Developer Journal #4: The SL Economy

Hi lifers -

we just posted the latest developer's journal under Second Life News. Check it out and post your thoughts on this thread.

and a couple of ideas:
The first is not entirely mine and when I have access to my IM list I'll give credit where credit is due.Edit: Harald Nomad in Boardman

1. Make Teleporting Free.
this will be good for a couple of reasons:
a) Reduce server load: as you zoom from say Dore to Federal your client is requesting 100s probably many 1000s of textures, shapes, sound bytes, scripts, etc. which for the most part are unnecesary for your trip. For those with fancy new machines **COUGH**Evie**Cough** who have their view radius cranked to 512 they're doing this simultaneously to 2-4 Sims. Wasted cache, churning harddrives and abused bandwidth are the result.
b) Reduced Physics/scripting related problems: there are several alternative forms of transport, Ballons, jet-belts, Big Green Blobs(never worked for me except to push me *way* off map) and I'm sure they've caused more than their share of overflows, overruns and downright crashes.
c) last but certainly not lest for those of us who love to travel: no more running into all those dog-gone billboards.

2. Make Teleporting for a fee your "Turnstile" to Events:
I can think of two possibilities immediately and I'm sure there are plenty of others.
a) The Ticket: A one use LM with an Event Host set L$ charge. After use it delets itself. Transports you to a closed Sim like Evies island where the Event is held. Money is deposited as the teleports are used (and only if used.) Teleportation back to the mainland by any normal LM or home setting.
b) The Vote: A perm LM which is just for conveiniance, example: I want to go straight to Skees second level shopping mall for a new ring and set of wings. I'm saving myself time, I'm giving Skee a kind of tip for putting up with my silly questions ("Where do I put this nipple ring anyway?" and I'm in effect voting for her.
actually three possibilities
c) The Bus Pass: A combination of the two. A perm LM which takes you to a Sim for say gaming, where everything but in-game scripts are disabled, flying is verboten and your attachments are automatically un-worn for you. Its just you, your opponent(s) and the court.
(my personal dream come true would be a Sim for the trivia games where all textures and items are disabled... ok maybe just faces are still enabled... so that the only thing loading is that next screen capture... when I went to the video game trivia contest a minimum of 8-10 people had already answered the question by the time I could even start to make out the picture. </rant>

Sorry for being a little long winded. Hope it at least provides someone with a chuckle or maybe a new path.

See ya inside,
UU

I know all about the texture loading problem in those games... the first (and last) such event I attended, people were guessing two pictures ahead of what I was seeing. Terrible!

Anyone who attended my scripting workshop may have noticed that the slides appeared to load instantaneously. That feat was achieved by loading the next slide onto the bottom of the slide screen, and colouring that side black. It couldn't be seen, but clients could cache it ahead of time. Then, when the slide was changed, the new image would appear instantly. Sounds like that would work for name-the-picture events, too. The only problem is someone could cheat and get the pictures early. (No, of course I won't tell you how.) I guess it's a toss-up on what side of fair you want to be on.

I think generally the economy works pretty well, but I have a couple of concerns related to the way I play the game. I'm a builder. lately I spend most of my time building things for other people, from small props to huge multi-story buildings. I'm starting to notice some drawbacks to being a builder. Right now I'm not allowed to put up a vote box at the sites I build. Most of the time I woudln't want to, but I recently built a new building for skeedalee's shop in tehama. It's huge, and it's a very popular shop. Skee's votes shot up when the new building went up. She invited me to put a vote box there (very kind of her to offer) but I was told by the lindens that I'm not allowed to do that... so basically, aside from the initial fee, there's no way for me to translate my hard work into vote or rating income because all that work is put into something other than my own home and land that I did for someone else... they're far more likely to reap financial gain from it than I am. For something that I put 20-30 hours of work into and that lots of people seem to be really appreciating it would be nice to be able to reap some reward from that without having to burden the person I built for. No one should have to split their vote money with me (and I would never ask).

When discussing my concerns with a linden I was told that they were considering implementing a way to rate people remotely without having to track them down (which no one would bother to do). Please do this!!!

Right now there's very little incentive for me to knock myself out to build something really spectacular for anyone but myself.

The same issues face clothing makers. The best way to sell is to get their wares into other people's popular stores. If they can't place a vote box next to their things in someone else's store they're missing out on a lot of votes that they deserve but won't get because they sell most of their stuff at other people's places.

I know the vote box system is going to be replaced. I just hope these kinds of issues are taken into account and not present in the new system, whatever it ends up being. Otherwise the only people who are going to reap the rewards are shop owners and not content creators. The way it works now is pretty unbalanced.

i don't want to sound ungrateful because i love SL just the way it is, but i AM one of the people who think that some economic decisions were made by the three blindfolded monkeys (hehe). I want to explain what I think is wrong.

it was stated in the article that among the goals of the economy are :
• maintain a system of exchange
• create incentives for exchange
• to fairly allocate resources
• promote (good)creation

i believe there are two more which were not explicitly mentioned:

• promote good behavior
• reward creators of attractions

so there may be other goals, which i won't speculate about, but these, i assume, are the most important and i don't believe they are all being met.

i think when most of us consider whether the economy is 'broken' or not, we think of our ability to buy and sell, and we see that there is no problem. i agree. we have the ability to trade, and after all no economy could exist without this. this ability satisfies the first of the goals stated above: 'maintain a system of exchange'. the system of trade works, and i have no problem with it.

the fact that our money is spent as we use up the resources of the grid solves the 'tragedy of the commons' problem mentioned. it limits how much resources we can use, and also as a result, satisfies the second goal above: 'create incentives for exchange'. in order to create more we have to find a way to earn more money. For that we can trade.

The next goal: ‘to fairly allocate resources’ requires a definition of ‘fair’. This obviously involves subjective opinion, but I think we can all agree that to be fair, at the least, we all deserve a minimum amount of resources to work with. Further resources could be earned. A solution in this respect is provided by the stipend system. We are given a minimum amount of resources each week to use. Again, no problems here.

Now, the current solutions to the next two goals are where I believe more harm than good has been created. These goals are to promote good creation and good behavior. I agree we should reward those that we find skillful and pleasant with more money. it would encourage a creatively richer, friendlier environment. Unfortunately, the methods that are in place which try to achieve these goals are flawed. They fail to reward good creation and behavior, and instead they promote behavior that is completely disconnected and can even be contrary to these goals. I’m talking about the ratings system. Since my first week in SL I’ve been complaining about it. I think I summed up my argument against it best like this:

“…when you get a rating, it adds or subtracts 1 from your total score. i don't know for sure but i'm willing to bet that most of the time people rate others positively. so, whats really happening is, you are accumulating the number of times you have been rated. this doesn't reflect your relative abilities, only the number of times you have been rated, which is more closely related to the amount of people you have met….”

You may think: “Well, how do I know that most of the time we rate each other it is only to give a positive rating?” For the proof, take a look at anyone’s rating. I’m willing to bet money that it is positive. Everyone’s ratings are positive. It’s likely that there isn’t one person in SL that has played for more than a few hours that doesn’t have positive ratings. If a person were to get more negative ratings than positive, they would end up with a negative rating, and this doesn’t happen. So, since we are mostly handing out positive ratings, the more ratings you get, the higher your rating goes, and the more money you will receive. Instead of getting more money for being good creators or being nice, we get money for accumulating ratings. The rating system is reduced to a popularity/rate-mining system. Is this fair? I don’t think so.

If you still don’t believe me, consider this. Imagine you decide to work on creating the most impressive statue anyone has ever seen in SL. You slave day and night for a month to create it. Meanwhile, you only meet a handful of new people because you are so busy working. These people see your creation and immediately give you a positive rating. In fact, let’s assume that anyone who sees your creation and meets you would want to give you a positive rating for it. But, there’s only a few who see it, or you. So you end up with a low rating because you decided to work hard on something for a while. You could have been going around to events, meeting other people and rate mining instead, but no, you wanted to create something great. Is this a fair allocation of resources?

If each one of us met and rated everyone else in SL, then the ratings system would be fair, but this is impossible to achieve. You will only meet and rate a subset of the total people in SL, and the bigger the subset, the higher your ratings will go.

This is my suggesion. Let us rate each other on a scale of 1-10. If I think you are the best creator I have ever seen I will give you a 10. If I think you are good I may give you a 7. If I think you are average I will give you a 5, and so on. Average your scores up and you will have a score that will reflect the average opinion of those who have rated you. More ratings will not necessarily give you a higher score, but will only make the score a more accurate reflection of public opinion. This, I believe would be fair.

I don’t have high ratings in anything, although I try hard to be nice to people and I don’t think that I’m too terrible at creating things. But, unfortunately, I don’t meet and I don’t rate a lot of people and so I lose out. This is not fair. If the ratings system is supposed to represent and reward our relative abilities, then please make it do so. If this is not the goal of the ratings system, then please rename it and stop claiming that this is what it is for.

I’m complaining because I know that the ratings system is bogus. Vote booths are bogus for a very similar reason. Luckily, vote booths will soon be replaced, and the next system will hopefully achieve the last of the goals above: ‘reward creators of attractions’. inventory protection is also a problem, but you guys are aware of it. The ratings system, though, is so obviously unfair and dishonest that it upsets me. I barely rate anyone anymore, not because I don’t think they deserve a positive rating but because it doesn’t represent their skills, only the fact that one more person rated them. I know other people agree with me. They have felt the same when this has been brought up in the past.

Please change the ratings system guys. It’s not fair.

I'm thinking also to discourage rate mining, perhaps there should be a limited number you can give out. So you can only rate 5-10 people per week or so. This would definately slow people who plan to rate mine, and make ratings actually worth something.

I completely agree with Ope about the SL rating system. The only possible rationale I can imagine for it is that it's intended to be a socialization contest: "meet as many people as you can." If that's its purpose, it would be more accurate if it were identified as such.

Never view the forums before walking out the door.

- Taxes on non-stitched land. C'mon.
- Taxes on your objects while working themed projects. I currently can't work on my WW building because I'm broke.
- Taxes on themed areas that are meant as attraction or public. Should they be the same?

The rating system indeed reflects nothing but your ability to get around. You want to rate builders, have an official build off and lets see if it reflects the current top 10.

It's a shame that a great scripter has no category to accelerate at and thus get involved in rating/stipend bump. Building is a loose fit. Scripting is the hardest knowledge element of the game to master, yet has no kudos.

Overall, the game is a becoming a cycle of working hard on something, putting in a LOT of time and effort, and then being forced to tear it down so you can get involved in something fresh. NO fun.

The alternatives: game the system, suck it up and destroy work you care about, or don't get involved in anything new.



Listening to an old Dream Theatre album while typing, jeez these guys still smoke.

*Applause for Ope* I couldn't agree more about the rating system. And I love the idea of making the ratings a scale of 1 to 10.

Here's what I'd like to see...

You see something in the game that you think is really cool... a building, a prop, a great script, someone wearing great clothes... so you decide to rate it.

You right click on the object and one of the pie menu choices is "Rate." Selecting that option allows you to give a 1-10 rating in building, textures, or scripting. That rating is then passed to the person who originally made the item regardless of how many times its changed hands. If that person is no longer a member of SL then it goes to no one. In the case of avatars there needs to be a way to rate their clothing and shape and have those ratings passed along to whoever created the clothing or shape... not to the person wearing it (unless you add another category called "shopping" <G>

It should be impossible for someone who never builds anything to earn a high building rating. They can still be rated in behavior and calling cards. And there badly needs to be something for scripters, clothiers, and texturers.

Right now the system only rates people for socializing and unduly punishes to most productive members of SL.

Oh, and one other thing... people are totally slack about rating and voting. So how about instead of charging people $1 to rate, pay them $1 instead (and limit the number of times they can rate in a day).

I say ditch ratings altogether. If people are good builders/scripters/socializers/whatevers, they'll get money for creating buildings/writing scripts/holding events/whatever in the end.

I also think that some zones, such as themed communities or settlement group colonies could be made into "renaissance developments" -- tax-free or reduced-tax areas.

Yes please! TAX EXEMPT THEMED SIMS..... or reduced.

I am part of Americana and the taxes are outrageous for a full sim... 16 times around 2,400 is around 30,000 a week!!!! granted most of our land owners are big enough people that they can shoulder the tax, but that leaves them no money for building.... I think at least while we are still cut off fromt he world it should be tax free and maybe even until we get a good portion built, right now we are paying massive taxes for nothing. If we hadn't had a time limit in which to buy under, i would have recommended to the group that we build first then buy, but we couldn't do that. So no we will probably spend hundreds of thousands of L on taxes while we build..... great way to help unique themed communities.

I believe in the taxes but not so harsh... not like the money is actually needed for welfare or anything .

On the ratings side, I like the idea of 1-10, though you'll still have a problem with people handing 10's out like candy... so maybe make it first 5 are free but the next 5 cost like this 6 - $1, 7 - $2 8 -$3... etc you get the point... If someone really deserves a 10 i have no problem spending $5. that would make it so people would be less likely to hand out 10 fors everyone they meet.

JV

I don't think I could agree more. I am constantly having to delay our sim's work cause come the 18th we all need to plop down our land buys so the linden representative can come buy and buy the other half and officiate our layaway. When I originaly wrote the proposal for Little Tokyo I expected the land to be Linden owned much like the origins of Nexus Prime, Rt. 66, Venise, etc...

With this new stratagy, if we are to secure the sim our ONLY recourse is to do nothing but find ways to make money and then hold out and buy land at the last minute, hiding any work we have done until we can find a way to recoup from the land purchases, and then not long after that we will have to repeat the steps to purchase the other half of the land.

If we can not find another means of gaining 'resources' with which to hold land and build, Sage (Little Tokyo's Sim) will be baren for a LONG time to come. It will not be the pristinely implemented community our group had in mind, or I am sure the Linden's expected. It will mearly be a big empty sim, with temporary projects going up and down as we scramble for any money we can get our hot little hands on.

I would venture that if some windfall does not come down the pipe for the proposal sims they will ALL be baren for a couple of months while the individual groups scramble. Nothing permenant can go up without higher rattings all around, lots of voting (but on what?) and ... I don't realy know.

FYI, I don't think the land in old NP was ever linden owned, at least not after it was decided people would start building a theme there. If you wanted to build the theme, you had to buy the land. When i got involved the first thing I did was buy my plot of land so I could put up the tower. Aside from roping off the land for purchase, I don't think we were given any breaks. I came in a bit into the project though so am no hunnert percent sure of this. We've always paid full taxes etc.

Ok If I was wrong on that point I appologize, I will have to re-read the old preposal info. Thats what I was basing my design on etc... I just understood it was Linden owned like the wild west town.

Ack! Nexus Prime is and was 100% owned by players. Not the whole sim...the empty areas are Linden. But we paid for the land under the build, paid the taxes like everyone else, and endure the height taxes which penalize tall buildings even though our whole design aesthetic is based on an urban setting.

I read somewhere else Philip says the themed communities are partially Linden financed, and aside from maintaining buffer zones (empty space around the build), I can't imagine what he means.

There was only one advantage to the Themed Communities and that was the buffer zone. We never got kick backs, land grants, tax breaks or anything else. And to be honest, never expected them.

It's just disconcerting to realize people think we were getting something we weren't.

Amen to that. My primary skill is scripting, and unfortunately it is rather time consuming and allows for little time to have a social life (Hmmmm... kind of sounds like RL...) I definately think there should be some way for the scriptors that make the world "alive" to gain ratings.

As far as the whole tax issue, I have seen the effects of this double edge sword. Kissling before this weekend was becoming very impressive looking, with the skyline full of high rise buildings. But I don't think Kissling, or the potential of what Kissling could have been, can be fully realized with the current servers. Half the lots were empty, yet the object load on the server was almost full, the speed of the sim crawling at slug pace. Remove the threat of taxes, and every where will be slug paced....

this is my point exactly. sorry for the long novel up there. its a personal record but i just feel that as scripters and really anyone who ends up spending a lot of time creating, we miss out on getting more ratings from people, and therefore getting more money. the system is backwards.

but i refuse to go out and rate mine because i just like to work on things instead...

and yeah, taxes are killing me too

Well, this is a bit disconcerting. I joined SL today with high hopes of using my MUD coding experience to write some killer scripts and build neat stuff...but these economic issues make it sound like it will be an uphill battle.

Not that I have anything like a full grasp of the situation yet, but here are some thoughts anyway I'm going to use items to mean textures, sounds, objects, scripts, etc. and builders to mean anyone who makes items.

Builders should (obviously) be compensated in proportion to the value of their items. What is the true value of an item? One way to look at it is recency and frequency, or how often it is used and by how many people. Rather than relying on an explicit rating, why not use a formula to increase the original author's stipend based on R and F? Also, there should probably be a multiplier for the original cost of building the item.

The value of a L$ would need to be deflated quite a bit (or maybe a move to fractions: Linden cents!) to allow for these "micropayments." Or use an internal metric: round(R * R scale + F * F scale * economic scaling factor * base stipend) = increase.

R and F can be hard, though. If I create a statue that people happen to gather around to chat, do I deserve credit? If I do, how is it calculated? Does proximity count for recency and frequency? Maybe it can be done by having each item maintain its own statistics and polling it at stipend time. Dunno.

Anyway, buying and selling between individuals or groups seems like it should work, but currently builders would have to charge exhorbitant fees to support their activities. And donated items--which should be highly rewarded if they're useful--don't seem to be rewarded. Rating the original author of an item won't work in the long run because it requires effort. That probably sounds harsh since SL seems very friendly and people seem willing to rate, but imagine having to continually send thank-you notes to the manufacturers of all of the things you use in your First Life, even after buying them from a distributor several degrees removed.

Under this model, unique items become extremely costly because there won't necessarily be the stipend increase from frequency, so the builder has to charge more. But unique items should be costly. Donated items are automatically rewarded, allowing philanthropic builders with skill to thrive.

A final thought. How about allowing the formation of corporations (groups) as separate tax and earning entities? Individuals wouldn't be penalized for participating in group projects. Investors would have to be found and convinced to raise capital. The government could fund corporations for public works, and give tax breaks.

I lied, one more thought. We could start a stock market...

Whew! That's the longest message I've posted anywhere, by far. Sorry if this stuff has been said before. I haven't had time to read all the posts yet, but wanted to get some ideas down. Hope some of it is at least interesting.

Hop

here is a wild idea why not add (just time to skim the forums as i am at work so if someone already suggested this i back them 110%)

"Scripting" to the existing rating schedule already in the game I know a few on this thread i would give positive ratings to

Cat

Yeah, you people are definatly right, with the lack of L$ recognision of scripts. Afew tweaks are definatly in order. Same with themed sims, I just bought up my 1/16, and I am dreading the taxes. The most I have ever used my bonus for is $1000. And when all of a sudden my taxes jump to around 3400 for land tax I fear for my financial security.
But back to the whole, lot o'time to script, I have spent a good fraction of my time here scripting and tweaking but of late I have started making some pretty detailed textures too and jeez they take forever. For my first build on my 1/16th sim I make a 1024x1024 image which actually covers 5 different textures, so don't worry I don't me plastering 1024x1024 textures on a 4x4 cube or anything but it took me over 6 hour to make. Ok, so in summery, basicily better recognision for contruibution.

New Ratings with scale 1-10, Good.
Ratings for Scripting,Textures, Good.
Taxes on big ass plots of land, Scary.

You want to talk about the economy? Let's REALLY talk about the economy! You want to see how it actually works? You want to see what our output is?

Y=C+I+G+(X-Im)

Y is the gross domestic product.
C is consumer expenditure, or what we spend.
I is investment activity.
G is government spending.
(X-Im) is exports minus imports.


Gross domestic product
This is pretty much a measure of what we get for an hour's work. It is an economic pointer to our quality of life.


Exports minus Imports
The export is intangible - we get to exist in SL. The import is very tangible - we pay USD$15 per month. That money goes into buying what becomes Second Life "land" and "capital" (i.e. new machines to house simulators, utilities so the machines can be racked and powered and on the net, wages for Linden Lab to keep everything running, etc.) So the USD$15 is converted to Lindenbucks, in exactly the same manner as you would convert US Dollars to Euros at an airport.


Government spending
Since sims require expensive machines, and run at a fixed processor speed with a fixed amount of memory and so much storage space on a filer, Linden cannot simply mint nine trillion Lindenbucks and hand them over to us. SL would grind to a halt, the natural result of allowing infinite demand to outstrip a finite supply.

Linden Lab CAN stimulate the economy with public works projects, just as in the real world. These projects make SL more interesting and thus are helpful with retaining residents, so the company gets value for its virtual dollars. (Contrast that with giving everyone L$100,000 and having the sims fill up with unattractive junk.)


Consumer expenditures
Our stipends are not welfare, they are the end product of our $15/month. They are our allowance to rez objects and buy land. We are not in the soup line; we are receiving "paychecks" in return for contributing hard cash to Linden Lab.


Investment activities
THIS IS THE GAPING HOLE IN THE SL ECONOMICS MODEL. The SL equivalent of the "Fed" (Federal Reserve Bank) effectively sets a NEGATIVE interest rate by giving less bonus/stipend L$ to people who have more L$ in their accounts. This discourages people from saving. That's great if you are in an inflationary period because it causes deflation. But if you don't hike the interest rate back up once you've got the economy back in balance, you're going to cause a recession that will NEVER end. Japan has been dealing with that for over TEN YEARS. The only way to combat a recession is for people to spend less money buying things, and the way to get them to do that is to encourage them to invest.

This is a real problem. Zero investment means that people will rez more objects and buy more land, which will have an impact on the sims. If Linden Lab encourages investment by offering a positive interest rate, they keep the sims a little cleaner a little longer. That's great because the technology behind the sims (the hardware, the bandwidth, etc.) actually gets cheaper as time goes on. In 2000, a $1,000 1U rack-mount server would have had a 500MHz processor (if you were lucky) and 64MB RAM and maybe a 5 or 10 GB hard disk. Today the same money gets you a 1GHz machine with 128MB RAM (BARE minimum!) and a 20GB hard disk. In two years... you see where that goes. If Linden Lab pays interest on L$, we will save a lot more, and when it comes time to spend that money, the actual real-world cost to Linden Lab is LESS than if we'd spent it all the second we earned it (as is the case now).

There are also no municipal bonds, another mistake in my opinion - and for the same reason. Bonds pay higher interest than banks, because the money is locked up for a certain period. (You can get out of a bond but you have to pay a premium to do it, so you lose on your principal investment.) This is even better at encouraging saving because people will want the extra earnings. Would I put L$1000 into a one-week bond that paid 6 percent (meaning I get back L$1060)? You bet I would! And that L$1000 would not be spent buying land or rezzing cubes for the entire week.

This has a cascade effect. Let's say you offer a 3% bond that matures in one week. I'm a wealthy business owner and I sink $10,000 into this bond. For that ENTIRE WEEK, not a single dollar of that will go into buying land or rezzing objects. What about a 6% bond that matures in two weeks? I get back prinicpal plus L$600, and the grid gets two weeks without a four-story shopping mall being built on half an acre of land. Once a lot of people get in on this, you will get a good delay on the land purchasing and object rezzing. Eventually you have to pay for it, but by that time the hardware, etc. is cheaper. Once people start spending long periods here, you'll find a few disciplined investors who are willing to wait a month or more if the interest rate is attractive. As with real bonds, you set a premium so that if someone wants to get out of it, they get back a little less than they invested.

Finally, there is no public stock market. How do you raise capital in Second Life? Do you go around and beg for L$? It can be tough for a big project to get funding, especially with excruciating tax rates and tons of poor residents (who are POOR because they don't SAVE because SAVING is UNDESIRABLE).

These factors are likely to cause a prolonged recession. Linden Lab, we need reasons to invest if we are to cause the economy to pick up.


Taxes
"In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," said Ben Franklin. Taxes ARE death in SL because they can bankrupt a great project. They are also tweaked to increase by altitude, which discourages people from building things in the air. In my opinion it's not smart to set that as a hard-and-fast rule. If a person builds something really beautiful that goes up into the air they ought to be able to apply for a tax break on that patch of land. Nexus Prime gives so much to the game, and yet they have to pay exorbitant taxes because they have built up into the air. Kazenojin (of which I am a part) is building an air station that rises more than 50 meters in the air, and will have a similar cross to bear - in fact the "fun" has already started. I'm worth less now than I was last week because of land taxes. I shudder to think of what it is like to own a 16th of a sim AND have 30 primitives a hundred feet off the ground.

I know the taxes were designed to discourage everyone from building at wierd altitudes, but what about structures that are MEANT to be tall?

Look at it this way. You have the guy who builds an 80-meter pole with a single-primitive platform on top, and then he puts a cabin there. With a pink flamingo. A pink flamingo, INSIDE the cabin. And the platform is made out of dark red stripes and the pole is purple swirlies. And then you have Nexus Prime. NEXUS PRIME. Are you REALLY going to equate these two?

Hmm. How about zoning, like in the real world? This area is zoned for structures under five stories, and has an altitude tax of .008/meter... and this area is zoned for high-rise structures, and has an altitude tax of .003/meter.