Ideas for Stablizing the L$/US$ and Curbing Inflation

I agree with Gabe's comments, but I am also forced to consider the 'brute force stupidity' option.

Say, if the $L just 'got too low for it's own good', some person or automated mechanism would cut the supply, and send it back up.

Conversely, if it 'got too high', the floodgates would open and the $L would be dropped down.

No matter what the fundamentals are, doh, this works!

Exactly how it is done may not be all that critical: lowering stipends by 10%, or increased classified costs, or both, or what-have-you.

Before the doomsayers step in - if the Company really damages SL by doing so, you can bet they will try to correct such action quickly, and not let it spiral out of control. In their place, wouldn't you?




The only risk is that such a mechanism would be a great profit engine for anyone gaming the system.

In fact, even now, the tiny piece of information that the $L should remain stable, is enough to game the system. That means over the long run, there *will* be a curbing action. That information is worth money, and in fact, a lot of money.

This I don't understand. Spare on alphas?

Are you talking about the textures I've bought where the window (and sometimes more) are part of the wall? Or the Linden doors I sometimes use where you can see through the windows of the door?

Because if so, those things save on prims.

So - what are we supposed to do, save on prims or save on alphas?

coco

It's only worth money if you trust that that piece of information is reliable. I'm sure that LL *wants* a stable exchange rate (and they claim they want that rate to be L$250/US$), they just don't seem either (a) sufficiently motivated, or (b) capable of moderating this system in such a way that the risk in taking a stat arb position in L$ is anything more than a crap shoot.

I'm still of the mind that the exchange rate should be allowed to reach equilibrium before any more economy-affecting changes are implemented.

Save on prims and save on alphas... each time, where it's possible. Adding a surcharge for alpha (I don't know if 50% is reasonable, but the concept is) will give people an incentive to upload textures in 24-bit mode where they can... which would be good, because unnecessary alpha textures cause all kinds of problems in a build.

There's a lot of 32-bit textures with a completely blank alpha channel, 100% alpha across the board, because someone had their graphics software to save everything as alpha. I've had to download some, convert them to 24 bit, and upload them again (paying another L$10) because they were causing problems for me. I've seen the same textures in other people's builds with texture jittering problems as a result. If the original creator had to pay 25% or 50% more because they were uploading alpha textures instead of solid ones they wouldn't have done that, I'd have saved time, and the other builds would be higher quality.

The fact that LL would get a bit more money overall from all the textures that DO have to be alpha is just a bonus, in my opinion.

Heh, well, yeah. AND that information was in fact reliable, in addition to the trust...




Agreed, though if that equilibrium point turns out to be $L 5000 / USD, that would be a bit inconveniencing and confidence-shaking.

Though I don't think it's going to be anywhere near that bad, but... I don't have anything factual to base that on.

Yeah, but what if that exchange rate is equal to what LL is giving it out at? 2500 L$ * 100K people, or L$ 250,000,000 per year for **0** USD .. or basically the L$ is worthless?

You keep going on about the 500 per week stipend, which is meaningless. There's probably only 20K premium subscribers in SL anyways.

I like this pricing structure, Adam.

Also, in terms of premium services, I would pay to have more groups to accommodate land, business, and social task management, perhaps as a part of an overall profile enhancement package. Also, I would pay more to be able to have more than 40 avatars access my mainland sim at a time if I could do so selectively, during large events (perhaps a fine one could choose to pay to admit 10 or 20 more people with the understanding that one is paying for increased server burden?)

If the exchange rate drops to zero it means that (a) nobody is making anything worth buying, and/or (b) nobody has any confidence that SL is going to stick around past the next day. If one or both of these are true, then the L$ *should* be trading at close to zero.

As for the premium stipend being meaningless -- that's nonsense. It's a fundamental hypothesis within finance that if something is traded in two different places, the prices should move until they are equal. I can buy L$ through LindeX. I can buy L$ direct from LL by purchasing a premium account. It's not a huge leap of logic to say that the prices should move until they are (nearly -- I acknowledge the difference in mechanics of each purchase method) equal. Since LL doesn't seem keen to either change stipend levels or change their pricing, the LindeX exchange rate is moving to compensate.

You're on the right track Ricky, but your price is all wrong.. you can buy 2500 per year for 0 DOLLARS!!!

Who cares that you can buy 25K for 72$ (and probably most people elect the $9.99 / month) when you can get 2500 for 0 DOLLARS

You're worried about the 347 L$ / 1 USD price ..

I'm worried about the 347 L$ / 0 USD price!

!

The only real value to the $L is the person who see's its value. Otherwise, it means nothing to another.

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It yields 10$ per person per year.

It really is building on Ricky's hypothesis that the L$ will stabalize over a price that you can buy the L$ at. Agreed, you can buy 2500 L$ or 0 dollars (and about 100,000 people buy about 250 Millions L$ per year for 0 dollars)

So where does that leave us, Ricky?

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Well it yields 2500 (50L$ * 52 weeks) L$ per person per year. Think of it that way.. the exchange rate changes over time

Also, 250MM L$ is equal to about 1MM USD at 250 L$ / USD, btw

DOH! I coulda had a V8.

Decimal prob, my mini calc was dropping a zero. $L250,000,000 @ $L280/$ = $892,857

I hate to break it to you but WRONG ANSWER. ROFL! You've only got half the equation supply. Your IGNORING demand. As long as the demand for L at a point above 347L/$1 is greater than the supply of L at 347L/$1 the price for L will NOT stabilize at 347L/$1. Please factor in ALL the fundamentals... lol With your bad math the real value is 50L/$0. The value of the L is based on supply and demand and you can post your number till your face is as blue as this forum it won't make it happen until the demand for L is equal to the supply of L generated by yearly accts plus the supply generated by free accounts. Please return to basic economics. lol

ps whats in it for you to try to crash the market?

Yeah Ricky has a grudge, no doubt about that and so he's more of a half empty kind of guy around here.

But grudge or pessimism doesn't change the reality that a market will tend towards the lowest price you can get the goods for

And the lowest price for L$ is 0 per 50 L$, so we need to think about that.

1)Vanity Services -
Agree totally with having a fee for a name change, mainland sim namechange sounds like an awesome idea, additional profile/webspace would also be great.
2)Texture tax -
Another good idea but I agree with Adam's pricing scheme more. Also wouldn't mind seeing sound uploads broken down similarly.
3) Advanced Scripting
This one doesn't click to me. People can already circumvent these things, and do in most cases with multiple scripts... Basically this would tax people who are responsible enough to do things 'the right way' and pay for this service, and conversely be rewarding people for using the workarounds it is meant to overcome. I wouldn't be adverse to taxing scripting in other ways such as a tax based on how many total server cycles all your active scripts are using... or a tax for multiple scripts triggering rapidly via timers/sensors/ect.

I personally also wouldn't mind paying a tax to be able to use custom ground textures or to set the sun on my mainland parcel, perhaps a weekly tax to use the estate tools for a parcel, or a larger one-time fee to unlock them on your parcel that was reset/relocked upon resale of the land?

Persephone's idea to pay to allow more AV's into a mainland sim also sounds good. I think giving us things like this: the ability to pay to change AV names, mainland sim names, or other new features, with a moderate tax on them is nice as it doesn't mess with the existing functionality but adds new features which are also money sinks.

Then why is the land market above $1L/m? If it was as simple as you and rick say land should be going down to $1L/m

There is an infinite supply of 50$ stipends. I've never heard LL say "Ok no more free accounts"

However, they choke off the first land all the time.

Flipper I think your suggestions have a lot of merit. Vanity charges are a good idea... I think there would be a lot of people who would like to change their name, I'm sure many people pick something in a hurry when they create an account, and regret their choice later on. I'm sure married couples would love the ability to change to their partner's surname.
I really love the profile plus idea. I for one would pay to be able to expand on the information in my profile. Picks is not enough!
Another thing that I would like to see, is a second class of group, one more suited to business needs. LL could charge more for a 'company'. I would have no problem paying, for example, $500L, for a better business structure.

That would actually be L$2600 per year, not L$2500. Additionally, don't forget you only get the L$50 if you log in every week. I would posit that someone who logs in once a week is quite likely to purchase either a premium account or L$ for US$. Making the mental note to log in once per week just to get L$50 over the course of the year to make the equivalent of less that US$10 just doesn't seem like a realistic argument to me.

Fade, I love the business group idea! The ideas mentioned have all been pretty darn good and could stablize the L$ nicely until the point where we have the tools necessary to let it self-determine... or just start using a non-virtual currency, probably US$.

Regards,

-Flip

Loosely true but doesn't accurately reflect reality. Right now there is a finite amount of $50L stipends same next wk and the wk after that. As long as LL controls the number of free accounts per person and there is a reasonable demand for L the supply of free L should always be significantly smaller than the demand for L.