In Chapter 8 of the book, the author discusses the political economy within Second Life.  One major distinction between the real world and the actual world is that virtual worlds can be owned.  Companies own these virtual worlds such as Second Life mainly for profit.  The author described this as “creationist capitalism, which is a mode of capitalism in which labor is understood in terms of creativity, so that production is understood as creation” (p. 206).  Creativity is what Second Life is based off of and is the primary mode of production and governance.  Even if the main motivation of Second Life was not to make money for some residents, creativity still served as a means of self-knowledge.  Second Life enabled residents to be as creative as they wished, as opposed to other virtual worlds.

Money and labor is Second Life also plays an important role in it’s political economy.  It was possible to acquire a number of objects and clothing for free, since places were always giving away items and you can save them to your inventory for later use.  It is also free to make friends and socialize.  However, Second Life still gave residents opportunities to earn money through actual labor.  In Second Life money is known as Lindens, and it is possible to exchange these lindens for actual-world currency.  Other ways to make money in Second Life were to create items and sell them to other residents.  Some residents felt that working on Second Life could actually improve their real world resume through graphic design skills.

For Linden Lab, the company who owned Second Life, their primary source of income was property.  Residents paid them in order to get property to build on.  From there, residents could re-sell their land to others for what ever price they wanted.  Outside companies even began to use Second Life as a way to advertise their companies, or get exposure.  They would purchase property and set up virtual companies.

During the authors research Linden Lab had full control over Second Life.  In the actual world, a users identity was private, but their avatars have no privacy.  Every conversation typed and movement could have been recorded and stored on Linden Lab servers.  Linden Lab staff members could be found on Second Life and one would know it was them because their last name would be Linden.  If residents had problems they could report to these staff members by clicking on ‘Report Abuse.’  However some felt that the staff was not very efficient on these reports because sometimes it took weeks to respond to them.  Another problem Second Life encountered was that in the beginning it was predominantly United States residents as well as Linden Lab was in the United States, but it quickly expanded internationally.

Inequality can be found in Second Life as well.  The staff of Linden Lab, in the virtual world “gods and wizards,” were not only administrators but a company who employed salaried workers.  Below these staff members existed a class of elite residents.  These people were the ones who were investing a great deal of money into Second Life, thus the staff gave them more privileges.  Other inequalities were if your appearance was a default avatar, you would automatically be considered a newbie.  Skill was also an inequality because those that knew the program more were looked higher upon.

The platform of Second Life assumes a lot about virtual worlds.  Building was a powerful social aspect that was influenced through the platform.  Friendship was another aspect of the platform in that it was possible to ‘offer friendships’ to someone else.  In the actual world one does not come out and ask someone if they would be friends with them.  Partners were also noted in this platform in that it was possible to have a partner of any gender, however you could only have one partner.  This played on the idea that “homosexuality was acceptable so long as it respected the norm of serial monogamy” (p. 233). 

Resident resistance existed in Second Life as well.  One example of this was in the summer of 2006, Linden Lab decided that it would offer accounts for free on Second Life, instead of having people pay a monthly fee.  They noticed that people wouldn’t sign up for Second Life as soon as they were asked for their credit card information.  So when they offered free accounts, the amount of users increased 25%.  However, this made some people upset because they felt this would cause Second Life to become to crowded and increase griefing and child use.  Linden Lab enabled residents profiles to show if you had no payment on file (no credit card information given), payment on file (credit card information given), and payment information used (credit card information given and actually used).  This allowed residents to see who was actually using Second Life seriously, and it was possible to ban residents from areas that didn’t give their credit card information to Second Life.