Pegging stipends to the L$

Just something that came up in a conversation.

At the moment, I know that L$ are introducing sinks, like the upload fee and the cost of classifieds, to pull L$ out of the economy and reduce inflation.

The problem is that these sinks hit everyone equally, especially the newer users who are still depends on their stipend to achieve anything. Arriving on SL for the first time can already feel more like Sim Loser than Second Life (ie, you wander around seeing how cool everyone else is) and breaking out of that can is hard enough without having to be told that all the prices on the grid, including for the fundamentals you need to start up, are going up just because (insert famous content creator here) made another L$1m.

So, if the universal costs of business are going to be pegged to the L$'s strength anyway, why not peg the stipend there too?

The current goal of SL is that everyone buy Lindens so content creators can cash them out for real dollars. This is sort of like the There model, except at least in There you knew from the second you logged in they wanted you to lay out USD for items. This has been a shift in SL, but it is glaringly apparent now. You aren’t supposed to make it off the stipend; you are supposed to buy Lindens. The whole stipend crap was just to build a user base and a following.

In that case, Eboni, throttling the stipend according to the value of the L$ would definitely do the trick.

But Lindens have no value. Duh.

If Linden had no value, content creators wouldn't get anything when they sold them.

Also, I'm pretty sure Linden get more value from Premium subscriptions than for selling L$. Seeing as how they can't just conjure L$ to sell on Lindex (because if they did, the value would decrease) they're only making the transaction fee. Seems that a more important goal is getting people to pay tier, and they're only going to do that if they have something to put on the land.