Ranting to /dev/null

New dog, old tricks

There's an interesting article on Slashdot about the digital economy of Second Life. The authors argue that not only is the market startlingly illiquid, but the market is perhaps a really pretty interface for what amounts to a Ponzi scheme: new suckers put money in, and the few people sitting on top - particularly the developers - arbitrage the hell out of everyone else.

This seems to me to be accurate. It's a basic economic rule that there is no free lunch, as if something this easy was actually a reliable way of making money, everyone would be doing it.