Make it possible to buy L$ directly for USD from Linden

Make it possible to buy L$ directly for USD from the SL interface.

You would just go to World | Buy L$, plug in the amount of USD to convert, and Presto! Away you go

Big advantages:
- makes it easy to charge realistic prices for things in SL
- reduces the barrier to new people who want to buy stuff (they have an RL job) but dont have ingame L$ to do so

Azelda

And Linden Labs gets the income.

What are the drawbacks?

Drawbacks are that people who consider that SL is a way of escaping RL, rather than extending it, will feel cut out.

Both situations are possible: SL as escape from RL, SL as extension of RL.

Which do we want? Which is most metaverse-like?

Azelda

I guess the comparisons to There are obvious, having to spend real cash to play. But, the difference is that it is an optional means of getting more L$. It wont be required.

Real cash for L$ is a fact of life with the websites currently out there that do buying and selling of L$. This seems like a no brainer for Linden Labs.

There has to be some real drawbacks though. Runaway price hikes in goods and services offered in world? Someone thats given it some thought posts the problems.

Or, lend your support.

'No'. There is enough GOM/IGE'ing among new residents as it is. SL is not about commercialism, despite some peoples best efforts. It's about creativity, and sadly these ideas tend to be mutually exclusive.

-Adam

Except that would send the SL economy in a faster downward spiral by creating even more money out of thin air, and on a really large scale.

Creating large amounts of money leads to hyper inflation.
Lets say 200 people run out and buy L$300,000 (just throwing out numbers), there are now a large amount of people with tons of cash, and all of the sudden $500, $800, $2000 don't seem like much anymore - after all, everyone has tons of money.

At this point people will start raising prices, a $500 car may now sell for $5000. Well, now all the people who have not went out and purchased money can't afford all these prices so they have to start putting high price tags on everything and/or going out and buying money.

I agree, it would be a great stream of income for LL in short term, except when prices get so high people get tired of shelling out so much RL$$ that they stop playing. After all, they played for 2 years and have L$100k, but that won't buy a can of soda anymore. LL will then be forced to keep lowering the exchange rate of RL$ to L$ to the point where people will buy it, devalueing the L$ currency even more (repeat above pattern).

I'm not saying this is an overnight process, it would be very drawn out but would be the end result.

You can always purchase money through a place like GOM or IGE, but it is another players money - money that is already in game. In this example you are simply spreading out the wealth already in game.

If 50 people in game have $100k and decide to sell half of it you would have 100 people in game with $50k, in the example of creating money by buying it from LL you would instead have 100 people with 100k (or more).

SL would get to the point that to do or own anything you would need to shell out large amounts of rl$$. After all when you start the game with your $3000 you will find after you buy a t-shirt you are all out money and need to go buy more.

In real life if the government decided it was going to print tons of extra money and let you exchange sporks for the money (a spork isn't normally valid currency irl just as rl$$ aren't normally valid currency in game) can you guess what would happen? Your currency is now effectively worth MUCH MUCH less, so prices are going to inflate to compensate for the new value of the dollar. So while everyone was all excited that sporks could be exchanged for money, were there any long term winners? What about the poor people who worked all their life and saved up $100k but couldn't get ahold of any sporks to exchange for money when this all happened? They are now broke, the amount of money they have won't even pay them food for the week.


Okay... I just realized how long my rant is and this isn't even the rant forum... i'm done now. Did anyone actually read all of that?

I read it all

Makes sense about money coming from nowhere causing inflation. I was thinking that might be an end result. I wasnt thinking about the other money on IGE and GOM already existing, simply being traded rather than materializing out of thin air.

What about our payday on Tuesdays? We all get money for nothing then, is this going to result in inflation down the road?

It seems that so far, from ver 1.1 to 1.2+, the prices overall have gone down. It seems a lot of things are reasonably priced these days. Is that just sheer competition for business regulating that?

No, becuase money is equally being removed.

- Accounts leaving
- Land Auctions
- Land claiming
- etc.

As long as the total amount remains constant per capita, there isnt a problem.


I would say the scarcity of money after 1.2 forced prices down. As soon as new accounts were made, and the existing money was slowly drained off, no-one could afford to pay $2K for a car.

-Adam

Yes, money does come out of thin air in many forms currently: stipend, dwell, events, etc.
You could view this more as you working for the magical lindens and getting paid a decent salary (your stipend is what you get just for showing up, dwell is your bonus you are paid for creating something in world that people like, events is your overtime for going above and beyond the call of duty).

The difference is that those amounts are set (dwell paid per day is caped, stipends are pretty much paid evenly with the exception that some people get $500 and some get $50 and running events requires time and effort for not much money).
This is far different than just being able to make whatever dollar amount you seem fit appear from no where - i realize you are paying RL$ for it, but as far as the game economy is considered it would just fall from the sky.

As far as prices going down, i was not yet around in the 1.1 days but from what i understand the average user had more than the average newbie now (forgive me if i'm wrong). But the many many new people do not have that same advantage - so the majority of users have less money, so things need to cost less so the majority of people can afford to buy it. Though i'm sure competition is another big factor.

I would venture to say money is not equally being removed.
$168k a week enters via dwell payments and a rather large amount from the weekly stippend.
I can't see under the current system that same amount of money being removed (at the height of the land demand i'm sure it was via auctions - but that is not always the case).

Of course i have no proof to back this up, just my opinion. But i also don't see it as being extreme, just enough to very slowly drive up inflation.

Actually the exchange rate would be more stable than ever since the Lindens would be defining the exchange rate by promising a maximum USD price for L$, probably around 1USD = 250L$.

L$ wouldnt be increased because they would cycle:

Linden Labs pays Player Tom 2500 L$ for 10USD
Player Tom pays CreatorNZ 2500 L$ for Product X-theta
CreatorNZ sells 2500L$ on GOM for 9.25USD

Linden gains 0.75USD, CreatorNZ gets 9.25USD, Player Tom gets Product X-theta, and all parties are happy.

Azelda

How do you figure that one? When you sell money to GOM it doesn't go away - it gets transfered to someone else.

Linden Lab created 2500L$ for Player Tom.
Player Tom paid CreatorNZ
CreatorNZ sold the money on GOM for $9.25
Player Bob buys the money from GOM for $9.28
(since GOM doesn't actually buy or sell per say CreatorNZ actually sold directly to Player Bob via GOM escrow)

That $2500 that was created because Player Tom paid LL $10 has been added to the economy, nothing is going to change that.

So... Linden gains $10USD, CreatorNZ gets $9.25, Player Tom gets Product, $2500L artifically induced into economy.
This starts the cycle i described in my first message... and while $2500L is going to have very little effect, have 100 people do that each week and you have an extra million L$ floating around each month.

But yes, the exchange rate would be more stable. Whatever LL charged for money GOM would stay just a tad under that - if there is no money for sale the person would buy directly from LL.

Also we need to ignore the fact i don't think anyone should have to spend RL$ to purchase objects in game... When i ran a MUSE/MUD i couldn't imagine the laughter i would have heard if i asked people to mail me RL$ to buy an object in the game.

If you bring the economy to that level you might as well just treat it for what it is. Zero out everyone's L$ balance and let you make a deposit of RL$, and you could just actually spend and receive that. With the company charging 3% for deposits and withdraws.

P.S. no Philip, this isn't a suggestion.

Maybe a market in which L$ don't appear out of thin air. It starts with L$0 on day one. Someone sells L$30,000 to the market. Now the market has L$30,000 to sell. Et cetera. This would place the same constraints on it that exist for GOM, IGE, private traders, and whoever else.

Yeah, I'm with Huns. It would only work if there was a CONTROLLED amount of L$ to work with -- and none of it was 'created out of thing air', like in There.

I'm still a bit cautious of this idea, though....I have a feeling most people won't like it.

I am 100% against US>L transactions. Completely against it.

I do NOT support this idea... I can accept GOM and IGE because it is just transfering money from one player to another. Totally different concept than what is proposed here.

Very much against it.

I think GOM and IGE and the like are bad enough, though I have used them a couple of times, to my shame, to pay for a land auction when I didn't have the cash handy to get it.

I wouldn't entierly object though if the lindens wanted to run their own version of GOM, maybe with a system like Huns proposed.

If you create money out of thin air, inside of a month the economey is going to be dictated by the wealthiest players *in real life*. Prices for things will shoot through the roof with the essentialy unending tide of money entering the market, until even very simplistic stuff is selling for the hundreds, if not thousands, of Lindens (By simplistic stuff, I mean things like 2-minute photoshop job T-shirts with text on them... stuff that sells for 10-50 lindens right now), as more and more money enters the market... eventually a point will be reached in which money is essentialy meaningless outside of land transactions, which will still be dominated by the wealthiest IRL players as they buy hundreds of thousands of lindens to pay the (by that time) insane land prices.

It's bad enough with some GOM-ed newbies as it is... When I have a person come up to me in sandbox when I'm working on something and offer to buy something I'm making... then start offering 500, 1000, 3000, 5000, etc and *not even seem to care what they are offering*, and then I check their account and they are 5-10 days old? That irks me.

At least it's better than my Everquest days, when you had a level 50 (That was alot, at the time I still played ) character asking in a public shout, "how do u cast spells?", because they bought the character on E-bay...

I'm against it. Coming from There its too much of a fear that prices will end up going sky high.

Having it easier to convert USD to L$ will just make more people do it, and the trend will follow...

While some people like me would refuse to sell items for higher cost, most items would definitly go up.

I'm completely against it.

Too busy at work to explain why, but the thread got me fired up to post my disapproval now

This might have worked in 1.1 when taxes drained L$, but not now. There's not enough drain unless all new land auctions are converted to L$. As someone previously stated, GOM does not remove any money from the game, it just transfers it. Buying L$ for US$ would basically cause Thereism (rapid, massive inflation).

Plus, if they did this I'd quit. No, really I would.

As a refugee from There, I'm quite against this. I'm with Viper Ritter on this for the reasons he's so eloquently stated.

If it's to be done at all, do it the way Huns Valen has suggested...buying Lindens that are taken out of the economy to be put up for sale.

Prices in There are ridiculous, and There itself is the bank, the mint and the store. You don't want that happening here. I don't think the lindens want that here either, otherwise we'd have seen it by now.

Lumi

Eeeek. Big Fat NO on this one! Can you say "hyper-inflation"!

Info About Hyperinflation...

I am absolutely, fundamentally, unquestionably, deeply, thoroughly, completely, and emphatically opposed to any and all exchanges of US$ <---> L$ "a la carte" without strict and draconian restrictions on real-estate resale value.

If you want to take your bonus, your dwell, or profits you earned out of game, I'm almost willing to look the other way while you twist your SecondLife experience into some kind of real life "job." Hey, live your SecondLife however you want, right?

I submit to you that allowing people to "cash out" to US$ is what is sustaining the strongest incentive to practice land barony.

The problem with land sales coupled with a way to turn these proceeds into US$ is that these barons start negatively affecting our collective experience by extorting L$ out of us to support their real-life US$-income-from-L$ habits, which they sustain by buying up the bottom end of the real estate market and reselling at their marked-up hyperinflated prices.

I'm tired of seeing 288m^2 lots in Lusk Estates being grabbed for L$288 and resold for L$3000 or more.

I want my SecondLife experience to be about creating things, good things, that the community as a whole can enjoy, not about playing some "money game" or helping somebody else play their "money game."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO NEVER!
www.gamingopenmarket.com
Zeppi is doing a fine job with that I say we leave at that!