Is it time to End the 10% group tier bonus

In the past LL proposed a 10% tier bonus to grouped land to give players incentive to work together on group projects. This 10% instead was first taken advantage of by land traders like myself. Eventually various tier skimming operations, which are not entirely disimilar to pyramid scheme or magical offshore bank accounting, have emerged as another form of exploitation of this bonus. Also, end users often sign up 3 accounts to simulate a group and take this 10% bonus in individual private projects. But the intended user of this feature never exploited it - the anonymity and strangeness of the internet made it difficult for most players to find the trust to use this tool effectively.

Tier donation is underused and unusable by endusers, as established in an insightful query by random unsung aka profoky neva over here. regressive tier leveraging, how his own business predominantly operates, and how player "communes" operate, are the method of choice due to the advantages described here. furthermore with the benefits of island sims, more group projects are moving to the off grid tier leveraged model with it's array of advantages: point to point teleportation, land controls for members, custom ground textures, infinite terraformability, lag reduction, an risk free ease of employing officers.

thus the group tier bonus is nothing more than a government subsidy to land traders, tier skimmers, and private residents, and not used for the socially constructive and world building goal it was intended. it is a clear example of socialism gone wrong when a system to enable small tier users is abused by the affluent to use on 5 sim tiers to leverage another half sim to further monopolize the resale and rental economy of sl. this 10% bonus does not come free but is but is subsidized by all players of sl who are NOT USING GROUPED LAND.

please end the LL sanctioned exploitation of the common player. let the free market reign.

post this to the linden hotline maybe

Could not agree more.

End LL's subsidation of Land Barony.

Av Power!!!

Robin Linden said it is hardly ever used. Go and read the hotline.

I don't see it as a subsidy, but an incentive. It provides those willing to bother with land in groups -- which is risky and cumbersome -- with some little extra bonus.

It's odd that more groups don't use it more often.

10 percent doesn't really help land barons much, they are helped more by bulk discount.

It's a good incentive for groups to cooperate -- an extra 1024 for a 10k plus coverage of land in a group is 234 prims.

Jauani's raising of this issue at this juncture is only suspect because it grows out of other disputes about tier donations. He's just stirring the pot.

10% doesn't really help land barons? i don't believe that you are that ignorant of simple math. stop purposely misleading people with your empty rhetoric. 10% tier bonus is essentially a further discount on regressive tier. instead of the prime rate of 336 m2/USD you recieve 369 m2/USD. this is compared to the 102 m2/USD a bottom tier player gets. it's not about what it amounts to, it's about operating cost.

it's not odd players don't use it. it's not useful for them compared to their other options. what's odd is that you listed those disadvantages yourself and don't seem to account for your own findings.

why should everyone subsidize people grouping land with 10% more resources? is prokofy neva afraid of the free market? does prokofy neva favour bolshevik style communism of the most pernicious kind which uses the hard work of the people to create palaces for the despotic rulers of its "tier nation"???

i'll be back in two weeks prok. i hope when i return you have come to your senses and quit serving your anti-competition, anti-freemarket secret communist coup of sl.

Jauani Wu]


10 percent of 10,000 is 1,000. Like I said, it's 234 extra prims on a 1024 in something a little more than 1/8 of a sim. Not that big a deal. If you have 100,000, it's 10k, and that's fine, but sometimes a group doesn't even need that much land. 100,000 is almost 2 sims --not everyone would carry that in order to get 10k extra land. Remember, we're talking about groups who want to cooperate on one sim or part of a sim. They're 1024 tier donation is 10 m2 bonus then.[/QUOTE]



It's about operating cost when viewed from the perspective of huge amounts of land in a land baron operation. But in a smaller operation it doesn't show up as much, especially not in small groups of people on a sim. So if the point is that land barons benefit from this to pass on the benefit to groups, well, whatever, but...as Robin pointed out, this doesn't get used much. Odd, eh? If what you say is true.

I really don't get your point about my "findings".



Um, has Jauani Wu been hanging out in Nberg too much? I didn't invent the 10 percent discount, I just took advantage of its incentive. I didn't get the huge tier discounts for months because I didn't have enough land to get them, as I've explained to you in detail before, I had my tier bills staggered over accounts so that I actually ended up not saving by stacking it all on one account -- which is what barons do because it gets them bulk discount and the best operating costs. But sometimes what people want is flexibility and the ability to move and cut tier when they have to, and cut losses quickly without riding around with paid tier for a month and the only way to fill it going to the auction yet again to stack up on Linden land that ain't going to sell in this climate.

I don't have a Marxist ideology of scarcity, so I don't believe that if the Lindens give me and my group 10 percent discount, I've stolen something from someone else. After all, they can open 2 accounts or find 2 friends and get the same damn thing -- unlike Nberg which was a one-off gift.

I don't have any palaces. In fact, I don't even have a home. It's funny, but even when someone gave me a home recently *cough*, I put it up for rent because I need the income to cover costs in my business. All I have is a giant cactus which I commissioned Satu Moreau to build in Ak'sha. I never even get a chance to go and chill there because I'm too busy.

For the life of me, I don't see how the Linden's 10 percent incentive comes off the backs of the hard-working people. Hard working programmers paid princely sums? Huh? Certainl no player is harmed by the Lindens creating an incentive, any more than players are harmed as a whole by players getting dwelloper awards or even the $500 stipend.

This sounds like the old Soviet anecdote. When a Soviet hears that his neighbour has a cow, and he doesn't have one, he says "take away that neighbour's cow" or even "kill that cow, because I don't have one." Spite, envy. An American hears that a neighbour has a cow, and he doesn't have one, he says, oh, I want to keep up with the Jones, I want a cow, too, I'm going to work hard and get a cow. The work ethic and valuation for work.



Huh? I'm going to go on with "tier nation," Jauani, my tenants and I seem to find it works. It's no big money maker and here I am buying a threatened view again tonight with some waterfront going up for sale near a store, but what can you do. It's Second Life.

for the record i think keeping the 10% group bonus is a good idea. but i think getting the linden stand on it is useful.

When our Codas group was actively buying land in Zoe, the 10% bonus was very useful. There were only 4 or 5 of us contributing tier, and the 10% helped with our projects a great deal. However, I don't see why there needs to be unlimited tier bonus for groups. If a group could get up to 10% of a sim bonus, that would be enough for any significant group projects, and would limit the regressively compounding advantage that land barons use to subsidize their business. Of course barons could game that by creating yet more groups... I do agree that the feature is more often abused than used, so it could probably be done away with and replaced with some other motivator to encourage group projects.

I have used the 10% bonus tier since it's inception.....for group projects.

I have never taken advantage of it for land barony, all land I sell is in my own name.

While it probably is not used as often as it was intended, I know quite a few people who would suffer because of its removal.

I vote that we keep the current 10% bonus tier.

(Sorry J)

You know, the moment I hear a tirade based on 'free market', or some other propaganda buzzword, it get a little more tired.

I use the 10% tier for my family, and enjoy the benifits it allows. Did I use it the way it was invented to be? Have no idea: No one told me there was an intent. I just wanted my family and friends to be able to control the land like myself.

The 10% bonus was a nice plus.

I'm afraid, though, that I will always be wary of people yelling that something must be 'done away with'... The mentality seems to be that if something is not serving the paticular person, then it should not be allowed.

Seems a bit myoptic to me.

Anyway, what do I know. I'm a fool.

Later all...

Schwanson,

Most people who sell land unless they are the very top barons are going to sell land in their own name so they can keep the proceeds. Otherwise, the sale dollars circulate equally to all the members of a group. If a group is joined together of like mind and working on a project, they won't care if a sale proceeds go to 10 people distributed equallly.

What some with land groups do is hold land in a group until they sell it, it then means they have less tier to pay. While you may not wish to *hold* your land as distinct from *selling* you land from a group, it's something others find useful and it eases the high cost of doing business -- a cost that quite a few older players cushioned for themselves by having 4096 free tier and years of ratings stipends and ease of educational grants.

So for a rentals land group, it is useful because you are not selling the land, and it enables you usually to buy views or get prims. That would be the main reason to be picking up the extra land a group on a sim would have.

But if they are in the land group for the purpose of renting or vending, it isn't fair or normal that the group founder who bought the land and paid for it has to share the proceeds of a sale to the entire group.

Schwanson, I don't see the need for positioning oneself altruistically in the community and making it seem like keeping land in a group for sales and getting 10 percent is somehow "suspect" (implying that's why "the better people" don't do it) but using it for group projects of a non-profit or charitable bent is "Ok".

10 percent is 10 percent -- it's meant to stimulate activity. If someone finds it an incentive to form a group and help people suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, that's great. If people find it an incentive to run a business in SL for themselves or their group, that's great too. There's no need to beat up on those who have commercial aims in this game because they are what create the economy, give it drive, and give it value. Not everything can be just one big socialist theme park with only a few oligarches running businesses that suit them.

I find it odd to propose to eliminating this because it only feeds the anti-baron frenzy. I imagine some will find that 10 percent bonuses most benefit those who keep land and rent it rather than sell it, so they'll start up the cry against it mainly to attack that sector.

Yet barons need to pause for a moment and think if a rentals agent got an extra 1000 or 5000 here or there, it was used *to buy their land with*. And the result was to give tenants *more prims*.

Again, it was Robin Linden herself who said people don't use this much. It's too risky and complicated sometimes making land groups.

Any clamoring to get rid of this 10 percent bonus must be seen in the context of the anit-business climate that often waxes very vigorous in this game, and part of the anti-land baron sentiment pumped by a small but vocal minoriy.

It's an incentive, not a subsidy. Subsidies of stipends to individual players are used by consumers and that stimulates the economy. The 10 percent bonus works this way, too.

If the Lindens remove the 10 percent bonus, it isn't going to stop major land barons, so it won't have that desired effect. It will likely most harm the smaller barons who are important to make the market more flexible and liquid and customer-service oriented and who constitute an important competition to the larger barons. It will harm artists or non-profit workers or educators who wish to get some ease from the burden of tier. So please leave it alone.

ummmm....I said I wanted it to remain.



I never said, nor meant to imply I was better by not using the group 10% for land sales. Perhaps I should consult with the top barons, see what I have been doing wrong.

I *think* we stand on the same side on this issue.

I am scared. Really scared.

I'm well aware that you said you wanted to keep the 10 percent.

But first, to be on the safe side? In the reputation-enhancement game? you positioned yourself as indicating that for altruistic reasons, you never use the 10 percent option on your land. Just to make sure that we could all see that you had the "right" position fitting with the anti-land-baron position even as you yourself deal in land.

You don't use it...why? Because you don't like to get 10 percent extra land? Because you sell your land-flips so fast it's just more advantageous to keep them in your own name? Because you have so much land that 10 percent more just doesn't make any difference?

There can be all sorts of reasons that people use or don't use the 10 percent option so I want it to be crystal-clear that no moral opprobrium attaches to those who *do* use it, and that no celebration attaches to those who do *not* use it, such as to start the latest forum witch-hunt.

It was put in as incentive. Let it be an incentive. It isn't used much. So it can't possibly "take away" from people as any might imagine. The Lindens might re-think it and decide to punish all those who had 10 percent discounts on their land group in order to satisfy the latest forum feeding frenzy (just started with this thread). Whatever. I for one will continue to walk around the robots.

Perhaps we *are* on the same side of the issue, but possibly if some can position this matter to be about "let's stop the Prokofy Neva rentals group subsidy now!* they'll shoot themselves in the foot over it and prevent even themselves and their friends from getting a bonus even when they do non-profit projects.

***sigh***
Here we go again....
This is the point in the thread you usually start to loose me.


Perhaps I was just stating how I use my group land. Something I thought relevant when discussing the elimination of the group tier.

You try to read into everything I say, accusing me of alterior motives.
Reputation enhancement? Altruisms? Anti-Baron? "right" Position?
To those statements I have a two word reply: Koo Koo



All of the above, coupled with laziness.
There was one time where I could have grouped all my land and saved $100 off tier. If I would have realized that prior to purchasing the plot that put me over tier, I would have grouped everything. Hind sight is always 20/20.



Its 10% free tier for grouping the land, not baby killing. I do not see any moral issues with using it however the system allows.

I will refrain from replying on this post further, as I feel I have added all that I can to the topic.

(Unless the need arises for a funny picture)

You try to read into everything I say, accusing me of alterior motives.
Reputation enhancement? Altruisms? Anti-Baron? "right" Position?
To those statements I have a two word reply: Koo Koo

No, because you're a public figure. Why would an important public figure, running a non-profit newbie welcoming project, and maintaining a thriving clubs-land sales-island rentals business NOT use the 10 percent land bonus? These questions have to be asked? Why? Why would they go out of their way to make a statement that they don't, just when some OTHER land baron was positioning himself to declare a pox on the 10 percent land bonus?

Could it be the 10 percent land bonus just isn't much good to everybody buying up private islands *cough*? And could that mean that they can appear to be distancing themselves from ebil land barons who *do* get the 10 percent bonus -- except it's not really so much of an advantage to the really biggest land barons, it's more of an advantage to midbie land barons?

I just feel it's important to raise these issues and to get some fresh impressions about these matters.

In this world, public figures with econonomic interests constantly posture on the forums and try to rock the economy in their favour. And that's why it's important, in the modicum of free press we have here, to examine motives, to ask questions of powerful public figures, and to try to determine what's up.

The metagame of reputation enhancement is one of the most fascinating but insidious features of this game. The feature is in part reflected in the actual pos/neg rate system but features much more prominently in all those other hand-to-see features like --

o how many Linden calling cards I have and how many Lindens will TP me places
o how many Lindens I talk to per week on the telephone
o how many Lindens I talk to in game
o how many people I get to my lot whether or not it shows up on the leader list
o how many game features I can get tweaked in secret or in public

etc.

So when even just a silly forums blah-blah about dumping a 10 percent feature that is an economc interest reflected in RL dollars, it's highly appropriate to give that a second look, especially if we see powerful figures grouping around this issue pro and con for whatever reasons that still remain unfathomable to some.




Yeah, I know you bought that snow in the aptly-named Ohno, too, Schwan, we all make mistakes. Yes, I have that same problem. I forget to consolidate or fail to see I could be consolidating things because I'm just not that much of a shrewed "land baron," either Schwanson.



Thank you for making that explicit.



I think it's good you've faciley dissassociated yourself from the anti-land-baron shtick while still handily positioning yourself just in case to jump the other way. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stay four-square FOR the 10 percent bonus BY USING IT.

I have no idea why someone's starting to detest something that's actually GOOD in SL. Land tiers are NOT cheap, and that 10% bonus is a nice possibility. I and 2 friends have group land, and we're happy for the 10% bonus. Even if we don't use the prims, it's nice to secure the view a bit more easily, etc.

Next we'll have someone actually ranting for RAISING taxes! How dumb, lol.

I don't have any idea either. So I try to figure out "what's up" -- I've come to grow utterly cynical about what happens on these forums and why people post and how they AR one another in this elaborate game that seems to be the real game behind SL.

I think it's a posturing in the reputation enhancement-game myself. It's a case of trying to get the "pulse of the people" which is always about "hating them ebil land baronz" so they think (that the people buy from them never fazes them). So they can posture and look like they are --

1. Helping Lindens. Lindens are good people who shouldn't be giving away so much land for free! So help Lindens! Make them give away less land!

2. Helping private island dealers. When you buy a private island, you buy a private island. It's all one piece. You're not going to need to buy 10 percent of a neighbouring sim to preserve the view or get a prim, *you're already there*. So you don't really need the 10 percent thing to get prims and views once you deal in islands. Of course, I'm imaging that tier levels still benefit from a ten percent bonus, but I'm thinking not much if one full tier level of $195 gets one island. So you buy X number of islands, and the Lindens throw in one free or something. That's a transaction you work out with them privately, perhaps, so you don't need the game's automatic 10 percent handout.

3. The one thing that makes the land group on the mainland still a competition to you, as a private island dealer glutting the market with cheap land that even undercuts your own land is that 10 percent in a big land group that enables you to buy 10 percent on the mainland -- because you can't buy 10 percent of a private sim! They don't come apart!

4. Dumping 10 percent doesn't do much for helping land barons at the mega level, and we see that groups don't seem to get it together to donate tier and do projects without a lot of hand-holding, so the 10 percent could only benefit groups of strangers in a large tenants groups -- and by God, if that business appeared as a sector of any size, even a small size, it just makes the pie less big to share, eh? And it needs to be *crushed*.

5. Joining on a band-wagon to look like you love Lindens and care about their bottom line, you love people who hate land barons and you want them to get rid of this ebil subsidy of land barons is a win-win. You look good, they look good. The handful of friends with little projects who got dinged over your campaigning against the 10 percent won't care, especially if they are already by now on a private island *where the 10 percent bonus means nothing to them because there's nothing more for them to buy, they're already on all they can hold anyway and can't get 10 percent of another island that isn't divisible using their own tier levels from the island dealers or from the LL.*

Call me paranoid, but I see what's up with this. It's a self-serving campaign for some, which I think a few just took up to be persnickety and argumentative. It's a clannish economic self-interest at work -- but what else is new about SL?

If it isn't any of these things, so what? The goal has been achieved. The Lindens hadn't bothered with it. Now they will. When Lindens focus on something, more often than not, they eliminate it (subsidies) or do it but make it expensive (classified listings, but for $250).

Strike another blow for economic freedom bleh.

hahahah, Jauani. How about instead of asking them to remove the one useful thing they managed to do, we inspire them to actually make the group code functional? Wouldn't it be cool if groups actually worked how they were supposed to, bringing together people from different parts of the game to work together toward a common goal?

Prof, personally I believe you are brilliant - and I have said so on other threads. Which is why I am suspicious of this statement of yours - I know that you're way smarter than that - these land barons who use groups to sell land populate the groups with 2 of their Alts, thereby getting 100% of the proceeds.

Your logic here just seems way too simplistic to be taken at face value, at least for me. Nothing personal.

He he... well, Zonax, probably not. In this research poll, /120/73/45852/1.html I probed the issue by asking how the SL community felt about a sales tax. It was heartly rejected. Overwhelmingly rejected. It would be highly unlikely LL would impose a new tax with such overwhelming objections.

looks like our favourite highly toxic polluant still lay in the forum

Oh, of course. We've seen some land barons that have groups of 3 people to hold the group and the 2 are their alts, that's normal. And legal.

Schwanson made an elaborate gesture of saying he doesn't do that -- for some reason. We can take it at face value.

But Jamie, you're smart yourself, so please look carefully at what I said this is about:

PRIVATE ISLANDS

10 percent bonus in your land group on one single private island, with yourself, your alts, or your tenants, at the $195 tier level, does you NO GOOD ON THE ISLAND. You're already on a limited, demarcated island with nothing next to it.

Now, you could apply your land 10 percent to something on the mainland. But why would you? You're in the island business now. So...apply it to um...10 percent on the next island you get? But you cannot buy PART of an island, Jamie, you can only get THE WHOLE island.

So...you need to tier up and buy THE NEXT island. Geez, now you have even more bonuses if you stuck all that land in one group but...not enough to do much except buy that old laggie Purina on the mainland, hmm?

So only at the really high purchase end will you get an entire extra island thrown in for your troubles. And you can work that out with the Lindens, and the Lindens can just make it work that way for those exclusive high purchase -- buy 20, get one free or whatever. They don't need an automatic game mechanism.

So the 10 percent bonus is *not needed* buy island traders and, feeling no need for it now suddenly in their island paradises, they can *afford to dump on it and look good and distract everybody from land baron hate*.

I think they are the brilliant ones, not me.

All I do, on the mainland in my tenants' group, is get 10 percent bonus to buy...um...let's see...was it 1024 here? 20k tops completely? But for what? Most cases it is like the $16,000 2048 m2 purchase I hurriedly made last night of a waterfront right smack in the middle of 4 of my existing tenants or open rentals, that if I didn't buy, might get taken by a club or a store or a box. So there goes $16,000 and 2048 of my big 10 percent bonus if I ever had that much.

Honestly, the 10 percent bonus and its reduction of operating costs is a great thing, but not a grand thing. And those who'd like to dump it have ever reason to dump it now and look good, and give an extra kick in the pants to those who decided to stay on the mainland and tough it out, since they do in theory at least still constitute a competition of at least the mild sort.

I dont care if land barons get some gain out of it or not. My group throws in their tier so we can own a kool place to have fun in. And the 10 percent helps quite a bit when your group owns 18000 meters of land. If your savvy enough to make some gain utilising the tools available to you, including 10 percent group land discounts, well cheers to you. If your one of the few who have a group of people who actually make joint ownership work, good for you as well. Dont mess with my gameplay and cost me more money then Im already spending by making me tier up a notch just so land barons with alts cant turn a better profit. Leave our ten percent group discount alone.

Absolutely.

What a brilliant post. It could only have been made by someone with great intelligence and a familiarity with the current system. Thank you for taking the time.

The question is, does the Linden Corporatist Oligarchy have interest in making reforms to the system? It is rife with inequity, yet on and on it goes with hardly an effort made to acknowledge let alone fix the problems.

~Ulrika~

Geez, that's just a tongue-in-cheek satire and you're taking it literally LOL. Well, whatever. I don't see any exploited common players anywhere. How can they be exploited when nothing has been taken from them? I see people who have gotten some incentives to take on more than they would have normally in this game -- businesses and group projects, and thus not only enhance Linden Labs' bottom line but help them create more viable sims. But...that wouldn't be a goal of yours? You'd have "socialist competition" methods to um stimulate growth?

Bleh.



What a brilliant post. It could only be made by someone who is a socialist with first a subsidized mainland sim, then a private island where a 10 percent bonus does no good



Um, I think the Running Capitalist Dog who replied to me in the forum said that not many people used it, they weren't sure why, and I guess they were taking a look at it.

But, hey, help them along in that process why don't you! Help destroy not only my business, but loads of non-profit groups on the mainland that aren't on private islands People on private islands don't care about the 10 percent because it does them no good. But it does some good for the others and the might um cough compete with your idea with businesses? Or nonprofits that met costs betters than yours?

bleh.

Ugh.

My cynicism is complete. Yet another example of someone mounting a fake public interest discussion which is only putting peas in their own pot, and helping to destroy someone else's business or project who they find to be a disliked competitor.

Work at it a bit harder, Ulrika, and see if you can get me not only banned for disagreeing with you, but permanently banned forever so as not even to be able to post advertisements for my business. Nice, eh?