Money Sink Ideas

1. No, developers have a hard time earning money as is.
2. That's reasonable, especially considering the event spam out there.
3. ibid.
4. Don't think likely. LL is making USD, and for them to give that up is financial suicide.
5. Interesting. I think there's a lot of issues with point to point, though ... like getting into areas you shouldn't be, privacy issues, and the total breakdown of the little de facto zoning we have based on telehubs.

Chage's idea:
Linden Lottery. Lindens could have a lottery, and skim a % of the winnings and just trash it. My idea - make that % variable so that it can be adjusted as per the need of the economy.

My idea:
Kill dwell. Period. No more dwell. Dwell is basically a subsidy for social events, and since clubs are giving away money to get people to their events:
1. Small events are crushed because they can't compete with money.
2. The clubs clearly aren't using the money to develop. Bottom line, people are bored, they're looking for a fun place to hang out. They only are picking places that dole out money over other places that don't. They'll come without dwell.

Take the dwell, put it into stipends for all accounts. Now newbies can afford to pay admission to events, and the whole reverse-backwards "pay to come to my event" is appropriately re-reversed.

I have to agree with what's already been proposed here.

While income taxes are not the answer I believe that some of the proposed fees would not only strengthen the linden but also really help with all of the spam and clutter in the find menu. I'm all for a 25-100 event listing fee as well as raising the directory find listing to 50 a week. Image uplodes are a sticky problem, I'd perfer to keep the current uplode fees for the standard size images, any increase in that fee hurts content creators but additional cost for a double sized texture makes sence (I've seen a few times this would have come in handy) as does an increased fee for extralength audio as the current limit really seems a barrier. Good ideas.

Linden lottery is an appealing idea because it the rate can be varied as needed and people will likely willingly want to participate in this. No forcing anyone's hand here.

Dwell is a complicated enough issue that I don't feel I can really offer an opinion on it.

Slapping more fees on everyone is a sick idea. Those with millions will face a 0.0000001% tax on their holdings, and those with a few hundreds will face anything from 25% to 50% of their total holdings being taken from them, just to do quite simple things which are supposedly 'features' of SL.

If you want to take money out of SL, you must take it from those who have it. Cause if your extra bills do manage to affect those with all the money, it will destroy everyone who has not that much.

.

It would make alot of people angry, and even some would quit.

How about instead of messing with the fees we must pay to facilitate creativity, how about we tax tringo players and club goes? Make them pay $100 to LL every time they rez a tringo card or activate a dance ball. Even more lucrative: sexball tax!!!! By the gods, that would be a massive $L sink.

Just more ideas.

Ps. I like the idea of killing Dwell as well.

-Ghoti

[ed. to add another point]

A idea kill dwell

Give the standard acount people a stippend of L$ 500 a week.
Premium owners L$ 750 stippend.

Event cost do we set on 1 event piont.
event point is worth L$ 60
Every week we give everyone 15 event points and if they going to a event.

1.They give the owner of the land right click pie menu "give point"
2.or in the menu a extra possibillity to give a event point.
3.or a event give box.
And also you cannot give event points to your self

If you get your stippend you get also the amount of L$ for your collected event points.
so dwell get event bonus and maybe then people going to choose for events that they really like.

Maybe it is a idea that you then also can buy event pionts so that we can start event offices were we can advertisement our events also like theaterbureau's in RL.
Then we have also create a new job oppertunity

Do Please Terminate Dwell - less money being dumped into the economy, notable processing load taken off The Asset System All Hail The Central Asset System, improved social dynamic

Do Please Terminate Ratings along with the Bonus - less money being dumped into the economy, very much improved social dynamic, another notalbe processing load taken off The Asset System All Hail The Central Asset System

The Lottery is not a bad idea. The variable skimmage is a simple feature that can effectively keep the value of the linden in check provided enough money is collected to cause a signifigant impact and enough people play to reasonable distribute the loss.

I am absolutely no economist, trust me.

But this whole Idea of raising prices to get LL$ out of the system I think will not work in SL.

Why ?

Because people can go buy more with US$ or other forms of payment.

I can trade my EQ plat for Lindens. I can trade my WoW gold for EQ Plat then trade those for Lindens.

This is not a ‘closed’ economy. Bagfuls of LL$s can be dumped in at anytime simply by buying more.

Is inflation the reason people want to pull LL$ out of SL ? Tell that to the 50L$ a week person. Sorry nonpremium person you have to wait 2 weeks before you can upload that texture, that may look goofy inworld once you see it.

I personally price the vast majority of my items between 10 – 50 L$. I have very few high priced things, I can not think of anything, if anything I have for sale at or over 500L$. I want everyone to be able to afford my items if they like them. If we want to fight inflation - keep our own prices non-inflationary ?

Anyway enough from me.

Because no matter what you price your items, the L$ stays in the system.

Linden lottery - great idea! Bring back the Atlas Casino while we're at it

We're talking about making money vanish from within the pool of existing L$, or preventing more of it from being created in the first place. You're talking about buying from the existing pool of Linden Dollars. No L$ are created when someone buys from GOM, they simply change hands from one user to another. The only entity capable of making more L$ is Linden Lab, and they don't run GOM.

Geting rid of dwell is a horrible idea. Dwell is the incentive for many people to build things to try to attract people. Very few people are "making real money" that way, but it is a meaningful way of keeping score. It creates genuine incentive for people to do things that they wouldn't do otherwise.

When looking at money supply, you have to consider where the money is, not just how much of it there is. Have you ever saved up your money to buy something? While you are saving up your money, you aren't spending it. It isn't in circulation, it is just sitting in your account while you wait to accumulate enough of it.

$L that is sitting in accounts while people are saving up for things isn't for sale on GOM.

In SL, lots of people save up money to buy more land, or better land, or even just different land. Any land baron will tell you that people frequently buy a parcel and ask them to reserve a parcel next to it while they save up their $L. When land prices go down, there are fewer people saving fewer L$ to buy land, hence more $L is freed up to be sold on GOM.

If a new trend pops up that creates an incentive for people to save up their $L, then that could a powerful effect. Let's say, for example, that LL releases an update that fixes sim crossing problem in vehicles. Suddenly vehicles work! Everybody wants one. At the same time, clever designers release a bunch of cool new vehicles priced at $10,000 that become status symbols, and lots of people want them. If lots of people are saving up to buy L$10,000 cars, then lots of $L are sitting in accounts that might otherwise have wound up for sale on GOM.

Economics is essentially the study of complex feedback loops.

Buster

But not long after, those vehicle creators will be selling those 10k's on GOM.

Keep dwell points without paying for it. It won't be as much help to The Asset System All Hail The Central Asset System, but it will stop the daily influx of newly created Lindens.

I wonder how much this actually equates to tho, I doubt the withdrawal of these payments will even make a scratch on the amount of L$ created. Dwell payments are pretty poor.

One thing is for sure, new land brought online from auctions is a huge source of L$ being introduced into the world. Not only are there no more L$ auctions, the rate of land release is decided by demand of the residents for that land. This is not a bad idea as far as the land side of things go, but it surely has implications on the amount of control LL have on the value of the L$? *shrug*

Additionally, charge a fee per capital letter and exclamation point.

Exactly. Those Lindes would tend be sold on GOM later. In economic terms, this is called "reducing the velocity of money". ("velocity of money" means how fast the money is moving, i.e. how often the money changes hands.)

Reducing the velocity of money has *EXACTLY* the same effect as reducing the supply of money.

Buster

When a resident buys a sim on the auction, they pay US$ to Linden Labs. After that transaction, there is more LAND for sale in the world, but there has been no effect at all on the number of Lindens in circulation.

It is true that parcels sold for Lindens on the auctions do destroy $L, but the amount of Lindens destroyed that way was very, very tiny relative to the other sources and sinks of $L. (Tbone Linden pointed this out in the enconomic town hall).

In fact, the recent whole sim auctions have a fairly high L$ per m2 rate -- around $5 or so! The long term effect of this will be a rise in the average cost of land. (Few land barons will buy land at $5 and sell it for $3. No, they're selling it for $7 and $8, or even more.)

I would wager that the resulting increase in land prices for pristine land will cause enough residents to save up money to that particular land that it will far out weigh the tiny, tiny sink. Besides, there ARE still L$ auctions going on in small parcels, I think that's what they are doing with land from residents who leave the game.

Buster

Bah. This is boring. I clicked cuz I thought the thread was about monkey stink.



So. Does anyone know how to stop your monkey smelling so bad?

Oh right. Monkey sinks. I see. Good idea!

If you turn dwell into mere "points", then it wouldn't create any incentive. Some people love to create, they would create no matter what. Some people give everything they make away for free. Some people don't care whether anyone visits their castle or not. Some people actively prevent people from entering their land.

Those people are not motivated by dwell. But some people are. Some people build things or run events to try to get dwell in order to offset their costs.

A system of incentives doesn't need to make everyone automatically 100% successful. It merely has to make success possible. When it is possible to get a genunine, meaningful benefit, some people will strive for it.

I think dwell is one of the most brilliant aspects of SL. By providing real incentives for people to create interesting places, LL has made business partners out of hundreds of residents. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of residents actively trying to cook up ways to keep people entertained. SL is a lot more interesting because of it. Without dwell there would be fewer people doing that, and some people would devote less of their time to it.

Buster

I'm no economist either, but I think it's a bit early to worry about needing a money sink.

To maintain a stable currency, the money supply needs to grow in proportion to the growth in the overall economy, not just growth in population. And this economy is still growing like gangbusters in terms of the real dollar value of object sales.

I told myself not to worry about GOM's trends until it hit 3.79/block or less because of all the wiggle the market does, and becasue I knew most of the drop in price was the sudden influx of someone selling off a very large chunk of L$. So I considered this thread an academic exercise, one that would be useful to point to later if and when we needed another sink, or to adjust current ones.
Well, GOM reached that point today, and volume is low. Maybe we are seeing a little need for a new sink.

Of course, my brain must still be in first gear today lol.

I think rather than talk about what to take away, it might be better for LL to think about what to add. I am sure with a little brainstorming, LL could come up with some cool new features that would require payment in L$.