Questions for Philip's Economy Town Hall

How steady is the value of the L$? What's happening to the price of land? How much money is flowing through SL? Is the check in the mail?

Philip Linden, CEO of Linden Lab, will host a Town Hall on Tuesday, November 23 at 4:30 PST on the subject of the Second Life economy.

Please post questions and issues by replying to this thread.

You can also check out a bunch of SL stats here.

Okay, that's funny!

Question ..

What kind of paring down of payments do you do? If for example, my friend and I are testing something and I pay him 5000 L$ and he automatically pays me back $5000 L$ and we do this a dozen times or so.. does that get counted in the spreadsheet?

Are you tracking the demand rate of land or just the median value? For example, what percentage of land is for sale?

Wwhat sort of confidence do we have that no-one is duping currency under the radar. For example, Wu's posting of the alt-account hack is an example of a dupe bug if done right.

And, I have to ask What's your position on land reselling (not land development)? Does SL frown upon it? If so what sort of things would you consider doing to stop people from reselling land?

Do you feel that the continued existence of the so-called "land barons" is having a chilling effect on the economy? Specifically, the auctions system? In recent checks of the completed auction page, very few auctions reach into the double digits of bids anymore, and the majority of them are bid on (and subsequentally won) by these land resellers.

Does this represent a failing of the auctioning process given the current economic situation in-game, and are there plans to revamp this or offer other solutions to get the land barons off the process (perhaps offering them entire Sims on the grid with the promise of parcelling them off and selling them, all for a set price of a server from Linden Lab?)

LF

To follow up on LF ..

If land barons are sent packing, would you consider repurchasing land from users immediately at market value when they wish to move? What would market value be?

And where would an economic town hall be without a question about LL getting involved in p2p currency transactions (or p2ll2exchange) .. A rough ETA on that? How would you feel about a 3rd party implementing a solution and seeing how that goes? I'd rather SL did it but you guys seem to be busy and you need to start leveraging the development community somehow..

Phil if you announced a Town Hall meeting and no one showed up would you be disappointed?



*ducking*

NO!@!@!@!@!

I'm gonna be on a plane to London Tuesday Evening.. Ack!!!! This is one forum I want to attend. I hope somebody takes notes and posts them...

Yes, I'll post the transcript. Sorry to miss you.

to follow up on blaze, have you observed this in the past? is this the reason behind the 5 alt limit? do you have IP checks for where avs are logging in from to make sure this kind of abuse isn't happening?

somebody developing a software to log in all their alts and an in world LSL script to pay an object or player their weekly stipend, could automate the process and this kind of abuse would deflate the value of the L$.

in fact, i question whether alt avs should receive stipends at all.

Will there be a way to get linden dollars out of the world? Are subscription cost/land use fee's ever going to go down?

Have you considered allowing items to store L$?

How does LL plan to encourage landowners to charge admission to events and such?

Please can LL make all land transactions public? The overwhelming majority of players that have posted about it want it very much.

What percentage of the SL Economy depends on land transactions?

Does LL track stats for items sold using the Buy feature differently than items sold using a vendor script or personal transactions? How can we developers utilize such knowledge to provide better statistics? For instance, consider transactions for hiring skilled labor that doesn't come in the form of objects being sold, or items marked for sale.

On the spreadsheats could we have added a table for past Money Supply & Median Balance?

Could data be added on the breakdown of where the inflation in the money supply is coming from. New accounts, stypends, dwell, ratings bonus, other. And another table of money being sucked out of the economy via, land auctions, land tier payments, ratings.

One way to possibly bulster the L$ would be to have more auctions in L$; land barons would drive up demand on the exchanges.

Alt accounts not getting a stypend i can understand. Maybe the stypend should be distributed evenly (or not so evenly) across all the alts. Should have a webpage to configure how the money gets distributed.

Is it possible that rating whoring is a cause? What if the people who have all the alt do lots of rating whoring with each alt, it would increase the value of the alt.

are listening relay things standard for all Town Hall meetings?

is one unit of the money officially called "a Linden" or "a Linden dollar"?
was it ever called anything else way back when?
why did you include play money in the first place?
did you ever consider making sl with an economic model besides capitalism?
can Lindens create money anytime they want?
if not, how is it made?

burning questions. i mean, questions that should be burned.

The Gom is a buyers market
The Land is a sellers market.

Both are controlled by how deep someones pockets are and the "need" to buy and sell. When there is no "need" there is a drop in both markets. Ppl have enough money and don't want to buy the land at current prices.

Now what would happen to the economy if the two were reversed?
L$; Ppl would be selling thelr L$.
Land; Ppl would be buying the land.

Now how this trend be positivly changed so the need is greater?

thanks

Cat

I think alt accounts should be banned.

I think GOM is a Buyer and Sellers market. Because you cannot 'buy' unless somebody else is selling. And the opposite is true. GOM is a pure play market where buyers and sellers link up to trade currency. Buyers want to buy it to make gains in the game. Sellers want to sell to reap profits, hedge an economic position, etc...

Land is a buyer or sellers market depending on the economic trend in the game. When land was L$20/meter, it was a seller's market. Those who had land could sell it for ungodly prices and reap the rewards. Now that land is L$4/meter, its a buyers market. Land is so cheap, that its a dime-a-dozen. Buyers can pick from thousands of lots for pennies on the dollar. Sellers have to compete with each other to get that sale. So right now, land is a buyers market.

Not exactly rl$ will buy l$. Yes correct that the L$ have to be avail. to buy. Sorry if you missed my "need" point. Point being the market won't move if there isn't a need for L$.





Well we disagree there I see what the buying price is on the auctions and the selling price is in world. L$1695 per 512m2 is not a dime a dozen to me when it used to cost L$512

I agree to disagree on that point
So we dont side track the discussion ok

thanks

Cat

QUESTION:

Why is the "Lindens for Land" program so skewed? Shouldn't it more closely reflect the current market value of the Lindenbuck, or is this just a way to sucker unsuspecting or ill-informed citizens out of a whole lot of cash? - Artillo Fredericks

I.E.:

Why would ANYONE pay:

L$10,000 = $5 tiering fee
Source: https://secondlife.com/account/account-landcredit.php

when I can go to GOM or IGE and get around $40 for $10,000 Lindenbucks???

That's "Lindens for Land" costing EIGHT TIMES the market value! YIKES!!!

How much revenue does this program actually bring in for Linden Labs? Is it really worth them keeping? My suggestion would be to do away with the "Lindens for Land" program altogether in favor of a more direct currency/fees exchange in-world.

My 2 cents,
Artillo

Is it feasible to seperate the "Payments" category in the economic stats into 3 different categories :

- resident to resident payments
- resident to object payments
- object to resident payments

This would give us a better handle on which are currency exchanges, which are purchases, and which are scripted vendos making change or correcting errors.

Additionally, would it be feasible to track the number of object->resident transactions where a resident receives something from an object's inventory. While not completely accurate (e.g. poker tables that give textures to players to represent cards dealt), this would give us a better handle on in-world economic activity.

- Ace

I thought I'd respond in advance to this one. The Lindens for Land site was set up a long time ago and I don't think anyone has used it. We are in the process of removing it.

Thanx Haney!

Arti

But then you wouldn't exist, Alby.

I agree with Ace - this information would be helpful.

Too funny... I know its hard to believe, but the only account I have in SL is this one. There is no gain for to have multiple accounts, nor can I understand why others do.. Except for those who have multiple personalities. I'm just as happy and content with my (1) account.

Cat:

I'm confused on what your saying. Obviously the price/valuation for the L$ won't move if nobody is buying or selling it. I was trying to say that GOM cannot be just a buyer or seller's market. Because it takes both buyer and seller to create the market in the first place. But you are right, if nobody buys or sells, nothing will change and the price/valuation will remain stagnate.







The price between the auctions and in-world selling prices is comparing apples to oranges. Auctions of new land have certain features that existing land doesn't have to contend with. For instance, if a auction plot is next door to a Teleporter, it'll command a much higher price than a similar plot in-world. The reason is, you can't auction "up" the price of land in-world. The seller has to set a price and the buyer has to pay it. If a seller is asking L$100,000, it might sit for weeks/months before being sold. And at the same time skewing your perception of that land's value.

A plot of land in the auction has the effect of allowing players to continually up the price of the land based on their own assestment of its value. Thus pricing the land much more efficent than prices in-world. Not to mention that auctions have limited competion from other sellers. If LL puts 10/plots up for auction, its much different than 1000 plots for sale in-world with price tags set by individual players than a auction/market based system.

Overall, the price of land either auctioned or forsale in-world is centered around the economic health of the game overall. If players are flush with cash, their buying causes prices to rise, because the land sellers are looking to obtain more and more of those L$ dollars. But when times are tight and people are short of cash, less and less buying is taking place and land prices fall because sellers are trying to unload their land in a market with few buyers. That causes low prices like we see.

I suppose the morale of the story is that the creation of a market, be it Land or Currency, always requires a Buyer and a Seller. A 50/50 split of both will give you fair market prices. If the balance of power tips to oneside or the other, then one of the two parties will be reaping the good times while the other is yearning for the pendulum to swing back. Now there is a catch to all that.. If too much time passes with the pendulum sitting on the otherside of the fence, then the market will have a tendency to recenter itself on the current location of the pendulum. Because "balance" is the high water mark of an economy. And because of this, either the pendulum (which represents the trading) will swing between Boom and Bust, or the Market (which represents the traders) will recenter itself back on the middle of the swinging pendulum.


Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Warren Buffett