Bring the Rate Down

I have to disagree with this statement. I belive not only can the exchange rate be forced to stable... it can be done while removing excess L$ from the market. EASILY.

The method:
1. Set the L$ / US$ exchange rate in LindeX to a flat US$4 / L1000.
2. Ignore the people who will immedately begin whining about "freedom", "buyer market" etc and leave them to their personal opinions and rationalization. Truth is, an unstable market is good for no one save those who "play" the market (and the way the market is going, even they aren't benefiting these days).
3. Set up a "sales tax" on all merchandise sold on SL, automatically tacked on deducted by LL and absorbed (ie, an L200 item will cost say, L210 and the 10 disappears to Linden Limbo Land). That sales tax can be immediately increased or reduced as the market requires.

This will have several positive effects:

* The L$ / US$ exchange rate will stabilize, which is really good for merchants.
* Buyers will always know exactly how much L$ cost, which will make it easier for them to predict what merchandise will cost them US$-wise.
* The L$ will become more valuable as the surplus-glut of them begins to vanish from the market.
* LL will get back control of the L$ rather than having it run rampant at the whims of the general populace. (Can you imagine the condition of the US$ and stock market if it weren't for the Fed? That's where the L$ is now).

These are common-sense, sensible solutions to these problems. I know there are people who will rant and rave against all this; there always are. I've seen on these forums every kind of rant against this. Doesn't make the premise any less viable. It would work.

The only thing I see as a real danger to this concept is Linden Lab itself, which is (pardon my saying so) known for doing things halfway or even totally messed up (take the current search engine / FIND changes for a start. We can't even do a REGION SEARCH these days because apparently LL doesn't know how to incorporate standard search engine concepts in their system). I've been on this board for over a year and they still haven't begun dealing with griefers in a sensible manner. When they set up LindeX, they pretty much copied an already-proven-messed-up GOM rather than setting up a totally new, more sensible system (imho). So in all of this, I would have to say I'd be concerned that LL might set up a sales tax that not only would fail to properly draw L$ from the market-- would cost merchants and landowners in the process. That's my primary reservation in any of this.

And both of these steps are exactly the kind of backwards things I've come to expect from Linden Lab (I'm not anti-Linden-Lab here; I'm just stating fact as I see it). Neither step solves the problem and both steps harm Second Life itself.

How?

The idea is to remove excess L$ from the market-- NOT demotivate and tick off your best clients. Both of these ideas mentioned above are virtually masochistic/ suicidal from the standpoint of Second Life.

Want to help your company? How about cutting off rewards to people who bring you new customers? That's sheer idiocy.

Want to help your company? How about removing stippends from the folks who provide the best content on your board... and make it more difficult for them to pay for their expensive landholdings. (I will agree that the DI was being abused by clubs and others with high traffic and zero content... but that was a problem of LL guidelines, not the DI concept itself. They just need a new way for determining DI, not abandon the concept altogether).

No, neither one of these were sensible, rational, viable steps in reducing the L$ glut. They are instead, demotivators, financial attacks against their most valuable clients. That's exactly what I mean when I speak of fear that LL will do things halfway or mess it up altogether. Sometimes I think they're so busy pursuing their corporate goals they fail to consider the good or needs of their clients-- and they just plain make the wrong decisions.