Economy, L's and stipends....

There has been a lot of talk of killing either all stipends or basic stipends. And things seem to be driving to this direction pretty hard. The problem is the quiestions are all being asked in a forum where most ppl do not post and what few do are either a radical right or left view. Here are the REAL issues.

Linden had this wonderful idea. set up an in world economy where someone can judge thier success and feel good about it. It was a good idea, I am not saying that part is not. The problem is they did so without putting any kind of enforcement on fair business practices. When you have an economy without any form of regulation you end up with a chosen few ruling the roost so to speak and doing whatever they please. this has resulted in ppl reselling freebies, preying on new folks who don't know any better. Employers who do not pay any wage and in some cases even take money from the "worker". How on EARTH do you expect to have a thriving economy when you do NOT pay your customer base?

Another issue....if I had to venture a guess I would say there's been a few out there hoarding L's then releasing a sizeable chunk on the market to drive down prices so they can actually amass more at a lower price. Thier next step of course is start screaming..." Oh no...stipend is driving down market value..stop the stipend now." This used to be standard practice in the stock market..hoard..release then buy at a lower price to hoard and control even larger blocks. Thankfully we initiated anti-trust laws that prohibit this kind of market manipulation. Thing is SL has no such anti trust laws or enforcement. Ergo.....hoard..release...drive the price down..buy more lower and get LL to believe something that is not true so that ppl have to buy those hoarded L's. Shady but true.

We have been discussing the possibility of buying a couple of sims, however I am rethinking this since....

A) Killing stipend will kill of probably 80% of the customer base of products in world

B) A lot of the basics will just up and leave thereby removing population and market support

C) Personally I think if LL listens to this kill stipend talk Second Life will end up failing and folding someday. True it is the best program out there as far as graphics, however there are too many other chat options that while they don't have the bells and whistles this one does, they also do NOT have the financial predators roaming around ripping your throat out without fear of reprisal or enforcement of fair practices.

I say again you want to fix the in world economy..require a minimum wage for all employees except retail..those can work commission but require a minimum commision to be paid

next step enforce same ( which of course means hiring a huge amount of new lindens to do so and initiating an in world court, all a major real dollar expense to Linden Labs)

Put a stop to 1000+ % land markups. Limit them to say 400%, which is actually quite generous.

Also put a stop to these folks who pick up free items then turn around and sell them for hundreds of L's.

There are the problems and the solutions in a nutshell..oh..last one...limit the amount of L's someone can sell in one month by putting it in the rules in the ToS. This of course means keeping track of alt accounts. Yet another enforcement issue which is going cost real dollars.

If you want real solutions you cannot post a question in a forum thread and only listen to the most affluent 1% of the population. You have to go to ground level and ask the masses. True we may be affectionately referred to as the hairy unwashed by those who have the most but, most of us have fine minds, if anyone would bother to listen. (BTW I wasn't always in that group. I owned a quarter region and tiered down due to some rather shady goings on by one of the most affluent in Second Life, and losing hope in any form of enforcement doing anything about it)

Oh and before it would come up, if stipend stays and we do buy those regions, let me say in advance to that affluent person..no..we will not sell for 50% of value. There....hopefully that'll keep us from getting notecard spam about it.

I agree with you. Just hope that the Lindens read this thread. We really need to do something if this is going to be a live, active, and fair program. I want to stay, I want to keep the land I have and upgrade to more land, but like you I am waiting to see what happens.

I figure the life expectancy of this thread is about maybe a half hour tops before it gets locked/moved or deleted since I don't happen to agree with the high dollar minority. They tend to sqwalk, scream dna pressure when you don't take thier view til that which offends them has been removed. I've seen it occur too many times already.

I have to share something here, that has no bearing on my personal view of stipends. The fact is though, every time LL is planning a major change to the platform, those who don't like it come here and explain why the world will end and LL will be out of business if this change is implemented. Then, LL implements the change anyhow, knowing better. After the change, not only does the world fail to end, but it continues to grow.

This has been repeated time and time again. Personally, I'm getting more than a little bit tired of hearing about how everyone's going to quit and the world is going to end every time LL decides to do something that's good for the platform.

I agree with you to a point. SL won't become a wasteland overnight after an update. BUT there are many of us that are getting tired of serious flaws not being fixed in favor of LL giving us eye candy like Ripple water. I think LL does need to start serious bug squashing or it will find itself losing some long term players that are simply tired of fighting with bugs.

Mass Exodus non. Losing some major content creators though? Yeah its possible and tragic.

Oh I agree, and I'm all for a back to basics approach on development. I think features and bugs is where SL is more likely to lose customers than stipends.

most employers actually charge employee's because of the fact that alot of places people work cost quite a bit to run. I myself view it as a fair practice think of it as taxation in the real world. and if you actually talk to msot employee's they find it rather fair themselves. They are given a place to do the work which they wanted which an employer pays to bring people there. So it all surmises as being fair if you look at it vs the real world. If people have problems with people becoming to good at something deal with it or try and 1 up them. Competition is healthy. People consistantly state its unfair blah blah blah its really not in the whole scheme of things. Where an employer takes a few L here and there alot of them may be paying out of pocket of 100 USD and arnt even covering that. Most people dont wanna do stuff at cost to them its common sense in that light. Basically with regulation of fair stuff u dont have newer products or and type of real competition for people to better themselves. If your not doing anything in SL and thing some big people just run things well i have 1 thing to say to you. Get out and Do Something Productive!!! to many people jsut sit around and just complain about linden dropping prices being to high blah blah blah. The fact of the matter is The People in SL control this if you feel something do something to change it try to make something on your own and see what you would wanna charge people etc. When you realize the time and effort alot of people that you see as being unfair in business practice put into their work mabye then you will have some respect for how things actually work in SL as a whole!!!

These People Have A Choice to buy stuff or not or to work at certain places or not. They control what they do!!

Wow, people in SL are actually making other people PAY THEM to WORK FOR THEM? In any normal context I would say that this practice is ABSOLUELY REDICULOUS, but upon careful consideration, it seems that all these "employers" have done is successfully taken a page from LL's book.

You aren't going to find any digital environment that lacks bugs in all sorts of shapes and sizes. From my experience with 3D interactive worlds... SL is by far the most dynamic, stable system available.

Ultimately... the choice is yours.

I'm in favor of doing away with stipends.


I think if people are forced to spend RL money for things rather than free money they are given each week their buying choices will improve.

Freebies will be more important to the economy, and users will learn better not to throw money away on junk.

(I say this even tho I pay my monthly costs from other peoples stipends, my sales would be sure to suffer)

No arguement there. I think the problem though is the perception that many have that we are being given Eye Candy features so LL can avoid trying to squash bugs. That is a whole different ball of wax from accepting that there will be problems since it leaves people feeling that fixing the problems is not a priority.

Dmi busts his butt in SL just like I do. We both spend the vast majority of our time in SL busting our butts. Maybe you should have checked his SL profile before assuming he does nothing.

I agree completely with the initial post - removing the stippends would kill a lot of businesses siimply because many basic members use that to finance most of their SL activities.

Having a bit of money in SL is the doorway to residents buying more and thus buy into the SL fantasy. Leave the stippend alone and mess with other aspects of the economy - add more regualtions to the linden exchange, sponsor the creation employment opportunities, make marketing more practical, provide opportunities to get more prims instead of land, etc etc.

I see you point... of course... therein lies the problem Different things have a different level of priority for different people.

If LL receives 10,000 requests for a bug-fix, or additional LSL functionality... and also receives 100,000 requests for a purple star in the northern part of the southern sky, east of the thing to the west... We're getting the purple star.

It might be a perception that LL is adding pretties to distract us from the bugs they haven't fixed yet... but it would be a misperception. LL wants SL to be as bug free and functional as possible. Less bugs = more client satisfaction. The thing I think a lot of people overlook is the complexity of changing/bugfixing such a large and... well... complex client/server environment. Each little change could potentially effect hundreds of other systems within SL, causing any number of issues. Think of this...

While you are working on repairing a product for a client... wouldn't you rather be able to provide them with something else to play with while you work? Keeps the client busy while you are busy. It's a common business practice. Free coffee at the oil-change place, the candy jar at the insurance company... etc...etc.

Just a few thoughts from a guy at work... wishing he were not.

Again agreed. I am well aware of the complexities. The problem is the perceptions of individuals, not the realities.

I don't care if people are buying good stuff or crap... as long as the L$ are flowing through the economy. Removing stipends, while increasing the perceived value of items in-world, will remove cash from the economy. Regardless of whether or not there are stipends... there will still be people buying good items, and others buying crap, and people capitalizing off of all of it.

Besides...

What compensation will I receive for the reduction in service by removing stipends? I pay $10/mo for land ownership and L$500/week. I can rent land with a free account. Why would I want to pay full price for half the product? I will definitely go back to a free account if they remove stipends. I am sure many others will as well.

Too true, too true indeed.

I'm going to repeat things I have already said in response to this.

I'm on basic (I had to pay the $9.95 USD to get a basic account) and I do work my ass off for what little I get. I spend hours daily in SL making things for sale. Yet without that 50L stipend there would be weeks when I would not be able to upload a snapshot of something I made for sale because of all the competition in SL. Not everyone can afford to pay for a premium account much less pay for premium and tier fees. Would you have LL discriminate against those less fortunate financially?

I don't have a problem with jobs being created in SL. Unfortunately, people like myself can't afford to hire help. The idea of taking away stipend hurting users financially ( I'm speaking of Linden dollars here, not real dollars), especially for basic accounts, may seem farfetched and/or absurd, but, the truth is, it is not for people like myself who are struggling to be able to pay for uploads, etc. I'm sure my situation is not unique, I have talked with a number of people who are in the same situation. We all agree that taking away stipends will hurt the "little guy" far more than it will help us.

If the freebies are such good things they why would anyone pay for anything else? There is a reason most of the freebies are free. Poor quality. I know there are some things out there that are freebies that are of good quality but the vast majority of them are not.

I do play tringo to earn extra Ls as often as I can. I don't do contests because even in RL I don't like clubs. I grew out of that years ago. I've had jobs in SL and had to fight to get my pay. And then my empoyers had the gall to expect me to put it ALL back into thier businesses. However, it is impossible to spend enough time playing games, etc. to make enough to pay rent and still have time to build new products to sell. The vast majority of the people in SL do have regular jobs and lives outside of SL.

The people advocating taking away basic stipend really pi$$ me off. They want to take away from the have nots and give to the haves. Like we don't already have enough of that kind of crap in RL... they want to drag it into SL. You people are the ones who need to get real and stop trying to take away from the have nots and keep them under your thumbs!!

I take no issue with anything you said here. As far as I am concerned... all valid points. In fact... I am beginning to formulate the opinion, that the vast majority of people who wish to remove stipends, are the people waiting to sell their horded L$ for USD at the resulting higher prices per L$.

Oh, Selene... if you are interested in some honest work... I will be looking for some salespeople soon... you would be provided with your commission at the point of purchase, and no requirements to reinvest it in my ventures would ever be asked.

Or they come on and explain why the change will lead to more problems, and a different solution can avoid them.
But the predicted problems occur, and so Linden Labs comes up with another major change to fix them, and people suggest alternatives that are less drastic, then LL implements the change anyway... rinse, wash, repeat...

There are signs that this trend MAY be changing. At least the Infohub Auction seems to have been deferred, and they're taking suggestions on the new abandoned land / auction scheme.

One of the big "world enders" in recent memory was the end of the ratings bonus and the ratings price hike. Which problems were predicted? Of those, which occured? The biggest problem I recall that this was going to bring about was the end of SL as all the basics left. Heh. Kinda resembles the current arguments.

reference to spending r/l money vs free money do that you run into massive problems and alot of people jsut quit as opposed to doing it. and alot of people cant just spend r/l money. IE what ur stating only makes sense for a select group of people that can afford to jsut spend r/l money as freely as they want. A big note to you most people cant. And i didnt asssume he was just sitting on his butt im saying people in general alot that complain are people that just do that. Im not targeting any said group. Alot of what people are reccomending just takes alot of the Draw of SL away. It takes away a game that alot of people can play and have fun in to something that just becomes less fun and driven by an even less stable economical structure. Think about this for a minute driving force behind SL = Content Development - Incentive for that is that people will buy your product - Taking away stipend or forms of vritual money lessens sales overall - People get mad - Content Creation slows which eventually leads to just a downfall of what SL really is. Take into account Time/Effort people put into stuff, amount of money employer's are spending/giving out to the general public for events/raffle balls etc amount people are spending on land tier to keep a club or business running, taking into accounts audio streams etc. Alot of the things mentioned Only end up hurting alot of places people quite often go. And i reitterate that these people have a choice in the matter if they want to work at a club that takes money from employee's or a place that does and if they want to buy things at a weird price. If you focus to much on comparing SL to the real world you end up ruining a beautiful thing that is working quite nicely. Sure linden is going down in value but thats not because of the stipends or because some mass group of people control things or for that matter an afore mentioned matters on this thread. Its due to the fact that people are selling linden at a low value to make a quick buck. Ie you have people jsut using stuff here to try and make money have a large group do this it has an adverse effect on everyone cuz there is a mass of money at a low value thus forcing others to sell lower to compete. If people stop trying to sell lower to sell their L quick then mabye L will stabalize. But unless that happens it really wont. Sure getting rid of the stipend or whatever might make L value go up for a short time but eventually will have a very bad effect on the economy. I myself have employee's and i tell them i take a cut from them when i hire them. If they have a problem with it they do its their choice. But the key here people say that its very fair that work for me because they know what we put into the place and what we pay to keep it up. Im going from experience on my own not going by what i think its what i know to be true. Im not just saying things cuz i agree with a mass of people or disagree. Its the cold hard truth wether people like it or not!!

I certainly do appreciate your offer and would like to discuss it with you in world before I make any decision.

Whoa!! I think you need to scroll up and read my reply to Burnman.

As for the clubs and such. Been there, done that. I sunk way too much USD into SL in less than 6 months. Now you know why I am on basic now. Sinking real dollars into SL trying to make my business a success cost me more than it was worth. I AM one of the people who can't afford to buy Ls, etc.