Greetings from The Land of Snow Crash

Hello folks, we've been off the blog for a few weeks now, though we've been working hard. As you may have read, I've gotten into the virtual world of Second Life, which offers some fantastic opportunities, not only for experiments in liberty, but economic opportunities as well.

Following our interview with Thor Columbia of Meta Bank, I became business partners in SL with a new libertarian from Michigan, Tavi Tuck, who has also joined the Free State Project and become one of its First 1000 (Thor Columbia has also become one of the First 1000 since the election, he's now convinced even a thousand activists can take over a state like NH. Gee, now I just need one more person to refer me when they join and I win a Golden Porcupine Award!). Tavi and I formed the SL firm of Brautigan & Tuck, and we bought half a sim of land, which we've been very hard at work developing over the past month.

It is now nearing completion. The development, in Magritte region, is mostly themed on sites and enterprises from the novel Snow Crash. The primary location is of course The Black Sun, the famous club of characters Hiro Protagonist and Da5id Meier. Also included is Ng Security Systems, Cosa Nostra Pizza, Snooze n Cruise, and even the Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates. A couple who bought land from us to build a castle have a historic marker denoting it as "Da5id Meier's House".

We also have some corporate deals in the offing. One is with Stone Brewery of San Diego, a microbrewery known for its "Arrogant Bastard Ale", Ruination IPA, and other similarly named offerings. We've built a brewery in SL that sells kegs to other bars, kegs which sell beer bottles that are animated and have lives of 45 minutes, which cost 1 linden each. This is a first in SL, and spells the beginning of a true consumer economy there. We plan on using this temporary technology for other ventures, like the pizzaria.

We are now planning to purchase two whole sims in late December, to develop more themes from the novel like The Raft, including a working aircraft carrier, as well as themes from The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. As an editor of Stephenson's now defunct Quicksilver Metaweb wiki, I've obtained the archives of that wiki and plan on making it available within and without SL to help preserve that knowledge base, a sort of "Stephensonian Institution".

All of this activity has been accomplished free of both taxation, and government regulation. We've built a well planned community, that is also attractive and fun to be in, policed by a private protection agency as described by David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom", that is neither chaotic or lawless. So far, this experiment has disproven the claims of critics of anarcho-capitalism.

We have not been free of difficulties, though. Our simulation has been attacked several times, by both individual jerks out to cause trouble in person, wearing "sock puppet" avatars that were fresh-baked, as well as a SL-wide hacker attack that was, according to LL and our estate company management, focused on our sim. We have survived all challenges, and are dealing with such attacks through Ng Security, and the help of others in SL.

We have also gotten publicity, in a few individuals blogs, but also recently in SLNN.com, one of the main SL related media outlets, where we were featured in a large series on the impact of Snow Crash upon SL.

Our promotion of Meta Bank has also had benefits. They first set up an ATM within our sim, though there were often problems with the SL servers crashing them from cache errors (possibly malicious activity). The Bank just got their own banking server independent of the SL system, and crashes have stopped. They also just opened their second branch in our sim, next to the pizzaria. Meta Bank is also going to be changing its name, as its management found out that there is a real life Meta Bank in South Dakota, which has a poor reputation. We'll report on that name change as it happens.