Lindens need to fix the bugs not end dwell

Free Money...... economics.......

I come to Second Life to get away from the real world. This is sounding more and more like the Sims on line. If I wanted to get money through work I would do it in the real world. Second Life is a place for me to come to get away from all that Conservative thinking.

As long as LL claims real value to the L$, economics remains a factor.
They've been claiming it to the press for 2 years now.

Does this mean there will be less camping?

and LL were to get another cool 11 mil...and they used it wisely...and were to turn a profit in doing so--MAYBE they'd hire more code custodians

So..yes..a receptionist COULD help

"Money doesn't come from nowhere" isn't exactly the exclusive domain of Conservative thought, you know.

I agree with you, Magnum, and it is not only shameful, it's probably how the Lindens got the idea that we all care about the value of the Linden in the first place.

Go take an ingame survey and I don't think you will find the majority approves.

Expect a replay of this when they decide to get rid of the stipends.

It's always the same story - a hidebound group of individuals won't be happy until every last thing is taken away - so that people have to buy their Lindens in order to buy their overpriced content. The funny thing is, this could backfire to the point where there is no one left to buy it.

As for loss of traffic, it doesn't affect me much one way or the other. (Except perhaps for a trickle-down effect, in that fewer people have money so fewer people can buy my things.)

And I know from a long conversation I had in Texas once with a game developer that inflation is the one thing that can kill a game for sure, so I understand why the Lindens are concerned about it.

However, I do think that it throws yet another advantage to physical content creators at the expense of everyone else, both fun-lovers and fun-providers.

coco

Then Linden Labs needs to make the value of the Linden worth .001US Cent. That way Economics will not matter and people can enjoy themselves. Second Life money will have a more meaningful purpose and that is to help us purchase things in world and remain in world only.

You're probably right - the majority doens't give a damn, I suspect, moderated only by whatever group they listen to whining. Doesn't mean it's not a good thing. We aren't a democracy.



That's one theory. I suspect there are a few more out there.



The old "one bad apple" phrase comes to mind.

Enjoy your world sans-content, do you?

The value was set by users, not by Linden Lab.
It was set when GOM existed, it was set by IGE, by Anshe Chung, by any other person who's ever bought or sold L$ on e-bay.

LL merely provided tools, and until recently free money which affects what people price that number in the upper right corner at.

Exactly. The value is out of LL's control. If value inflates, prices will match. If value crashes, prices will patch. You won't suddenly become rich if LL floods the market with 10000000000000000 lindens. You will have the same slice of the same pie. The pie itself just got fatter.

If I remember right, There was beautiful Content before GOM or what-not came along and before the Linden had value. I remember seeing gigantic fortresses and nice castles and lots of single family homes in SL. All built before the Linden had value.

Oh there were nice night clubs like Club Elite which entertained till the wee hours of the morning.

So making the Linden worth nothing will have no effect on content. Only those who come here to make money will be effected, those who came here for the sake of art or to have fun will not be effected

Despite it's escape value, SL is rooted in some RL values in the way it is run in many respects. Human nature will continue to be what it will even in SL, and as such any principles based on how we tend to respond to various factors will by necessity be in play, or else the whole of the SL world will die.

The fact is that SL has a currency of sorts, which behaves much like any other currency out there, and therefore will be susceptible to economic forces that apply to any paper or coin money.

One of those principles is that scarcity is perhaps the largest factor is the value of a currency, and removing dwell is a means of trying to reduce the money supply, which arguably would tend to counter the inflation of the linden that many people worry about.

It is also noteworthy that the Linden's policy on Dwell (and other L$ centered policies) has no bearing on their attempts to track and correct any bugs and glitches in the code. You don't have to pick one or the other, you can do both.

If you wish to argue against the removal of Dwell, there are certainly some better arguments you may make in favor of keeping Dwell, and I am sure the matter will be thoroughly discussed by people on both sides.

*groan* please dudes - don't encourage him, I don't know if my brain can take Monday at work -AND- another thread of 'Magnumomics 101'.

Well, I'm willing to entertain the possibility of some other theory winning out. In fact, having been in entertainment in TSO, I'm kind of interested to see how well paying to get into clubs, amusement parks, and other entertainment places works out. I just don't have high hopes for it.

To add to my own theory - as regular people become unable to provide the entertainment, the Lindens will look to outsiders, and make deals with them to provide it. In other words, the outside businesses would be offered a situation that makes it worth their while, while partakers of their entertainment still would not have to pay.

That's going out on a limb. But it is also in line with my theory that ultimately the Lindens wish for the environment to consist entirely of outside businesses, and Linden businesses, with other people coming into the game not to live, or play, or socialize, or create, as much as to partake of what those outside businesses are offering inside of SL. Kind of like Wells Fargo.

Course that is really going out on a limb, looking into a way distant possible future, and I hope not to see it come to pass. I just wouldn't be too surprised if the Lindens GOM'ed all the entertainment, and/or passed it to real world businesses and/or themselves.

coco

Before GOM there was e-bay... and IGE...

Club Elite... that's another can of worms...

Linden Dollar's value increases people's desire for content creation, I know of several friends who enjoy creation with commercial products making money to help fund sims with beutiful content.

As a side note - I'm old enough to remember the huge fight when dwell was PUT IN!

Seeing the battle rage on the flipside is pretty funny.

And the world was the size of a matchbox, and supported a tiny handful of users. Not a viable buisness strategy.



Do you HONESTLY believe what you just wrote there?

So you clasp your ears shut and scream "I'm not listening"?

It takes all kinds to run the world.

How does this effect those of you "whom come here just to have fun"? Do you need $L to exist and have a good time? If so, it would imply you are wanting to obtain something that someone spent time on - oh, I forgot, everyone should be creating content for free. If you don't agree with keeping the $L stable, why use it? If the majority of the people don't care about the $L being stable, why is the HUGE bulk of the objects and whatnot cost money? It is because people do care, and I am sure it is a much larger number than a dozen.....

First and foremost...

Second Life is by far the most stable interactive 3D client/server platform I have seen to date. With the amount of things you can do in SL, I am amazed it runs as buttery as it does.

For those of you who feel that SL is unstable... I would suggest playing any number of the MMORPG's out there. There is not a single one that can provide the function, features, and stability of Second Life.

For those of you who feel they should remove the USD value of the L$... that's just silly. For a great many people, half the fun of SL is the ability to earn real cash playing a game. Dwell is a rediculous way to measure the popularity of a place, since it usually means camping chairs and zombies. In many cases, the camping zombies prevent people from getting to their land due to the sim being full...half of them with an anti-idler running and away from their keyboard.

I guess what it boils down to is this...

If it's not fun, then don't play

There are other ways - just have to think outside the box. Not all entertainment has to rely on the 'pay to enter' principle, I've seen many that tried that fail. When I came up with my own plans last November I decided that that wasn't the route I'd take.
I've always touted Waterworks as a 'public pool' you can use as you like - only you can take a pool or some of the waterslides home with you should you choose to.

So far that experment has grown from a bit of land under my lab to a 1/4 sim - and soon to make the leap to the final stage of the project. Hopefully a self sustaining park that folks can visit that won't go the way of the dodo over policy changes like Dwell or free player sponsorship.

If you Zero the value of linden by setting it artificially, there are any number of possibilities.

1) People who create stuff at least partially for monetary gain will lose that incentive and may drop out entirely. In this event, economic forces will no longer put any pressure on the builders to push the boundaries of what they create.

2) Something else may replace linden as the official currency, which will place the market in a place where enforcement may be much more difficult, if not impossible. Such could be detrimental to its appeal to newcomers.

3) Prices will skyrocket unbelievably, making previous holdings useless.

4) You'll kill one facet of SL.

Like it or not, many residents have an interest in lindens remaining fairly stable, and having value.

Sadly the economic Pandora's box cannot be re-shut, people will still desire value for their currency, which is used to pay for their work, and in many cases currently, lack of work.

If LindeX is shut down, IGE will become the economic hub, or e-bay, or whatever 3 other markets currently exist.

Humans seek more, it's a very basic survival instict.

We don't have robots and computers that can self repair and make anything we desire. We don't have unlimited resources. There are many places in the world where people fight to eat.

The fact is, there isn't enough to go around, and we have this arbitrary thing called money which tells us how fit we are to recieve the magics of electricity and broadband and the basics of food, water, shelter, fuel for our vehicles, etc.

A lot of people have a very limited resource called 'time' they want to get paid for that time or it doesn't seem justifiable to them.

These factors contribute to what makes our economy. At it's heart, economies are resource controls, people will ascribe value to a resource, in SL's case, that resource is asset server space (10L$ to upload sound clip, texture, gesture) or it is sim server space (5 dollars for 512 meters, 195 dollars for 64K meters, etc.)

Dwell was an attempt to pay people for helping SL gain a resource, people. This was in the days when it cost 10 dollars to make an account, and 10 dollars a month to gain the right to own land (a resource that was also paid for directly by an increase in stipend)

Currnetly the basic member is free... thus paying for a resource that is not getting anything back is kind of like paying someone to stand on your lawn all day, it doesn't make much sense and it doesn't do anything specifically productive to the lawn besides cause a brown spot under their feet.

Good riddence to dwell. It was simply abused, and has been devaluing the L$.