LL buy $L off the lindex for stipends?

The economy of SL in my opinion cannot be stabilized by the players of SL alone. There just isn't the right balance of sources and sinks and of course the selfish people that are only in it for the money as opposed to the community.

Stipends seem to be the largest source of freshly printed $L.

So I have to ask why LL doesn't buy the $L off the lindex to use for the stipends as opposed to printing new $L? They could buy just enough to keep the $L at whatever stable spot they want and print the rest. $L250 per $1USD from what I understand is their target. Even if the cost of the $L was more or less than $250 they could just eat the losses to keep the economy stable for the players. After all the economy is more for the players than LL as LL pays their bills from real currancy.

And yes I could just be ignorant but if so please explain why instead of just saying it so I can be less ignorant.

Because that cuts into their USD income needed to run the company

Hummm, with the data avialable it seems that it would only cost about $170,000USD to buy the $L to pay the stipends. They claim SL generates over $60millionUSD a year with only 165,000 residents. http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16286&hed=Second+Life+Lines+Up+%2411M Seems to me they should be able to afford it for the sake of a stable ecomomy.

Now they have well over 200,000 residents (sure most are alts but whatever). Once they bought the $L off the market for a few months they could probably stop having to with other adjustments already being made and some more they could make.

My main point here is LL could easily fix the economy and keep it stable if they so choose to.

"and of course the selfish people that are only in it for the money as opposed to the community."

Being selfish is thinking only of yourself. Creating content for others, and getting some monetary reward in return, is thinking of yourself and others.

There IS no community without an army of people working to create the environment for it. Is it wrong for some of them to get paid for it? If you don't value what they do, why are you using it?

Is it selfish for Lindenlabs employees to get paid? I mean, shouldn't they work to make Second Life work just for the love of the community?

Musuko.

Per month. You are talking about about $2 Million USD a year. At $50,000 per year salary, that is the difference of about 40 employees.

Actually I was off. It would be about $170,000 per WEEK. As stipends are given weekly not monthy.
So it would be more like $8millionUSD a year lol.

However they don't have to buy the $L to pay the stipends every week. Just when things get way out of line. They can also raise the money pretty easily.

Also ask yourself how important the economy is to SL? Is it not worth the cost to keep it stable for the people that need it to be stable?


Not really. Getting paid to create content for others to buy and enjoy keeps you making content for people to buy and enjoy. Hardly selfish.

The people I am refering to are the one's that do not create content, have very little intrest in SL other than making money, and simply whine and complain when their cash cow gets skinny.

Jodina:

Thanks for creating your thread. Your idea has been mentioned a few times before and does have merit in principle.

Unfortunately, as you have pointed out in another one of your posts on this thread, the estimated $8 million US$ per year to cover stipends would be way too much for LL to afford. Furthermore, this amount would need to increase each month as the number of new users increased.

You suggest that LL could possibly purchase Lindens each time the economy needs to be stabilized. With the rate at which the money supply currently grows each month (over 6%), it would have to be a frequent occurrence. Therefore, it would not be financially practical for LL to consider.

LL is currently not profitable. They need to keep a tight control on their spending in order to have a shot at becoming profitable.

Besides, the article you reference states:



This does not mean that LL receives $60 million US$ per year via SL. It means that $60 million US$ equivalents of spending activity occurs within SL. It is SL's GDP--Gross Domestic Product. A large percentage of those monies are most likely kept within the game by residents or cashed out by residents. How much does LL receive? Who knows.

This issue is an interesting, perplexing, and important one. If LL truly wants SL to have a functioning virtual economy, which it seems is one of their objectives, then they have a difficult puzzle to figure out.

Again, there is no magic number were the exchange rate should be. The most, and really only, thing that matters is that the exchange rate is constant. That is the key to it all. A constant exchange rate.

"The people I am refering to are the one's that do not create content, have very little intrest in SL other than making money, and simply whine and complain when their cash cow gets skinny."

So you mean stipend farmers and camping chair providers?

Musuko.

What if you are a stipend farming, camping chair, content creating, scripting, land baron, daytrader? Then can you whine and complain?

dunno but if LL buys L form exchange .. that would be a whole world of hell for them since L would become a a valueable secuity almost like a bond,stock or other regulated investment im pretty sure thats why the TOS says they will never buy any .. but im just dumb noob dont mind me

Thanks for the feeback guys. Interesting this all is.



You can whine and complain all you want really. In my opinion if one is so butt hurt about a fake virtual currency loosing value then one needs an outlet to let their failures out anyway. Maybe they should seek psychiatric help as well.

Yes, Jonas has nailed it here. To quote a famous King, "Arrows cost money, the dead cost nothing.... send in the infantry!"

Then how, exactly, do they have a cash cow to begin with?

And just how do you do this? You can't just say "BOOM! The L$ is worth X".

The minute you do that, the black market raises its head and opens up shop.

If your goal is simply to keep the $L from becoming too strong, then setting a flat $L500(or whatever)/USD, black market or no, would keep the $L from ever getting stronger than that.

That's "Send in the Irish", dude.

Huh? I thought you were claiming to be a economic wizard? Same way anyone gets ahead. Take advantage of what you can when the opportunity arises. Problem is the opportunity has diminished as more and more people take advantage of it or something better came along. Capitalizm is just that.

Ok.. have to parody this though its unrelated.

"Creating costs effort, freebies cost nothing...send in the Bergman!"