L$717,618,852 And Growing

Inflation is not "evil" in secondlife.

The only people that should panic about inflation are those that are in the business of holding large sums of L$ for long periods of time.
(I'm not sure how Ginko rode out the last few months.)

No one is going to starve...
or be be kicked to the street when their pension dries up early,
or have to pray for cost of living adjustments from their employer,

Land rent and sale value is more determined by tier costs and USD value... and translated into L$ at the time of sale.

Widgets are holding their prices.

Comparing SL inflation to post-WWI Germany is silly. The government was minting money left and right to get out of debt and to buy what it needed. SL mints money and uses 'Trickle-Up' reversed-Reaganomics. While both have the side effect of more currency in float...

In the case of Germany, the real problem was that the cash surplus was in the hands of the government, not the citizens!

Consumers were behind the curve and had no chance of keeping up with rising costs.

But... because of the 'trickle-up' effect here...
That problem just does NOT exist in SecondLife.

(So, ... once more... this time with feeling...)

Inflation in SecondLife is not "evil".

It is merely a variable cost associated with doing certain kinds of business in SecondLife.


hmf

Using the term Inflation these days tends to denote price inflation, that is the purchasing power of money has decreased, which judging from my rounds on SL dosen't seem to be the case as prices of most goods have pretty much stayed the same.

It got me thinking about whether it would be possible to calculate price inflation in SL. And the best way I could think of was to calculate it through one of the large merchant systems like SL Exchange. You could create a basket of goods to measure and see how prices change over time. That would give a more accurate figure to the amount of inflation in SL rather then taking top line statistics like total amount of cash in the economy which is at best misleading.

Personally I much rather see the terms monetary expansion to denote the increase in the money supply rather then the term inflation. And currency devaluation for what was happening on the Lindex.

Where is this excess?

In peoples account balances, being saved rather than being thrown into the Lindex... despite what RBD assumes...


Oh, and speaking of RBD assuming stuff... can someone please tell him I'm a she?

Bouncy, bouncy, bounce goes the dead kitty. RBD, do you see how little money is for sale at the moment? We could see the linden at 290 by the end of the day or even higher!

OK RBD, its 300 and two months early. Where is that post again?

Oh and by the way, I waited to sell until now. Though I think I'll wait even longer now because there is NOTHING past 300 at this moment.

So... how long do we wait before RBD and Jamie try to pull the "zOMG!!! TEH L$ IS FALLING!!!11!" screaming fits again?

Yeah, I'm already missing RBD's 'L$ is falling, L$ is falling, sell, sell, we must stop this at once! Take all stipends away!' posts... lol

Wow, assuming this isn't just a bounce, I have to say that I was wrong. I thought the majority of the sellers would price themselves into the gutter trying to sell faster than the previous one. I'm happy I was wrong. Much as I enjoy getting a ton of L$ for my US$1, stability helps both buyers and sellers in the long run.

but you need to take in consideration that in SL "dead people" take their money with them. When an account is closed or not used, the money on that account is effectively being taken out of economy.

Interesting and exciting times.

The gap between the two lines has widened again so the limit buyers seem to be staying at 315 and not continuing to follow - that suggests to me they expect resistance to the trend to be meet and stop at 300.

A nice rest at 300 sounds like a good thing to me.

The emotional factor of a swing being "too big" (whatever that maybe) might do much to confuse punters.

A Lindex that see-sawed wildly would be fun for the traders but would do nothing for your average buyers confidence in the $Linden.

Yup, but you will likely not see much response to this, at least I didn't when I called RBD/Jamie out on that subject about 5 pages ago. To continue on that line, the more interesting thing is in the accounts that are MIA (presumed dead) that still have active premium annual accounts that just got bored/burnt out/caught by a spouse/whatever and simply walked away from an account that gets $500L dumped into it weekly, but will never be drawn down since the human attached to it will never log on. This limbo situation causes an unknown amount of false volume in the economy, since, if no one ever spends it or cashes it out it might as well have been "sunk" but it never will be (or might if LL try to bill the account at renewal time and get expired CC #s).

Anyway, good luck getting them to bite on this point, since they don't have a convenient "dead cat" to throw at it.

to paraphrase "Princess Bride":

RBD (Vizzini): THE LINDEX DIDN'T FALL?!? INFLATION!!!!!!1111oneoneone
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

ROLFLMAO, that is classic, ty.

In the words of Emperor Tod Spengo from "Mom and Dad Save the World":

YOU'RE WELCOME!