Money for Nothing
Clive Thompson’s article on economist Edward Castronova (“Game Theories,” June) described how virtual property can be exchanged for real dollars. Let us explore the possibilities of inverting this paradigm.

In Canada, under Powers of the Parliament in The BNA Act, the federal government, in addition to collecting money through taxation, can create money. To create money where there is no surplus of goods or services would simply fuel inflation. But there exists a body of goods, services, and capital equipment that is rationed for lack of money. It’s called health care. It is a provincial responsibility under the constitution, but the provinces do not have the power to create money. For this reason, downloading financial responsibility is a cynical and cold-hearted act of rationing.

Instead of making people line up for services until tax money is available, resulting in many becoming more critically ill and, so, more expensive to treat, let the government set up a program to create the money to balance supply with demand. In a sense, virtual money would pay for real services, but, in the hands of providers of those services, virtual money would become real money, to be spent or invested.

With the tools existing today to guide a space probe to a block of ice in remote parts of the solar system, this economic balance is certainly within human capability.
Ross Andrews
Straffordville, Ontario

The answer to the question at the outset of Clive Thompson’s article should be a resounding “No!” The question I am referring to is: “Are these virtual worlds the best place to study the real one?” The outright rejection of most universities of Edward Castronova’s work may be a little extreme, but from what is presented in this article, I support the position of the universities. My opinion was formed mostly because of the line early in the article stating that the players were overwhelmingly male. When will it be accepted that women make up the majority of our population? All aspects of society are affected by the subtle but real differences between men and women. Until supposed sciences such as economics address this, they will remain flawed tools for understanding our current situation or predicting our future. In this article, we are presented with a view of a “modern,” technically advanced world that is entrenched in the patriarchal beliefs of our past. It is not surprising so many of these games are set in medieval Europe.
Roger Payne
Waterloo, Ontario

Weapons in Space
Though I found Paul Webster’s article (“The Ultimate High Ground,” June) quite interesting, I thought it lacked a complete enough historical analysis of the United States’ Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). In particular, I think Webster ignores the often overlooked intention when SDI was initially launched by the Reagan administration in 1983.

One of the main motivations behind SDI was to force the Soviet Union to launch a similar “Star Wars” plan by creating the impression – true or false – that the United States could engage in a nuclear war and win.