Push the economic changes further. Think about it.

I'm surprised my proposal of getting rid entirely of L$ ingame is considered "childish". It's not, on the contrary it is based on capitalist logic, albeit forcing principles of altruism as a consequence, something some people naturally reject out of habit of getting more than they give in real-world. But you will see here that this forcing is not exactly detrimental to either value of content or equality of SL players.

Money is a tool of a scarcity-based economy. Its limited supply and inequal distribution among people ensures that, ideally, ownership of scarce resources go in priority to those who deserve it most (= those who will be able to produce more with it than their rivals).

In Second Life there are only two things that are truly scarce (as opposed to artificially scarce items - when creators remove the copy or transfer permission for other owners):
- computer resources, and as a consequence: land, maximum number of AVs in a Sim, prim quotas, texture resolution, file size, bandwidth requirements, LSL function hardcoded delays, upload fee
- time (that of players, since CPU processing time falls in the first category)

Both these are scarce only because of their dependancy with the real world, and as such should only be payable in real money. Everything else in SL is virtually unexhaustible, and as such SHOULD BE FREE according to basic market laws so as to not cripple the economy.

The latest economic changes aim at reducing the amount of L$ ingame to slow inflation. I say reduce this amount to zero, and you get rid of inflation forever. This would also increase creativity. In case you're living under a rock, this idea applied to intellectual works is known as Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) and has demonstrated excellent creativity.

There are problems with this, I recon, but I can address them easily:

1) Incentives for content creation:
That's the first complaint people have with this plan. Unfortunately it's a logicial fallacy. Content creation has value through the use of the few really scarce resources it uses: the time of the creator and the computer resources used by this content.
Let me address the computer resources issue first: SL makes people pay for the whole computer resources through land tier fees. It means that land owners pay the burden of computer resources for everyone in SL. The one-time fee of basic accounts is the equivalent of a tax that tries to rebalance this situation a bit, which means it's hardly relevant to long-term economic planning. Here's the point: the SL land market should be in real money only. It'd let people who value possession of land (and the associated advantages) pay the right amount (as decided through offer/demand) for it. All these people own islands and private sims and parcels because, face it, THEY VALUE IT.

Ultimately this should lead to either having only land-owners being able to create, either making everyone pay a small recurring fee. Yes I have a basic account for the moment, but I'm perfectly ready, because of the reasons lined here, to pay a monthly fee even if I don't get land (although small land and prim quotas shouldn't be very expensive I think).

Second point, time. People rightfully say that content creators deeply involved in SL should be rewarded, which means that the more work performed in SL, the more value you should get. This value is basically Time*Quality-Value of resources used. As is explained in first point, the value of resources used is already taken care of mainly through land fees. Unfortunately this means that LindenLabs should be paying real money to ALL the content creators, something that is probably not their intention since they, being a commercial company, are trying to make a buck. I know they are doing this partially already, but it's not done in any real-economy way: some prizes here, some subsidies there in the form of computer resources, etc... whereas the retribution for content production should be based on offer/demand. It's pretty obvious that someone should be able, under this scheme, to earn more than what is paid for the computer resources required, except if Quality is tied to computer resources. I'd be interested to hear Lindens' opinion on this.

2) You're a filthy communist !
Obviously not, I'm a greedy capitalist who likes to point at, and attempt to break monopolies. There are a number of monopolies in SL, one is the L$ production, another is new land production. Ideally there will be a free market for both. Right now it is NOT free, and probably won't because LL is a commercial company (more on this in 4).

3) you're a greedy capitalist!
Obviously not, I'm a filthy communist who wants everyone in SL to be virtually rich as long as this virtual world can afford it. As has been pointed out time and time again, you don't need the L$ to play SL and enjoy it.

4) What about content creators who don't want to give things for free to everyone ?
Jauani, is that you ? In this case they can use the permissions system in SL to create artificially scarce items and try to convince people to pay real money for it. That's another way to retribute content creation, one that does not involve LindenLabs, but I predict it will fail, with simple maths:
-> total amount of computer resources used = "CR cost"
-> total time of players spent creating content and making SL enjoyable = "TC cost"
CR < total land fees and TC < total account fees if LindenLabs wants to be profitable, or more accurately in the current situation (with land fees paying for most of the CR cost of basic accounts):
CR + TC < total fees
This is like the Second Thermodynamics Principle, only applied to SL economics: ultimately everyone won't be able to make a profit from SL, which is not a problem as long as you consider it a game. This is also the reason why L$'s real value decreases (inflation). Some people will be able to make a buck this way, but they have the whole system against them (like the L$ monopoly). That's how greed works. Yes, greed, that's what it is about if you try to make a living this way. My opinion is that people will value their work more than what they can get people to pay for ingame. Maybe I'm wrong, but being stubborn as I am I give this a low probability
I advise that people who want to give artificial value through artificial scarcity to their creations don't try to get this value back to them in real money, what about using them as prizes on contests, for example ?

your arguments are sound. another option is for linden lab to let us sell things for real money and clear the charges for us weekly or monthly.

what you're overlooking is that fact that philip rosedale, the owner of linden lab who poured millions of dollars into the development of second life, wants to use the software, and the community of residents, to experiment with the dynamics of a virtual economy. we agreed to be subjects of the study when we purchased an account.

Oh, that, yes But you missed my proposal to make residents establish SL's price in a free market way, pretty much nullifying all of LL's financial benefits. And since they have families to feed, it won't happen.

they do, indirectly, because of GOM.

the real way to implement this without stripping everyone of their pre-existing wealth is to simply freeze the $L.

stipends would be based on the amount of $L "sunk" each week, and given to all premium accounts equally. that's it.

this would actually create value against the dollar, since the dollar is constantly sinking.