Pay per Poly - Natural Resource to stabilize Economy

I got to discussing my ideas about using a per/poly purchase idea for downloading models on a different thread, but it got me thinking about the virtual economy in general, and thought about how the dollar became attached to gold in Fort Knox for stabilization.
If land was a "natural resource", you could have a poly count that could be attached to the land. You would have to purchase to "dig up" this natural resource, but no more than the max the land would allow <a constant per square> that could only be "dug up/purchased" by the owner. Call it mineral rights, if you will. The polys could be traded for cash or goods or remade into new objects. Even if you didn't allow for new geometry to be imported by being purchased/converted from your poly stockpiles count you could have the same concept with primitives.
Only so many primitives made from a plot of land could be "made/purchased" by the owner. This would make more money for SL but keep the poly counts down to a reasonable/predictable amount.
This way the economy is directly tied to an actual limited resource... the speed at which computers can display polys.

/108/a5/82919/3.html#post963460

-Bastage Beeks (Newbie Extrordinaire)

Um, that's called a "prim quota", and it's already in there.

There's PARROTS underground? I thought those were gophers.



P2

I think what he's saying is that he could sell his "prim quota" for a cheeseburger or something (not the same as renting the land). I'm not entirely sure.

What I'm suggesting is that each person who owns land should be given or allowed to buy a certain amount of polygons that can be used for building. You can sell, buy or trade objects with a value based on how many polygons are used to make it. If somebody wanted to turn those polygons from a miniskirt into a cheeseburger, than they could do it. If somebody buys your land from you, you can keep the "minearl rights" and thus retain the potential polygons that you can buy. I think there should be a max amount tied to the land. If you sell the "mineral rights" along with the property then what has not been "used up" by being purchased from the landowner could be transferred over to the buyer. It doesn't actually take anything out of the ground or use polygons from the land, it is just a concept that givesvalue to something more solid. Since the amount of polygons that can be displayed is taxing on the machines displaying them, it helps keep a limit on the amount that is used in game. A total amount set by the Linden Lab that meets the specs at which the minimum requirements of a machine can display. The Linden Dollar should be viewed in terms of the amount of polgons in the game. As people want to build things they will need to break them down, or be very efficient at building them. As the total polygons in the game reaches the max then its value will go up and people will be willing to pay more for polygons owned by other SL citizens if they want something built.

The idea of putting value to money means it needs to be tied to something of actual value. Some limited resource. In reality the only limited resources of a game are the machines displaying the content (the minimum hardware requirements). The number of Polygons are directly tied to this. If you see the way the US dollar was meant to be given value, it used that same concept, until later abused by the Federal Govt. Here is an excerpt and link from "How Stuff Works" about the Gold Standard. Maybe then you'll see the relevance of my idea.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/currency7.htm

The Gold Standard

"The complex mechanisms of the modern world depend as certainly on the faith in money as the structures of the medieval world depended upon faith in God."
- Lewis H. Lapham, author and editor

One of the long-standing myths about modern currency is that it is backed by the U.S. gold supply in Fort Knox. That is, you can trade your greenback dollars to the U.S. government for the equivalent amount of gold bullion at any time.

At one point, this was true of most paper currencies in the world. However, the U.S. took away the government backing of the dollar with an actual gold supply (known as leaving the gold standard) in 1971, and every major international currency has followed suit.

The obvious question is, "Without gold, what does guarantee the value of our money?" The answer is: nothing at all.

The only reason a dollar, or a franc, or a Euro has any value is because we have a stable system in which people are known to accept these pieces of paper in return for something valuable. Or, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman puts it, "the pieces of green paper have value because everybody thinks they have value."

......... Continued on site.
http://money.howstuffworks.com/currency7.htm

-Bastage Beeks

Prims ARE ALREADY tied to land. You must be new. Welcome to SL! Prims ARE ALREADY TIED TO LAND. Number of PRIMS relates to landm2. As in 512m2 land can have 117 prims. Need more prims = buy more land.

That's good to hear. I keep reading about all this yammering in the forums about how there's no stability in the economy and LL is just basically printing money. As a "Noob", it's hard to filter out what sort of comments are actually factually based. Thanks for the info.
-Bastage Beeks

anyone here ever heard of tringo? that's 10k. If i read this right, the original poster is suggesting exchanging prim for prim. If that became the case, you could just create the amount of prims equal to the amount in tringo, (about 100 something prims, you'd have to pay almost 100L for each prim) and get it. I know kermitt quirk, and i don't think he'd like getting something that would currently be worth not even 1L for his 10kL game. Also, tringo hosts (I'm just using tringo as an example... it was the first thing that came to mind) would have to pay for people to play tringo, reducing the amount of hosts dramatically. If I read it wrong, sorry, please disregard this post. If not, take this into consideration

Welcome to SL History:

In a far off galaxy... wait no... a long long time ago... yeah... LL use to change the userbase to rez prims (in L$). All was good for a while till the userbase revolted against the unjust taxes; in the only way they could think of, by thowing tea into the harbor.

And to this day, if you see any crates with the word "Tea" on the side in SL, they are from that time.

History has show, the userbase will not support taxes.

Aren't there already taxes on land, ect... ....
"a Land Use Fee proportional to the amount of land you own."

Fees for Buying L$
Buyers of currency will be charged a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction regardless of the amount purchased.

Fees for Selling L$
Sellers of currency will pay a fee of 3.5% per transaction. Proceeds will be credited to your US$ account balance.

Using Your US$ Balance to Pay Recurring Premium, Tier, or Island Billing
Any credit on your US$ account balance will automatically be applied to recurring premium, tier, and island fees when they become due.

Using Your US$ Balance to Pay Island Setup Fees
Any credit on your US$ account balance will automatically be applied to initial island fees.

Using Your US$ Balance to Pay Premium Upgrade Fees
Any credit on your US$ account balance will automatically be applied to premium upgrade fees.

Using Your US$ Balance to Pay for Linden Land Auctions
Any credit on your US$ account balance will automatically be applied to Linden land auction fees.

Fees for Processing US$ Transfer
Please see the schedule on this page.

Process for Requesting US$ Transfer
Use the "Withdraw Funds" link in the middle of the Your Account page or just click here.

So I don't quite get how the $L could be stable, if you can just buy $L.
That's like printing money right, because the money Linden Labs gets for it doesn't go into SL. Well, you could count every fee that you pay is like a tax to keep the Virtual World safe and running on the servers, but it doesn't account for the fact that if more and more $L is bought, then the value of $L will just keep going down. If money is tied to prims, then the value of your prims is going down with it.

So, can you buy prims or does it just come with land? Can you sell or trade prims? If not then it is not really tied to the money system like my Fort Knox Example, and thus there is no stability with $L because it's not tied to a true "limited natural resource". Hmm, if clothes and buildings and personal items are made from the limited amount of prims then sold for $L then it would be tied to $L.

The $L is not part of an independent world but directly relates to the $US Dollar. I guess you could sell your $L at any time for $US. This is all too confusing. Then it's treated like foreign currency. How does the value of $L get better? The more exchange of $L means the more demand on virtual prim objects sold, meaning, supply from competition must meet demand or the price will go up. Inflation.. making the $L worth less. If there is more competition, because there are goods people want, and more people start producing goods to "cash-in" on the need, then supply will be greater and we will have deflation, causing the value of $L to go up. I don't know if I confused you, but I confused myself. If more and more $US is spent on $L to get SL items then SL citizens get wealthier, but the $US money that goes to Linden Labs doesn't circulate in the SL community. When you buy $L from LL they are acting more like a bank exchanging $L for $US. If you buy $1000L for $3.87US but can only sell $1000L for $3.34 you just lost money from the exchange.
My brain just exploded.