Fall of the Linden isn't important

I know this goes against a lot of the threads here. I make scripted stuff in SL and make some money on it, not a lot but it's fun. I've gone through a lot of stages since joining SL. Gaining and loosing interest at different times. What it does hold though is a lot of promise and look at the future.

When I think about the value of the Linden I think that I'm going to get less money for my work. But frankly no matter what the value of the linden I'm still working for pennies an hour, so it's not the money I work for. It's the challange of seeing if I can do something good enough people will buy it. Also love getting thanks and having people tell me how much they love what I've done. It's about people mostly.

If I wanted to see the Linden go up in value I'd say raise the price of stuff and reduce stipends and dwell. But those things would make the game less fun. Heck the best thing I could personally do to raise the value of the linden is drop my paid account so I stop getting a stipend. Sell my land and pay rent instead so that I need lindens to pay the rent. If a lot of us did that it would help the linden but... it would hurt Linden Labs and it would reduce my pleasure in owning my own land.

What I think is hurting Second Life above all others is the shrinking number of people building amazing public places for all our enjoyment and being replaced by one endless expanse of malls and casinos. Dwell was meant to reward great builders but that's been turned upside down by camping chairs. Does anyone really think "Popular Places" shows you a list of great places to visit? This will hurt SL most cause to many new users it's just become boring. The right incentives are not there to encourage great builds.

One final thought of an idea that would increase my enjoyment of SL and take lindens out of the economy. The computers running the sims are getting more powerful every day. Use this excess capacity to provide perhaps 2000 extra prims available in each sim. Allow land owners in the sims to bid on an open market for the use of those extra prims for a month at a time. This might hurt Linden Labs a little in land sales but not if it's managed right.

Oh and eliminating dwell as it now exists is a great idea but... it should be replaced with a less "gamable" program that actually encourages good builds that people like to visit and would recommend to others.

I'm going to comment strictly on the dropping value of the Linden, and not on dwell.

There are many scripters here who don't work for pennies an hour, who in fact make their living here. However, that being said, I STILL don't think the dropping Linden value is the apocalyptic problem everybody seems to think it is.

If you seem to be noticing your regular income dropping, then you have a problem. However, I don't think that's necessarily the case. The Linden-to-USD ratio is, in my experience, just numbers. There's an amount of money people are willing to invest in this game, and as long as that doesn't change, the numbers are probably not as big a matter as we're all making them out to be.

If people are getting more Lindens for less money, it means they'll be likely to spend more freely, and buy more products. Unless there is some evidence of a correllation between the dropping power of the Linden and a reduced willingness of consumers to put money into the game, I'm not going to worry too much about it. If the Lindens continue to drop, I may need to adjust my prices, but not too much or I'll turn around and defeat myself.

To me, it's like a cost of living thing. Yeah, everything in New York City costs more than it does in, say, Corpus Christi, TX, but the mean income in NYC is also higher. In this game, the Linden may be gaining more power, but the real measure is in how much the economy is trading, and how much real-world money is coming into the game.

Does anybody have any numbers on this?

Luc

declining price of L$ indicates that less people are willing to buy lindens than the people who are selling them. Does it need explaining?