Pitch to Linden Lab regarding Estate management.

Give management to the people.

I’ve been thinking about this for months now. What I am suggesting here is pre-blue print. There are probably more holes in this idea than a buck shot through a paper towel, but surely someone smarter than I could refine this idea, patch the holes, and maybe even make this actually work?

My idea is based on the fact the LL could never support, customer service wise, an all out mainland grid, assuming that is the direction they are slowly taking (the idea being that THEY replace today’s estate managers to flow all profits directly to the company and cut out the Land Barron middle men/women - which many believe that they are doing).

So why not go in the other direction. Why not enhance the estate land process to provide more protection for Estate Land Residents. Let’s say, automatic monthly tier billing, managed through the About Land interface, where Lindens are sent directly to the estate owners account. Then, an estate owner could not just boot or reclaim land from that person, as long as monthly payments continue. In order to reclaim land, the only courses of action would be a resolution dispute (where an estate owner would have to prove covenant violations – with covenant changes only be allowable upon a vacant parcel). The other course of action of reclaiming land would be a refund from the estate owner to the resident (through the About Land interface) of the recorded sale price (which would adjust with land market inflation/deflation perhaps), and then perhaps that resident would get 15 – 30 days before the land could be reclaimed from them.

And lets say that LL provided TRUE open spaces sims where estate owners could connect pure water sims, at say $20 a pop in tier, with 200-500 prim allotments, which would allow for people to connect their estates together to give private estates a mainland like feel. Estate owners would then have more flexibility through the Land Portal to move around their estates like a jig saw puzzle as they see fit.

This whole concept (with lots of flaws that would need to be worked out) would alleviate the inevitable excessive Customer Service increases to the LL workforce, and also allow for a more natural growth in LL based on true supply and demand, and remove the artificial land market control LL has now - to some extent anyway. Maybe even do away with Mainland, and allow Estate land to become the “new” Mainland.

Is this idea even remotely viable, and is it a potential GOOD idea? Or do I need to put the crack pipe down…

Oh and of course in order for this to work, there would need to be some sort of Estate Owner "Belly up" protections as well, where maybe LL temporarily takes control of estates where owners become MIA. Perhaps these estates would then be auctioned off to new Estate owners? Perhaps even giving priority to the potential estate purchase from individual residents of that estate?

Your premise is unworkable as Linden Lab does not involve itself in resolving disputes between residents (in this case renters v. landlords). See section 5.1 of the Terms of Service (which all residents agree to upon joining Second Life [whether they've read them or not])

The inherent problem I see here is, who is going to step in to judge that the landlord has a legitimate complaint?

I'd think it obvious that one particular part of this proposal requires a policy change by LL. That doesn't make the rest of the proposal unworkable, plus the proposal includes an alternative to this issue.

As residents already have a CHOICE (buy mainland or "buy" estate land) it's highly unlikely that LL would create an overly complex framework (and devote the manpower to enforcement) to protect the latter segment of residents /after/ they've made a poor choice.

What's obvious is: If a resident wishes to have full control over their parcel and exercise their property rights (within the Terms of Service) then they should buy mainland.

The people, in general, will be far worse managers on average than the land barons we have now.

Take everybody for starters, then subtract the people who lose interest once it's not "fun" any more.

Then subtract those that can't balance a checkbook.

Then subtract those who do great, but blow up in a fiery ball of internet drama one day.

And so forth.

Eventually you'll get the same competent few that you had in the first place. But with a massive tax and welfare check going to the 'almost could do it' types.

You really don't want to prop up a scenario like that, I think. Competition is important.