Our focus should now be on SINKS not STIPENDS.

Now you're talking Bloop, offering ADDITIONAL functionality for Lindens might be a positive move, however...

You have to bear in mind that if LL could in anyway charge more US$ for that extra service they would, both because they need real world profitability and some things, such as faster servers themselves cost US$

It's the same paradox we keep banging our head against. We want the L$ to be a real currency and while I can't dispute it has value, the fact that it's issuing "government" can never accept it as payment somewhat screws it.

I also run a RL business and I would be happy to be paid in L$ for some of our products, so that I can enjoy the SL game more. RL products paid for in L$. Similarly I would be happy to be paid £ for SL items. It is through the creation of ideas such as that, that the value of the L$ will stabilise. Too many of these threads talk about the L$ in isolation to RL economy and when it does go to RL it then ignores completely people like me who have £ not US$ to spend. I need to go through 2 exchanges to buy Lindens. This is another avenue to explore. Offering £ and EURO exchange rates, or else players such as me have to think about holding lindens or dollars or our own currency.

...

Follow this up with businesses such as mine being incentivised to accept LS$ for RL services. The incentive being structured SL banking and a way to make this happen outside of SL, as I need to account to the RL revenue for the L$ income. Then there is the possibility for people to take money out of SL into RL and get something for it as well as avoiding yet another L$ withdrawl.

All the short-term fixes (such as the recent stipend cut for new basics) is attacking the wrong end of things. They NEED to concentrate on fixes that impact the well-off first, and not so deeply that they leave but deep enough to matter....rather than pruning the roots while the branches get bigger and bigger. Eventually the tree will collapse when most of the roots (newbs, low end premiums, small businesses) fold and only the big content creators and land barons remain...without a

Your ideas for sink suggestions to LL in this thread would be most appreciated. Thank you.

First, being 10k usd in the hole after less than 3 years of running a RL business would be pretty damn good. Most businesses in RL are in the red for their first 5 years. If you were running a RL business, you would be deeper in the red or out of business.

Second, you had the chance to read the TOS when you signed on and every time you invensted. You knew you were pegging your business on the what people were willing to buy L$ at.

Third, most of you knew about stipends, dwell, et when you invested. These did not come as a surprise to many of you.

LL didn't promise that you would make money.

Elimination of premium stippends is stupid from a business view as it will cause many to tier down. Many people dont care about land and only hold a premium for the stipends.
Sure some of them MAY buy money from lindex instead (but not all, many hate it), but even if they do, LINDEN LABS ISNT GETTING THEIR MONEY.

Don't tell me this, tell that to Lusk owners. And LindenLabs for expecting people to pay so much to buy their land.
The problem is NOT "zOMG, all this money was invested, and we can't get it back" for these people/content providers/land owners. The problem is that, right now, they CAN make the money back (probably knowing full well that they could before spending that money), BUT they see the decline of $L as a serious threat to that money being made back. Essentially this isn't a "Ack! I lost money! Give me yours!," it's "Ack! I was making my money back, but something/someone is fecking up the Lindex/$L value! We need to fix it NOW."

P.S. Personally, as I've mentioned, I have about $650USD tied up in this game. And I still think it's been one of the best investments I've made to date. Problem is, I can only do so much with that money to keep it's value increasing faster than the $L is devaluing.

You would do beter "investing" in a passbook savings account! At least the small amount of intrest is a positve growth instead of a negitive one! If it is for a game it is an expensive one. It is about 1/2 a plane ticket home for me

I had %42 growth on my initial investment. Not %4.2, %42. Find me a bank or a stock I can trade that can do this for me and I'll gladly switch.

Yep but you're paying for that now with the falling value of the Lindex. You can't have it both ways and cry if that investment is losing value at the same rate it gained it in the first place.

IMHO, we are wasting our energies in further pursuing an elimination or reduction to premium stipends. Please understand that I am not necessarily against the elimination of premium stipends ... if it would guarantee a net overall positive effect on our economy and the future overall health of SL. But I am not convinced that it will.

Money flowing into an economy is not, in and by itself, necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, money flowing into an economy is not only good, but it is necessary to sustain a growing economy. So our current problem is not so much LL's ability to add cashflow to the economy, but their inability to remove it in the form of sinks.

Think about it for a minute. How many sinks do we have in SL today? By all accounts, our sinks are paltry in number. LL simply has not devoted their attention to implementing creative ways of removing cashflow from the economy in any measureable way. Again, our problem is that the outflow of cash from the economy, in the form of sinks, are not offsetting the inflow of cash into the economy, in the form of stipends.

Simply put, we need more sinks. Now!

LL simply needs to devote some of their time and talent into creating innovative and effective sinks immediately!

I mean, what would be more indicative of a need for sinks than the recent and increasing movement by many of our residents to BURN THEIR STIPENDS?

And though I believe that their cause is borne of good intent, it is a cause doomed to fail. Why? Because the removal of premium stipends is, for all intents and purposes, wrought with unknown consequences. It is, to say the least, a very precarious maneuver that can have a negative impact on LL's current and future bottom line profit, have a potentially alienating effect on the psychy of our community, the income provided to our content creators in-world could decrease, and it could ultimately stagnate, if not outright curtail, a growing economy and the future growth of SL.

In short, it is now time to turn our attention away from stipends, and toward the creation of innovative and creative sinks that will effectively remove the cashflow from our economy. In so doing, not only will the overall health of the SL economy improve, but so will the relations scarred by this bitter anti/pro stipend debate.

Your ideas for sink suggestions to LL in this thread would be most appreciated. Thank you.

There is no sink in the world that is going to work so long as LL keeps flooding the market with millions of free L$ every week. Any sink sufficient enough to overcome that would be grossly unfair to paying users.