US Dollar Meets SL

My tagline says Capitalist cause that's what I am. I run my own company and I charge fair prices and make money. I'm a capitalist, and it's my dream to be rich through profit.

I don't know about what's happened to the L$ now though. Not sure if there are bad guys. I'm not smart enough to know why this has happened today, exactly. And I'm not sure about the road out of this mess. But I know I'm not touching Linden dollars with a barge pole.

Actually you reminded me that I forgot to put that in my project plan a month ago when I read another thread talking about automatic L$ pricing based on conversion rates and initially set prices.

Anyways, I added it to the v1.2 plan so it will hopefully be a reality at some point in the next couple of months.

How is this better/more convenient than keeping US$ in GOM?

Well you buy them and they're.. like shiney and stuff.... and you can spend them on.. uhm..... ah... uhm.....

and they're shiney and stuff!

Jsecure, I think it's better to follow Gabrielle Assia's suggestion and start offering "L$ accounts". Here's what it is: someone pays me any number of $5, and for each $5 a month I send them L$300-350 in weekly stipends.

This way people can stop paying for Premium accounts just to get L$, save money on the process (you can get the 512 sqm allotment in addition to this for a total of less than $10 now anyway) and reduce the amount of L$ created by LL.

If you are renting land / trading currencies please start doing that. For the good of the L$ economy. Please ?

Hahahaha this made me laugh too much..

I think this is a non serious idea, but even if serious it's kind of illegal on several fronts isn't it? You cant just print currency, you cant even print stuff that looks like currency let alone stuff that implies that it is actual currency.

Also, major disagreement that the US buck is "stable" most (no-American) pundits have the Euro overtaking the dollar as the world's #1 currency in the next five years or so, the US being on the verge of financial collapse and all.

Actually, U.S. law does allow the creation of local currencies, as long as income in those alternate currencies are reported as income on your tax return. Several U.S. communities have created local currencies (and banks) and run local barter economies on those currencies. Uncle Sam doesn't care what you do, really, as long as Uncle Sam gets his cut.

Well it seems he has already decided not to do it now, but I meant *US* currency. He was saying he was going to print US currency not some equivalent local exchange currency which is what Lindens are.

I'm no economologist (?) but I'm pretty sure he can create a new currency, and peg it's value to the dollar.

That might work...

Actually I would blame the account that flooded the GOM market with $L to "bail" out.

And if you are unsure as to what account I refer to, please check the leaderboard, and the GOM forums. That is the sole reason of the slide, an irresponsible company.

Yeah, I was just being picky about him saying that he is going to be printing US dollars. I am pretty sure the only thing he can do is what you suggest, but that's what Lindens are so I dont know what the whole point is. Probably just a rant.

Do economologists give economoloscopy's using an economologiscope?

You know... here's what we need in SL to solve this, revitalize GOM, IGE, Anshe's trade and encourage more... and give us the option to to business in other than the L$ if we need to. (Imagine how useful this woud be for the charitable events!) One single LSL library call:

integer llRequestCreditCharge(key customer, float usd_amount);

Which would pop up a dialog on customer's screen, saying something like "This object would like to authorize a charge to the credit card you used to sign up for Second Life. It is requesting usd_amount. If you answer yes, your credit card will be charged usd_amount."

A yes will pop up a confirmation.

If the confirmation gets a yes, then the library call will return TRUE, if either the first dialog or the confirmation gets a no, the library call returns a FALSE.

The charge would be credited to the object owner's SL account and/or delivered to a paypal account or similar service.

I'm not 100% on stuff like chargebacks, fraud and whatnot... so I don't know if this would cause problem on LL's side. I suspect there'd have to be some upper cap on how much this library call would allow to be charged at once.

Eh.... just thinking out loud. Well, in as much as typing is out loud.

I'd never touch or attach anything for fear of being charged huge amounts of USD by accident..

I do agree that the best way to stabilize a currency to the US$ is to actually back the currency with US$. This is probably the reason US$ used to be backed with gold. The price of the US$ was then stable compared with the price of gold.

You face one very large problem, however. Almost everyone in Second Life trades with $L. Creating a new bank note is like trying to sell people monopoly money, and convincing stores to come back to you to get their US$ value after the money has been traded.

I know the $L already seems to work in a similar way, but there are three main differences. 1. All the SL code is programmed to work with $L. 2. The $L is not backed with US$ from the printer. 3. Since it is not a currency with a standard it must be redeemed from people who want the $L in exchange for your country's currency. That first difference may prove very hard to get around.

You're right... it shouldn't be a library call:

It should be an event and a prim property!

llSetChargeAmount(float usd_amount);

Sets the prim so the user can select "Pay USD" (or something similar) from the pie menu. It will take you through two dialog boxes, an initial warning and explaination, and the confirmation.

usd_charge(id payer)
{
float usd_charge = llGetChargeAmount();
}

This is how the script can know the charge was accepted and for how much.

No spaminations!

Much better

Hey did I HELP?

I don't think the US government would care if I made my own in world US dollars. They would exist in SL, so it's not like you could ever get them to a US bank and try to pay them in. So they wouldn't be fradulent realistic copies of actual circulating currency.

In effect they would be a new currency, but as I'd sell strictly a dollar for a dollar, the currency would neither go up nor down, and would be a nice stable extension of the US dollar ( Pegged to the dollar ).

I've realised since I was so shocked this morning, that in fact nearly nothing I do is done with Linden dollars, so the total collapse of this subcurrency wouldn't affect me much. That limits my desire for the introduction of the US dollar into the game somewhat.

But I also realised I am perhaps not the guy to handle such a thing. It'd perhaps need a coalition of influential traders and bankers in SL to back such a thing to really make it float.

It could either happen on a total level, or as a way to bank money in SL (Eg. people just hoard a large part of their L$ balance as US dollars).

Wether this idea materialises remains to be seen. I already know some big organisations in SL don't use the Linden dollar anymore, preferring instead the very stable e-gold trading currencies.

Maybe if the Linden dollar continues to fall on hard times, people will have to start an alternative because the current currency will just no longer be viable.

As for the suggestion of a LSL function for handling credit card payments, I think that's an inspired idea, a really good one, but it'll never happen. Very much mostly because the L$ is LL's baby and they'll always champion their baby.

Perhaps.
However, I think this might help the L$ more than usurp it. I'd never stop selling my content in L$... that would be a dumb thing to do. I'm all for stipend-users having a shot at the fun stuff.
But... I might open a micro-exchange on my land or offer a USD alternative buying method. I think a bunch of micro-exchanges would be a great way to revitaliset he L$ - and the new LSL calls and event would empower GOM as well. They'd be the super way to get your L$ in-world for the lowest available price. Imagine how useful the ATMs would be with this.

Or we could just hoard our $L balance as real USD.

Yeah we could hoard our L$ and laugh like a maniac cause we're rich and the Linden is strong.

Then just laugh like a clown as the Linden is good.

Then laugh as the linden is fair.

Then frown as the linden is weak.

Then curse our useless pile of digital nothings as the Linden is poor, and wonder where our US $ went at all???

I think a micro exchange.... Would be a good thing. I think it can only be a good thing if you open yourself up to more currency options in times of a struggling linden dollar