OVO 20 JUVEN(a/i)LIA

112 pages, 8.5 x 11, $10.00

The best of OVO 1987 – 2011. Walter Alter, Dmitry Babenko, Hakim Bey, Trevor Blake, Johnny Brainwash, Chris C. Cilla, Cunnichant Night Owl, Mike Diana, Yael Ruth Dragwyla, James Ellis, Karen Elliot, Feral Faun, Klint Finley, Richard Ford, Chris Gross, Mike Gunderloy, Ginger Hutton, Ian MacEwan, Ernest Mann, Melissa, Thom Metzger, Jennifer Murrian, PM, Gerry Reith, James V. Scianna, Stuart Swezey, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, V. Vale.

[Free] [Purchase]

Review by Ferdinand Bardamu: “To someone of the Internet Era, where narcissistic self-expression is just a couple of mouse clicks away, the effort and dedication involved in compiling an entire magazine, from writing and gathering the material to binding the physical copies and mailing them out, is difficult to relate to. Still, this is a great little collection of oddities, ranging from poetry to short stories to investigative journalism on offbeat subjects.”

Trevor Blake: Introduction
Mike Diana: Read OVO
Hakim Bey: Salon Apocalypse
Hakim Bey: Evil Eye
Hakim Bey: Intellectual S/M is the Fascism of the Eighties
Hakim Bey: Ringing Denunciation of Surrealism
Johnny Brainwash: Holding Games for Ransom
Gerry Reith: Letter from the Graveyard Shift
Cunnichant Night Owl: Lunalogue
Thom Metzger: The Hypmogoogoopizin’ Man
Thom Metzger: Wad Rules
Richard Ford: Bellowing Forth and Brandishing
James Ellis: Mayhem
Mike Gunderloy: The Meta-Network
James V. Scianna: A Pit Stop Along the Inward Journey
Chris Cilla: Sperm Trek
Anonymous: 23 Sperm Stories 23
Mike Diana: Attack of the Giant Killer Sperm
Feral Faun: Thoughts on Experimentation
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: Lidznap
Chris Gross: Three Letters
James Ellis: Control
Klint Finley: The New Currency War
PM: Liberating Wednesday
Ernest Mann: Warbucks Intra-Family Communique
Ernest Mann: Becoming More Free
Karen Elliot: Operation Negation
Walter Alter: Little Wally’s Reader (Lights = Camera = Action / Densest? / The List of Recalibrations)
Chris Cilla: Apple / Pineapple
Review: My Struggle by Mark Mothersbaugh
Review: The Skin Horse by Nabil Shaban
Review: The Myth of Natural Rights by L. A. Rollins
Interview: Melissa
Interview: Stuart Swezey
Interview: Ginger Hutton
Interview: Yael Ruth Dragwyla
Interview: Jennifer Murrian
Interview: V. Vale
Trevor Blake: Tape Fragmentation
Trevor Blake: Magnetic Poetry
Trevor Blake: Saturn Return
Trevor Blake: New Superstition from a Dream
Trevor Blake: Mutants First
Trevor Blake: Science is Anti-Authoritarian
Trevor Blake: Tipping Points
Trevor Blake: Cursed Object
Trevor Blake: Trajectory Through Anarchism
James Ellis: Suffering
Trevor Blake: The Bonus Army
Trevor Blake: Multiple Name Identities
Trevor Blake: Co-Remoting with the Thunderous
Trevor Blake: Ecclesiastes 9:10
About the Contributors

… or assemble your own anthology from what I think of as the best few dozen articles or from all 19,000+ articles.

In an 1883 paper called “Ideas for a Science of Good Government,” Peter Cooper wrote (emphasis mine):

After Franklin had explained this [the use of paper money] to the British Government as the real cause of prosperity, they immediately passed laws, forbidding the payment of taxes in that money. This produced such great inconvenience and misery to the people, that it was the principal cause of the Revolution. A far greater reason for a general uprising, than the Tea and Stamp Act, was the taking away of the paper money. [3]

Although Cooper was in favor of government issued currency, he saw the British outlawing of the Bills of Credit as a problem. He opposed the use of these local currencies, but saw them arising out of a failure of the government: “Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, raised his voice against the curse of the local banks, which were allowed to come into being by the neglect of the Government in the performance of its duty.” [3]

Today, a host of independent currencies are available: from small and local to big and global, and they are all issued to solve perceived problems with government issued currency. But it appears that the government is none too pleased with this competition.

Indie currency

Activists on both the far left and far right of the political spectrum work to create government independent currency solutions, but it seems that the left tend to prefer local currencies. “Community currency is a tool that can help revitalize local economies by encouraging wealth to stay within a community rather than flowing out,” Susan Meeker-Lowry wrote for Z Magazine. “In many communities around the country people are taking control by creating their own currency. This is completely legal and, as organizers are finding, often very empowering.” [4]

The Local Exchange Trading System (LETS), developed in British Columbia in the 80s, is one widely used system. LETS does away with the need for a printed money, acting instead as an interest free credit system. Michael Linton, a computer programmer, created LETS to solve a simple problem: community members “had valuable skills they could offer each other yet had no money. He also saw the limitations of a one-on-one barter system. If a plumber wanted the services of an electrician, but the electrician didn’t need plumbing help, the transaction couldn’t take place.” [4]

LETS solves the problem by issuing credit within the system. In the above example, the plumber would owe a debt to the LETS system, and electrician would be issued credit from the system. The electrician would be able to redeem the credit from another LETS member who is either in debt or wanted credit, and the plumber would be required to make his services available to other LETS members. [4] Many variations of Linton’s original system have been created, and several “how to” kits and manuals are available for purchase, or to download for free from the internet. [5]

Shifting the focus away from the US for a moment: during the Argentine financial crisis, the national currency of Argentina became practically worthless. [6] To help meet their needs and keep the economy working, many people turned to barter or to local currencies such as the “credito.”  [7] The credito was based, amongst other things, on LETS materials translated into Spanish. Transactions were originally recorded in a notebook, as in LETS, but eventually paper certificates were needed. By 2000, circulation of this currency had reached the equivalent of about $5 million a year. [8]

Argentina illustrates the usefulness of independent currencies when central banks fail. Local currencies, which tend not to cross state lines, seem not to get much attention from the government. I don’t know of any cases of local currencies being shut down by the government.

Towards a more perfect capitalism

Right wing proponents of alternative currencies, however, tend to favor more global forms of exchange. Advocates of “free banking” propose the dissolution of central banks like the Federal Reserve in favor of private banks issuing competing currencies. [9]

The founder of the internet payment solution PayPal, Peter Thiel, envisioned PayPal as a way to create a more free exchange of currency globally. Thiel hoped people in foreign countries with restrictive money export laws could use PayPal to hold their currency in dollars or other more stable foreign currencies, such as the US dollar [10]. But the proprietors of precious metal backed digital currencies like e-Gold and the Liberty Dollar are more even more ambitious.

Thinkers ranging from Ron Paul [11] to Alan Greenspan [12] advocate a return to the gold standard. But some entrepreneurs act directly by issuing digital currency backed by gold, silver, or other precious metals.

Dr. Douglas Jackson founded e-gold, the first internet currency backed 100% by precious metals, in 1996. Jackson cites gold’s stability as a currency and the internet’s natural openness as the reasons for creating an internet based gold currency. He believes e-gold is currency perfected: stable and market driven. In an interview in Wired in 2002 he called e-gold “probably the greatest benefit to humanity that’s ever been thought of.” [13]

The Liberty Dollar, backed mostly by silver but also by other precious metals, is sold by National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code (NORFED). Founder, and former mint master of the Royal Hawaiian Mint Company, Bernard von NotHaus conceived of the currency to compete head-on with the Federal Reserve:

For years America was saddled with a slow, poor postal service. Finally, Federal Express brought competition to this heavily subsidized government agency that no one though could change. And it responded and improved noticeably. NORFED emulates this model by bringing a superior product to America’s monetary system, its currency. [14]

NORFED offers coins, certificates that look like something like dollar bills, and an internet backed currency. Coins and certificates are available through “Regional Currency Offices,” and NORFED actively encourages Liberty Dollar enthusiasts to open their own RCOs and recruit others. [15]

Financial Jihad

Outside the western left / right political spectrum is the another global cultural force: Islam. While the founders of Pay Pal, e-gold, and NORFED believe themselves to be perfecting capitalism with their digital services, the Islamic founders of e-dinar, who formed a partnership with e-gold and at one point hosted 50% of e-gold’s reserve at their vaults in Dubai, believe they are destroying it. [13]

The founders of e-dinar are members of the Murabitun movement, a peculiur form of Sufism. Murabitun followers believe that paper money is haram, unlawful, according to Islamic faith. The founder of the Murabitun movement, Sheikh Abdalqadir, says: “A true study of the Qur’an and the Sunna shows us that capitalism will not be abolished on the battlefield but in the marketplace where it is practiced.” [13]

“Fatwa Concerning the Islamic Prohibition of Using Paper-Money as a Medium of Exchange,” a Murabitun text by Umar Vadillo, states: “After examining all the aspects of paper money, in the Light of the Qur’an and the Sunna, we declare that the use of paper money in any form of exchange is usury and therefore haram” because paper money (and, by extension, credit and debit cards) is “nothing but a pure symbol with no reality attached except the imposition of law.” [13]

Vidillo says: “You want to be radical? You don’t need to blow up the bank, just burn your bank account. For that you need an alternative. What is the alternative? E-dinar.” [13]

The current status of e-dinar is a bit mysterious. e-gold used be partners with e-dinar [13], but according to e-dinar’s web site e-dinar officially split with e-gold in 2004 after being acquired by an unnamed “Large International Corporation” in 2003. [16]

The state responds

It would seem, though, that the larger reach of global alternatives lead to larger interventions by the government. Of all the major players in independent currency game, e-gold has probably had the worst legal trouble. “In December 2005, the Secret Service and FBI raided the company’s headquarters and seized roughly $800,000 in assets,” according to the Washington Post. [17] This lead e-gold to beef up their security measures, even creating new software designed to detect e-gold customers committing crimes. [18] The new security measures didn’t stop a federal indictment from being leveled against the company in April of 2007. The company was served with four indictments, including operating an illegal money transfer operation and money laundering. [17]

Then, on Wednesday May 9th, 2007 the United States government seized the holdings of 58 e-gold accounts, forcing 48 bars of gold to be redeemed for approximately $77 million dollars. As of this writing, all the funds are still in in the US government’s control pending the outcome of lawsuit filed against e-gold’s parent company. [19] However, e-gold and its subsidiary Omnipay maintain business.

In 2006 The United States Mint issued a press release stating that circulating Liberty Dollars is a federal crime. The press release implies that Liberty Dollars are deceptively similar to US currency, and that NORFED intends them to be used as legal tender. [20] As of this writing, I am unaware of any case against any persons in the United States for using the Liberty Dollar.

NORFED responded with a civil lawsuit. On March 20, 2007 von NotHaus filed against the US Mint, asking “the court to declare that the use of the Liberty Dollar is not a ‘federal crime,’ as claimed by the U.S. Mint. And the organization further asked the court to enter a permanent injunction against the U.S. Mint requiring it to remove any reference that the use of Liberty Dollars is a federal crime from its website.” [21 As of this writing, the case remains unsettled. But on November 14th, 2007 the situation took another turn: the FBI raided Liberty Dollar on charges of circulating illegal currency, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The affidavit also described Liberty Dollar as a "multi-level marketing scheme."  [22]

Von NotHaus has described the raid as “a direct assault against the US Constitution and your right to own and use gold and silver in any way you chose” and dismissed the mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering charges as fantasy. [23]

Pay Pal, eventually burdened with legal problems, banned the use of PayPal for gambling, pornography, and several other uses in 2004. [24]

Conclusion

It is important to note that e-gold and NORFED may well be guilty of the crimes it has been charged with.  It remains to be seen how they will come out in court. NORFED and e-gold have many competitors, so the international, gold back internet currency business continues. However, the struggles of these companies, and the fact that they are being held liable for what their customers use their services for, is illustrative of the control the US government exerts over currency. If the Federal Reserve were held accountable every time legal tender were used in criminal transactions, surely the Fed would have been shut down by now. Why are companies like e-gold held to a different standard? Why are they asked to act as de facto law enforcement?

And all of this raises the question: why is there such a demand for alternative currencies? Shouldn’t the state be spending its time trying to correct the problems the Fed (or shutting it down), instead of trying to shut down those who are trying to solve problems the government is not?

References:
1. ushistory.org “Currency Act,”  http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/currencyact.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
2. u-s-history.com “Currency Act,”  http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1212.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
3. Cooper, Peter. “Ideas for a Science of Good Government,”  http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1212.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
4. Meeker-Lowry, Susan. “The Potential of Local Currency,”  Z Magazine, July 1995. http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/july95lowry.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
5. Wikipedia. “Local Exchange Trading System,”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_System Retrieved 10/30/07.
6. Ballvé, Marcello. “Silent Revolution,”  Orion Magazine, July 2006. http://thetake.org/media/The%20Silent%20Revolution.pdf Retrieved 10/30/07.
7. Katel, Peter. “Argentina: the Post Money Economy,”  Time, February 2002. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,199474,00.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
8. DeMeulenaere, Stephen. “Reinventing the Market: Alternative Currencies and Community Development in Argentina,”  International Journal of Community Currency Research, 2000. http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/ijccr/pdfs/IJCCR%20Vol%204%20(2000)%203%20DeMeulenaere.pdf Retrieved 10/30/07.
9. Greaves, Bettina Bien. “Market Money and Free Banking,”  The Freeman, October 1999. http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4946 Retrieved 10/30/07.
10. Bodow, Steve. “The Money Shot,”  Wired, September 2001. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/paypal_pr.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
11. Ludwig von Mises Institute. “The Case for Gold.”  http://www.mises.org/store/Case-for-Gold-The-P386C0.aspx?AFID=1 Retrieved 10/30/07.
12. Greenspan, Alan. “Gold and Economic Freedom.”  The Objectivist, 1966. http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
13. Dibbell, Julien. Wired, January 2002. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/egold.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
14. Orzano, Michele. Coin World Magazine, October 1998. http://www.libertydollar.org/news-stories/pdfs/1164902714.pdf Retrieved 10/30/07.
15. Liberty Dollar web site. “Regional Currency Office.”  http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/rco/index.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
16. e-dinar web site. “History.”  http://www.e-dinar.com/html/3_4.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
17. Krebs, Brian. washingtonpost.com, “U.S.: Online Payment Network Abetted Fraud, Child Pornography,”  May 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050101291.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
18. Zetter, Kim. Wired News, “E-Gold Gets Tough on Crime,”  December 2006. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/12/72278 Retrieved 10/30/07.
19. “US Government Forces E-gold Redemptions – Seizes Gold,”  Money Net News, May 2007. http://www.moneynetnews.com/articles/54/1/US-Government-Forces-E-gold-Redemp Retrieved 10/30/07.
20.US Mint web site. “Liberty Dollars Not Legal Tender, United States Mint Warns Consumers.”  http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?flash=yes&action=press_release&id=710 Retrieved 10/30/07.
21. Liberty Dollar web site. “Legal Updates.”  http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/legal/updates.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
22. Taylor, Jeff. Reason Magazine web site,”Your Liberty Dollar Raid Update.”  November 2007. http://www.reason.com/blog/show/123553.html Retrieved 7/24/07.
23. Liberty Dollar web site. “FBI Raid on the Liberty Dollar.”  November 2007. http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/legal/raid.htm Retrieved 7/24/07.
24. Balko, Radley. Reason Magazine,”Who Killed Pay Pal?”  August 2005. http://www.reason.com/news/show/33114.html Retrieved 10/30/07.

from OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008).  Revised for technoccult (November 2008).  Reprinted in Digital Gold Currency Magazine (January 2009).

You trade your time for money and trade money for things. This is in some ways overly complicated and there are people who spend their time making those things that they want, cutting out all the middle men. The do-it-yourself movement is an example of this, as is subsistence level farming. Considering how wasteful consumer capitalism actually is, it is entirely possible to survive in a urban environment without engaging in wage labour. You can spend your time getting food by dumpstering. Food, of course, is far from the only thing thrown away while it is still usable.

Out of the discards of a wasteful culture you can pull the raw materials with which to construct objects of desire and engage in enjoyable activities. The simpler your needs are in terms of objects the more time you can spend on experiences, on living. Buckminster Fuller was an inventor who spent his time designing things to more efficiently meet the needs of people in order to free them up to live. He called this branch of technology livingry to put it in distinction to the other motor of innovation, weaponry.

Marx developed the Labour-time theory of value where the value of an object was determined by the amount of labour time that was put into its production. Of course this theory was partially a work of propaganda or myth-making to build up the claim of the workers to the rewards of the early capitalist economy but it still one of the better theories on what actually makes a commodity valuable. Perhaps another way of looking at this is that value is produced by the energy put into the object over time, Value as Kilowatt Hours. With the increasing mechanization of industrial production it is foreseeble that items will be stamped out that had so minimal an input by humans that they would be valueless in terms of labour. However, these objects will still take work in a physical sense to produce them. Whether this shift to inhuman production will be a liberatory experience for mankind or the creation of a destitute no-longer-working class is an open question as yet. In part the answer has been to push people into service and administrative roles but even these have begun to be mechanized with information technology such as recommendation systems and complicated telephony arrangements.

from OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008)

Edward Wilson is a freelance writer living in Vancouver, Canada; Portland, Oregon and Cyberspace. If not found writing in one of Vancouver’s coffee shops, Edward is likely drinking in one of Portland’s Bars. Edward, known online as Fenris23, specializes in rediscovering magical techniques in the fields of psychology and sociology. He is Co-Author of The Art of Memetics with Wes Unruh and his next project will be space/ time/ punctuation, an exploration of the experience of space and time.
http://fenris23.wordpress.com
fenris23@gmail.com

“we were broke. The town cold.
With four dollars a day
streets were wet. Jobs hard spending that last four dollars
few options for food would
have wiped us out.” Money

it no longer signifies. there’s a silence,
the loss of coin to paper,
the paper to credit

“rich white people
like me, they fund
my art” and sold

to the color of more
with each transaction
cash burning;
a memory of wealth:
bank enough money
to be saved. Ourselves…

money lies, you smear
money across the counter
It’s manifest destiny, the first
dollar bill framed dribbles
above the register does
make money
make value
make meaning

“you fold the bills
right you can see
the towers fall”

she’s got the video
online we’ve spent
all the loose change

the more you have
the less it means
and exchange rates,
memories, shadows,
a handful of dust
and great white guilt

from OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008)

wesunruh.info

Only a handful of other games can compete with D&D for profitability. Many are lucky if they can even make it onto the shelves. Major book retailers like Borders prefer to deal only with established and well-supported games. Local gaming stores, meanwhile, are usually shoestring operations with limited shelf space and a bewildering array of options. Again, an established line is usually a safer bet.

Selling directly to fans seemed to become easier with the internet – anyone who could find your game online could order it, regardless of whether their local gaming store stocked it or not. But the costs of printing a large enough run were still prohibitive. Some publishers tried selling digital copies, starting with various e-book formats but quickly settling for the basic .pdf.

Unfortunately, anything sold as a .pdf is quickly shared, and stops selling as free copies become available. Sharing music isn’t catastrophic for independent artists, because they can make their money on live performances. Game publishers have no such option, however – the book or manual itself is their primary source of income. They don’t sell concert tickets or t-shirts. And independent game writers, without the resources of a bigger company to back them up, can’t subsidize their game books with collectible cards or miniatures.

If they can’t get paid to create games, they can’t keep doing it. At least they can’t give it the time and attention that it deserves. One game writer, however, is trying a new model, one that’s off to a promising start.

In 2004, Greg Stolze and Daniel Solis created a fun little game called Meatbot Massacre. It’s a tactical dice game where players design bioengineered war robots and fight them in an arena. It’s well-written and tightly designed, and introduces an innovative dice-rolling system. It’s a game that feeds the enthusiasms of a select group of gamers, a niche within a niche, but it’s not a game that will generate enough profit to be worth printing. Not on a traditional retail model, at least.

But Stolze re-imagined his audience. Instead of a group of individual customers, he saw them as a collective. He wanted to harness the support of the gaming community to sell the game to the community. They didn’t all have to buy as individuals – they just had to offer enough collectively. So he decided to hold the game for ransom.

In December of 2004, he announced that the game had been written, and would be released into the public domain when he received $600 for it. It was a small start – the game itself was only ten pages, and Stolze set the price by determining all the expenses and then paying himself four cents a word, the low end for game writing. Solis set up a ransom website with a PayPal button, and they set a deadline of September 2005. If the ransom wasn’t collected by then, the game wouldn’t be released, and whatever money had been raised would be turned over to a homeless shelter.

Ransoming a game was a novel idea, and no one knew how it would work. After a strong start, donations slowed to a trickle, but they kept coming in. The $600 goal was achieved in five months, half the time allotted, and the game was released as a free download in April 2005.

With this success under their belts, Stolze and Solis went on to produce …In Spaaace!, a comic role-playing game of space shenanigans. Like Meatbot Massacre, it was an innovative system, based this time on bidding with tokens instead of rolling any dice. And like Meatbot Massacre, while it would find a hearty welcome in a certain narrow audience, it would never be profitable for retail.

They set the ransom in July 2005, this time at $750 for a fifteen page game, still paying Stolze less than five cents a word. Instead of ten months, however, they set the deadline at six weeks, and it only took four to collect.

There was another big difference in this ransom, apart from the shorter time period. Instead of running their own site and collecting PayPal donations, Stolze and Solis moved their operation to a new site, www.fundable.org. Describing itself, Fundable says it “lets groups of people pool funds to make purchases or raise money.” It collects pledges, not actual payments, towards whatever goal the group leader sets. When the goal is met, the money is collected, Fundable collects 7%, and the remainder is sent to the group leader by PayPal (or by check, for a $10 fee.). If the goal isn’t met, the pledges are released and no money changes hands.

Greg Stolze went on to release two more games on Fundable. Soon after the success of …In Spaaace!, he teamed up with four other writers and designers to produce Executive Decision, in which characters are Oval Office advisors who compete for the President’s ear while pursuing their own agendas. It was offered in September 2005 as a fundraiser for the Red Cross after Hurricane Katrina. In one month, it met its goal of $1000, which was devoted to relief efforts.

Then in February 2006, Stolze and fellow game developer Dennis Detwiller offered Nemesis for a $1000 ransom. In this case, there was a 25-day deadline that was met in just 11 days. Nemesis was the largest yet, at 56 pages, and it was also an important release for other reasons.

Stolze and Detwiller had worked together before, notably on 2002′s Godlike, a superhero role-playing game set in World War II. For this game, Stolze developed the dice mechanic that would become the One-Roll Engine (ORE), a generic game system that could accommodate any setting. Stolze and Detwiller would release Wild Talents, the sequel to Godlike, at the end of 2006, but in the meantime Godlike was all there was.

Nemesis was the ORE, stripped of superpowers, spliced to a system for madness from Stolze’s earlier work on the Unknown Armies game, and placed in a horror setting reminiscent of the Cthulhu mythos. It was the first ORE release since Godlike, and by working with characters who were ordinary mortals, it made the system accessible to a much broader range of settings than a superhero game could be. It served as a default system document for the ORE, and continues to fill an important function within the system.

But Nemesis only set the stage for Stolze’s next project. Reign was to be his long-awaited fantasy adaptation of the ORE, with a new set of rules for characters to build organizations and play on a much larger scale. It was to be a full-size core rulebook, over 350 pages, far larger than anything that had been published by ransom. Stolze didn’t want to stretch the ransom model to the breaking point, but he couldn’t afford to print the books himself either. He chose instead to use Lulu.com for print-on-demand (POD).

Reign came out on Lulu in May 2007. It came in four editions: hard or soft cover, and with a choice of cover art by Daniel Solis or Dennis Detwiller. The softcover editions ran into trouble with some misprints, which took several months to clear up. Also, POD can’t offer the price breaks of mass production, so the books were spendy: $36.89 for the soft covers and $49.30 for the hard, with more tacked on for postage. This compares to $29.95 for hardcovers of the core D&D books, and $39.95 for the hardcover of Godlike from the small press Arc Dream Publishing.

Despite the problems and the cost, Reign has sold well for POD. In October of 2007, Stolze reported on his website that he’d sold 675 copies. Not a lot compared to D&D, but a decent showing for an independent game. He reported that he’d currently made over $12,000 from Lulu, selling the four editions of Reign and one small book of short stories. None of that money included what he made from the supplements.

Traditionally, role-playing games offer one or more hefty rulebooks, followed by a number of supplements. Managed well, new supplements can continue to bring in money once the core books have leveled off. But from the player’s perspective, the constant flow of supplements sometimes feels like being milked for every available penny.

At the end of the Reign rulebook, Stolze makes a promise: “You’re holding in your hands the last Reign product to be released solely as a print book with a fixed price. Everything else is going to come out via the Ransom Model.”

From June to October 2007, Stolze offered for supplements for a ransom of $1000 each. Each one had a deadline of 25 days. The first three made their goals; the last one came up $20 short but was released anyway. More are said to be in the works.

Stolze seems to have dedicated himself to building a new model of making and selling games, one with the potential to reach players directly, saving the game’s creator the overhead of printing and distribution and bypassing the fight for retail shelf-space. He’s made a good start, but important questions remain.

Stolze and his collaborators were already well-known in the gaming community. Stolze had worked for White Wolf Publishing, the main competitor to Wizards of the Coast, as well as the smaller Atlas Games, where he had worked on the seminal Unknown Armies. The ransom model depends largely on his well-established reputation, which also helps to overcome the high price of print-on-demand. But will his model work for a writer without his reputation? What happens to a designer without a built-in audience? How will a system based on reputation allow for new blood to enter the field?

It also remains to be seen if this model will work for Stolze in the long run. Will ransom continue to work when the novelty wears off, and will it allow him to establish a regular source of income? Other than coming up $20 short on one Reign supplement, he hasn’t failed to achieve a ransom yet. What will happen when he does? The system looks good when it succeeds, but is it robust enough to handle failure?

Finally, what else can the ransom model support? Fundable’s primary market seems to be non-profit fundraising and group purchases. It also boasts of supporting books, music and film. How far can this approach be taken, and can it be optimized for particular types of products? Game design has such a narrow audience that it may have to ride the coattails of more popular fields, such as independent musicians.

Stolze’s efforts may succeed and grow, or they may become another internet casualty. But in the meantime, they’ve already put good innovative games in the hands of players, and broadened the range of what can be done with gaming. Long-range success is by no means assured, but Greg Stolze is doing his best to find a new way for his industry to work.

RESOURCES:
www.gregstolze.com
www.gregstolze.com/downloads.html
www.fundable.org
www.lulu.com
stores.lulu.com/gregstolze

Johnny Brainwash only talks about gaming and riding his bike. johnnybrainwash@hotmail.com

from OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008)

Triangle, circle, serpent’s tooth, serpent’s egg.
Bites through the shell, sucks out the translucent ooze. BITE IT.
Ooze, ooze, baby. Oooh baby, your digits, your zeros, your commas, I WANT THEM ALL!

Let’s get digital. Count off by ones.
Boy-girl, boy-girl. Ones and zeros, ones and zeros, marching endlessly to the horizon.

He’s bone, she’s stone. One on one, T for 2, three’s company. For unto us a child is given. THEN TAKEN AWAY.
Coitus Interruptus. Annuit Coeptis.
God has favored our understanding.
Great Seal of the United States.
Obverse / reverse. Heads or tails.
The greenback’s back.

Great Seal: for your protection.
Pierce the membrane, pull back the skin. Nothing there.
Nothing up my sleeve.
This is the null set, signifying Nothing.
Peel a few bills off your wad.
King Piston, Magic wand, Orb and Scepter.
WAD RULES. Money from nowhere.
Pennies from heaven. Penis from Hell.

T-bill, E-bone, ebony baboon
Barbary ape climbing the pyramid with a rose and eros clenched between his teeth.
Black bristle back, furry tongue, pink gums and prehensile prepuce.
Foreskin of the gods, 3-toed sloth, too much fun being alive.
One triangulated eyeball surveys the infinite distances.
Light carries forever. They eye looks round the world. The eye sees itself, mapped onto itself.
Retinal membrane – film.
The skin of sight.

Eye See You. I know what you do.
ICU. Intensive Care Unit.
Dead Presidents on parade.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson.
N to the Nth degree. Three dimensions, lust, power and hunger steam-rolled down to two. Printed on magic paper, trimmed.
Dead Presidents 1, 2, 5, 10, 20.
Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer.
Einz 57 varieties of nothing.
E Pluribus Unum.
One hundred channels and nothing on.

Uni-dimensional. Black hole.
Infinitely hot and dense dot burning a hole in your pocket.
Your dizzy little digit is twitching up a storm, but playing pocket pool in the Temple of Cool is sure as Sheol not the answer.
You got a crazy little finger
You got a crazy little thumb
You got a crazy little organ
I think I’m gonna get me some

Cash in your chips, Buddy.
Red hot poker, pookah ghost money.
Phantom funds, joss dollars burnt and sent to the next world.
Talking, trash, spending cash
A pillar of fire and a mountain of ash.

Money reigns supreme
Mazuma’s revenge. Solvent?
Liquid assets running down your leg.
A cataract of filthy lucre
Niagra Falls of body mud.
A flood of intestinal tears.
CRY CRY CRY your life away
WHY? WHY? WHY? time to pay and pray.
It must be rainin’ cuz man’s not supposed to cry.
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
Money to burn?
BURN YOUR MONEY.

from OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008)

See also:
OVO 15 SPERM February 2005

According to the General Accounting Office [pdf], “as of 31 December 2003 [there are] a total of 1,138 federal statutory provisions classified to the United States Code in which marital status is a factor in determining or receiving benefits, rights, and privileges.”  Due to the Defense of Marriage Act, these federal statutory provisions are available only to hetero married couples.  If legal access to same-sex marriage occurs in the United States, some or all of these federal statutory provisions will have to change.  I predict they will not change at the same time. I predict that they will not change to the same degree or in the same way.  I predict that sometimes a federal statutory provisions will cease to exist rather than be extended to same-sex couples.  I predict that they will not all change at the federal level, but rather at both the state and the federal level and that they will not be uniform in all states.  During the time these federal statutory provisions change, some same-sex couples will lose out while other same-sex couples will benefit.  Attentiveness now to these benefits, rights, and privileges might make their transitions more smooth.

Interracial hetero marriage was banned in some states as late as 1967.  The Loving v Virginia decision of the Supreme Court that year found miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional. Interracial marriage has been legal for over forty years. But it is not the case that interracial marriages occur with the same frequency as same-race marriages. According to the US Census for 2000, around 97% of whites married whites and around 96% of blacks married blacks. I predict these statistics will remain constant if legal access to same sex marriage occurs in the United States.  The State has no role in encouraging or discouraging marriage diversity.

Citizenship in the United States can be conferred by marriage.  I predict that legal access to same sex marriage will confer citizenship to some men and women who otherwise could not be citizens.  I predict this will be a small number and will not influence society much at all.  What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Domestic violence occurs among same-sex couples as well as hetero couples.  According to the American Bar Association [pdf], “seven states define domestic violence in a way that specifically excludes same-sex victims.” I predict that legal access to same sex marriage will include an increase of reports of domestic violence.  This increase in reports of domestic violence may be caused by a change in the ability to report domestic violence as much as or more than an increase in actual domestic violence. Domestic violence among same-sex couples does not occur with the same frequency among all sexes.  According to the U. S. Department of Justice, 11.4% of same-sex cohabiting women report being victimized by a female partner while 15.4% of same-sex cohabiting men reported being victimized by a male partner. Men raping men occurs much more frequently than men raping women.  According to the U. S. Census Bureau, 78.3% of murder victims are male and 21.4% of murder victims are female.  According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [pdf] 65.3% of murders involved a male offender and a male victim while 2.4% of murders involved a female offender and a female victim.  I predict that legal access to same sex marriage will show more domestic violence among men than among women.  Acknowledging a difference between men and women and funding State services accordingly might lessen the problem of domestic violence.

Same sex couples cannot conceive children.  Same sex couples who wish to raise children are limited in their ability to adopt in the United States.  Some states allow it, some forbid it, and federal law has said only that an adoption in one state must be recognized in other states.  (Compare this with the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law stating same-sex marriage in one state need not be recognized in other states.)  Many states that forbid adoption by same sex couples base their law on same sex couples being unable to legally marry.  I predict legal access to same sex marriage in the United States will cause changes in adoption laws.  I predict some states will make it no more or less difficult for same sex couples to adopt than for hetero couples to adopt, while other states will make all adoptions more difficult to make adoption more difficult for same sex couples.  Same sex couples who wish to raise children are limited in their ability to use birth surrogates or artificial insemination in the United States.  Legal limits on birth surrogates exist for hetero couples as well and vary by state.  There is no legal limit on artificial insemination but some insurance companies will not compensate single women who use artificial insemination.  I predict some states will make it no more or less difficult for same sex couples to use birth surrogates or artificial insemination, while other states will make using birth surrogates or getting artificial insemination more difficult to make these procedures more difficult for same sex couples.  I predict the number of children adopted will increase if legal access to same sex marriage occurs.  State by state differences in adoption, birth surrogates, and artificial insemination will be similar to the legality of abortion.  Abortion is legal at the national level but access to services varies by state and is not a service the state is compelled to offer.  Adoption laws should be inclusive of same sex parents.

Advocates of legal access to same sex marriage want treatment under the law identical to hetero marriage, and that includes legal access to divorce.  Making predictions about legal access to same sex marriage must include predictions about legal access to same sex divorce.  Statistics relating to hetero divorce have a limited value in making predictions about same sex divorce. According to the National Center for Health Statistics [pdf] “Approximately 61 percent of the divorces in 1988 were petitioned by the wife, 32 percent by the husband, and 7 percent by the husband and wife jointly.” More hetero couples are divorced today than in the past, and differences exist between the percentage of divorced men and divorced women.  According to the US Census Bureau: “Of the first marriages for women from 1955 to 1959, about 79 percent marked their 15th anniversary, compared with only 57 percent for women who married for the first time from 1985 to 1989. People born in the leading edge of the baby boom experienced high divorce rates in the 1970s and 1980s. About 38 percent of men born from 1945 to 1954 and 41 percent of women in the same age group had been divorced by 2004.”  The trend for women to initiate divorce more than men is also found in Denmark, where legal access to same sex marriage has been available since 1989. Male same sex married couples in Denmark seek a divorce 14% of the time, while female same sex married couples in Denmark seek a divorce 23% of the time. I predict legal access to same sex marriage in the United States will reveal that women seek divorce more than men in both hetero and same sex marriages.  According to the US Census Bureau [pdf], among hetero divorced couples in 2008 56.9% of mothers were awarded child support and custody while 40.4% of fathers were awarded child support and custody.  I predict custody and child support issues among divorcing same sex couples will incur less legal fees and occupy less court time among men than women.  I claim that some discontent to legal access to same sex marriage is caused by discontent with hetero marriage.  Discontent with hetero marriage comes in part from the prevalence of divorce.  No-fault divorce has existed in every state since 1985.  Discontent with hetero marriage comes in part from the disparity of who initiates divorce and who benefits from divorce.  Women initiate divorce more often than men, and benefit from divorce more often than men.  Divorce and women’s rights are largely spoken of as having only benefits, never any cost.  Divorce and women’s rights are largely spoken of as bringing about only equality, never inequality.  For these reasons, what might have been a debate about women and divorce has become a debate about homosexuals and marriage.  I predict legal access to same sex marriage will not bring about the former debate.  Acknowledging a difference between men and women and funding State services accordingly might lessen the problem of divorce.

See also: Three Predictions Part One, ‘Who’s That Girl?’

(from OVO 14 Suffering March 1992)

Why do the results achieved by a conspiracy as a rule differ widely from the results aimed at? Because this is what usually happens in social life, conspiracy or no conspiracy. And this remark gives us an opportunity to formulate the main task of the theoretical social sciences. It is to trace the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions. I may give a simple example. If a man wishes urgently to buy a house in a certain district, we can safely assume that he does not wish to raise the market price of houses in that district. But the very fact that he appears on the market as a buyer will tend to raise market prices. And analogous remarks hold for the seller. Or to take an example from a very different field, if a man decides to insure his life, he is unlikely to have the intention of encouraging other people to invest their money in insurance shares. But he will do so nevertheless.

We see here clearly that not all consequences of our actions are intended consequences; and accordingly, that the conspiracy theory of society cannot be true because it amounts to the assertion that all events, even those which at first sight do not seem to be intended by anybody, are the intended results of the actions of people who are interested in these results.

It should be mentioned in this connection that Karl Marx himself was one of the first to emphasize the importance, for the social sciences, of these unintended consequences. In his more mature utterances, he says that we are all caught in the net of the social system. The capitalist is not a demoniac conspirator, but a man who is forced by circumstances to act as he does; he is no more responsible for the state of affairs than is the proletarian.

This view of Marx’s has been abandoned – perhaps for propagandist reasons, perhaps because people did not understand it – and a Vulgar Marxist Conspiracy theory has very largely replaced it. It is a come-down – the come-down from Marx to Goebbels. But it is clear that the adoption of the conspiracy theory can hardly be avoided by those who believe that they know how to make heaven on earth. The only explanation for their failure to produce this heaven is the malevolence of the devil who has a vested interest in hell.

First published in the Library of the10th International Congress of Philosophy, 1948. From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

via youtube.

In April 2008 I published OVO 18 MONEY. Following the pattern of many previous issues of OVO, I was using the publication of a magazine as a chance to learn about the theme found in that publication. In the course of putting that issue together I did learn a small amount about economics. Money is that which you want to own more of than get rid of. Banking and finance regulation and the stock market seem to be far more complex. Not long after that issue was published, the world economy took a turn for the worst. My understanding of what I do not know or understand is much greater now. All I can say about this video is it made me laugh.