Hoarding, stipends, and the nature of L$

I agree with Yumi, and i humbly will suggest a sink that would stablize the economy. Of course it was a sink that LL removed from the economy; in ages long ago LL allowed users to pay for tier with L$. If LL reintroduced this with a semi-reasonable fixed rate, say 290L$ per US$, then when the economy dropped to and below that level, the userbase would pay for tier with L$ till a vast amount of the L$ reserve had been used to pay for tier. The value of the L$ would jump soon after because of it's rarity; hovering indefinitly around the rate.

LL would never go for it as it would adversely effect thier income.

The governor has taken another job? Which one would this be?

And does the rsident who hijacks multiple threads do harm or good?

If you invested $2000 USD buying land in SL only to have LL render it useless, would that make you happy?

Beside that, it's not a hijack, because I am (or soon to be, was) a tier paying customer. It's my case in point that the purpose of this thread was to snub successful business people.

I think this point of this remark is ( or maybe is ) Sme Basic members are not really basic newbies and just results of a rebirth Maybe 2 or 3 or more offsprings from the main tier paying avie.
Just a thought

Well, the real point is that for content creators to get the rewards they deserve for their work, the amounts of content and USD have to be balanced. In the earlier days of SL, there was a content shortage, and the result was that USD weren't coming in (indeed initially it wasn't even possible to sell L$). Through the efforts of many hard working individuals, there is no longer a content shortage, and value has been added to the L$.

But now we have reached the balance point and started to go down the other side. SL no longer has a content shortage. It has a USD shortage.

This doesn't mean nobody can make money creating content anymore. But what it does mean is that, unless it's an entirely new form of content, the money they'll get is just a share of the money that would have gone into SL-as-a-whole anyway - not new money that wouldn't have gone in otherwise. And although the new entrants might make money, content creators as a whole lose out twice here, since not only do the L$ sales get divided between more people (so each individual gets less) but when time comes to sell their L$ they are competing against more other sellers.

So how can this shortage be sorted out? Well, the problem basically is that the reward for buying stuff in SL is pretty low. Logically the reward for buying something ought to be, having that thing. But with SL being a virtual world, just having ownership of something isn't much of a reward on its own, and the social culture is all geared up to reward creators over buyers, and buyers who earned the money in SL over those who bought it. Now you might say that's good and fair, but the result is less people buying money and, as a result, less rewards for content creators, which is not fair to them. Yes, it's a case where every individual step in the process is fair but the outcome is unfair - entirely possible

I guess I shouldn't go without making a suggestion, so I'll try..

We have a new component of Lindex, called TierEx (or whatever). When you sell L$, you can sell them on Lindex or TierEx. But the total amount you can sell on TierEx is equal to <tier bills since TierEx started> minus <amount cashed out through TierEx so far> (or something similar - there should be a better way, but you get the idea I hope). When someone buys L$, they can choose for a proportion of that purchase to come from TierEx - must be at least 10% but can be more if they wish. TierEx sells at very slightly higher rates than Lindex. It also doesn't charge commission, but the money is paid straight to LL towards the seller's tier rather than going into the general account to possibly be cashed out via PayPal.

(This has the advantage that money going towards tier fees gets cashed out on a seperate schedule to money being cashed out to go into PayPal accounts, thus eliminating the "I can't pay my tier because I'm stuck behind L$200000" issue)

However, there's a reward on the other side too. Every L$ bought from TierEx becomes a Golden Linden. Golden Lindens are indicated in a seperate colour on the balance bar in the client. They are not a seperate currency, they are still worth only L$1, they can be spent on anything that L$ can be spent on, and as soon as they are transferred to anyone else they lose Golden status, automatically being replaced with the same number of ordinary L$ (thus they cannot be resold). Because of the limit on total sales on TierEx, the number of GL is limited too. However, vendors can set prices in GL, and can identify that GL were used to pay for a good, even though they stop being Golden as soon as the seller recieves them. This means that individual content creators can devise and provide rewards for people who support SL by introducing new USD from outside into the economy. An item could be sold for L$100 or GL$50, for example, or a bonus version of an item could be awarded to players who include at least GL$1 in the amount used to pay for them. Possible LL could have some kind of reward scheme (not in L$!) for people who offered such bonus items as well.

Like this!

Eliminate the $Linden completely. Use $US instead to buy/sell stuff, all transactions to be run through an accounting database, and merge your transaction account with your LL account, so once a month your balance is merged with your premium fee and tier fees. If you sell lot, your balance is positive, if not, then you are sent the bill.

No $Linden = no need to convert virtual money from a virtual economy into real money...

Why not?

I think the whole idea of $Linden is to dis-associate the currency from the $US for most players.

In theory the more people associate in-game money with real money the more they think of things they could buy in RL with it instead or start making decisions like "New Prim Hair vs Real Life Chocolate" mmm chocolate... or "spend $150US on non existent land that costs $25US to keep per month or Pretty RL shoes" mmm pretty shoes...

Can't.

Casinos. Sex Biz.

That stuff is illegal in some areas. Using a fake currency introduces some level of ambiguity about it. Using RL $ USDs.... well, there's no way around it... you gotta comply with local, state, federal, and national laws..... worldwide.

Not to mention the follwoing facts:

Transaction fees.. it could cost more to transfer the cost of those prim shoes than they cost themselves..

Inherent control..if they lock a greifers account and he has a USD balance.. its technically theft. If its just L$, lindens have no inherent value. They can contorl greifers better with a L$ balance

Then it would be a good thing, since it would clean up this place from all those money chairs and casinos.

Then again, ppl will always find ways to work around the system. As for online casinos, anyone with a credit card can play online, regardless of what country or state they live in. What does LL want SL to be again? A platform for conducting real business or a place where you waste your money paying for non-existant objects?
Blah... another useless discussion... I'm outa here.

And a new company is born! Yumi's retarded solutions to non-existant problems!

Where is this USD shortage?

Shit I think getting ANYTHING for what is essentially a hobby is pretty cool - and if theres a shortage in sales etc.... or a glut of 'content' (mind you seeings that most 'content' is different thats a retarded statement.. like saying 'There is an abundance of 'stuff' in the real world! theres a glut of 'stuff'!!! everywhere I see there is 'stuff!') I've not seen it.

Or the game it is to alot of people?

People! Second life is peeeeeeeeople!

Um, on Lindex, being the reason why people undercut the current price to sell their L$ in time for tier.



Well, in the real world, the value of a currency is based on the amount of stuff, as against the amount of money, in the country - it doesn't matter that all the stuff is different. However, in the real world, countries don't charge tax in other countries' currencies.

well i guess thats what you get when you count on a vulture job.

Just for completeness, there's a formal description of the currency tiers here.

Ah right. you asked them? You do realise there is no 'tier day' that the day I pay tier is different than the day someone else may?

Didn't think so. Ok onto the next.

Ok.. if there is exacty $0 USD on Lindex - at all times - how is there a shortage or surplus?
Lindex doesn't have USD... when you buy my money you pay from your account to my account with Lindex acting as a middle man - an escrow.

So again - how can there be a shortage? and if there was how does another exchange with another currency that offers next to nothing in difference help more than say another exchange run by a player?

There are many reasons why people will undercut - to elaborate:

People enjoy getting money more than they enjoy giving money - this is a fundamental given that I really don't think anyone could disagree with.. even philanthropists give away money for reasons other than altruism.... people will receive money gladly for no reason whatsoever.

Maybe I want my money NOW - maybe I want some poker money - or pizza and porn night is coming up on saturday.. maybe I'm just impatient as is becoming prevalent in the 'me first' world we live in.

Or maybe - I just dont give a shit because the difference between 30k at 275 and 286 is still around abouts a hundred bucks.

Make a new exchange - hell make 5 with plaid an pokerdot lindens and guess what... you'll have the same shit happening.

as for lumping all content together - you still can't say there is a 'glut of content' - its simply doesn't work that way... in the real world a surplus of rice won't make gas prices go down.

I do realise that. And I didn't need to ask them - it's all around on this forum. The complaint that sellers put their price down in order to sell quickly, because they have a deadline, whereas buyers can easily wait days or weeks to buy their items in-world. The fact that everyone has a different deadline (and thus, every day is a deadline for somebody) makes this worse.



At any given time there is a "pool" of USD, which is the combined amount that all SL users at that time are willing to spend on L$. This isn't tracked by LindeX or anything else of course, but it's there.



The idea isn't to make a new currency, the idea is to reward people for buying L$. At the moment all the big rewards in SL are for creating stuff and selling L$. Now that sounds like it's fair, and the way it should be, but unfortunately it also directly results in a low value for L$ because if there's little reward for buying people don't do it and if they don't buy you can't sell.



The value of a country's currency is determined by its total value of stuff outputted, divided by its total value of currency available. In other words, all the country's money is always just the right amount to buy all the country's stuff, no matter what actual amounts of each are involved. If there's more money than stuff, then there's not enough stuff to go around even amongst people who can pay for it, so people start trying to outbid each other for the scarce stuff and prices go up. If there's more stuff than money, then sellers can't sell their stuff, so they lower their prices.

It doesn't matter what the stuff is, only that it's valuable: you can see that by the way governments can control the level of their currencies by carefully releasing gold onto the market when they get too low. Since most people do not care about buying raw gold you might think this would have no effect, but in fact it does because it's adding "value of stuff" to the country's economy.

Ahh...Yumi knows best - because actually finding out what people think may just fuck up your argument.. no- if you want to make the assertion that 'people do x' you'll have to ask and find out why people do.. saying it doesn't make it so... case in point 'SL's top economic mind'.


What you are saying is that if I have 3 motorcycles - a pushbike - 2 cars and a gallon of milk... if someone takes the milk it's ok because 'I have plenty'


This is the crux of your 'stuff' point and as you can see, its ludicrous.

Again - there is no 'shortage of USD' it's like saying 'things are expensive on EBay because the USD pool of ebay is low. 'Pool of people willing to pay USD' is not a 'Pool of USD' either.. Thats 'people wanting to buy money' not 'money'.

On Lindex there are 2 factors: How much you want to sell for and how much people wish to buy for.

If folks don't want to buy it - they don't wish to buy it - for whatever reason.. if folks want to sell it, they will, and it's not 'because they have a tier deadline' that may be one factor for a subset of people - but saying 'this is why' with NOTHING to back that up but your statement...


... I'm emporer of the world!

See, I can do it to, but it doesn't make it true.

People at the moment have a great reward for buying money - IT'S FUCKING CHEAP!

Also - as for gleaning info based on the Economic forums, well go back and see the flipside comments on this forum when the L$ was higher, you'll see BUYERS complaining and the majority of the current crowd whooping and yahooing saying 'its a free market baby!'

'something needs to be done' only when the market is not working in their favor - atm its GREAT for people buying money - thats the flipside of the 'free market'.

SL is not a 'country' - some say platform - some say game - but it is NOT a country.

The "stuff" point only works when applied to the entire economy. If applied to the possessions of one person it doesn't make sense anymore, you're right. But yes, for the purpose of valuing currency it doesn't matter what the "stuff" is.



The USD pool of eBay is not low by any means And there is always a pool of customer's money to draw from that has to be allowed when selling a product.



Well, I'm not saying that's the absolute only reason why anyone ever sells L$ on Lindex. I'm just saying it's a factor that'll encourage certain sellers - quite a lot it seems - to keep driving the price down by selling at a price that puts them first in line.



That isn't a reward though



Well yes, but because of the relationship between "cashing out" L$ and tier fees it's more worrying when the market is bad for sellers.

and in a world with no 'needs' all 'stuff' comes down to personal possessions and wants.. a 'glut of stuff' is a broad generalisation that doesn't work in SL..

I say here, it does - A Chip Midnight Skin release will have more impact than another poseball screw anim. Probably more than several such releases.

A new and innovative product not seen before - say when ROAM came out - will have a bigger impact than 2 more low prim stools.

What the stuff is DOES matter.




Well, actually, yes you were - you said it WAS what was causing things to go down - so consider..... why isn't it happening constantly? Why isn't it nosediving every single day by 8 or 9 points?



Well I think it is.




In a word - 'fuck em' they took the $$$ when the reverse was true and yahooed about the free market and how great it was.

Now the shoe is on the other foot - stiff shit - good with the bad.

And thats coming from someone who IS a content creator and DOES cash out earnings to pay tier.

Stop making sense, Siggy! It confuses people.