Money Sinks (Cash Leaving the economy.

Sorry I'm starting a new thread about this, but I couldnt find any that are specific to money leaving the economy and people seem stuck on stopping the influx of it instead.

Where does cash leave the economy in SL. I know of texture, animation and sound uploads. There is also a charge to rate someone. What else is there?

I have heard that prims used to cost L to make, and I think they did the right thing by removing this because it stifles creativity. Anything that stifles creativity is a bad thing.

I've seen some sort of discussion on taxing sales of items and I cant really see a problem with this, maybe someone would like to enlighten me on why this isnt implemented.

I suggest a teleport fee, because that is something that isnt an absolute necessity and could remove a decent chunk of money without breaking anyone. An L per teleport?

What about a fee to stream music to your land. Not something large, but sort of a luxury fee that is paid weekly and could be taken directly out of the stipend. 50L? I would pay something to maintain this.

Is there something that there is a limited number of that could be increase without killing servers that could be charged L for? I suppose that prim limits are in place to prevent the lagging of servers, but might it be possible to increase the prim limit a little for a fee. I know my 1024 lot is about to run out and I would gladly pay a little more weekly L for a certain amount of prims extra.

What are some of the other ideas that have been suggested for SPECIFICALLY removing money from the market?

Thanks for not bashing me on the head



Compiled list of money sinks:

Uploading Textures, Animations, Sounds in L$

Buying land directly from LL in L$

Paying for land tier usage in L$

L$30/week to have your place listed in the Find window

Not yet implemented: The new Partner feature charges $10 for listing and $25 for removal

I think something as a sink is a good idea as long as it's not too draining and probably even optional. Can't think of any ideas at the moment. :x

It's an excellent question, Wig.

I think if someone at LL would take the five minutes to document these things somewhere we'd all stop wasting our time by posting a bunch of guessing games.

You *can* pay for your tier fee through L$...thought I doubt many do this because the value LL assigns is like 50% of market

Optional is probably the best way to do it that way noone can be that upset about it. Of course it may require paying for things you are used to getting free.

Things that only the rich could have that was some sort of status symbol or gave them extra ability for a nice steep price wouldnt be a bad thing either. Maybe some sort of special club, or vip only place or maybe some sort of seat on a board of directors type of thing where they can voice opinions directly to someone special. Status things are always good though.

Buying land directly from LL in L$ is also a sink

If these are all of the money sinks in the game then this is a serious problem. It seems that the people just sitting on large sums of L are the ones sinking the money right now and that is a disaster waiting to happen.

What do people think about taxes on selling goods and is it possible to track?

Would people be against a sort of gift tax where all money that switches hands is charges a small amount on the reciever end? maybe a small percentage. The fractional L$ could just be aggregated when they hit a whole number.

What about a copy fee? It could be a sort of luxury fee, where you get charged an L$ each time you copy a prim or object. You could avoid being charged this by actually building each prim, say while making walls for your house, but wouldnt be charged per prim when copying multi prim objects, just once for the object.

Listing in the "Find" dialogue.

Ratings.

As to previous things - rezzing prims used to cost 10L per prim, yes, but that was refunded when you deleted the prim or took it back into inventory. As a system it was okay, but not stunning. Prims left in-world were taxed on size and altitude on a weekly basis (so, in theory, you wouldn't get a sim with a 100m wall of 10x10 prims stretched side-to-side.
Standard taxes on prims like this wouldn't fly again - people are already paying (in a sense) for the prims once now.

One idea that's been bandied around the irc channel alot recently is the resurrection of the Light Tax - basically, any prim with material set to "Light" was taxed at a much higher rate.
We figure that this was the case to discourage overuse, as the more lights you add to a scene, the greater the rendering code gets a workout - more than a handful of lights (esp if you're wearing a prim-heavy av) and your fps heads groundwards.
Basically, I'm thinking if we start the light tax then a)usage becomes more sensible, so turning Local Lighting back on becomes less of a technicolour freakshow, or b)those with the resources to pay the tax keep their lit objects, and we drain some excess L$ out of the system. (Assuming there is such an excess)

That's just my 2L$, anyway (with the cooperation of the denizens of #secondlife)

Copy fee? Yick, no!

You'd never get anything complex built again.

So maybe instead of a recurring tax on lighted objects maybe a one time, non-refundable fee to make them or copy them.

Sounds sensible to charge for something like this, because a. it's harder to render b. it's not a necessity.

How many things do you have to copy? A hundred? I suggested 1 L$ per copy, that wouldnt be much. IF it took a thousand copies then sell it for more. Once you have linked everything its only 1 L$ per copy.

They should charge more for uploading images over a certain amount of kb, crazy how some of those textures out there take like 5 min to rez for me with there 1mb worth of textures that have the same resolution as a jpg.

Not a bad idea, especially since those large graphics take up SL bandwidth to load to your computer. It would help regulate two things with one stone.

Teleporting used to cost money...the farther you were teleporting, the more it cost. I guess it was okay, but...with the telehubs, people may not want to pay to teleport somewhere only to still have to fly to their final destination.

I saw someone else mention it, but, it didn't get added to the list...it costs L$30/week to have your place listed in the Find window.

I'm lost...what are we trying to do with this? You want to impose new fees and taxes, why? Most of the things mentioned would take money from people that don't have it. It wouldn't touch the people who have a lot of it.

I'm confused.

Do you folks start thinking about ways to burn bills if the Dollar is weak against the Euro?!

I thought things that cost LL real life money or resources cost $L in the game. Making up ways for use to lose our play money so that it costs more real money seems kinda weird.

I just don't get it...

Added to the list, thank you

It's so that L$ will retain its value instead of becoming worth nothing, which devalues your stipend you recieve each week.

If the number of dollars keeps growing, then the value of them decrease and it hurts the people who dont make as much.

In addition it also decreases the real dollar value which is very much a part of the economy, since people pay lots of real money to provide all of the neat things you see in the world. LOTS and LOTS of real money is poured into this game to own land per month and if they cant recoup some of that money, so many things wil dissapear.

It's important that the economy does not go bad.

In the real world economy is controlled with interest rates and taxes and how much money is printed. Or something like that, I'm no economist, but there are definately controls on it.

Instead of taking away all of your weekly money like some are suggesting, im trying to come up with alternatives that allow you some amount of choice in the matter. Go read the other thread where people want to take away your rate bonus to fix the economy. That's fine for people with loads of cash and established businesses that makes that 500 a week seem like spare pocket money, but that's about all I get.

Look at the alternative, before you dismiss this idea.

That is a really good deal, maybe up that fee to L$50.

It is free to advertise at the hubs, that is prime space, charge L$50 - L$100 a week for that service.

Linden sponsored shopping outlets. Right now you can rent land via lottery award in Luna, but it counts against your tier fee. The Lindens should build a big shopping sim, like a huge department store, and just rent space for L$50 a week without having to own land or sacrifice your home tier space.

Bypass telehub charge. Click an optional button to pay L$20 to bypass the local hub and arrive exactly where you want to be. I would pay this to avoid some laggy sims I frequently have to pass through and never bother to look at whats next to the hub.

relax. breathe. rinse. repeat.

I really wouldn't worry about any of this, but if you do, then you should be thinking about big money...money transactions. Most of the ideas that have been brought up in this thread would stifle the economy, not help it.

Here is more to ponder.

All this money that leaves the economy... Isnt it injected back into the economy via dwell payments and bonuses?

Why does it need to be removed anyway?

The big sink of money out of the world would be Land sold at auction for Lindens I'd think.


Of course, if they wanted to auction a few old style lifetime memberships with 4k land per month for free I'll bet they could sink a few Lindens

Um.. so.. I don't like the alternative either!

I mean, either the game money has real value because of the stuff *in* SL, or it's just rare play money that folks wanna pay for 'cause the game's kinda popular right now.

I'm *definately* no economist, but it seems like if you just invent reasons for L$ to be scarce, then you're saying the value is completely arbitrary. If its so arbitray, then why do you care that it's not worth much in terms of US$?

Not to mention that nobody have enough confidence in the Linden's day to day stability to keep the value up!