PayDay Tuesday - L$ Going Down

If memory serves, the Linden actually peaked higher than US$5.80 per L$1000 that summer of 2004. (God, am I on a nostalgia kick today or what? ) If I'm not mistaken, the value of the Linden had risen above US$6.

Thing is, a unique situation was going on that summer. For starters, our world was much, much, much smaller. I'd venture to say it was a tenth of the size it was today.

That summer, the new Snow Sims were released, and a land rush was on. Folks were paying amazingly high prices to be the 'lucky' owners of these new snow-themed areas - and that's what drove the Linden up.

Then, for some reason - the whole Snow Sim market crashed. No one wanted that land anymore, and it became some of the cheapest property in Second Life. Lots of folks lost out hardcore.

Additionally, around the same timeframe - GOM switched their method of selling blocks of Lindens. Instead of selling blocks of $250 like it used to be, they switched to blocks of $1000. I'm not certain why - but it was around this time that the Linden began its fall to around $4.00

Once the Linden reached US$4 per 1000L, its pretty much stayed betwen US$3 and US$4. Ricki Zamboni could probably speak a lot more intelligently on this than I can as to why.

So to make a prim a commodity, I have to pay the government (LL) for it? Do oil producers pay the government for the oil? How about gold miners or wheat farmers or whoever it is that produces pork bellies? Again, you're trying to fit an RL model on SL. Taxing the creation of prims doesn't make them commodities. It taxes the creative workers that make SL a viable enterprise. Your idea that then the objects they sell will have an intrinsic value overlooks the simple fact that these creations already have an intrinsic value, and are bought and sold. What do you want to be in this new economy, Reserve? A prim producer? Selling blank blocks to people for more than you paid for them? Instead of taxing creativity out of SL, how about you just use those prims to make something people want to buy.

Well the onus is still upon yourself to support your original statement - not the smoke and mirror arguments you are summoning out of thin air now.

(and I think Travis summed most of this up above).

Now - do tell. Where is the proof to support the supposition you made in your thread title? Your original arugument, so far all you've done to try to support it is to divert the discussion to other matters.

I maintain it is a made up affair - conjured out of thin air to support your own 'no stipends' cause.

When people sell Linden dollars, they sell them to other players; therefore all the Lindens sold DO stay in SL.

Having read through this thread again it occurs to me RBD seems to be on some type of mission to prove a point.

Here is one idea that I mentioned in part jest earlier.

Create the ability to "go short" on Lindens (as well as long) In other words introduce a facility where people can short sell the Lindon and profit if it falls. Of course this would have to be on margin, which could be a mirror of the way in which real life currency is traded...,say $1 per pip with the Linden value expressed in 4 decimal places.

Your margin would be either your Lindon dollar balance or perhaps Lindens in a separate account with gearing of 100 (usual on currency markets). We could have stop loss systems and all the usual trading rules of currency

We can still have matched bargains as those speculators who believe Lindon may appreciate will hold long, as against those who believe contra wise.

Believe me, short selling ALWAYS helps market liquidity (please read stock market research on this point) and to be fair it also prevents speculative bubbles.

Finally Lindon Labs can charge commission and earn yet more money

Land Barons will like this because it would enable them to hedge their holdings, as other content providers may too

Not to help you ignore the obvious but LL's DESIRED rate is US$4.00 per L$1000 $3.60 is closer to that rate than $5.80 is.

the 'mission' is pretty simple - someone who reports to have been around for that long (obviously under another account) would know that that the money system isn't closed - money leaves the system (via uploads/classifieds/l$ land auctions etc) and comes into the system (via dwell and stipends etc).

They obviously know this as they promote things akin to the old prim tax system - ways to take money out of Second Life, yet wish to plug up whereever it comes IN.

What they want isn't a stable economy, but the exact opposite of the 'doom scenario' they cite.. where money is increasingly leached out of the system making it spiral the opposite direction - as the 'pool' diminishes.. making the money they hold worth more.

Thats it... alas its just as bad an idea as the opposite, probably worse... as the population increases it becomes harder and more expensive to participate - until folks eventually leave disheartened.

Playerbase dwindles, LL doesn't recoup money to expand... and down the gurgler it goes. (on a worse case scenario).

Stipend is needed to give new players an 'in' to the game - to get them involved.

I think the key to a stable economy is LL's ability to offset the money going in with the money going out.

And so far its nowhere near the chicken little proportions some would make - the last massive rise was at the same time of the 'telehub buyback' program.. and even now that leap seems to have stopped and is steadying.

Dude, if I could short sell, I would be all over that baby....
My name would ReserveShortBank Division

US$3.60 might be closer, but US$4.00 was where it was at
back in Oct/Nov 2005. Why the decline? Why didn't Linden
Policy adjust to keep it from falling 10%? Why isn't LL policy
changing now to keep it from falling?

LL might have a "target", but to reach it, they'll have to start
taking up the policies that I'm recommending. They need something
to generate demand for Linden Dollars. Until that happens, L$ will
continue to decline, trust me...

eh. Its not welfare i pay ten bucks a month for $500 linden a week.

But your not paying 10 bucks a month to give Alby $500 lindens a week, therein lies the problem

There has been no continuation of any decline whatsoever. The past 30 days have seen a steady price ranging from 282 to 272. I would think that this would mean that the price has been "steady" with the usual ups and downs. I'm still waiting for the $L to decline like you have said for how long??

Effectively, prims are already a commodity, and scarce. When we're trading land, what we're really trading is prim allocations. And we are already taxed on those prims, it's called tier.

30 days bump compared to a 18 month decline? You are missing
90% of the valuation movement. Wake Up.

If prims where a commodity, then you would have a limit
on the amount of widgets you can produce, period. Not a limit
on the amount of widgets a piece of land can support.

Are you talking about yourself against Siggy? I ran a
search on this alby person and its funny that Jauani Wu
in a post a month ago listed you two on the the same list.

Only somebody like you hypes there own alt..


Jauani Wu
the new pie

Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: canada
Posts: 3,130

i hereby put in place the resmod oversight commitee.

basically, along side other upstanding and reputable posters of startling intellect, i will moderate the moderators on a volunteer basis.

fellow resmod resmods that i have chosen arbitrarily for this program without their consent are:

siggy romulus
korg stygian
christopher nomad
zoey jade
aimee weebler
taco rubio
alby yellowknife
regnar bell
briana dawson
jin gupte
cory edo
the painfully obvious pandastrong alt
zugzug
grimmy moonflower
nolan nash
charlotte gillespie
catherine cotton
prokofy neva, and of course,
strawberry cocopants.

Shorting the linden? Margin accounts? That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. Just who is going to make sure margin requirements are met? For that matter, who's going to determine just what the margin requirement is. Which Linden is going to call us when there's a margin call. Something tells me Linden Labs isn't in the brokerage business.

Sounds like a perfect niche market for somebody else
to jump on. I don't see why it isn't possible.. A broker
issues a margin line which is backed up by a deposit an
account holder has made. The broker makes money off
the interest and the short makes money off repurchasing
the L$ at a lower price. If the short defaults and runs with
the cash, the broker just forfeits the deposit.

Hmmmmmm... Great business idea... Shorting the L$...
I know the Linden's would hate that...Tough Love..

No - that's not how it works. To short something, you sell something you don't have. You short a stock, say 100 shares of IBM, yoiu sell 100 shares you don't have. You have to borrow those shares and then eventually buy them back to replace the shares you borrowed. You sell Lindens you don't own, you have to borrow someone else's and eventually buy them back (hopefully at a lower price). Whose Lindens are you borrowing and what happens if the market moves against you? When you short, your theoretical loss is infinite. It doesn't matter that you have a margin account. No one in their right mind would take all the risk necessary to facilitate this in a game like SL.

Do a search - learn - study....

Follow your own advice on that one

So tell me again - how did that Tuesday go.. you know.. with the stipends lowering Lindex?


Thought so

The Linden Dollar was down as predicted. From L$276 to L$279...

Next Question...

Im still awaiting the answers to my questions

Well your prediction was 280... so I guess that was wrong.

Data to support that it was folks cashing out stipends as you said it is... which I guess is wrong too

And - I disagree with your figures too.

Next? Thought so.

Damn, I was off by L$1 dollar. Next time I'll try to be
more exact on days when Stipends get dumped and the
market moves lower...