judiciary, and, separately, a means of bringing that judiciary to the wider echalons of SecondLife.

You can read all about it here (turn to page 80). More informaiton about Neufreistadt (and the new umbrella organisation, called the Confederation of Democratic Simulators) is here.

We will soon be accepting applications from landowners, or those who wish to become landowners, on the mainland and other private islands to join our Confederation, and secure all the advantages that that acheives. We still welcome new citizens, of course, on our original island sim, Neufreistadt, and, soon, our new island sim, Colonia Nova (with a Roman theme), too.

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Ashcroft Burnham

"We do not permit a man to rule, but the law" (Aristotle).

I definitely opt-out of this one.

If this continues to fester, I should publish my debate with you

This is one landowner who will definitely not be joining this strong-armed fake "democracy".

Um, how wide was the support? I think there were...30 people? Or was it 42?

No, I will not be joining the Confabulation of Simulated Democracy.

I read the article you mentioned.

Some quotes:

So they sign over the land that already belongs to them so that they can basically rent it from you.

So what if my friend gets banned from one piece of land by someone else, that means they can't come visit my land anymore?

Seriously???

So if someone does something against your laws they can pay you to not lose their land..... On the landowner (well really renter)'s side that's called bribery and on your side that's called extortion.

The person who wrote this is a lawyer?

Under these guideline's I'm afraid I'd have to ( ) side with Prokofy on this one... good luck, but no thank you.

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Confederation of Democratic Simulators.
Sorry thats a misnomer.
Try fascisct dictatorship.
Ill exercise my democratic right to say no thanks.

I notice that your arguments are, as ever, devoid of any attempt at reasoning. You might also be interested to know that all the people who join as franchulated citizens will have the right to vote and run for office.

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Ashcroft Burnham

"We do not permit a man to rule, but the law" (Aristotle).

If they want to do so, they do, or they can simply buy the land through us, and rent it. By doing so, they get all of the advantages of belonging to a democratic civil society mentioned in the article (that, for example, people can trust them to enter into binding contracts because our courts could enforce those contracts against them).

Ahh, but it wouldn't be "someone else" doing the banning from the whole CDS: only the courts, and everybody has a right to a trial in accordance with law before being banished. (On private islands, there would be, additioanlly, power for landowners to ban people just from their own private parcels using the new estate tools. That would not ban anybody from any other area).

In our system, the citizens (who are all, in effect, renters) can only have their land removed from them by order of the court, and have a right to appear and argue before the court before such an order is made. Any other landlord can take people's land away for any reason or no reason at all, without any recourse whatsoever, and quite often do.

And in the real world, that's called "powers of enforcement". Why should every wrong be punished with the most serious possible penalty?

That's up to you. As I have written elsewhere, our system is not for everyone. There are, however, substantial benefits for those who do choose to join.

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Ashcroft Burnham

"We do not permit a man to rule, but the law" (Aristotle).

Who is the dictator exactly? The democratically elected leader of the representative assembly, who has to be re-elected every six months (ten times more often than his real-life counterparts)? The judges (who are appointed by members of a public judiciary scrutiny panel, also elected every six months)? The Chancellor, who, although she has limited powers, is nonetheless elected by the democratically elected members of the Representative Assembly every six months? Or perhaps you mean that all of the citizens who get to vote so often are each jobshare dictators (which, outside la-la land, is called a "democracy").

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Ashcroft Burnham

"We do not permit a man to rule, but the law" (Aristotle).

I'm afraid I was not able to read the article linked to as I boycott the evil reactionary format known as PDF (particularly those files involving 80 pages or more). However, I have to say that
is a statement that has been traditionally accompanied by the presence of cavalry, tanks and/or air power, depending on period. Perhaps you might be interested in a business deal involving the latter two? (I am not much for horses to be honest.) I assure you that my rates would be very reasonable. Democracy, as is well known, comes from the barrel of a gun; a corollary being, the more barrels, the more democracy.

Thank you for the kind offer, but your boycotting of the PDF has meant that you perhaps did not realise that what was meant was not that we were going to invade the mainland by force, but conduct mutually agreed and mutually advantageous transactions with existing or prospective landowners whereby they would put their land under our government, whilst retaining rights as against our government, enforced by our legal system, to it, in return for the financial and other advantages (all detailed in the article) that membership of a civil democratic soceity brings.

Fortunately for the PDF-haters of the world, the SL Business Magazine is also available in in-world prim format, and even paper format: see here for details.

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Ashcroft Burnham

"We do not permit a man to rule, but the law" (Aristotle).

This would be very hard to have work to any satisfactory degree.

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