A solution to the anti-stipend whiners?

The 50L$ stipend and free Basic Accounts are used the same way those "500 free minutes" for AOL are used. It gets you into the game and "addicted" to iit in whatever form meets your ideal.

LL is smart in allowing the stipend to continue. Why?

Because it keeps people in SL and spending money.

Sure, some people might jsut log on, collect thier 50L$ stipend, camp in chairs while AFK and do all the other things people are whining about.

Others collect thier 50L$, buy L$ off the exchange and spend it in-world on things others are making/selling.

Renting/owning land costs money. Those Basic Account players like the option to "vacate" thier land for a time if RL monies become limited (believe it or not, not everyone in the world has $9.95/mo every month). With Basic Accounts they don't -have- to pay RL money, but they CAN if they wish to and have it at the time.

The 50L$ stipend keeps them logging on and spending thier limited funds on products and services that those who wish to make a living in SL are producing/offering.

LL is using the 50L$ stipend as an INVESTMENT in consumer activities. Yes, it costs LL (and therefor the large land owners who pay tier) a monthly amount. If you could get the numbers on that, I highly doubt that amount is even worth discussing in an Economic sense (number of Basic Account Stipends / number of Tier Landowners). In any case, the Tier being paid is part of that INVESTMENT. Anyone purchasing and maintaining a Premium Account is aware of Tier, as well as thier monthly fee. Wether they realise all implications of those fees depends on how deep they wish to delve into it.

NO buisness can make a profit without INVESTING income in the buisness. "You have to spend money to make money."

In summary:: Basic Accounts increase the SL economy via purchasing of L$ even when factoring in the 50L$ "given" on a weekly basis. Premium accounts increase the SL economy via land tier and monthly fees, and yes, in purchasing of L$. Niether the 50L$, nor the 500L$ has any significant impact on the economy. Only to the point of enticing people to come to SL and increases the economy by thier very presence.

~Jessy

Yes, it's true they might enjoy the smaller shop. If they do, good for them. However they might enjoy the smaller shop, but also be prepared, or even keen, to build a themed sim - but only if they could pay for the tier, or most of it, in L$. If they are unable to do that because prices are forced down, we lose out on that creativity, ie, we never get to fly around their themed sim because they never build it. If they would never have wanted to build such a thing, then they don't have to, and we have lost nothing since the potential never existed.

But if someone is keen to contribute a newly themed and interactive full-sim build, but finds that they can't, because the person running the shop next door doesn't have that ambition and therefore sells the same quality of items at much lower prices because they don't care about meeting an income target - then is that overall a good thing or a bad thing? It's a good thing for many people (customers), but..

One of the key, deeply entrenched, and effectively unsolvable problems of the SL economy is that the people who create and contribute things get charged for doing so in the first instance. That's why you can't just "love to create but not care about the money" - you're going to get a US$ bill each month for the price of acting on that "love".

I wasn't aware the 10L$ uploading texture fee was sent to you in the mail? Oh wait, you don't get a monthly charge just for creating. Yeah, your bad, not mine.

Oh and if I could vastly undersell a scripted ao lower than anyone else- I would. I don't care about the real world money I would gain. The others could lower their prices or I could outsell them. Thats called capitolism. And not the freebie reselling a certian parasitic legend does.

Its real capitolism..I can provide a quality product at a lower price. Wonder which one I'd buy if I was a consumer?

If you want to create anything meaningful, it usually involves owning land as well. If you want to sell anything, ditto. Well, you can use the free areas, I suppose, but there'd be a problem if everyone did. Creating anything major means either paying tier or renting.



Being able to "vastly undersell" a good is not capitalism. Being able to avoid "caring about the money I would gain" is not capitalism. In the real world, if a shop started out offering well-made clothes for $1 each, it would attract massive volume but would quickly go bust from its own production costs. In SL, there's no production costs and the rent is the same every month, so as long as the owner didn't mind losing the rent, it could do it and ruin the local clothing trade.

I am not sure why you would actively work against the possibility of getting your tier paid for free, unless you had a bee in your bonnet and were trying to grief the economy.

Um so why are 126,000 ppl in SL? How many of those do you think pay to be in SL. It's your asertion that they are all here to work. I am here for fun and enjoyment. Claiming that ppl who are here for fun, enjoyment and entertainment are some how wrong, is absurd.

Ppl who think like this perhaps should be speaking to LL about what SL is for. More so they need to be taking a good look at how SL is marketed. "Get your free account so you can work for the man!", "Pay a subscription amount monthly and extra US$ for land, so you can WORK FOR US!" I somehow think that is not how SL is marketed. If it were I think you would probably see those subscription numbers closer to 3k not 126k.

LOL my goodness.

And if the answer is "not", then what? They should leave?

What about non-free basic accounts or basics who have tiered down from premium?

That $10.00 for a Basic account pays for a good year's worth of L$50.

Plus, what kind of business is it when you hate all your customers?

That's capitalism. That's the free market.

Over time, the price of any good available from multiple sellers will fall towards the cost of production. Any time the price is significantly more than the cost of production, people willing to sell for less will be attracted to the market. So, over time, you have to keep creating new goods that aren't available from multiple sellers, that are distinctive and different enough that YOUR good is worth more because it's not the same as everyone else's.

If someone started selling their really nice clothes for L$1, everyone would have those clothes, and they'd be no more attractive to people than the generic Linden outfits in the library. People would say "Must be a newby, she's wearing a Dior".

So the real production costs are the cost of creating new content. Old content goes down in value, because, well, it's going down in value. You take it out of your vendors and put new stuff in. The guy selling clothes for L$1 each can't afford to do that, and will eventually raise his prices for new stuff, or quit making the clothes, but he won't affect the clothing market for very long.

Well I could just plant a shop next to parasitic legnds with a huge 'freebie' sign and give away all the freebies that she is selling for her own income.

Personally I'd find a level or cost that paid my tier, and -maybe- premium costs. anything else I would keep in world and not make any real world profit on the product. Granted my products would be -cheaper- than others still, but not 100l to others 1k. Maybe half of others costs.

I'm more for affordable style than outrageous costs for things that don't cost anything to produce after the first copy (even assuming you upload textures)...

Oh yes.. and a money tree for the newbies on my land

that's so when they fleece someone for every last l$ they don't feel guilty about it

I belive that is known as the "Service Industry".

Quote:
Originally Posted by Argent Stonecutter
Plus, what kind of business is it when you hate all your customers?


I tought it is know as the "customer service desk" of any company, including my not to be named firm. Those people can make a Vandel blush!

Ok, so Im not the first to quote that bit, but man, thats a classic. You have to put that in your sig. Think I'll start a t-shirt business based on quotes from these threads

Wonder if you have to get the original poster's consent to do that (especially if you attribute something someone would rather they never said)

SL may give some people enough mental stimulation that, for them, it is indistinguishable from reality and they become obsessed with it.

That's one end of the scale.

For the majority of 'residents' it is a game, an entertainment, a representation of an environment which they understand as such and enjoy experiencing to a greater or lesser degree.

At the extreme opposite end from the obssessives are those who see it purely as a tool, which gives access to thousands of potential customers for whatever service, or item they can devise and market within the constraints of the environment (read rules of the game)

Personally, I enjoy the social interaction coupled with the therapeutic freedom to do things I can't in RL due to Parkinson's disease. As a bonus to me there is a demonstrable opportunity to make a RL profit here which, I fullyacknowledge, is rooted in the success of LL exactly as you say and which I regard as a game objective.

The trick is to come up with an idea that is potentially profitable in SL, which you have the RL resources to support until it becomes profitable, and which you are prepared to let go of if something happens to LL or if the parameters are altered to make it unviable.

Obviously the costs in time and effort must be of lesser value than the return in satisfaction/RL US$ to you as a player of the game or you would go elsewhere.

Yes, there are probably some few who use SL purely as a money maker but I strongly suspect that even these individuals derive a modicum of entertainment from working in the virtual environment of SL.

I just had a thought while typing the above. You could, I suppose, regard building your entire business on SL in the same sort of way that a professional poker player makes a buck. AFter all, they have no real world location of their own to work from, they have no physical assets that are required to play the game, no inventory, their entire wealth could evaporate on the turn of a card, they earn a living purely on their skills being finer tuned than the other players. None of that stops them from making a living or from many observers having the wish to emulate the top players.

So, is running a business in SL wise? That depends on how you view SL, the stability of LL, and depending on where you are on the obsessive-ultimately pragmatic scale, the valuation you place on the intangible value of the entertainment factor.

As long as you can keep your feet planted in reality, not over commit your RL resources to the point that SL failure would destroy your RL financial position, enjoy playing and have an understanding that it is only a game which it's not compulsory to play then I would say yes.

For me, the benefiits far outweigh the money I have at risk here.

Your mileage may vary.

Phoe

Couldnt agree more... all those ppl talking about economy and capitalism, and that everyone should work have simply fogotten that SL is a game. Someone who comes in there to just play around in the sandbox, but might have a premium account... WHY do they have to work extra just to get some pocket money?

Let's take a fun thing and turn it into a rich person's only social club. You know you guys that got the bucks would be hard pressed if all your workers adn customers left you on day since most of you cannot even figure out how to boil an egg for yourselves.

Yes, us paying a monthly fee is doing 'nothing.' The stipend is paid for by our monthly fees to Linden Labs.. if you were to cut the weekly stipend, monthly fees would have to be slashed too..

Otherwise..what does premium really give you for 9.95 (or 7.50 or 6) $ us a month...a 'free' 512 of tier? Please..not worth it.

"Capitalism" existed BEFORE stock markets, dear. It simply took the form of individually-owned and family-owned businesses, along with partnerships, rather than "joint stock" companies.

"Capital" was invented by the Italian bankers in (I think) the 11th-13th centuries. Joint stock companies became feasible during the period when Europe was busy as hell colonizing the rest of the planet.

There are such things as barter economies and market economies, which are perfectly feasible models for an economy in SL. They are nowhere near as complicated as a full-blown "capitalist" economy. A market economy which used email agreements as contracts with regards to virtual property and services would be quite manageable.

Considering that LL's operation of SL is itself a corporate business project, which exists _solely_ in their wholly-owned servers, operating an "economy" on anything but an ad-hoc market basis seems impractical, given that a fire or earthquake in California could shut down LL and effectively kill the entire "world" of SL. Everyone here seems to be assuming that LL will be doing this for the next twenty years. They may decide to do something else _NEXT MONTH_, and kill the entire thing.

It's a game. It's ENTERTAINMENT. There is no legal requirement on LL to maintain SL any longer than it remains profitable for them.

Yes, some members are landbarons and moguls; Ansechung is the most-touted name. However, her investment in SL real estate is extremely high-risk. LL could decide the entire world is a massive headache and not worth their ongoing effort to deal with all the clueless morons who think SL will be here until the sun goes nova. Unless anyone knows of any legal requirement for LL to enable their members to use SL as an alternative income source, I'd say that anyone who counts on making a RL income from SL, without massive monetary investment and equally massive risk, is delusional.

Now, if LL decided to move the servers to a state which was not quite so prone to things like mudslides, forest fires, and earthquakes, some of the risk factor would be mitigated, but the fact remains that they're running it as a business for themselves, not as a business PLATFORM for anyone else's benefit. It's nice that it can be used as such, but should be regarded as a temporary business base, and SL entrepreneurs should be preparing to move on to another venue when LL decides not to continue maintaining its creation.

Noooooo ... the point of elimination or reducing stripends is so that a the greedy bastiges proposing such a move can corner the market on the existing supply of $L and drive the price higher and higher.

They not only want the price of land to be dictated by the land barons, they want the price of $Lindens to be dictated by the $Linden barons.

It's about profit margins. Tier costs aren't based on revenue. If two players have the same tier payments, but one earns more $L than the other, then a greater percent of his revenue is profit.

before i make a formal reply i have seen people say well i pay 10$ a month and say that because they do there helping the economy..or am i misunderstanding that comment

You're misunderstanding it. They're saying their stipend isn't a handout. They get $L500 instead of only $L50 as one of the benefits of their paid subscription status...and, possibly, that the fact they pay real money to Linden Labs has more beneficial effects on the game from without than any negative effects their stipends may have on the virtual economy from within.

I just have one small question... where is the research behind all these accusations of paying stipends to those that do nothing? I want to see numbers instead of whining bs... I am basic, and I've paid plenty and gave plenty in sl.. I don't own a business nor do I own land but I do rent land.. I shop, play games, I help newbies, or anyone that needs help and so on.. so you tell me how I'm NOT giving back to this game? I really don't give a rats ass bout the stipends but I'm tired of those assuming, people like me, don't give back or earn my way. So show me the actual number of people that get stipends and don't do anything compared to those that do. Y'all really need to wake up and realize NOT everyone your trying to condemn is doing nothing for something!
And before you throw the premuim account in my face.. I don't want to own land.. so therefore why should I pay for something I choose not to do.

You did use a credit/debit card to sign up with, right? It's on record in your profile -- all you have to do is charge $5us worth of Lindens to your credit/debit card. $5 is only a little more than a triple expresso at Starbucks, son. You're that damn cheap, you can't afford $5usd?