Why end stipends?

Well ending stipend would be stupid for starters. To do this fee for premium should be 5 dollars. Currently we do get over paid on stipends however. The simplest solution would be to regulate them on a weekly basis according to L value. we should get a relative amount of L a week that equal out to what buying 1.25 usd worth of L that week would be worth. That evens out the costs and is actually more fair to LL then what is in place now. This would lower some of the L that gets circulated as well without cutting it out completely. So in instance if it was 300L to 1.25 usd for that week on average that would be what we get for that week. Currently we get 500L a week which is an oversite of what we should really be getting.

But again there is no point in getting rid of the stipends it will only cause panic and hurt people in the long run. Regardless of what any economist says it wont work. I dont care if they have a degree its a degree for real world economics not virtual worlds. I know a thing or two about game companies screwing up economics in a game FFXI did it and many others. I quit most of these games soon after they did that because it became unenjoyable to do anything. Had to spend days on end doing crap just to make enough to buy a single piece of something.

Again they could make it a bit fairer without hurting anything. Removing it would only hurt everyone except those that cash out cosntantly!!

Also musuko I'll point out your comparing SL's economy to a real world economy. Simpy put this isnt the real world but it does have an economy. You can do alot more in SL. And that is how it works in SL btw. I can give my money to someone else to guy buy your product. It's called helping people. I make out by feeling good about myself the person can buy your product and you make some money. Everyone wins. Its not being childish to disagree with you. I've sold stuff, I've bought Land, i've never cashed out though. Not everyone cashes out and the problem has nothing to do with the amount of L in SL. Its greed. With the implementation of the newer advanced features for Lindex hopefully it changes a little.

Getting rid of the stipends simply put would be like if the U.S mint stopped Pressing money. You would pay taxes and earn just what is out there. Eventually because of the tax in Sl's case stipends the money would eventually dry up. Making people earn less and less. While you go off on inflation getting rid of the stipends fully would end up causing deflation. The exact opposite. Then everyone would complain we need stipends or some way to balance that out. There is no way to get rid of the stipends fully without hurting everyone its simply a bad move for everyone including LL. Only those with a ton of L now would profit and LL mabye for a tiny short term area. You wanna argue the fact that inflation will happen? Have prices on things gone up as L value has gone down so far? Answer to that is no. Most developers simply wont risk it. They know the majority of the people that buy their products arnt getting more L with the lower values.

Not everyone buys L and these people putting massive amounts in at a low value are the problem. Its greed caused by them wanting to cash out fast to simply cover their tier. We should all suffer because the minority of SL choose to do something like this??? I think not. Simply put its an idea that would hurt even these people.

You created the value, by making the thing you sold. You newly created it from nowhere, so money to match the value needs to be added too, otherwise the money will deflate. Now we could do that one of two ways. We could have a big complicated gameable system that monitors who builds what, or a team of Lindens monitoring everyone 24 hours a day, to work out how much value they've added to the SL world and give them a matching amount of money. Alternatively.. we can give everyone a dollar, and they'll spend it with the people who made things they want, so the money will wind up with people who earned it by adding value. Neat!



Every week, people make new stuff. The stipend goes out to everyone, and the vast majority of people then spend it.. and so it gets given to the people who made stuff and added value, matching the value they added.



Not when you want people to buy your L$ so you can cash out, it isn't.

Spelled: Non-O S T E [backspace] R I C H.

Jamie- I think you've succeeded in creating a new meme.

Oh, and to keep it L&E related: I really don't see how 'capping' the economy by doing away with stipends... (or balancing sources and sinks) will effectively create the "artificial" scarcity necessary to make L$'s more valueable.

Particularly when a L$ can spin through the lindex several times a week.

Plus, thinking that stipendless folks will just buy their stipends from the Lindex instead is, I think, assuming too much. What did the last round of stats say? Less than 30% of people have used the lindex? You think 70% are suddenly going to jump up and start pouring USD in? Bah. Yeah right.

People will spend the USD's they're comfortable spending, changing the rate, changing the stipends isn't going to automatically INCREASE that.

It's clear that operating at a loss doesn't run people out of business in SecondLife (unless they default on their tier payments, and many seem to be making up the difference out of pocket). So reducing the number of sellers through this kind of market shake up isn't going to have the "desireable" effect of reducing competition for L$ sellers.

My opinion? Make everyone's stipend L$50 a week... give premium players more tier. As I pointed out in another thread... L$ are cheaper on the lindex than via premium membership, so what's the point?

"You created the value, by making the thing you sold."

And what value did I recieve in exchange for my value, if the money is created with no value?

"You newly created it from nowhere, so money to match the value needs to be added too, otherwise the money will deflate."

Very true. However, creating this balance by giving money on a flat-fee basis, rather than as interest on money already owned (as it happens in real life, through banks), is biased against those who earnt their money, as in relation they find their money has not balanced to the same degree as those who had little money to begin with.

Now, I am very left-wing in real life, and in real life a situation like this would actually be beneficial (as it gives a bigger boost to the have-nots). However, in SL I am the reverse: NOBODY who owns a computer with decent 3D capability and a broadband internet connection is a have-not. Nobody who can afford to use SL cannot afford a few dollars to buy ingame content. They may want stipends, but they don't need them.

"Alternatively.. we can give everyone a dollar, and they'll spend it with the people who made things they want, so the money will wind up with people who earned it by adding value. Neat!"

Not neat. Those dollars have to come from somewhere. And if they are just being created out of nothing to dilute the existing currency, once the money winds up in the pockets of the people who earnt it, it becomes worthless outside of the game, as the US dollar value of the currency would be pathetic...

...pretty much the same situation as Americans trying to buy things sold in British pounds; you'll get very few for your buck, as the US Dollar has lost a lot of value against the pound in the last few years.

Musuko.

Actually not true. L is cheaper thru premium membership. You pay 5 usd a month for stipend. thats split into 1.25 cents a week now look at that number on Lindex for 1.25 this week currently... Is 302. Now how is that cheaper. Im gunna get 1.88 cents worth of L tommorow for paying 1.25. In the long run doing away with stipends wont help anyone and reducing them that much is also bad. Control over the value on a basis of 1.25 usd worth of L a week actually makes sense. Its what we should be getting with the pay. I wouldnt want them to double premium tier. How am i gunan get the money? I'd need to buy it off where? Lindex. Simply put The stipends are important wether people want to believe it or not. We arnt all super creative people that are going to make a fortune in L. They are necessary to the every day user who isnt out making a ton of content. Those that help out newbies even. I use my stipend alot to buy someone an outfit or help them get started in SL.

So simply put you wanna punish the mass of SL for something the minority did by totally devoiding stipends. woop dee doo i get 512 sq m more of land for premium membership that ends up costing me mroe to buy then the premium membership fee itself costs. No thank you really. Think about that. How many of these people that sell alot of L a week actually rely on the stipends. As a whole most of SL does. You cut the stipends you cut alot of job that exist in SL as well. Some people work on a tip basis. They'd be outta money. Sinks would eventually cause money to dry up if content creation continued. People keep spewing ohh its gunna make the value of L better. Yeah mabye for a short term time.

ThiS can go two ways with the loss of stipends. 1. Deflation Happens Buying L becomes overly Expensive and things are marked down and people start ranting that we need more moneyi n SL. and another thing 2. It has a small immediate effect to increase L value but people's greed makes it continue on its downward spiral course. Lessening it to 50L a week has the same effect. All of these plans aside from mine which uses a fair system to weight average L which is quite easily done for what it clocks in for on monday night are an attempt to make the people that have the L in SL now powerful. They control the vast majority of L and if you need it guess what your going to need to pay their prices. Only way its going to work us if LL is the only person allowed to Sell L. Well guess what crumbles the infastructure of SL, slows content creation, gets rid of one of the big draws of SL. So in turn there isnt a proper way to go about this other then controlling it as much as possible. One other way is simply cutting the stipend in half but i view that as unfair. I dont want more tier as i use the L constructively to better my experience in SL.

Not everyone wants to come in SL and work is all im going to say and its unfair to expect them to.

"They'd be outta money. Sinks would eventually cause money to dry up if content creation continued."

No it wouldn't. Simply keep stipends at a very low level, perhaps for the first 30 days of a basic account, and still in full for premium accounts (who are the minority) will be enough to roughly balance out the in-out exchange.

"Not everyone wants to come in SL and work is all im going to say and its unfair to expect them to."

Nope. And I'm not expecting them to. But I am expecting them to work for their purchases in some form, be it in the game making content, or outside of the game doing their jobs (converting their USD into Lindens).

One thing to note; a free market requires a LOT of work and careful tweaking to keep it stable. If you don't put this work in...well, you get economic crashes. Boom and bust is the mark of a market not being cared for, and though things work out in the long run, the busts can be very damaging for a lot of people.

And in SL, booms and busts are sure to drive away a lot of players.

Musuko.

Actually, to summarize that, based on what's been happening for the last three years:
1. LL changes things one way, and people bitch.
2. LL changes things the other way, and people bitch.

LL just has to find the level of change between the two where bitchiness is at it's lowest level I guess.

I work for the content I create in game, putting my own effors and time into it. Why shouldn't I expect someone else to pay me with something of some value back for that content? (even if what they pay me is MUCH less whan what I myself put into it)

And some of us pay premium fees -for- the stipend so we don't need a second job and can indeed relax. I'm all for paying you, but if its affecting you that bad, raise your prices. Don't take away -my- money unless I pay you for a product.

But, why pay a high fee for small ammount of Linden, plus access to land you don't need, if it's much easier and cheaper to just put that money into Lindex? Use your premium monthly $10 to buy $3104L instead and then use that to pay people. Linden will still make their money off the %3.5 transaction fee.

"And some of us pay premium fees -for- the stipend so we don't need a second job and can indeed relax. I'm all for paying you, but if its affecting you that bad, raise your prices. Don't take away -my- money unless I pay you for a product."

We aren't talking about taking away the premium account stipend; that's paid for, and premium account holders are the minority. We're talking about taking away the basic account stipends.

And we are raising prices. In the end, it's all of you who suffer. "Yay, I got L$50 for free...but the product I wanted is now L$100 more expensive..."

Musuko.

I was thinking maybe it would make sence to lower premium account stippends, since the $50l don't do much other than make frees want to buy stuff that costs something just barely above what they have (it's an incentive to add a little bit to that from Lindex to buy stuff), and premiums getting $500 not only adds to the supply of money, it also effectively prices the L$ at $361L / $1US if bought with a $72US account.

LL changes things to best suit themselves

They best suit themselves by increasing their own profits, which are increased by making more of us give them more money, which means providing something we will be willing to give more money for, so I assume LL, being smart about business, does things to suit themselves by doing things to suit the majority of us.

Minority what? Minority of the total number of accounts ever created? Sure... Minority of the total number of currently active (as in, stipend receiving) accounts? Not so sure...

Work it out... for the number of basics to outnumber the premiums, we need 40k active accounts... (stipend=L$12M a week... minimum # of premium accounts for that is 22k. 10k active basics = 1k premium stipend value. Equal numbers reached at 40k accounts)

Is 40k active accounts too high? Some people think so, but that puts the premiums in the majority...


As a side note, at those numbers the total amount per week that the basics receive in stipend is just L$1M... less than 10% of the weekly glut. Something all those "but the basics are causing the stipend glut each week" people should consider... (anyone wants to argue that basics *are* causing the glut should consider this as well... for basics to receive more than 50% of the stipend glut, there would need to be 121k active accounts each week. Not very likely at all, is it?)

As I have stated many times in other posts.... The stipends are not the problem. The stiepnds where made an "issue" by residents. People putting so much in at a lower rate that it became absurd for other people to sell L on lindex forcing them to go lower. These same people then turn around and complain that the stipend is the problem. The problem simply put is human greed. Simply put most of you dont get the point that getting rid of stipends or lowering stipends be them premium or basic will not raise the value of L. If stipends are gotten rid of for premiums especially it may cause some value to go up but stuff may end up to the other extreme where L costs to much.

The point here is if these people still wanna cash out fast the trend is going to continue in the same manner regardless of getting rid of the stipends or not. So why punish everyone for that which will not really be fixed. Again people act like the basic stipend is going to end the world. Its 50L a week for a week they actually log on. If they dont log on they get jack. Now most good products alot of the time are 200+L. Thats 4+ weeks of saving L just to buy one thing. So really stop stating they are hurting anything because they arnt. Its not like its all going into 1 big stock pile on one big basic account and everyone is cashing out 50L thru it.

Listen to your side of the argument sometime and see if it makes any sense when you add in the factors of human beings and their inherint natures. Greed is the major factor driving lindex down and we wont change that. Ill point back to final fantasy again here. Ok when i joined FFXI (11) everything was cool we had normal players and farmers like any other game. Now some of these people worked for places like IGE and sold the money (very very few of them did). Now to counter act this the company that runs the game basically made the economy horrid for everyone. Things first doubled in price then tripled and it became rediculous. They punished the majority of the users because some people sold money and it had an adverse effect of a bunch of people quitting (i was one of them). Also I'd like to point out that the basic stipend may be used for upload fee's as well. Not everyone is cashing their L out.

Thats where you guys get confused. You see the stipends create such and such an amount. How much of that is actually sold hmm? I know i use my premium stipend for upload fee's etc. In closing saying get rid of the stipends in any form basic or premium isnt a valid argument because there is no proof they are the problem. The problem is human greed and we cant change that no matter what we do.

And no LL dont make changes to suit themselves. Simply put development costs $$$$$. Money for a company aside from matinance requires investors. Investors require the system to stay profitable so they make money back. At the same time they need a happy medium of corporate(investors/profit making end) of things and the resident (public end) of things. They cant push to far in either direction. Their ability to make descisions to show that they can help both sides will make or break them. While making it profitable to investors may be great and all if they focus soley on the business end of the spectrum well they lose a huge user base and some profit margin in the process!!!

Ridding the stipends falls under this argument to. They lose a potential profit margin. As i said above a happy medium between corporate/public needs to be met. If LL cant make a descision to balance the 2 well you get the idea by now.

And on what basis do you expect this?

For people who don't make things and/or sell them, SL is just another graphical online game (with a really good community). Those charge just a single subscription. They don't have to pay per item of content on any of them, so why would they want to for SL?

I'd like to point out your cross of my statement is contradictory of itself. They have to work in some form for their purchases but you dont expect them to work? They shouldnt be forced to use a real world income and all games constantly have money being put into them. Be it by a quest or killing a monster and looting it. They dont actually work for it they simply play and get this money. While peoople keep going on that L on lindex is cheaper in retrospect no it isnt. Your only actually putting 5 dollars towards the stipend per month And getting 2k for it. 5 usd at the current time is worth about 1500L. Now we get 2k for 5 dollars which is an extra 500L a month. As i said b4 they need to control it to 1.25 usd worth of L a week.

So in that sense no the L off Lindex isnt cheaper. Because 5 of that is going towards a tier cost and 5 is going toward stipend. It comes down to wether you want land or not the stipends mean very little in the value of L. Some people would like you to believe they are the reason the value is going down. Simply put this isnt a decision the linden's can take lightly even for basic account holders. You keep claiming to balance it out. With the disapperance of Dwell and Developer Incentives and Rating Bonuses over the last year there have been more then enough cuts to try and raise the value of L. Simply put the value isnt going to go up unless the residents want it to go up. The U.S government controls the value of their money in the U.S and other countries know its face value and their currency is compared to ours at least here.

Basically removing any stipend just hurts people. The basic account holders may not pay for it but they do deserve some money to be able to do something. And alot of these people cant afford to buy L or a premium account. So basically you might as well walk up to every basic user and say f you because thats what your essentially doing. Look at it from this stand point. If the U.S stopped printing money what would happen? Hmm? Well lets see first companies would use up their assets, investors would slowly pull out unless it was an international product, jobs would get cut, people would get paid less and less and money would become overly valuable. Just the opposite of what is happening in SL now. Currency simply needs to get into the economy.

If alot of these people that sell L werent so greedy and wanting quick cash then the value of L wouldnt be so bad. But they are they dont wanna wait for it to sell at a good value so they sell it lower to make it fast just to cover their tier. That is what is causing the L to devalue. Not the amount of L but the people selling it. Believe it or not its the cold hard truth and mabye you just dont wanna hear it!!

You are being so thoughtful...................I am not willing to give up my stipend to help the content providers and landlords!

最初に決して決して死無し

What will the content providers do if they do not make enough Lindens to cover tier or rent? Will they want to stay in Second Life as just a game? giggle laugh giggle..............This is too too funny!