Vasudha Linden - "the economy does not need stipends to sustain it.”

This is incorrect. [Edit: Reading farther down the thread, I realized there is currently a bug that would allow an incorrect payment size.]

It is possible to create an object that if you right click buy, shows a specific price that cannot be altered.

Additionally, objects *CAN* be scripted such that when you right click and select "Pay", the menu that pops up shows a single value on a single blue button and the manual pay option (that lets you specify any ammount) does not display.

The fact that 99% of the vendors out there right now failed to use these features of LSL is more a function of ignorance and/or lazyness on the part of the scripters. I'm more inclined to believe it's probably due to scripters not knowing that it was possible.

For more information, feel free to look at http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=llSetPayPrice

Note the following part:

I was unaware of this, and would call this a bug. Next time I'm in SL, I'll submit a bug report on this.

Or - that this was a feature recently introduced - and that a lot of the vendors that were made and distributed were made BEFORE this was introduced.

llSetPayPrice was introduced in 1.7

I know many vendors were made BEFORE that. I have one that I changed specifically to use it (but I make all my own vendors). Of course people who have made vendors in the past and sold them as commercial products may well have changed them over too.

Alas the purchasers of these vendors may not know about it (if they could script - they probably would have made their own to begin with) - or for whatever reason not requested an update.

I think 'lazyness' or 'not knowing' is an overly broad and probably incorrect assumption, Considering a good portion of the vendors in Second Life were created - conceived - sold - set up before the feature was ever introduced.

Agree, 110%. My point was just to say that, if a tax were needed, this would be a SILLY way to implement a tax.

I don't see why LL won't let me play The Game for free and also get a little something in the way of funds so that I can have an even better time without having to shell out my own money.

I can't believe LL would even think about analyzing this stupid stuff objectively by gathering as much data as possible and using educated employees to sift through that data. What a bunch of fools.

You know you love me... I'm your inner soul talking..

Ok, I've read this thread, and the MM article with some confusion.

The SL economy overall requires no additional pump-priming - OK makes sense. But SL relies on it's new members to keep the economy in check - don't they need some pump-priming? There are methods (you get a stipend for 3 months as has been suggested already) that might meet both these demands, but stopping stipends altogether blocks new residents from participating within SL itself. It might block out the "freeloaders" but I'm willing to lay odds it will filter out an unacceptably high proportion of all future residents and suddenly SL isn't growing - oops!

SL could have jobs to cope? Sure people can make jobs, but there isn't anything written in to make that a requirement (I believe there is in TSO?).

Some proportion of us "work" in SL:

- building, scripting, pixel-pushing, anim building that's SL's manufacturing industry (some aren't in-world activities directly but they're for in-world activities so let's count them as SL work) and get paid for it. But, once it's made there are next to no on-costs (there might be rent/tier for a plot and/or advertising). Working here requires time, talent and commitment (often a small amount of cash too).

- there's things I'm going to lump together as service industries - escort work I guess, financial industries, land rental. Journalism is in here for this. Land sales in SL I think come here too, but that could be argued I'm sure. Working here requires time, probably different talents and reasonable amounts of cash.

I'm sure it varies with your location and culture - but a lot of RL jobs are retail/admin in most first world economies - and first world economies still make up the majority (possibly the vast majority) of SL residents. Are there such openings or even a need for such openings in SL? What would be those entry level jobs? Without majorly rewriting the system (permissions, sales etc.) there won't be a need for salespeople. We don't really have big enough organisations to need a lot of admin support yet in world - and whilst we're in typed interaction (long may it continue) - we don't need people to take minutes etc. We can't have a secretary to do the filing for us...

I also read this in the article:


Um what?! LL has total access to the data on every transaction in SL - except I guess for the reasons *why* people make gifts to another. They might ask me to agree to release my data for analysis, although I suspect the TOS doesn't require that of them, but what extra data do I need to provide that they can't see anyway?!

There's more - if analysing SL's market presumably US$ transfers are the foreign market? That's not how it reads though, SL doesn't trade with a foreign nation in any other way though does it?

I realise this isn't Vasudha's own words in part at least - but there are a number of confusing or unclear statements in the article - I'd love to see the state of the economy report though and I'd also hope that LL will listen to the residents opinions as well as their expert's, and give us some time to sort through the summary data too. As someone's pointed out before there are a number of economic models that can be applied - all of which have underlying assumptions about RL economies that aren't true here. Vasudha might well get the spot on answer - but it seems she's never logged in (she hasn't appeared in find when I've looked several times for example) it might just be that SL's economy isn't a real life one and some experience of how it works for the residents (and doesn't) is certainly in order.

Taxation implies the presence of government. Government is an emergent property of human populations that find themselves with common resources to manage. It's possible that SL, or 3D socioeconomic spaces in general, may become so established at some point that government emerges to manage those spaces, but at present all resources in SL are clearly provided by LL, and all services provided by LL are presumably profitable to them, either in the long or short term. Users pay for a service, or otherwise maintain a relationship that is perceived as profitable to both LL and the user. "Tax" in this context, is a nonsense term.

I don't pretend to be typical, in SL or elsewhere, but if all stipends were revoked, I would not reduce my tier. My tier would remain tied to my level of social, creative, and economic involvement in SL at any given time. In any case, there is no "stipend tier;" people do not invest hundreds rather than tens, or thousands rather than hundreds of USD in SL because of a change in allowance.

Now, I'm not a shopper, but I'd imagine that if I were, I would not rely on L$500 per week for my purchases, unless I only logged in once or twice each month. Of course, new residents shoud have some initial sum, but if they understood that this sum would not increase without action on their part, they would have several options open: find uses for SL that don't require income (most of my activities in SL), find non-Premium sources of income (I've done this, with mediocre success, and it has provided me more than adequate income for anything I'd want in SL), obtain a Premium account (I've done this to obtain specific parcels, seeing the stipend as a bonus or offset), or leave SL because it was never suitable for you in the first place.

Any "money barons" with an interest in buying "all the money in the world" (am I the only one who saw this after-school special?) would surely find more profitable investment.

Basically, all the posts since my last one have convinced me that not only Basic, but also Premium stipends could be rescinded to the benefit of our economy. Total revocation of stipends would probably best wait a while, but Basic stipends could be withdrawn any time now, allowing new residents only a beginning sum, and the result would be positive. Availability of L$s right now far outweighs any shortage that lost stipends might create. The sky would not fall. Our body politic has enough blood to get on fine for some time, barring growth sufficient to make this discussion obsolete.

The "if people leave SL it was never suitable for them in the first place" line just sounds like sour grapes though doesn't it? The idea of dropping stipend, according to these threads, would be to create more buyers for L$ on the money markets. The only way to do that is to make buying L$ more appealing. If you try and force people, and they quit, then they're not buying L$ so the problem stays just the same.

Not quite. What they are arguing for, by removing stipends, is reducing the amount of L$ in the economy. It's more the supply side of the equation they're discussing.
However, you are correct that the demand side can be addressed, and that if the L$ was more desirable it would put pressure in the opposite direction.

Quoted for Truth.

Putting more value in L$ means putting more value in what L$ can buy.

Problem: Premium users pay for their premium stipend with their fees. To remove the stipend, premium fees must be reduced, or proper recompense made. Otherwise at least half the premium users drop to basic, if not leave SL all together. This makes things harder on Linden Labs monetarilly and other services become more reduced. Or it kills LL entirely. Cutting the stipend without providing recompense that will keep the majority of premium users premium is virtual suicide for Linden Labs.

Wrong Jonas, Wrong.. Premium users pay Linden Labs for
the privilege of receiving L$500/wk from the never ending
printing press.

People who "Pay" for their Linden Dollars buy them on LindenX.
And the money you gave Linden Labs isn't buying Linden Dollars
off LindenX..

In the interaction between the user and Linden Labs, it doesn't matter whether those Lindens come from LindeX, from fees payed to Linden Labs, or from thin air. The customer is paying US$10 for L$2000. It's not the customer's responsibility to figure out whether that money is inflationary or not... that's Linden Labs' job... the customer is paying for their Lindens and at a poor exchange rate at that!

But poor or not, that premium stipend is paid for in full. Taking it away without reducing the premium account charge (and cutting into their income) would result in a lot of people dropping back to Basic, as well as tiering down and cutting their land income as well.

So...

Linden Labs doesn't have the option of not paying those dollars out, not if they want to keep the US$ (the real money) coming in. And don't forget, Linden Labs only financial interest in the Linden economy is as a source of US$ for Linden Labs.

Their only options are to spend real money for those Lindens on Lindex, cut the US$ they charge for a premium account (which comes to the same thing), or adjust their fees to make up the difference.

They can't afford to do either of the first two options, so there's no point in your continuing to complain about the existence of the premium stipend.

There's people who rely on the Basic stipend, without even camping, so your imagination may perhaps need some expansion.

Exactly. Supply and demand both matter.

If you kill stipends, then the reduction in supply will very probably be outweighted by the reduction in demand from users who don't stay around. The argument that "there's no demand loss because users who depend on stipend wouldn't have bought any L$ anyway" doesn't really hold because it doesn't allow for the users who just appreciate the stipend but don't depend on it.

What needs to change, first of all, is the culture within SL that says - quite strongly, and in places where new players see it (I know because I saw it a lot when I was a new player) - that paying any real money for SL at all is a sign of failure, because if you were a success you could earn your L$.

On one end Premium users pay a monthly fee, on the other end they receive L$ in exchange for subscribing to the Premium plan.

I can call it a commercial transaction if I want to. They're paying for the L$.

Good point, though I think this attitude is changing as LindeX becomes more accepted and integrated in-world, and as the userbase expands with more diverse users. I think the stigma against spending USD on SL is partly a holdover from days when L$s were easier to come by due to event subsidies and a smaller pool of competition and labor. As the training wheels are removed and SL's economy becomes more "real," the most sensible way to obtain L$s for most people (and certainly Basic accounts) is to buy them with USD. If an SL career is part of your fantasy, awesome, but if you're here to party or play at being rich or beautiful or popular, then hit the exchange and get some hoochie hair and let us "common people" do the grunt work

I suppose the stipend issue is a paper tiger. Does the economy need stipends? Probably not: there's more money right now than there is stuff worth buying. Do they still have some marketing value, getting people to log in and go Premium? Probably so: it's one more checkmark in the "pros" column when people are making up their minds, however small its real value.

We don't need LL to do anything to improve SL's economy. What we need is more desirable content to spur economic activity. Maybe SL has reached a kind of critical mass where we need to set aside the old debates and devote some attention to what is really going on here, perhaps encourage academic departments to study SL and tell us what they see, setting up an atmosphere where connections can be made and new ideas synthesized. I suppose I should head to that socio-whatsis forum to explore this idea further.

IF YOU HAVE A PREMIUM ACCOUNT YOU ARE SPENDING US$ ON LINDENS.

The option of "not providing the lindens" isn't there. The only choice LL has is where to get them.

Eventually, a more mature SL will not include stipends; the more residents we attract, the more currency stipends dump into the market, and the more the L$ depreciates and the economy destabilizes. According to Vasudha Linden, it's nothing to worry about at the present stage, but user accounts have been restructured before, with appropriate compensation offered to existing residents, and like all aspects of this world, they will almost certainly change again. The stipend is a secondary element of the Premium account--a coupon for store credit offered to good customers. I like getting it, too, but I didn't go Premium for the stipend.

I went premium for the stipend, the land is secondary. There better be equivalent compensation.

Stipends will always be necessary otherwise Linden currency will run out because of money sinks. I would be fine if it was 250L. In my opinion reducing the amount of stipend is the only option if it is necessary.

"Always." Perhaps the only accurate use of that word is: things always change. Eventually, LL will need a more measured way of regulating an increasingly complex economy. Most likely we won't see Basic stipends axed for some time, and Premium will be even farther down the line, but if SL remains viable, the day will almost certainly come. One possibility would be removing stipends (perhaps only the Basic stipend at first) and compensating with some new form of event support. Or, LL could award fresh L$s for content contests or public works. They could even give employees in-world spending quotas.

Dynamism is key to SL's growth. If it continues to scale successfully, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 will be unrecognizable in many respects.

I think we could use a little reassurance from Lindens Labs on where the economy stands. Seems lately everyone is in a rush to sell. Perhaps this is happening because of the continuous fall. A more measured way to regulate the economy would be good also.

One good thing I've seen from the current price is that sales at least for me are higher than they were a month ago. Perhaps it is the fact that customers are still willing to spend the same amount of rl dollars, but getting more $Ls to spend with it.

So far the emphasis is on how "the economy" doesn't need money.

Has anyone bothered to think of the players who do?

So many new players come, and the first question is "how do I make money". Not everyone has an instant talent, and remember for an economy to even exist you need buyers as well as sellers. If nobody buys, then the sellers don't make any money.

Not many people have bottomless real life pockets to just buy L$ all the time. I certainly don't.

Lewis