Don't cut our stippends!

Not me! I will refuse to buy Lindens! You are thinking that demand for content will stay the same it the stipends drop but you are WRONG. My friends are so right it is cheaper to rent than to buy and if you change your mind you have lost no money selling land. I am sure that any landlord will take American Dollars over Lindens. Maybe I will make a few Lindens selling my super Satilite, only 100 lindens! giggle, laugh even more giggle.............

The Stipend is the edge of buying over renting, if it is gone it becomes a "slam dunk"! Oh why would Linden Labs care about inflation of their play money?

You still need $L to rent. True, people will take $USD as pay for rent, but it may be cheaper to take $L since that means they don't have to work out how to take your US, or pay any transaction fees to services that allow them to take your money. Either that, or they will bump up their prices to cover their fees (like the big % fee if they were to get paid through PayPal.) And despite you refusing to buy Lindens, I have already bought and sold about $350,000 worth of Lindens today (i.e. $350,000 has been sold, and $350,000 has been bought back)

Who cares what you do with your Lindens. Remember he who lives by play money will die from it.

About rent Anshe Chung is more than happy to get her "tier" or rent payments in dollars. Why does she need lindens anyway? She pays her tier to Linden Labs in dollars and this saves money for both of us, a win win In any case Paypal charges 2.9 percent and 30 cents while it costa 3.5% to sell Lindens. It is not a "big fee" silly rabbit! She saves .6% and saves the bother of turning it into dollars. Also losing money from the declining value of the Linden. You are silly! She saves money and recieves rent in real money!

Actually... yes, it is, and yes, you're right. If I create an object that has cost me $1000L to create, I can make that money back by selling 4 of them for $250, or 100 of them for $10. Production costs are still $0L But I still charge people fake money, since it saves me on transaction fees I would either loose, or have to impose, if I were to charge them USD. Would you preffer $250 for an item, or $250 plus $320L (1USD transfer fee)?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Elgyfu Wishbringer

I remember getting over $500 a week on my account. True it was a LOOOOONG time ago, so maybe I forgot why I was getting it. Could've been the ratings along with a lot of other stuff, or just the amount I got before policy changes.

Bye Bye.. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Oh, I forgot to mention, somebody new will replace you
and enjoy living in the new economic structure..
One less person in opposition means less fuss when
the stipends are cut..

You are so smart Ranma, you are right, there is nothing you need
to purchase to play Second Life. Which is half the problem of why
there aren't enough buyers of the Linden Dollar. Causing it to fall
due to lack of Demand.

The Old Supply/Demand equation lives on... Linden Labs is flooding
Second Life with Linden Dollars every Tuesday and when folks go to
cash out their L$ from selling widgets, they don't find enough buyers
to match the number of sellers. Net Result, the L$'s value falls.

You are really slow.............I refuse to pay real money for play money to buy objects that have no use outside of a game. Hell the things never even get on our hard drives. The real reason the Linden is going down is a lack of demand. Why should I lose my stipend then have to buy Lindens to make you money? I refuse to play your baka game. You made your bed by buying all of those Lindens, now sleep in it! I refuse to bail you out!!!

I really don't like this. Many of the things you can buy in second life take many hours to make and a lot of real time in real life. I'm making a lot of things for fun, but boxing everything up, moving everything around all of the time, and customer service takes real time.

Same thing with playstation or Xbox except the content of the game is all made by the producer of the game. They just get paid all of it. So go play the Sims or something and play with play money on there then.

So sorry but the content sold in second life has no value outside of Second Life. I know how long it takes to make this proprietary crap but the truth is the truth. I buy add-on software for my flight sim program but it can be played offline and is not dependant on a company to keep its servers running. Have you forgotten those weekends that the grid was out for hours and hours because of griefers?

Did you miss the last sentence of my post or something?

The free accounts have NEVER gotten more than $50L/wk. So they can't be cut down from $500L, which they've never gotten.

What _ARE_ you smoking, son?

In trying to understand all sides of these economic debates I'm currently stuck on this one issue.

Why are all the supposedly knowledgeable and expert "it's a platform not a game" businessmen and economists still fixated on the L$ anyway? Whatever you think of SL, the L$ IS PLAY MONEY. The fact that some people are trying to make a RL income from it doesn't change that either. I know Linden Labs encourages you to come here and make RL money, but they also tell you that the L$ has no value ! Wake up ! Even RBD seems to have his head so far up his arse he doesn't realise he's inhabitating, by Linden Labs own definition, a pretend environment (wrt the economy if nothing else).

If anyone was remotely and genuinely concerned about the economy and its impact on their RL finances, they'd simply be lobbying LL for real world currency transactions within SL. Problem solved, or rather it would the problem of real world goverments and banks, you know, like REAL ECONOMIES, in which we're not dependent on exchanging our daily earnings for another currency anyway.

Please, somebody help me out here, it makes no sense to me.

If L$ can be exchanged for real money then it has real value, period. It doesn't matter what LL says. Many other gameworld operators deny that their currency has real-world value and prohibit external trades in game currency-doesn't matter, as far as the customers are concerned it does, because they can sell it.

It is still play money to me, frak it is not even useful as toilet paper!

Dont spend your rent and food money trying to corner the Linden market. You will end up homeless and hungry! *giggle* *laugh*

I think that merely confuses the issue, and coincidentally is why debate is so heated over it. It doesn't make the $L economy itself any more like a real world economy. It's too small and subject to many factors that the global economy isn't, has no banks or many of the mechanisms that operate in real world economies to function in that way and in many ways is working in opposition to the notions of product and profitability of LL in the real world.

Again, why try to fix an admittedly borked, but neveretheless "toy" economy, when what everyone advocating stipend cuts, sinks and demanding SL adheres to the economic principles of the real world seems to want is simply a REAL ECONOMY. It already exists, and doesn't use $L !

I agree with you - but you're also kind of missing the point. The unfortunate truth of capitalism is that a product is worth what people will pay for it. The amount of time and work and talent and effort you put into producing it will only affect the value, if it makes more people more willing to pay more for it.

I've known this myself - I once worked for several weeks on a product that I thought did something that had never been done before, but it failed because, well, nobody wanted it. All the people I asked basically said the same thing: I'd messed up - it wouldn't have mattered how hard I worked on the features I added, because nobody had actually wanted them.

And many people do seriously disagree with the idea of paying any real money at all for virtual items. Yes, it's real work and real time spent by a real person, but the buyer doesn't look at how it was made, they look only at what they get. And what they get is a virtual item. And some people think that's just a bad deal: "Which would I prefer? A chocolate bar or a fully made gorgeous virtual dress? Well, the chocolate bar of course - it's real!"

Now it could be that as "Metaverse"s like SL become more and more established, that this perception will begin to fade away, and then some more serious rises in the L$ value are likely. But the establishment is not a matter of having more dresses or more games or more clubs or more sculptures, it's a matter of a social perception change. Alternatively, the Apocolyse As Prophecied By That Banned Guy could occur - Platform kills World, and the development of the Metaverse is hamstrung by the intrusion of completely RL-focused content that basically uses SL as a 3D engine.

Few problems here. Aside from what RBD already said, despite everyone saying $L has no real value, if I was to put up $100,000 worth of Linden's play money for sale, I would get about $300 worth of real US money. That's definitely more than just pocket change or play money. This means that this money is worth something to someone somewhere. The fact that it can can be traded for real money, and is actually traded in game for goods and services, makes this economy just as real as any other. It is subject to real world economies, since it depends on people being able to make enough money to afford broadband and afford to be able to play. It does have at least one bank, and one stock exchange, plus many businesses that you can actually invest your money in ($L or $US). And LL make a nice chunk of real US$ from the trading involved in exchanging $L for $US and $US for $L, effectively being the main bank in the game. The economy already exists. It's a real economy that has a real impact of the value of money which has a real worth. We are simply hoping to some how fix this economy before it becomes pointless to make content and provide services, since people wanting to charge for them won't make any money (usually if you charge $US, people won't pay. $L they do). I don't want to have SecondLife revert back to the way it was when almost everything in game had to be made yourself, and those who couldn't build or script were stuck with either crappy throwaways/freebies, whatever basic badly working stuff they could come up with, or nothing at all.

I don't disagree with the majority of what you say, or in principle, what a lot of the economists are saying either. But that one quote alone confirms my feeling about the L$ economy.

Either it's real or it isn't. If people won't pay US$ but are happy with $L then the economy as it stands is just a game. It's also why those who pay subscriptions to LL for a product with real life money aren't happy with stipend cuts, taxes or increased fees for basic functionality like uploads and teleporting. They've already paid LL for use of the "game".

If as you claim, the rest of it was worth the money you and those who want to fix the economy claim then they WOULD pay US$ for it. You can't have it both ways.

I understand that you act in your best interests; I act in my best interests, Losing the Stipend even at 500 means losing $52 a year. I am paid up as a premium member well into 2007. You are asking me to lose money to make you sir money. I am sorry it is not in my best interests. I have started to make my own content. You may hold up your talented nose at my efforts but the work will be my own!

It's real in the same way that charging someone $1.99US instead of $2.00US to get them to buy is real. They're essentially paying the exact same price, it's just that when it's in $L (or at $1.99), they don't think about it. It feels like it's just play. Yeah, I guess it's a bit exploitative in a way. And, as you say, people pay real $US money to get their stipends, in other words they already pay real money to get $L. It's just that, in a way, they are forced to do it, and feel that, since they've already paid for this $L, they might as well spend it however they want. I agree that this is a good way or I guess forcing people to spend $L in game, which they have paid for with their real earned $US. What I don't like is the idea that this $L that they have paid for with their $US is made out of nowhere, leading to the decline in the economy. If the $L was bought from people who actually worked to create it, those being the people who put a lot of time and effort into making SL a better and more fun to be, and in turn the suply of this $L was reduced, then I think everyone would benefit. Essentially what's happening here is similar to a bunch of people working on making real value money, and someone coming alng and printing counterfits that are indistinguishable from the real thing and then just trading them for real money.

First and foremost, I am acting in the best interest of SecondLife as a whole. At least I believe so (I'll explain below).
As I said, I don't think Lindens should cut up contracts that have already been bought and paid for, such as your $72 annual subscription. Lindens never had in the past, either. When Lifetime accounts were discontinued due to Lindens getting rid of the monthly fee, they compensated those lifetime accounts by giving them land, and probably a few other benefits, which LL believed to be of equal value for what those members have paid. You won't get shortchanged, trust me. I simply wish that either premium account stippends were reduced, possibly to $300L a week, with a reflected change in the subscription rate (lower the subscription), or replaced with the entire, or at least a part, of the source of that $L being the market instead of all of it being made out of nothing. In other words, support the people who put time and money into the game to make the $L actually be WORTH something.
And I believe I an acting in the best interest of SecondLife because personally, despite the devluation of L$, I have an option to either put it where it earns more interest than it's loosing, or trade it myself and get even more money. I.E. I am curently NOT loosing money, just not making as much as I can, and thus this is not reall hurting me much. This IS however hurting the economy, and especially stippend earners, since this IS causing an inflation, and people's stippends are able to buy them less and less due to prices going up. Also it is hurting SL as a whole because it gives less of an incentive for people to create high quality stuff, since if thye were to charge for it, they would also need to immediately dump their money on the market to hope to keep any sort of value out of it. In summary, if this continues, stippends will be worthless (I am hoping that this won't happen, since I do think that stippend are a good thing, as long as they're either priced right, which I think is about $300 for $72US, or are not created out of thin air), and good content will not be gone, but the creation of it wil definitely be slowed quite a bit, which in turn will slow the progress of SecondLife as a whole.

Yep, once again i agree with you, and i fully understand the principle that by handing out stipends LL is effectively giving away your content for free. That sucks, but so does taking benefits away from residents who have paid real world money to LL for this real world product called SL and all that entails, access, functionality, stipend and land allowance (They didn't even offer free accounts when I joined and yes, i did pay for a year in advance) Thats the inherent contradiction in all this, and the reason why the L$ is a toy currency.

I'm not falling on either side of the game vs platform debate, but the economy IS a game as long as it uses L$, to the detriment of anyone who wants the stability and income offered by a real world economy. If it's to be taken seriously, your argument that it's easier psychologically to spend L$ is bogus because yes... if it's a game with worthless currency of course it's easier to spend it. If it's not a game and you want real world US$ for your product then people have to be happy paying US$ for it, and being a part of the real world economy is the way to do this, not L$.