Another stab at the fundemental problem

I can understand the points made in various posts about the economic problems of SL and the value of the Linden on the Lindex in particular, but even the simplest most clearly laid out points about the money supply seem to miss the bigger picture.

Isn't the fundemental problem here that LL not only creates NO CONTENT, it also offers its OWN SERVICE for FREE via free accounts, and furthermore offers FREE ACCESS TO THE CONTENT CREATED BY OTHERS FOR PROFT, as LL encourage us to do, via the stipend (or potentially worse, profiting from them by selling currency itself it it goes ahead with that ?) Isn't this simply unsustainable and quite contradictory given the only reason for the Lindex currently is to allow the exchange of US$ for Lindens so consumers can recompense creators who wish it ?

Isn't the real problem as much about LL's real world economic model as it is about the SL economy in isolation ?

Note, I'm not a capitalist at heart, and fully support free content made by residents who wish to provide it, the differing reasons people enjoy SL, and if LL can sustain it, free access to their service, but something seems very wrong with the picture as it stands.

I think to flourish SL needs both the free & commercial, but it has to support both, as well as LL own need to be profitable in the real world.

People complain about LL printing money and selling LL's. But when they create new land and sell it, doesn't that do the exact same thing in effect? Printing new land is the same as printing new money. There is a glut of land, and prices are brought down when there is an infinite supply of it, when it is not rare, it looses value. As the amount of land has increased, the value of the linden has gone down, because peopel do not need to purchase as much lindens to buy from people who want to sell. Just look at a map and see all the yellow lots!

The two sides to the issue are supply and demand. Linden labs has glutted the supply side and exceeded the demand, thus the falling linden. There is too much for sale and prices fall, leading to less demand for lindens. Naturally they do not see this because sellign land benefits them financially, so they blame the DI and dwell, which benefits them in having less payments in the short term, but simply creates less demand for land to be used for clubs and other attempts to break even financially. Demand for the linden will only increase when things you can buy with it are rare and prices start to rise. As long as Linden keeps creating new land, it is equivalent to printing money and just as inflationary. The linden will keep going down.

Lovepeace

I would agree with you that in RL it might have the same effect, but aside from access to the service, the only legitimate thing LL has to sell is land, after all it creates it by virtue of the service it provides.

In RL land is limited, virtual land in SL less so, and to cap this would seem artificial and arbitrary. This is one way that the SL economy differs from the real world, so trying to leverage it in that way makes no sense to me.

It is also different to what amounts to giving away or profitting from an aspect of SL that has been created not by LL but by its residents ie: CONTENT, which will only exist in ALL its diverse forms if both commercial and free providers can flourish.