LindeX fees as an $L sink

I thought I had learned my lesson about posting on the forums but it seems I'm a glutton for punishment! But I've been thinking about the economy lately and what would be a *fair* way to help get some $L out of the system. Believe me, I am *so* nervous posting this.

What I'm proposing is that LL start charging sellers a fee PAID IN LINDEN DOLLARS to sell $L on the LindeX. "OMG! Wynx! You suck! And you're hurting yourself!" Well, no, I don't think so. Because I've been thinking about how to destroy some $L in the economy while still allowing for growth and protecting the the players who are just here to have fun.

A real number-cruncher could probably think of the correct amounts we should be charged. These are numbers I'm making up off the top of my head:

• A 500L flat fee to put ANY AMOUNT of $L onto the LindeX (this will curb some of the fools from putting $1000L up at 500L per $1)
• You can cancel a sell order, but you will only have half of the flat fee returned ($250L)
• Possibly a 0.25% (not 25%!!!) of your $L you want to sell deducted before the sale, but returned in full if you decide to cancel your sell order. This seems steep until you figure out how much it costs to sell to another $L buying company.

So. There. I stuck my neck out. Discuss, tell me why it won't work because I'd like enlightenment. Please be nice, I don't claim to be an economist and I cannot even balance my own checkbook.

Hey, are you plagiarizing my february 2006 thread?

LindeX money sink suggestion thread:
/130/39/87061/1.html#post884265

Meh, added fees don’t really seem like a real solution. That would be like a special tax that was only levied on a certain portion of the population, which really isn’t all that fair or effective.

Personally I think the Lindens should come up with some special Linden created things that would require payment to use/have. This could be special islands that require a fee to enter, special objects that are possibly one time use only, special events with an entry fee, or whatever.

This way the lindens being paid for them doesn’t stay in circulation. Once it’s back in linden hands, it’s gone forever. Sort of like countries buying back their own currency.

They could even go so far as to have certain very rare, and therefor very expensive, items that would become status symbols. Such as items people could put on their land, or maybe special attachments that they could wear. Or maybe even special perks a person could buy, such as an in game guided tour “behind the scenes” of SL for like 100,000 linden. Or maybe “lunch” in world with Phillip Linden for 500,000. Whatever.

One time use items might include something like an attachment that gives you “God Mode” in the combat sims for one hour. Or maybe a way to have special weapons rentals, weapons that don’t kill but instead do silly things. How about the ability to rent more prims for your lot? Special landscaping items such as limited edition trees and shrubs.

There are plenty of things that would work that I haven’t thought of. The thing they would really have to be careful about is to make sure these items don’t compete with user created items. Which really shouldn’t be a problem for the Lindens, considering that they can do things the rest of us can’t.

These types of things would suck money out of circulation and might even stimulate the economy by giving people motivation to earn lindens. Someone might say “Hey, I REALLY want to have an hour alone to chat with Phillip, so I am going to create a whole line of new objects to sell so I can earn the money.”

Hey, stop laughing, it could happen!

Oh, awesome! I didn't see that. TY for bringing it to my attention.

*runs to read the whole thing*

I am propably one of the few. The way i look at the L$/USD value is that it's always been overpriced (because if you can make profit off just registering unlimited number of accounts on your unlimited amount of creditcards, and dumping the 500L$ weekly stipends on all of them) so until this practice is no longer profitable the L$ is still overpriced. However that still doesn't mean you can't make profit by speculating on purchasing ls, current ginko rates gives a good security against a hardlanding even if L$/USD declines by further 43% over next 12months, you'll still be about break even.
I've acutaly made a marginal profit off my AUG/SEPT 05 investment into ginko, i was prety lucky i purchased with all my accounts to max allowable levels the last few operating days of gom while ppl overpanicked that gom was goning down, wich ended up in massive-overpurchasing by ppl the months after because once ppl notice L$vsUSD soars it's a supersurprise and you purchase more than you need in hope to be smarter than the market, now we're simply getting back to "more realistic pricing levels", i just hope people won't dump at the bottom again and feel sorry for themself when it goes abit up again.
Thats my view on "the pump'n'dump currency" also known as Linden Dollars

How about this novel idea....


If the Sinks remove around L$10/million Linden Dollars a Month,
then why don't we reduce the Stipend Inflow from L$30/million a month
to L$10/million a month? Causing a flat line of the money supply?


Amazing Idea..

Yes.

Nah, I don't like it. You're asking the casual/social player to give up stipends that they use to buy our stuff or have fun in SL. There are simply some people who will never buy currency. They'd leave SL before they had to. Sinks are a much more palatable idea, IMHO.

NOnonnon... The casual user still gets their stipends, but the
global outflow and inflow are equal. Offsetting each other and
keeping the overall money supply flat.

So instead of a player getting L$500/wk, they'll get 2/3rds
that amount, L$170. The basic user will get L$17.

I'm impressed. This makes more sense then completely getting ride of the stipends altogether Though it may be a bit too drastic.

Since the population keeps growing every month, implementing such a proposal would kick the economy into a serious deflationary mode.

The problem is that everyone cashes out in USD.

There is no reason to buy up $L unless you're buying in game items.

They should charge fees for accounts, tier, etc in $L. That will push people into buying up $L and giving it a real value.

Now... because the $L changes in value all the time, they should give it a variable rate. e.g; $9.95 USD worth of $L is what your monthly fee comes out to, not a set $L amount.

Theres still the dragon of giving players recompense for what you take away using that method. Premiumk users, after all, are paying for their stipend. To lower it would mean increasing perks somewhere, like, for example, higher 'free' teir.

(first of all i disagree that a L$ value around 3.00 usd is too low, ithink a right price is around there), but anyway
You're into something there... Virtual tax on stipends l$...

Ithink it wouldn't be optimal to take from the poor (thats the effect of that), it'd actualy favourize only the very richest, but also for them only for a very short term because the avg. Speding-Rate pr capital would be shrinking and would propably end up in a very unhappy second world...

My fix: Virtual Tax on total ingame revenue (bothways, seller and buyer pays tax... or giver if it's a donation, nomatter what kind of capitalmovement that is) Sellers tax should be alittle bit higher than buyer tax.

Set at automatic rate equal to something abit higher than current inflation (higher because it can be used to trigger shorter periods of very lucrative taxes, driving people to automaticaly spend more in shorter period of time, in my country the government sets taxes for November at Half of all the other months are, you'd bet it's working as a virtual spendingrate-enhancement, we're wealthy for christmas and poor rest of the year... perfect for a booming economy). So we automaticaly end up in exacly the float we need to maintain a healthy growing economy. (this should be totaly automized once a month or once a week)

This tax would collect quiet alot of L$ millions. Wich can be either deleted or used for some kind of new reward system (but only a small part of the tax should be paid out in the reward system if there is to be one or the whole taxation system would be pointless and end up in exacly same moneyfloat as it is now).

First thing that'd happen would be the wealthiest tycoons making less money (in rl cash), some people would freak out on shortterm, but it'd get back to exacly same amounts they receive today over time, because each L$ would be worth more in usd.

I believe there is no way of fixing a supply demand situation, if you don't play with the float&tax, setting up a lindex seller tax would propably not change a thing (those times when i need to sell my L$ i need sell them period, only thing that stops me are bidders, the fee is there anyway so i wouldn't change anything when it comes to trading practices.)

In the us there's been many examples on how to play and not to play with the float&taxes... many of them were often not stabilizing usd value at all, rather push ppl to spend more by virtualy creating better spendingrate-percapital atmospheres through: lowertaxes combined with higher inflation, or higher taxes combined with deflation... those adjustments were ofcourse for more psychologic purposes than stabilizing and as we can see from FED's graphs.

This could propably work very well, or not at all... best suggestion of mines so far. maybe some combination between this and stipend adjustements + some other creative stuff could be a solution.

Also, just thought about it now, Deficit Spending:

how about adding a new type of tier fee, wich would be called Credit-Rate, and could for work somelike this:

Only a premium account can do deficit spending and spend upto USD 5.00 worth of ls on credit pr month (or can expand their Credit-Rate by selecting a higher tier like land tier, gets billed at end of month i don't think there should be much higher credit-rate allowance than 10-20$ atm).
This must be paid back at the next billing period or stipeds would be locked until account gets locked if a player is unable to payoff it's debt at all.

maybe deficit spending combined with revenue taxation ?

I expect my full stipend to remain the same after any taxes. I pay for my stipend, to receive all of it. Not all of it minus tax.

If proplr want to make taxes, tax the linden sellers. I don't cash out, I only bring money -in- to LL.

Hmm, ithink there's abit of a misunderstanding there.... The word tax is the most negative word in english, after no

The idea is not to cut your stipend, and yes as you say you'll be receiving full stipend after taxes (after conversion to usd) because, the market will price your l$ better. For example:

Example 1: Your stipend today: 500L$, you spend 200L$ on shopping and selloff the 300L$ you have remaining at current rate of 1.00 USD, at the same time the seller sells off his overfloat of L$ (in this example only: 200L$). This adds 1,67USD worth to the supply side of L$ on lindex, and none to the demand side depressing the future stipends of yours.

Example 2, in my taxed world (lets say the total tax is 1.00% and divided by 60% to sellers and 40% to buyers) : Your stipend is still: 500L$, you spend 200L$ on that car (0,4% goes to tax float: 8L$), and for the seller (0,6% of 200L$ is 12L$). Again both seller and buyer sells off similar amounts on lindex, but this time the float is abit different: the float buyer has left is 292L$ and sellers is 188L$. So now the supply side is reduced to total of 480L$, and we've added some to the tax float (20L$) wich will function as a the balancer... so it's still worth exacly 1,67 USD. You got your car, you got your 1.00 usd for the 292L$ equal to 300L$ currently and sililary for the seller (minus 0,2%).

Actualy, it is more propable that the seller would sell this car cheaper in example 2 because than in #1 because he'd be getting more USD for it, if he would not some competetitor would, and you'd be getting cheaper goods.

Thats the idea, less float, more value per L$. Everybody happy.

The weekly stipend is needed per the nature of the game. Decreasing or eliminating it is not the answer.

The answer is for the Lindens to come up with more creative sinks.
Sinks that people will be willing, even happy, to pay in to.

It wouldn't be all that hard for them to come up with sinks that siphon off lindens without putting users out of business.

Hell, it the Lindens want to put me on the payroll, I will develop them myself!

My stipend isn't touching the market. The USD value should not affect it.

I wan't the 500L a week, not 500L a week with market interpreataions.

I'm not selling any of it off, thats my entire point. I want my 500L and forget the lindex.

<- I couldn't agree more.

But keeping current uncontrollable moneyfloat isn't gonna make your stipends get you more stuff, rather opposite.

the 'uncontrollable' float that we are experiencing is the free market, wherein people are placing their own value on the linden $

Funny how its the 'capitalists' calling fro a more controlled market.

Hmm, ok, how about this idea....

Let's roll the float!

works like this:

Lindens Add more moneysupply you get 4000L$ weekly stipends.

One question, if you had a choice wich would you prefer:

getting 500L$ or 4000L$

(I used to live in poland 10 years ago, youknow we had the communist regime, they made everyone a millionaire, problem was that the Monthly Payroll was worth 50% less at end of month for example my adidas shoes costed me 2,500,000 Zloty, so the only way to enjoy some life and afford stuff was to spend ALL the same day i got paid. Today i live in norway and this currency has been soaring (comparing to most other currencies), and i actualy like it better to make 12,000 NOK than Millions of Polish Zloty, i sort of end to get more bought.) Insane inflation sounds fun, until you touch it

The 500L keeps people from bitching (as much), so I'd stick with that.

Leave the market out of my stipend unless you give me -full- recompensation in the form of more free teir for any portion of lost stipend (to 'taxes' or policy).

edit: inflation? please..the cost of goods in world hasn't moved from what I've seen, except downward

Ok, here is an example of a linden sink that would be effortless for the Lindens to enact:

Guest hosts for event.

Personally, I think Torley Linden is cool as hell. She's a freak just like the rest of us! I could see them doing a once a month auction for "Have Torley host your event". She would be a riot as host, and everyone would have a great time.

Just an example of ways the Lindens could decrease the linden supply with a minimal effect on content providers in SL. It would even go a long way towards increasing good will towards the Lindens, as there seems to be a very prevalent "we hate Lindens" attitude in SL! (Which I just don't understand, unless it’s the normal “rebel against authority” attitude that is common with web folk in general, myself included!)

Torley might be amazed that he's a she.

Paying L$'s for LindeX services would either:
1) raise the cost of selling L$'s.... (very unpopular) or
2) reduce revenue to LL to keep the cost of selling L$ the same (very unlikely)

Free L$'s are good. It encourages people to be less tight-fisted with them.

The final numbers on the influx/outflow of L$ isn't settled yet, LL is still working on how many L$'s they reclaim from player attrition. While I'm still sure the influx is higher than the reclaimation... it will be nice to know those numbers too. (unless they already posted and I missed it?)

Anyway, as several have said, several times, MORE SINKS are needed.

Charge or even auction off spots on the events list.

Bring back the ratings high scores pages and let people buy their popularity and destroy L$'s in the persuit of vanity.

Create a stipend lottery that allows people to whom stipends are meaninglessly small to waive them for a chance at a portion of the waived stipend pool.

Allow players to waive their stipends if they don't want them for a fractional addition to their land tier. (Prop 1200)

--
well, anyway.