Economy Meeting.

If perhaps LL sold more land with more desireable factors - such as streets, waterways and similar, and introduced some more 'zoned' sims that had certain restrictions such as no building between 50 and 200m above ground level, I believe that many people would consider buying them. Start at 1024 sq m and work upwards, I'm quite convinced they would sell.



It is going to be an interesting month or so, seeing who disappears because they weren't able to maintain their income by quality alone - and to see what new scam/gaming system springs up.



It's ok... truly. Many people have, and the majority do make a full recovery within a week or so.

Lewis

Why should such a discussion be held in the absolute worst place for discussions? (I.E. inworld.)

How come noone ever suggests that the devaluation of the linden is caused by people dumping $5000UDS worth of Linden into the market every month, while the vast majority of buyers of linen buy in lots of less than $200USD. When Supply outstrips demand, then price goes down. Right now the money supply of people dumping linden is high, and the demand of people buying linden is lower.

Now the follow-up question is how many people on basic acounts are dumpint thier 50L a week on the market to cash out? Or are they keeping this money in game?

Maybe they should go back to auctioning off PARCELS like they used to, instead of offering auctions that only land barons can participate in.

I second that emotion. I'd also like the starting price to be more reasonable, say L$2 instead of $L4 per m2. If the land is really worth $L4, it won't be long until the bids are up there.

I'd love to get a shot at a nice piece of land before the land barons ruin it by dividing it into teeny parcels and leveling everything. It's not fair that you have to buy a whole sim to get anything decent.


Because the market for tiny useless parcels is saturated and this stuff is not selling anymore??

Wrong, the cost of a server(sim) is $1000 so you cant buy cheaper than 4.4 / sqm from LL(you can buy for L$2 of course if L$/usd rate is near 120/USD).

You can terraform it and land barons are not ruining sims, it is buyers who put ugly stuff on your neighbor lands.


Wrong i am selling everyday enough parcels, lands are selling good, the only problem is the value of L$.

In summary all your post is wrong.Sorry.

I definetely agree, they should sell more small parcels.

[disgusted explicative]

Lewis, etc-

Way to show community spirit. Do you hang out in bankruptcy courts to laugh at the destitute business folks that "Got what's comming to them!"?

Kazanture sent an invitation to peers to discuss a problem that concerns and affects THEM.
Don't like it? Scared of what horrible ideas they might cram down LL's throats to fix things for them? Well, go hold your own meeting and invite YOUR peers to discuss counter-suggestions.

I don't care if you like or respect the business-folks in SL, but your accusation of them being intolerant, harassing, assulting, disturbers-of-the-peace is more descriptive of your own behavior on this thread than theirs. Show some of the basic human decency you claim that they lack and quit hijacking their thread.



Kazanture- Good luck with your meeting. I'm not a usd5k-er and will regretfully miss the event.

Maybe "5KUSD" word was a mistake. Anyone can attend to the meeting who think devaluation is bad for themselves. Anyone who wants to attend the meeting please IM me in the game so i will decide the place of the meeting(above 40 residents i will need a sim corner.).

Will this meeting be open to members of the press? I'm not one; just curious.

I don't expect that "a meeting" will help much, but it is not only the big spenders that are hurting in the current market. If the L$ continues its downward trend the model of selling whole sims at the auctions and have them resold by residents won't work any more.

Fresh flat, green, mature land currently can be bought at 6 L$ per sqm and below. It is impossible to raise prices because there is allways someone desperate enough undercutting you, trying to minimize his losses. At 6 L$ per sqm a whole sim is worth 393,000 L$. If you sell those L$ at the LindeX you currently get 1,265 US$ (at 300L$/$ and subtracting 3.5% commission). Those sims currently sell for 1,000$ to 1,100$ if they sell at all! Nice profit? Hmmm ...

Lets not forget the tier. If you succeed to sell your land after holding it for a month on average, which can be quite a feat in the current market, you have to subtract 195$. Profit is down to 70 in the best case now. It is already a loss if you won the sim at more than 1,070$. And if the value of the L$ falls to less than 318L$/$ this sim is not worth even 1,000$, the starting price for bidding at the auctions. The same will happen if prices fall significantly below 6 L$.

This calculation does not include any compensation for the time spent by the reseller in the process.

You might say: who cares? When you are not interested in the land business or despise the evil land barons.

The only problem is: Linden Lab obviously is not interested in selling land in smaller packages than whole sims; for whatever reasons, there are many. They want to sell it in even bigger packages! But when the land resales business is not possible without a loss, nobody will want to do the job anymore. So they would have to do it themselves again - either at higher prices or with less earnings for Linden Lab.

It was not that long ago that L$6/m2 was considered very high. It's only since the land barons have controlled sims that this changed

The moment you mentioned taking tier into account, you lost any respect you might have had. The buyer gets to pay tier too, and tier on a sim is lower per m2 than for a fraction thereof. I know $195 is high, but you get to absorb that when you buy a sim... If you don't want to, then please, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I have not problems with paying tier - as long as the sum of what I earn by selling the land is a little bigger than the sum of auction price and tier payments.

Please try to forget just for a few seconds how much you despise anyone in this business and try to follow the calculation. I was not lamenting tier payments. I was just stating the fact that:

If the L$ continues its decline it is mathematically impossible to break even with auction prices of 1,000$ or more and land prices of 6L$ or less. This isn't a question of respect but of math. You don't have to believe me, you just need to know how to use a calculator.

Be carefull you are about to be included in an endless conversation

Thanks for the warning, but I consider it polite to at least answer when there might be a missunderstanding.

Most of the time I am able to step back from circular discussions as soon as I realize that they become circular. Contrary to most men I don't feel the need to have the last word.

About the meeting:
I want to discuss(people can add more)...:
-> What are the parameters for the value of L$
-> What should be the parameters
-> Where is L$ going.
-> Is the money circulation in SL healthy?
-> Can we (or should it be) make L$ as strong as a real currency
-> Is L$ really unfounded(i dont know if this word is right, sry for my english)? if so, can we do it well-founded after this time(there are over 500 million L$ in the game and there is no 1.5 million USD to support this amount)
----> Can we start to use USD or something different in the game anymore if we try, what will happen to this 500 million worthless L$, Maybe we can think about slow but long-term solutions. Maybe one or LL already discussing about it.
-> is there any intend to make L$ worthless slowly? Maybe changing the currency of the game? maybe LL is planning to use real money or something different supported with real money. And to be able to do this L$ value must decrease enough to change it without any cost(LL can sell X$ with usd and can save it in the bank and can guarantee to people that your X$ always will worth something for a strong and trustfull SL economy.But to do this first must make the L$ in the world worthless).***All theories, can be real or not, this is why i want to discuss.
.......
.......
.......
tons of things to talk about.

They are not a welcome part of the community as far as I'm concerned. Capitalists, extortionists, profiteers, market manipulators, land stealers... can do without 'em all.



There's the root of the problem there. "Peers" usually implies 'better' people than mere players like me. Just because they have money and control does not automatically make them 'better' or 'more valuable' than me. They were newbies once as well, and if they hadn't had a trust fund or daddy's chequebook to help them would probably be selling L$5 t-shirts and playing Tringo to make ends meet like the rest of us. Nobody is a 'better player' than anyone else in this game, whether they accept it or not.



We're doing our 'meetings' out here in the open, publicly, for all to see, with no pretense of pre-qualification to attend based on your bank balance or land ownership. We are all individuals here, and should have an equal voice and an equal opportunity to make our points known. This is called a 'discussion forum' for a reason.




Since when is holding a contrary opinion to the original poster and replying in that way 'hijacking' a thread? If you don't want to hear people disagreeing with you, don't post it.

Lewis

Cancelled.
/130/6d/99599/1.html

There's no point saying "if people don't care" when you were trying to set up a specifically exclusionary meeting, only for contributors with a certain point of view.

Sometimes you should tell us, Lewis. What happened that made you hate some other people, which you probably never met, so fiercely?

Lewis, I have started this post 5 or 6 times and keep deleting it. But I cannot refrain any longer. You yourself are a capitalist, you admittedly make and sell items in game. I too am a "capitalist" and have been in SL since July of 2004. However, I am not out to f*** everyone in game, and profit is not the ONLY thing that motivates me. I enjoy creatiing things just as you do. I enjoy the social aspects of the game just as you do. I like to contribute to the content of the game just as you do. And I resent the implication that anyone in game who disagrees with you is no good and a detriment to SL. I agree with you on some points, and disagree with you on others. But I can do so in a civil manner, and can hold a discussion without insulting people or their intelligence.

I think that your thoughts and ideas could be valuable to all of us if you would present them properly. As is, you present them in a manner that turns people off, and they tend to ignore you. I urge you to change your attitude and try some constructive criticism instead of bashing everyone whos ideas don't conform with yours. A little respect can go a long ways...

Respectfully...

Land and land tier fees ARE the basis of the Linden Lab earnings. At least this seems to be the main way they make their money.

But there has to be a balance. With all of the new Sims they have already put into the game, and like mentioned earlier, 20 new Sims on the auction right now, in my opinion they are negatively impacting many people in the game.

Any new technology requires a certain organization to achieve it.

Capital (money) is always required. To even get second life to this point I am sure millions have been spent already. I'm sure Linden Labs are not "profitable" yet, but very few businesses in their development/initial growth stage ever are.

Another requirement is the infrastructure of equipment, software, personnel, etc. LL has achieved much of the personnel & software development by having open code so that anyone can develop parts of the world and therefore not have to pay programmers to develop those ideas themselves.

But why are programmers and these knowledgeable people doing this? It is unbelievable to me that so many players evidently don't understand how this world is being created. In order for the LL model of development to work successfully, they must have realistic ways for these people to benefit financially from their work. PERIOD.

Land has been one of those ways. I think if you looked at the overall contributions made by the top 50-100 land owners in the game compared to others we would find they have contributed much to this world. One reason is because they have been able to make the money to pay others to develop additional ideas that they may not be able to develop on their own. So I feel land is the basis of the lindens earnings but also many of the other developers in the secondlife world.

By flooding the game with too much land they are effecting every other aspect of their business model by taking away one of the top ways many of the addtional developers make it worth their time to do.

I also feel that they need to make the land auctions TRUE auctions and quit this minimum started bid crap. There are enough land buyers in the world now that would not let any land sell too cheap. How many of you saw the 46,000 meter or so sim sell for $1,000 about a week and a half ago. Counting the land tier she paid $1195 and then sold the land for 3.8 - 4.3 per meter. If that was a real player she lost over $700. Have the Lindens decided to just start taking advantage of inexperienced, unknowledgeable players?

The bottom line to me is this. Land effects everything. If the lindens do not implement the land correctly they will fail in the long run. It does appear they are being very short sighted in trying to make the fast dollars now. They are missing the big picture if that's the case. And this world people liking just to "PLAY" in, won't exist.

Really, why do all of you against making any money, only think the Lindens should be making any, when so many people are contributing time, ideas, talents, etc to help make this idea successful? That concept is just inept.

I'd like to add a small story, if I may.


Feb 2006 - I opened the small 19th c. sim, Caledon.

While perhaps profitable in terms of money, the time lavished on this project puts it in the 'passionate hobby' category, not the 'sit back and make money' category. Everyone got land for $L 0 per meter.



Mar. 2006 - I'm bombarded by 10 - 20 IM's per day: "I want land in Caledon!!!".

I said it would be months before I could raise the money, but the waiting list wouldn't hear of this.

So I took 12 weeks advance rent, invested approximately 750 USD of my own money (that I had made in SL) and gave people what they demanded. The advance rent wasn't even my idea.



April 2006 - over 50 people on my waiting list, not counting the solidly booked sims Caledon I and II.

I'm out of money now - I'm simply not making it fast enough to buy 1250 USD sims every month. People still wanted their land, but I'm low on capital reserve. So I offered reservations for $L 3 per meter - it's either that, or everyone has to wait months.

That sim, Caledon Highlands, booked solid in about 48 hours. I ordered it Sunday.



That was this weekend. I still have people waiting, wanting in, very disappointed. I was going to open the next sim for them this week, a seaside Port Caledon - but was stopped dead in my tracks.

I had converted 2000 USD of $L in these last 30 days, and can't cash out the rest due to the game limits. Until my next business tier comes through (presuming it does) I am stuck with hundreds of thousands of $L in my account for weeks.



The comments I get from people coming in: "I'm so excited" and "This is so wonderful" and so forth.

Lewis, I invite you to stop by my sims as an honoured guest, and verify all this.

Incidentally, I'm not going to any meetings. If I were going to, I would have gone to Shaun Altman's a long time ago. I haven't anything to add, and my course of action is based largely upon what the people in my sims and on the waiting list want.

For every "bad" capitalist in SL, there are 100 stories like this. Someone has to provide the basic needs and the not-so-basic desires of the SL community. They come at a cost, and SL players can decide if it is worth the cost or not. To lump all business owners together as greedy profit mongers is ridiculous. Good luck to you.

Oh, even as the hard-nosed communist that I am, I would certainly say that Mr Shang was am honourable chap. (Not just because I rent from him; I wouldn't do so if I thought he was some sort of con artist.)

Desmond, LL do remove that limit for certain favoured customers, I would ask them about it.