Solutions to the land problem.

I'm new here, and after examining the economical situation, I have a few ideas.

My first thought, on reading about the demise of First Land is that this situation could have been easily avoided: First Land can only be sold back to ll for what you paid for it. It's that easy. You can't rent it, all you can do is live on it. People that stay in the world will eventually want more land, when they decide to purchase a bigger plot, First Land gets sold back. Problem solved, only people that want to live on the land would have any interest in acquiring it. Everyday there will be people quitting or moving to a bigger space, opening up slots. This is not profitable short term but would have long term benefits, as the number of new premium account users would go up.

This was supposed to be a resident created world, and the economy should not be land based, but based on good and services. It is not the fault of the land barons that land costs are so high, it is the fault of ll for allowing this to happen. Unfortunately ll still gets paid, no matter who owns the land. It is ridiculous to me, when I see vast stretches of empty space, that there is a problem with land scarcity. Anyway, there is no sense pointing a finger at the land barons. What they do is legal, and they have a right to make a profit.

What to do then? Well, there is an option. A collective. A collective of people willing to take a loss to change the land problem. With costs spread out between a large number of people it is feasible. What the collective would do is aggressively acquire land with their pooled resources. A resident could then permanently 'lease' a 512 plot for a one time fee for a significantly lower price than the current market. This land would still belong the the collective and could not be rented and can only be sold back to the collective, and the collective couldn't sell it out from under you, they'd have to buy it back. The lease would be indefinite, but there would have to be some sort of minimum amount of time one would have to stay on the land in order to sell it back. Now if one wants a bigger parcel of land one gets the still discounted price, has to pay the land fees, and also has to join the collective and pay dues, commensurate with the amount of land they have purchased. This system will eventually stabilize and a balance will be created. The prices for land not owned by the collective will go down, making it easier for the collective to acquire more land, and also making it easier for people uninterested in joining the collective and paying dues to buy their own land. Non-collective land owners would still be able to make a profit, but their ability to artificially inflate prices would be balanced out by the collective, whose land will still be cheaper to acquire, but the difference between collective price and market price would be smaller. There will still be plenty of people that would rather have the option of being able to sell and rent their own land as opposed to joining the collective.

Well there you have it, this virtual world is quite a bit simpler than the real world, there are only three resources, land, prims, and imagination. A scarcity of the first two limits the third, which is the most important one. A better distribution of resources makes for a better world.

Well if they wouldn't abuse the auction system and try to win at all costs, they wouldn't be paying so much for the auctioned sims in the first place and wouldn't have to charge so much to dump the land. So they are indeed partly to blame make no mistake about that.

While your plan sounds nice in theory, I personally would be quite skiddish about investing in such a venture. LL keeps dropping hints in interviews that land investors need to be very careful. This tells me that we are in for a major policy change soon that will affect the whole land business in SL.

Well thought out post. It could work and would be real solution over time to problems with people wanting and being able to obtain land from Linden Labs. I don't see that affecting the private island and sim owners at all.........and that is a good thing. The biggest hurdle to overcome would be that the "collective" would be competing with the "manufacturer" should the manufacturer decide to up the supply and undercut the collective...........forcing the collective to purchase more land at a lose (by increasing tier owned by the group). It would require, at the very least, cooperation from Linden Labs. If that can be obtained I think your suggestion is very feasible.

That is statement makes no sense what so ever. If they don't think they can make the money off the sim, they won't bid that high. You can't abuse the auction system in that manner. They see it this way. I can make $X off of sim Y. I want to make $Z profit. My max bid is then going to be X-Z. What I really wonder is how many of these new barons are making enough of a profit to justify the amount they are spending in auctions and fees.

I dont know about the old days of SL, but I do know that almost all mainland at one time was first land, to cut out the profit of selling your first land renders it invaluable, plus too you would have the problems of joining and dividing, if first land could only be sold for L$512 then it couldnt be joined into other parcels and made bigger

I doubt most of them even have a high enough spending limit to even be able to turn over enough sims like the more established barons do. Most of the newcomers are in store for some costly lessons I think.

The idea behind offering first land back in the day when it was widely available was quite noble..........a "gift" from Linden Labs as a thank you for become premium, if you want to think of it in that way. However LL should have put some sort of restrictions on that basically freebie.........I mean back then your first week's stipend paid for the land. LL could have placed minium time period before the FL owner could sell to the general population. Or they could have put a huge restriction by making the FL owner only able to sell back to LL no matter how long it was owned............remember, it was really a freebie in the first place. The owner was getting upwards of 2000 lindens a month they could save for another chunk of land elsewhere plus a guaranteed buy back from LL on the orginal FL. It would put some of the first land back in circulation.........recycling if you think of it. But apparently LL thought it best to leave it up to the owner to do as the pleased.........putting a lot of trust that people would play fair and not gouge others for that "free" piece of land. That was a mistake..........good intentions but extremely naive. Now it's a problem..........not created by the residents at large but by some using LL's optimistic outlook on life and abusing it. Linden Labs could have prevented it from happening had they given it the proper amount of thought and having a realist view of what real people do in life. And once they saw what was happening after the fact, they could have fixed it with implying the restrictions. Instead they let it get out of hand and become a nightmare for them to deal with..........so they shut it down completely.

The OP's idea is sound............if she can get LL to cooperate. No one's restricting your right to own and profit from land. Just trying to put in place some safe guards to pervent gouging or cheating honest people out of the market too. It all boils down to LL taking control or allowing others to take control to balance the opportunities in a more fair way.

That would be quite a loss to spread out, if you were to buy land at market value, and offer it at a price that in any way equated with the now defunct First Land program.

The land auctions are favorable to only one party, Linden Labs. The whole point of an auction is to get the highest possible price for whatever you are selling. The buyer is always going to lose by paying more than the item is worth. The only way for the buyer to come out on top is if the seller overestimated the desire for the item and is forced to sell it for less than it is worth(see all those ps3 e-bay saps), or of course, the seller underestimating what an item is worth(see all those e-bay wizards, who turn around and sell for several times its worth).

The auction system isn't being abused,it is abusing the buyers, bilking them into overpaying for a commodity that ll can just make more of at any time. These people are going to lose their virtual shirts. To turn a profit, they are going to have to sell at a price the market won't bear. Unless they have some grand plan of turning it around and selling it to Pepsi-Cola for a profit, they are screwed. Nobody wins but Linden Labs. By doing it in this way, they assure that people will own all of the new land and start paying fees as soon as possible.

I suppose it is possible, as Sly was suggesting, that these overzealous fools will eventually be forced to ditch these lands at a discount in order to get out from the land fees, and it could theoretically lead to a drop in prices. However, what will probably happen is that when the foolish, wannabe barons start selling, the real barons will be there to snap it up, and they will low-ball them without mercy.

Now that I think about it, it may be a perfect time for the idea of a collective. Large amounts of land are going to be available at well below market when these guys bail.

Going against fudaments as simple as a open format auction is just impossible, LL isnt "bilking" anyone into paying more than something is worth. Its open to the highest bidder, and calling them fools.. well thats just not right. I would think if they have the money to be tossing in so much on an auction its not them thats the fool
BTW I havent won any auctions lately so i dont have any hidden motive in saying that

The phenomon you are referring to is called the winners curse. Whereby the more people who bid for a single good, the more likely the winner is to overpay. There have been numerous economic studies that have confirmed this.


Personally I think your collective sounds like an overly complicated way to solve the problem. In addition I believe it will be counter productive. Aside from the adminstrative stodginess it would create, it still has to purchase land on the auction market for re distribution. Cetreris Paribus land prices at auction will be higher due to the actions of the collective. That in turn will impact the price people outside of the collective would pay for land.

The simple answer to high land prices is just that high land prices. Higher prices stimulates LL to make more (since they earn more from the sale of it) and for people to consume less. No complicated collectives, buy backs or lease arrangements required. Adam Smith be praised

just to clarify, i did not say fools, somebody paraphrased what i said incorrectly. i merely suggested that some bidders may be buying on hype before looking at the big picture. it happens to all of us and hopefully we learn from it without getting totaly soaked. it has been my experience that those who buy on hype try and correct their error as soon as possible to minimize loss. some have become quite good at it (losing money that is).

food for thought: upon carefull observation i have notice a few key players backing out of the bidder's forum the passed few days.

"Baby Ill be there to lend a hand, baby ill be there to share the land - they'll be giving away, when we all live together"



hehe a commune is a great idea. Free love, Power to the People.

Think of all the money well save!
we wont need many clothes with the free love/ nudity.
since we'll be back to nature we wont need anything but long, straight hair.
No cars , planes, boats
and especially no guns - make love not war =)

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The only land problem is prices went up and people dont like where they ended up. You can still get contract/covenant land at reasonable rates. First land was doomed from the start it was a Linden Labs subsidy selling something far below the going rate.

The problem with placing restrictions on First Land was that people wanted to be real land-owners, with all the rights and priviledges and responsibilities of other land owners. They didn't want to be owners of second-class land. LL made the right move in getting rid of the land giveaway. My recommendation for those who just want a piece of land they kinda own is to forego premium membership and use that monthly fee instead on rent.

When I hear talk of a Collective, I hear people wanting to grab other people's land or L$, whether through outright coercion or by indirectly taking control of their property. If prices are too high for you, don't buy. If you don't like what your neighbor is doing with his land, buy him out or move. Just don't come up with some utopic scheme to control your fellow-residents against their will.

As far as first land was concerned, the new first land owner would soon discover that a 512 just didnt cut it for that 'first house'. You scrambled around looking for a dwelling that would actually fit, and wouldnt eat all 117 prims in its structure alone. Then you looked around for low prim ( and usually simplistic and ugly) furniture to put in your first house. When all was said and done you had a sofa, a chair, a cheap bondage rack and maybe a few pictures to hang on the wall. Forget about parking a car in the driveway. First land was just a wake up call that you really needed MORE LAND. Sure having land you could buy cheap and sell for a profit towards that 'MORE LAND' was a plus, but the Lindens could have just given everybody a bigger sign up bonus and avoided the damn thing to begin with. Solution to the land problem? What problem? Everything became overpriced for some very obvious reasons. Anshe made a million, the media discovered this and suddenly SL is all over the press, the general population thus learned about SL and its Anshe million, people swarmed in. In the middle of this, LL decided to raise island prices, heard a groaning noise from the inhabitants and decided to have a fire sale on islands, people with cash rushed to order the 'discount' islands, LL choked on the demand, servers grew scarce, millions of newcomers seeking land couldnt find it, opportunist land suppliers jacked up prices, millions of newcomers who didnt know any better paid those prices, LL started catching up with server supply and started dumping land all over the place, real estate agents start freaking out that LL is sabotaging their money making machine, more servers delivered by LL, land becomes less scarce, as land becomes plentiful, land prices drop to normal levels. No problem, just a temporary setback. Those who spent way too much during this fiasco will not recoup their investement, but hopefully will enjoy simply living on thier new property and appreciating what SL has to offer.

*moves*

Wow, I can't believe there were so many posts before someone made a sarcastic remark about hippies and communes, I kind of figured that's all I would get.

I believe I've figured out a way to sell land cheaper, take an initial loss, and accept a smaller profit in the end. An organized collective isn't really needed, I see now. A mass of people using this particular system would be required to have an impact on land cost, but this could also be built slowly. I'm just going to try it myself. See if it flies.

I personally consider vastly overpaying for a resource that is essentially infinite is foolish. That's just my opinion. If one has the financial means to hemorrhage money for a long period of time perhaps this could work out in the end, but it seems awfully risky. Let these people overpay and then buy the land at a more reasonable price when they bail out, that's the way to go, I think.

For those that think that Second Life is only going to get bigger and more lucrative, think again. Competition for Second Life is being developed as I write this by who knows how many different companies. Virtual land can be created by anyone with a server. One could, for instance, make a Second Life that is all about pornography and sex, specialize in it, create an environment where anything is acceptable along these lines. All the people that are expressly interested in those things would make a bee-line for that world and leave Second Life.

As the idea of virtual land and virtual money catches on, more and more of it will be created, decreasing the value of what already exists. If you can get more of what you want from a different virtual world, you will go there.

SL suffers in presentation pretty badly. I personally have only been in the world 3 times and was completely underwhelmed, if I didn't have prior knowledge of all of the interesting things going on here I would have never bothered returning after the first time. Interactions with objects are crappy, the default animations are crappy, it's incredibly laggy, etc. The internet is chock full of bad reviews of the SL experience. It is inevitable that something less mutable, less interesting than SL will appear. Its presentation will be superior, the interface will be easier to use, and it will look better. It will only offer a fraction of the possibilities of SL but it will do far better in attracting the casual user. The richness of content will be the one advantage that SL will possess and that should be the primary focus. Inflated land prices are at direct odds with content creation. Subsidizing land was a great idea, actually. Unfortunately, they didn't prevent the selling of this land for a profit and thus completely defeated the purpose.

read the hippie post again , she did comment on your idea seriously at the end.



good luck, im not sure you really should plan on taking a loss for something people can "live" without - i.e land. Better off just making a sandbox or a free apartment building. But good luck with your plan




This is incorrect - The Land isnt infinite. Since prims are tied to land and both are teid to a physical server. Land is only as infinite as the computers that house the land/prims, computers are neither infinite, nor free.



Buying the land up when it goes back down in price seems reasonable - assuming it goes down, and that you can figure out when the bottom is, heh.



This part leaves me totally confused. Youve only logged on 3 times? Yet you have an altrusitic plan to save the land market? And are willing to come up with a system to operate at aloss for the benefit of the new?

WHY?

Youve only logged in 3 times. And were "underwhelmed" - And are sure it will lose to the soon to come competion.

Why not just take a pass on Second Life? In over 8 months you've logged in 3 times - you cant be hooked.

Might as well not have it then. Because you can rent land on the islands for less than a premium account costs you, what would be the point of paying $10.00 a month to Linden Labs instead of <$1.00 a week to an estate owner for the same privilege?