ratings bonus

Ok, I can understand the new tax, (which sadly signals the end of an era), if I was a n00b, I would not know any different either.

I am no economist but there are still issues. My plan of building a simple platform and buying the least amount of land to build my simple platform on in an effort to be frugal has backfired on me.

I am #6 in the ratings list and my ratings bonus is a BIG FAT ZERO. I was speaking to someone who is just a few steps above me in the ratings list and they get almost $1800.00. How is that possible? They also purchased a huge amount of land compared to my small plot. Both are being completely subsided by the Linden economy. So why did I bother trying to save money on land taxes? And why do I bother with ratings at all if being #6 gets me absolutely nothing?

Since this is a beta, maybe it will still be tweaked -- but I would have to admit, if I was paying RL$ for this, I would be a bit discouraged.

fen-

The reasoning is that they don't want all the money piling up in the acounts of people who aren't playing. They way they determine if you are playing is by your taxes. So the bonus only applies toward your taxes. There is a little leeway in that if your bonus is more than your taxes then it will build you up to $3500.

What I think a lot of people aren't realizing (and I didn't at first either) is that the amount of money in SL is pretty much fixed. "Pretty much" because when they add more land or resources to the servers then they add more money. But essentially you can think of it as fixed. All the money from taxes is what is split up among the bonuses and weekly stipends. The only exception to this are the voting booths and their bonuses which I guess pull money out of thin air. At least that is how I'm pretty sure it all works.

The result is if there was no $3500 cap, then the person who owns no land and never plays would pay no taxes, thus not contributing to the fund, but would still get a stippend every week. More and more of the money would be 'lost' in this way, on accounts that weren't being used. Because they aren't contributing the fund total money available in SL would keep getting smaller and smaller, meaning smaller stipends and smaller bonuses. It is also my understanding that this is how it was a while ago, and why they changed it.

I posted about his a while... fenkis, I know you and I are pretty much at the same lvl.... but last week I got a tax coverage of 3800 but I have 7000 to use... hold on. let me find the post....
BRB

found it
/120/16/474/1.html

II can see the dilemma of the fixed money source, but my point was that something is still way off. How is it right that I have such a small plot of land and someone can have a much larger plot of land and we both are completely subsidized? I should have bought up an entire sim. I would still be paying the same taxes I am now.

Shouldn't I be getting the difference in what I don't own compared to what someone else does? Basically it does not matter what size lot you buy, it is free after the initial cost. If everyone is subsidized, I want more land. I will buy up a sim and rent it for 10x the price.

The $ in SL is getting smaller and smaller, my stipend and bonus is getting smaller and smaller. When I first started, my stipend was around $1,000.00L. Now it is under $200.00L. How could I be 6th in ratings and get absolutely nothing for it but a BIG FAT ZERO? Why botha with a ratings system at all?

Maybe it is all in the expectations of how an economy works, I am expecting one thing from SL and not getting it. I was introduced to one system and now it is different.

I will now chant my mantra, to ease my tension...

betabetabeta

If I don't buy up a sim, I may open the first SL Buddhist Church, were I happily retreat to in my poverty.


fen-

OK, once again I will try to explain how its working.

1. You get taxes calculated weekly based on the land you own, objects, lights, scripts.

2. You have a maximum stipend and ratings bonus amount calculated.

then

3. It figures out how much it costs to pay you back your taxes.

4. It tries to do this with your available amount of stipend.

- this part is where the confusion sets in. It will not pay you more than your taxes, no matter what your reputation bonus is unless you have less than $3500. so you could be rated in first place, and if you don't pay any taxes at all, you won't get any money at all.

- The reason that feniks and the person who owns a larger piece of land are both subsidized is because neither pays as much in taxes as the maximum stipend/bonus they are allowed to recieve.

- Why Feniks shouldn't have bought a whole sim is that you would very quickly owe more taxes than your stipen/bonus could cover. Right now I think I am rated 8th in ratings. I pay over $8000 a week in taxes, but ratings/bonus will only cover me for $5000 of it. If I only had, say $4000 in taxes a week, I would be covered the full $4000.


I hope this helps

BBC

thanks,

I gets it now, but it still could use some work in the way that it is presented.

fen-

This is my impression of the SL economy, and yes its rambling.

Money is used to reward people for adding "something" to the world.

Money is also used as a way to control the limited resources (server CPU time, bandwith etc.). In fact I would say money is a representation of the available resources.

Because money in second life is a representation of available resources, it doesn't really do the world as a whole any good if people stock pile it. Say you somehow manage to get 25% of all the money in the world but have no taxes. That means 25% of the resources available aren't getting used. The theory I believe is that if what you build benefits the world enough then it will pay for itself, in one way or another, and hopefully enough extra to fund more projects. And if it doesn't, then it is a drain on resources and shouldn't be in the world.

The way the stippend and bonuses work is that they only see the "something" added to the world if it is a tangable resource - and thus also taxable. However the rating system is designed to reward the intangable - how you yourself add to the SL world. I think possibly your main problem is you feel you are adding to the world (as shown by your high rating) but you aren't getting rewarded for it, because you don't have the items for the tax to pay off.
But here is something else: your addition to the world is not taking up any resources either.

One question: What are you saving the money up for? Is it just to be on the list as richest? Or do you have a grand project in mind? Or something else?

On to ideas:
I think it would be nice if the money cap that stipends/bonuses go to could be raised by the people who add intangibly to the SL world. However I don't think you should be able to keep that max if you stopped adding as much to the world. And thus we get Ama's version of the Needs system.

It would be purely optional.

Fulfilling "needs" will raise the cap. Neglect those needs and the cap stays the same, or if already high, will eventually lower back to the standard. This is only the cap I'm talking about, you wouldn't actually lose money.

As long as you are active in whatever way this need is fullfilled you can keep your cap high and thus get more of your stipend / bonus.

I am not entirely sure what the 'need' should be or how it would be done. My general idea is a decaying ranking system, only easier to do perhaps. For example the ring menu that pops up from clicking on another player could include a "touch" option which would add a point to the touched person's score. A person may touch another person once per day. And the score decays over time.

In general: I don't know. I'm really just rambling and typing as I think.

I just had a thought / question:

If I deserve a stipend/bonus of $3000, only have taxes of $1000 and am already over the $3500 cap ... where does the extra $2000 go? My hope is that it actually is going somewhere from the general fund. My fear is that it is going to never-land.

Why do we even need a cap at all ? What if we want to save up for a large project that will cost more than the cap? That means our project has to sit there for a whole week unfinished while we wait painfully slow for the next doling of money? Honestly that kind of sucks.. The giving of funds weekly is nice, and a great idea. But having a cap that low is not. Maybe raise the cap, or remove it completely. Some people don't want to work over time, but rather get something done in one night kind of deal.

When there was no cap all the money ended up in the accounts of the people who weren't even playing.

The money isn't created out of thin air. The tax money is what is divided up into the allowence (and bonuses?). When there was no cap the people who never played and payed no taxes were accumulating all the money meaning less money circulating in the world for the people who were playing.

The allowences don't bring new money into the world. And taxes don't take money out of the world. All the two of them do is move the money in the world around.

The money is a measurement of computer resources available to the world, it is fixed unless Linden labs adds a server or in some other way increases the available computer resources. When that happens they put more money into the world. People who accumulate money aren't using the resources which that money represents, and are in fact preventing someone else from using those resources. And when it is people who aren't even playing that are doing this .... that is a problem.

=====
Really though this is the point: There is no cap on the money you can have. Look on the leader boards, most of the top people have over $10k. The cap is only on allowance and bonuses paying more than your taxes.

I hear there is a bank now if you need money for a project, and I have a few extra linden dollars I would be willing to donate to a worthy cause. Allowence and bonus shouldn't be the main form of income anyways. I even saw a post about a consultant for ideas on ways to make money.

The allowence is just Linden Labs saying, "hey you can use this many resources each week on us." If your taxes are more, then you still owe and need to get that money some other way. Don't wanna use it all? Fine, but resources don't accumulate, they won't have more CPU cycles next week cuz you didn't use em this week.

phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one who seems to get it anymore, thanks Ama.

BBC

got it