Land Prices, Please Clarify...

ok, I'm floating around the 1.2 build, and among the new "features" is that land will cost one dollar per square meter.

That SOUNDS good, but that's going to break the in-game economy even further, and anger current landowners!

As far as I know, LL will not be giving you a refund on the land you own now, to reflect current prices. So, if you own land you bought for 20,000, you can't get it back after 1.2. It's gone. You can't even release it and get the NEW price back... it's just vaporized.

I rarely buy user-made objects. I'm a creator, not a consumer. My money originally went into paying for land taxes, paying for prims, and paying for purchasing of land.

With 1.2, these options are gone.

I can buy up to my maximum allotment of land, 4096 meters, for a paltry 4096 dollars now. That leaves me with tens of thousands sitting in the bank, with nothing to use it on.

Now think about this... I'm not rich, by any means, but I have quite a bit of money saved up, "just in case". Now, there IS no "just in case".

Combine this with whatever stipend I'm going to get in 1.2, and I'm going to get progressively richer each month.

If I'M getting richer, and everyone ELSE is getting richer... the value of the Linden dollar will plummet. Why charge ten dollars for a shirt when all of your potential customers have 1 million Lindenbucks in their account? Charge 100. Or 1000. Hell, I bet even 10,000 for a shirt will be easy to see within a few months.

Some people are saying that you could just put it into extra land, and that will keep inflation down... ok, it will, but then we start ALL over again with land shortages. If we ALL have 1 million dollars, and we're ALL getting 50,000 a month easy in linden bucks, then we ALL can buy a sim. No problemo! And suddenly, we have another Sim shortage, and the lindens aren't any better because of it.

And that's best-case-scenario. I have no need for more than my "guaranteed" allotment of land, so I can sit pretty on my increasing linden dollar account. I'll be a millionaire in about 4 months due to my stipend (even if they cut it down by whatever amount they're going to).

So, please clarify. What need do we have for linden bucks anymore?

I can't use it for prims, I can't use it to buy land, I can't use it to pay taxes. I'll be the richest architect ever

PLease clarify.

LF

I'm hoping that the money becomes useful for larger things. Perhaps groups can invest in large projects that require paying for talent, labor, land, services, etc? For instance, what if there were a project to make a huge beautiful Forest Sim that requires 4 fulltime caretakers? Or an amusement park notches above everthing done so far - where every single item you can touch does something magical - requiring 3 fulltime scriptors, 10 builders, an administrator, etc?

What about setting up a grant system for promising projects - especially those by newbies? I remember that was tried before and produced some great builds, though there were not enough people who could afford the time to do the process more than a few times. Perhaps there should be a fulltime board for that grant system?

Hmmm. I think I could find many ways for a clever person(s) to spend a LOT of money making this an absolutely stunning planet.

It's not really a question of how much money. It really comes down to WHERE the money is.

Uh... got too much money? Give it to me!

Pray tell, where exactly is this L$50k a month coming from, hmmm? It SURE as hell isn't coming from the new tourist class with their L$50 a month. And I can almost garauntee that I'm gonna be mostly broke due to sound/texture uploads.

Please, tell us your 50k a month secret.

Nice rant!

I agree that there is very little to worry about as far as having too much money. There are some very strong money sinks:

- You can cash out L$ for USD
- You can put your L$ towards more land allotment at a 2000:1 LD:USD ratio.
- Land auctions will sink money out of the economy in proportion to the L$'s relative value

Don't forget, you can always reward other (poorer) players by granting money to fund their projects, events, etc. if you're feeling guilty about getting too much cash =)

I think Philip Linden answered it in another thread...

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?
s=&postid=59518

Where has this been said? From what I can see, this has been opposed by the multitude of posts by Cory and Philip, at least, as being part of SL itself.

If you use eBay or GOM or whatnot, that's entirely different.

Actually, I think they're making it so it's one way. IE, you spend a year in SL, and want to "cash out", so to speak. So you'd call up LL and say "I have X dollars in my linden account... can I get Y US dollars to convert it?"

What WONT be happening (at least not yet) is the reverse... marching up to linden labs and saying "I have Y amount of US Dollars, can I buy Z amount of linden dollars?)

The upside is twofold: one is that money gets sucked out of the in-world economy faster, keeping inflation down, and two is that you can make money playing SL

I don't have a problem with that at all.

Also, thanks to Hank for posting Philip's response. That's a relief. The Linden guys in the 1.2 preview thing didn't know alot about the economy.

LF