Forbid access to Currency Exchange to basic accounts.

I am NOT trying to restart the flamewar involving Stipends.

I have heard both sides of that debate and agree with both sides.

The simplest solution I can see is to forbid basic accounts from cashing out their stipends.

This would keep those $L in-world and not being leeched out of the place.

I would allow them to -buy- lindens, at least.

Dont forget SLExchange

Good point! We want their dollars to flow INTO the game... just not out.

Then they will just sell it on SLExchange, IGE, or eBay...
Your solution doesn't solve the problem....

Fix the Policy and you fix the problem. Sellers aren't the
problem, they are a result of poor economic policy by LL.

Bad idea. There are plenty of content creators who contribute much to SL who are on basic accounts. They should be able to cash out their lindens like anyone else.

Lindex 101 again: cashing in or out does not affect the amount of L$ in SL. Each operation makes a small profit for LL, though.

That's just silly. They (the stipends) don't make their way from basics to the Lindex directly, in the case of basics, rather indirectly, from the people from whom they buy stuff. If they don't blow it first on a couple of happy snaps.

Not to mention that you can be very successful in SL and be on a basic account, and your L$50 stipend is pitifully irrelevant..

Yes, it would be rather bad. Everyone who's cashing out would be cashing out L$450 extra.

Oh yeah, that $L50 a weeks really putting the hurtlock on the economy.

Tomorrow's Tuesday! Woohoo! Can't wait to sell my L$50 on the LindeX at L$350/$1 and cause the entire economy to explode! I'm dangerous, better stop me!

Insane idea and totally unrelated with the LindeX problem (if any)

Sellers are the biggest problem in a system where buyers have no choice than to buy or not to buy. No one is forced to set a lower rate than his fellow sellers. This is only dictated by impatience and/or fear. I doubt that any decision of LL except setting a fixed exchange rate will end this interseller competition.

What planet do you live on?

How do you think Real World things like Oil, Sugar, and Wheat
are traded? Sellers are not the problem.. Linden Labs Economic Policy
is the problem... n00b

Cashing out their stipends? And $50L/wk is all of ... hmmm... 47 cents!!!! Gods, stop them before they go too far!!!


ROFLMAO!!!

Another thought -- the value of the Linden is going down (meaning you get MORE Lindens per USD) because THERE ARE TOO MANY LINDENS IN-WORLD. And you want to make sure the peons don't remove their $.47US from the game? Please, let them take as many as they want!!!

I don't think it addresses the problem.

Most of the solutions I've seen come up at one point or another over the past few months simply deal with ways to limit money.

If the problem is that more people are selling than buying - you could say that there are too many dollars in the system - that is a fair conclusion.

But making that number tilt to an equilibrium isn't going to happen just by limiting or kludging the system - thats not going to magically make folks buy more money.

Money is only worth what it can give you - if not for that its just a floating point number on the top of the screen.

Personally I'd think something along the lines of auctioning all 'reclaimed' land in linden dollar auctions would be a good start. Linden Lab -still- gets tier money for people buying it (currently they double dip on larger auctions by getting USD for the sale AND the tier).

It's important to note 'all' because although they do SOME it seems to be on smaller parcels (under 4k meters) - all above are in USD.

It gives a venue for the 'everyman' to compete for a better land deal - the L$ accrued in the auction are taken out of the system, and if there is a healthy competition to bid for the land - even better.

Money is taken out of the system - people receive some value for it - it doesn't intefere with any business currently going - and LL still gets their tier money.

The fundemental thing thats being missed is that Lindex doesn't take L$ out of the game - it simply shuffles them from a selling player to a buying player for an amount of money.

It (at this point) neither creates nor destroys money.

Someone selling their stipend or their big wad of land baron cash doesn't remove anything at all - it just shuffles it from one person to another.

Basic accounts get a whole L$50/week -- and you actually have to come in-world during that week to get it, which means you'll have plenty of opportunity to spend that princely sum. Cashing out basic stipends just isn't a problem; they don't amount to enough to be worth the trouble.

People cashing out premium stipends (L$500/week, and they accrue whether or not you log in) might be an issue, but I don't think a lot of people are doing it. At the current exchange rate, you're losing money if your premium membership is on the monthly or quarterly plan; you're still slightly ahead if you pay yearly, but not much. If you consider the premium stipend to be L$450/week rather than L$500 (subtracting out the L$50 that you would have gotten anyway as a basic member), the present exchange rate is right around breakeven for yearly membership -- each L$450 is worth about US$1.50, and you get four such payments a month, just covering your US$6 fee.

If a basic account is working or creating content in-world, that's another story; the user might actually have a significant number of Lindens to cash out. But then that user is contributing to making the world a better place, and is certainly entitled to sell some Lindens.

Like Linden$? LOL.

I live on Planet OPEC, on a planet where markets are blocked against competitors (sugar in the European Union), and where billions are spent on subsidies to lower the price of products artificially (wheat).

Sellers set the price of the L$ and at the moment the only pressure on the value of the Linden$ comes from fellow sellers who can't wait to have their orders filled.

Currency trading and simple cashing out of stipends aside, it seems to me the Lindex is a mechanism by which "consumer" residents can pay US$ to "content creator" residents. So what is causing the current imbalance ? If the content creators are finding it hard to sell their Lindens at a good rate it's not simply a matter of there being "too many Lindens" surely, because all those Lindens have been spent on purchases from them. There are sufficient people wanting enough of their products.

Surely the issue is more like not enough US$ being exchanged on the Lindex since this is what everyone who is selling wants. This surprises me since the only new source that doesn't have an associated exchange of US$ is stipends and I personally wouldn't have imagined even L$500 a week for the premiums would be enough to cause this, afterall, who makes a land purchase with only their saved stipend, or how many really nice items can you buy with it ?

Sorry, this is "first principles" stuff for me as I'm no economist, but I'd still like a better understanding of all this with respect to all the issues involved.

look at the number of sub '500' sales offers (or just the number of sales offers in a given number, say people offering to sell per 1M linden, and you will see 'cash outs' of stipends, in numbers sufficient to even break 1% of the daily transactions, simply don't happen, never have and most likely never will, its always been a red herring used by people trying to disguise their own inflationary tactics/desires

and what planet do YOU live on? As I have stated to you on numerous occasions, if you buy up large blocks of a stock IRL then turn aorund and dump it fast to create a panic so you can buy more and control what you're buying, your assets get frozen, the IRS visits you, the treasury dept visits you and the SEC ( Securities and Exchange Commission since you obviously have no CLUE how trading IRL works or what's allowed. Anything, and I do mean ANYTHING that those enitites can even perceive as market controlling tactics buys you a fast trip to Club Fed. The only reason you get away with it here is LL does not regulate BS.

The idea proposed in this thread is poorly thought out.

There are two things you can do with the currency exchange:

1. Buy Linden

If a basic account holder buys Linden then he creates demand for Linden. This improves the Linden. (GOOD FOR LINDEX)

2. Sell Linden

A basic account holder gets only L$50 a week. That's less than US$1 a month at the current lindex prices. A basic account holder would not cash out such a tiny amount because even just to transfer the amount to paypal (cheapest transfer) costs US$1 already. If you're worried about basic account holders cashing stipend, you're barking up the wrong tree because the amounts are minuscule. (MINIMAL EFFECT ON LINDEX and economy, and pointless for them to do in the first place).

If a basic account holder has enough Linden to actually cash out a large amount the only sustainable way that could have happened is that they generated sales or earned service fees. Regardless of the source, if a basic account can cash out a significant amount of Linden it means that this basic account created a CASH SINK. (VERY GOOD FOR ECONOMY).

If he sold Linden he bought earlier, then he's actually losing money because of the transfer fees and transaction charges (pointless for him to do).

I rest my case.

There are a lot of people on free basic accounts, renting land, and making a lot of money - whilst contributing nothing to the running costs of the game.

If basic accounts were prevented from cashing out - make it another reason to sign up to premium - then at least they're contributing something instead of how things are right now.

Too many people are making a living off of SL at the expense of those who believe enough in it to give something to the company that runs it.

I'm not saying stop basic accounts - because that's a good way to get people in to see what the game is like - but currently I believe there is far too much freedom and not enough incentive to go premium.

Lewis