Second Life...

Does this qualify as a model of a real economic system? Or as an actual real economic system?  Apparently the official Second Life currency, the Linden dollar, has been fairly stable over the past 3-5 years (the Linden dollar is apparently pegged to the U.S. dollar).  What amazes me the most second-most is that, at least according to the Wikipedia article, the owners of Second Life have developed their own monetary policy in order to maintain the peg!  What amazes (but does not surprise me) the most, is that the Gini coefficient hovers around 0.9 (i.e., 90% of wealth is held by 10% of users)!  Although this estimate is probably not very scientific, I would tend to be much more sceptical of a claim that inequality was low...


Second-Life should start publishing data...actually no, they shouldn't...if they do start publishing data then I am likely to get distracted from doing more productive research...