METAPHOR ON THE FLOOR [Author: wirehead]

Gather round, children, and let me tell you a story.

There was once a land which began a very drastic economic experiment. Unlike the status quo up to that time, which involved a great deal of artificial manipulation of the economy by the land’s leaders, this time it was decreed that the economy would stand or fall on its own merits. The land would be free, owned by the people themselves, and economic freedom was a pivotal part of that.

Time passed. Some spectacularly bad decisions were made, including randomly re-distributing large sums of wealth to literally everyone in the land. Many had no clue what to do with it, and had no interest in participating in the economy, so they gave their wealth to speculators who had a better use for it. Others simply resorted to criminal activity to make their own wealth.

The common folk, who found their struggle for survival more and more difficult, could only watch from a distance as those speculators and criminals grew more and more powerful. A few arrests were made by the now largely impotent government – but the great majority of them were involved in corruption up to their eyeballs, and it didn’t help.

Eventually the economy completely collapsed; the experiment was a failure. While the great majority had no wealth whatsoever, a few made ostenstatious, vulgar displays of wealth. As the land further sunk into an economic black hole, wealth began flowing out into other lands, and the small men who facilitated that became very rich indeed, in their own right.

Of course, the example I am discussing is the Russian Federation. You didn’t think I was talking about something else, did you?

Busily raking through the muck. There is more here to this story then I’d like to admit, and it may be a while before it’s all ready to impact. The threads are becoming more and more visible, however – shine a light on the darkness, and the cockroaches always flee.

In the meantime, our intrepid reporter and the man who taught me everything I knew about raping dungeon chests on Siege, Thunderlips, reports:

An intrepid counselor, horrified at the thought of appearing on That Evil Site.

Is there a bug with items decaying in houses? Yes, I literally saw two lanterns and a secure chest vanish before my eyes. Sinis Vrax (DC) was in my house shopping to witness it as well. The pic is OSI’s support in action (notice his awe in being informed he would be seen on Lum the Mad’s page tomorrow).

Next topic, is there a Dupe? Honestly, I don’t know. What I do know is some guy (Snooze of SP) just spent over 2,300,000 gold collecting rare items just off Zod and I. The second highest bid I got was 83k. The current exchange rate is about 6:1. So, to make a long story short, he spent 14 million Baja Gold for 20 rare items. End of Story.