What is a Lindenbuk REALLY worth?

If you sell something for L$100 each, and you have an infinite supply of them, then your inventory is worth L$infinity. That's easy to tax - L$infinity divided by the exchange rate = US$infinity, and times that by whatever tax rate you pay, you owe the government US$infinity.

In other words -- How much do you earn? Send it in.



-Atashi

For sure value is relative to many things. In the desert, the tumbleweeds are free (other than the time taken to gather them). For someone elsewhere in the world (and an avid tumbleweed collector) they may well have a much higher value.

However saying that "market value" is a fiction is not correct. Market value is simply the median value that people in a particular group are prepared to pay. Now that group may be 1 person or it may be 1000 people. It depends what viewpoint (or segmentation) you apply the market. Marketeers and economists get paid a lot to study such things.

Neither is it correct to say that there MUST be quantitative differences in personal values. That is only true in the case of arbitrage. Normal economic transactions (work for money, money for goods/services do not require that there be any quantitative difference.

To a land baron, 1 $L is worth very little, to a newbie with no $L and wants to buy their first dress it's worth a lot!

1. The same as any other currency not backed up by real assets: intrinsically zero.
2. Nope, just pp

So since the USD is not backed by any real assets, please feel free to send your worthless dollars to me in a large unmarked envelope. I'll be sure to give them a good home

The current situation relating to the US dollar against many other major currencies has the potential of showing some folk just how "much" or "little" the dollar is really worth in terms of having fungible value purchasing goods and services. In my country (UK) folk are starting to organise shopping tours to New York because the £sterling is currently fairly strong.

And more to the point of this thread the poster who commented a currency is worth what a broad consensus of people value it at are rapidly being proved correct.

However although I can see the broad advantage of the Linden dollar as a type of micro currency to pay for in game goods and services, I am also a little concerned about the potential for fraud, indeed if Linden Labs was based in the UK rather than the US I would not be writing about this on a semi public BB, but rather writing or talking to other authorities.

I have no problem with folk using the Linden (as perhaps it was designed) to pay for in game micro services, which includes land and other virtual goods and services but I could have an issue with it when it passes into real life financial services. For example on a visit to the in game stock market recently (WSE) I see yet another "virtual bank" (Midas) has gone bankrupt. Following on from the Ginko bungle this was almost certainly another disaster waiting to occur.

It does concern me when good hearted folk loose real life cash sums from speculating in these virtual experiments, indeed I was aware some people lost thousands of real life US dollars following on from Ginko, and on the basis of reasonable possibility a similar situation may apply to ex-Midas clients.

These types of issues could threaten the emergence of all virtual worlds, in fact it is just as bad if not worse than the gaming issue, as I think the US authorities (sooner or later) are almost certain to investigate. Indeed there is a tangible risk vis-à-vis money laundering and crime to say the least, and that's before anyone considers legislation on first life financial services.

I think Linden Labs should pre-empt this by acting now to ban ALL first and second life financial services using Second Life to promote business, unless they possess the equivalent first life authorisation.

Finally I am not against the use of the Linden dollar to pay for in game/platform virtual goods and services, neither am I against folk partnering up to create and sell things. It is just that I would like to see the Linden dollar being used for what it was perhaps designed for, (an in game micro currency) rather than a substitute for good real life advice. And (at present) virtual worlds should be fun to visit rather than a 3D advertising platform, unless the commercial organisation offers something in 3D that cannot be easily duplicated on a standard web page.

Just a personal view folks

/me points out the difference between intrinsic value and fiduciary value

(felt like being a wise-ass ;D)

ps: I have no dollars, I sold all my US currency and assets before the recent downward trend