Town Meeting Question left unanswered

At yesterdays town meeting, Misnomer asked the following question;

"we've talked about balance and taxes on the lower end of the economic model. What it the upper end. Aren’t there people who have money they cant spend or they will then go neg in taxes?"

The question was defered to after the meeting so as not to take up to much of everyones time. Mis, did Philip provide an answer? As I kinda sorta fall into this catagory, I'm interested in what he had to say.

I have money, but can't do anything because I'm already loosing money on tax day, I do not want to keep loosing money. As a lot of others are doing, I will start deleting items in World so my tax and stipend are the same. So I will continue to make more money, but it will not go back into the ecomomy because of tax.


-TK

Sorry Tracey! Hehe, I was not only there after the meeting for the conversation, but I was also the one who explained to Philip what our problem is with having too much money. After the explanation, his reply was that things will get better for the rich because taxes will fall. With lower taxes, we will save less money to pay off taxes on tax day, and we will be able to buy more objects/land to even out taxes and the amount of money we have/make/save.

As for when this is going to happen, I have no idea haha.

Thank you Dave, it sounds like they had no idea this was a problem. I'm glad someone took the time to fill them in. I SO want to built more stuff, but right now I'm being forced to delete what I have.....

Again, thanks


-TK

What would Second Life look like if everyone took down his or her builds and rezzed single, plain wood cubes in their places?

If the essential purposes of taxation are to prevent people from leaving junk builds around and to keep servers from being overly stressed with a high object load, I believe other solutions are warranted.

Clearly, the tax system seriously inhibits creativity by putting too much financial stress on the creator, and there is no doubt that many dreams go unrealized as a result. Those dreams that are realized often are never allowed to fully bloom in detail due to object limits.

If each server must have an object limit, would it be possible to assign one server per quarter sim instead of one per sim?

And could landowners police their own properties to keep junk in check?

Another possibility would be to have special "no-tax" sims governed by Lindens. There would be certain rules to be abided by, but there would be no taxes to pay.

If Linden Lab is relying on the current populous to build the world before they embark on a serious SL advertising campaign, one would think it would be in everyone's best interest to allow SLers to run with their dreams and reach their full potentials.

Then again, perhaps we could all just do away with our dreams and rez a plain wood cube as the only object on our land. It would cost only L$10 to rez and the taxes on it would be only L$1. Perhaps therein lies freedom from taxation and worldly material things.

Please don't misconstrue my intent. I love SL and the Lindens. But, clearly, there is a genuine problem here.

My plan may not be quite as eloquent as the eating of Irish babies or the dumping of tea, but I hope my point is well taken.

umm,

Remember this is a business and not our personal paradise. They have to make money or else it will all go away.

right now there are approx. 40 sims (more or less i don't remember)

so instead of 40 servers you want them to pay for 160 servers!?!?! Without creating more land? I highly doubt they could afford 2 servers per sim... but I will let them answer this if they wish.

JV

yes they (LL) speak of the possibility of owning all, taking over and being the one who does Philips review.

Under the current model this isnt possible unless you have a wildly successful business that will never lose its client base.

I used Yuniq as an example. She made a ton, fast. Had she purchased or built accordingly she would be taking it all down about now since her customer base dried up.

I'm looking forward to the ceiling being raised as as it is now there are limits to what one can do and not go neg.

Jonathan, you make a good point. And this is why I posed that idea as a question. Would it be possible to have more servers?

As far as SL being our personal paradise...well, it is...for many of us, anyway. There are many persons sharing our group delusion of paradise. And I make no argument about it being a business; it surely is as we well know since we pay for the service.

I hope there is a happy medium in there somewhere that taxes both users and providers as fairly as possible.

This is one area where the advancement of technology and the scalability of the system will really help. Newer servers, and sims, will probably be more capable of handling a lot of players without as much lag. Then the ability to rez lots of things can get cheaper, events can be bigger, etc.

Yes exactly, and they already said they will raise limits as the abilities are there. They said they will raise number of avs and objects in a sim at some point. I believe it was once Havok 2.0 goes in but i'm not sure. I know i've been in a sim with 40 people before They raised the limit for the Linden Appreciation event But man was that event Lagtastic.

JV

Great thread Tracey, I definatly feel your pain in much the same way. Spend and go broke in taxes. No spend and have a pile of cash with unrealized dreams of cool builds.

What really stinks is that RL interferres with LL too

Kinda a comparison of 2 company layouts would be a good place to start with how LL is to survive. (which I think they will anyway but)

Anyone remember Commodore?

To much product development and exec's dumping company $ into their pockets. Which lead to bankruptcy. That may not be a total full scenario but the gist of it.

They had a great product for it's time but no $ for marketing. In turn no customer base.

It ultimatly killed em.

Now look at the all too favorite $19.95 er advertisements you see on tv.

Some of those companies are makin a good revenue.
Why?
Good quality products?
Not likely.

So how can a company with junk for sale make a good profit?
Develop a product that is of just enough quality to satisfy at least over half the customer base.
Then market the heck out of it.

Not to mention if you can invent a product to make a lazy person lazier and price it with an easy to remember catchy price that has the illusion of being cheap.
Hence the $19.95 (sounds cheap like $19 but actually more like $20)
Then add to it this:
all this for 4 easy payments(in small letters) of $19.95 (in bold large letters)
And theyn the "just wait there's more!"

There is undoubtedly more to this than what im saying but the point is there.

LL is not a big coorporation. They were forced to start small.
I wish we could get a easier tax break in our virtual $ but it's LL RL $ at steak here.

They got a great product, with most likely a limit on resources that prevents them from making it very comfortable for us L$ wise.

Like the example of the overhead it would take to have more servers up for the same amount of land mass currently in the world.

But on a side note I definatly agree that something has to be balanced to make it so that "WE" users can help keep LL going strong and make things that will appeal to the masses when they try out SL. So that hopefully the customer base gets bigger faster and with a good quality of users.

If SL looked like a garbage pit. (not many great wonderous builds like the themed areas, Americana, Darkwood, Nexus, Darkwood, and the others that I didnt mention cuz I don't explore much) It would have 2 effects.

1) general quality of the type of new users would most likely suffer (quality meaning respectful and creative)

2) people wouldn't stay period and the customer base would put LL into a tail spin.

Now if builds like the themes were easier to maintain SL as a whole can and as it should market itself, and therefore survive, and possably flourish.

So in a nut shell I agree the Themes, the people with the money that can't spend it(that spent alot of time and effort to make SL look good and got L$ as a result). Can be less limited in terms of not being able to use what has been aquired.

Then SL can benifit more from the dedicated users, and possably gain some dedicated users to make SL get even further yet.

I bet there are some out there that don't go for financial gain in SL just for the simple reason that they can't use it.
Also just the same I bet there are those that have gotten much financial gain that are holding out in spending just to hope that they may be able to build their dreams in the future.

I hope that future isn't far off.