LindeX "attacked" again

This is a simple, powerful idea.

Yes, there will be a black market... but such a move by the Company would essentially 'nail down' some endpoints.

Who would buy $L at 251 if you could get all you wanted for 250?

The only issue is the Company having to 'accept' transactions to buy your $L at 225.

It may not be financially wise for them to soak up $L like that when *we* want them to. It makes a 'run' on the Company's bank possible - and one thing we can be sure of are mob panics and market crashes.

THe Black Market for L$ does exist but its weak and hardly used. If LL tinkers
with LindenX in an attempt to artificially prop up the L$, the Black Market will
grow and prosper.

LL needs to get it through their thick skull that they need to think of
Second Life as their own Country. And they need to do things to promote
demand for the Linden Dollar. And that demand comes from things related
to investment and profit. The only asset that commands L$ buying is Land and
Content. There is nothing else in SL which drives demand to buy L$.
No Stocks, Bonds, Commodites, etc... Without such, you get more L$ Dollars
Seeking US$ instead of US$ seeking L$. Result: Declining L$ Valuations.
Easy to understand Economics 101.

Go check out the privately owned sims - that situation exists TODAY.

In some cases: No money down and for smaller plots you pay LESS tier than for the mainland! And no ugly Impeach signs.

These sims are brought to you by people trying to make money.



That's exactly what I'm setting up to do as well. I'm very open about the making money part - in fact, my profitability will lend confidence to tenants. Insofar as they won't worry about the sim sinking into the sea due to money issues.

Who is telling you, that they don't think of Second Life like that?Maybe we all are a just a little impatient.

Second Life is a very young economy. If it grows and continues to prosper, I am rather sure we will see most of these (some already exist in budding form). It just takes a little time - and some growing pains, probably.

There is this quote from the magazine Wired on wikipedia. This quote seems to show that he is thinking how you want him to:

"I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country." (source: Wired, 2004-05-0

Of course, every leader is going to run his country in a way that upsets someone.

A world where no one cares about their own interests and works to improve the environment for all? Is that not a dream of a digital utopia? I think that model can exist within a small community but cannot scale. SL is already too big, so to achieve this goal you'd need to create a sub-community within SL. This should be quite doable -- there are more than a few people who feel the way you do. Then you all can share land and build stuff for free for each other.



I happen to disagree, but there's not much point in arguing about it. It's true some people cannot have fun in SL without spending money. Of course, plenty others do have fun without spending more than a few pennies.



You're always paying for someone's time, whether it's the art department at Blizzard or the art department at Linden Lab (i.e. non-employee content creators). With those other games you HAVE to pay their content team to do anything. In SL, it's your choice as to how much you pay and for what.

Now if you happen to think SL's content is bad, that's another story. And if you happen to think that you should get everything in life for free, that's another one too.

Currently there is NO black market. A black market would require that currency selling was against the TOS, or that currency could only be exchanged by "approved" vendors.

Thank you for beautifully articulating the crux of the matter.

King Philip is running the Kingdom Of Second Life like a Socialist Nation with
Hyperinflation. They just keep printing money like it was water with no care
about how to bring in L$ buyers. Without reason for people to buy L$,
the L$ will sink.

Sure, Land causes people to Buy L$. So does a user created content.
But the problem is that the demand for L$ has fallen behind the supply of L$.
There is just too many L$ dollars floating around. That coupled with weekly
Tuesday PayDays isn't helping the problem.

Is it just me? Or do people get dumber by the minute nowadays?

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10&satitle=linden+dollar&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum=1&coentrypage=search&fgtp=&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=20147&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=

While I think that the stipend and other $L give aways have always caused a rapid snow ball effect on the money supply, I don't think it is up to them to make people want to buy $L. The model they seem to be suggesting is that they sell you the land and give you the ability to make your own virtual world. Getting people to want to buy $L from you on Lindex or on your own to buy participation in your own little virtual world is up to you. It is becoming a problem that the government continues to give free tickets to get stuff others sell in the stipend and other $L give aways. I'm all for infusing $L if the price of $L starts to rise out of control, but the closest thing I've seen to that is the opening of the Lindex. That leveled out at the target level of L$250/1US$.

I think it just goes to show that people will try to sell anything on Ebay.

Seriously though, L$235/US$1? Who do they think is going to buy it at those prices?

I think it is just you.

Much of SL's content is trashy porn, sure, but not all of it. I happen to survive in a nice area that does have a few sex clubs nearby but thankfully far enough away not to affect me negatively.

I never said you should get everything in SL for free, but I do think that the price of land is stopping a lot of people from upgrading to a premium account, because on a free account and perhaps either a sandbox or rented vendor space at a mall you can do probably 99% of what most people in game are doing.

I don't know what the true active membership is - the 120,000+ is fake as we know - but only a small proportion of active memberships are paying - that's the real problem here

Lewis

Thats just it.. Currently nobody will be buying off ebay with those prices.
But if LL tries to tinker with the LindenX to prop up prices or something that
goes against the grain of the market, you can be sure the Black Market is
waiting to take in the business.

So to whomever believes there is no black market, just try to coral the
open market trading of L$ and you'll see pretty quick what happens when
prices on the Black Market become competitive and/or better than LindenX
prices.

The Goal of Linden Labs should not be to try and "Control" the free market
trading of Linden Dollars L$. Their goal should be to encourage Savings and
Investment within SL of Linden Dollars. The result of which will cause people
to buy and hold L$ than earn and sell for US$.

And as Econ101 dictates, the Buying and Holding of L$ will create supply
shortages of L$, which lead to increased valuations of L$.

Land prices are as low as they have been since 1.2 was released.

With the current prices and the strong $USD, I doubt we will ever again see such bargain priced land.

I saw several nice, mature, 4096's priced just below L$5 per m over the weekend.
Thats less than $73 USD for a nice hunk of land.

Land Prices are not only tied to the value of the L$, but also the
supply of New Land. There is also the wildcard of Population within SL.
Land Values can be semi-difficult to determine as being "Cheap" or
"Expensive" since several important factors are a mystery.

How much Land does the Average SL Citizen own? Divide that number
by the total amount of land available in SL. That should give you the
average Supply/Demand metric to determine if New Land and Population
Growth is tipping the balance.

1.2..what was that, a week ago? (sorry grumpy about updates)

Please don't let this turn into an argument about the stipends.. we have enough of those.

....... but not everyone happens to have $73 (or its equivalent, depending on where you happen to be in the world) to spend on a game.

I'm sure that it wasn't LL's intention to stifle creativity, but that's what is happening. All we see on big plots mostly are huge sex based nightclubs, that pay people to sit there for hours on end so they can artificially appear popular, raking in the money to pay for their teir.

Such blights on the landscape do not offer much to the average player (except the lure of free cash), and offers nothing to my gameplay whatsoever.

All except a couple of things on my property are my own unique creations. Yet it's, for some reason, not considered 'as good' due to not having so many visitors, as something where the owner just paid someone else to build something for them, and/or bought pretty much everything from a store.

Lewis

Well I'm a bit concerned about you.

A black market requires something to be against the law. There are no restrictions in SL on who trades $L. Most people probably use the Lindex cause it's handy. Others use SLExchange or IGE. But I could sell on ebay tomorrow and no one at LL would care.

Thus, no laws broken.. no black market.

I sometimes wonder if we are playing in the same SL. Not to invalidate your personal experience, but yours almost never rings true for me.

I personally co-own an entire sim that is free of trashy porn. Now that we've removed the trailer park, it's mostly free of trashy. Besides... if there was any porn in Chaos, it would be classy and well done.

Last month I took a long tour of the mainland - by water. I saw so many wonderful builds and had a chance to chat with lots of cool people. Honestly, except for the areas around the Infohubs, I saw very little trashy porn... indeed very few bad builds. Since P2P was implemented I have noticed more and more how much I enjoy the mainland.

Now I avoid club sims, but then I don't go to strip clubs in RL either. So I'm not really sure how you can say what you did...it doesn't seem based in any SL I know.

Maybe from the events calendar?

From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Main Entry: black market
Function: noun
illicit trade in goods or commodities in violation of official regulations; also : a place where such trade is carried on

If you re-read my original post. Yes, if LL tries to fix the price of the $L, there will be a black market. However, none currently exists because it's not against the TOS.

Sorry. I thought you were debating that a Black Market wouldn't exist and
that somehow LL could control things to prevent that from happening.
Sorry. My misunderstanding.

I second this too, and I think that you should provide the community with an exchange which functions in exactly the way that you've specified. I will be thrilled to sell you L$ at a 250 rate all day long to help get your exchange moving!