Population and Economic Data

Hehehehe...... Paranoid.. Damn Straight. When it comes to
Linden Labs, they've got a bag of tricks to make the funk smell like roses.

End Stipends and the problem will resolve itself....
Free Markets will take over and correct this evil.

Bye Bye... Somebody new will replace you and enjoy the
new economy model.

I think that rise was due to the telehub buy back, Frans.

What you "end the stipends" people are missing is that when SL becomes more work than fun, nearly everyone will leave. That is not particularly good for the economy, either. Ending sponsorship for general events took some fun out of the game; ending ratings took a more fun out of the game; ending sponsorship for contests took out even more; ending dwell took out a small incentive to provide fun.

Some people think it will be fine when there is nothing left in SL except stuff that people are willing to pay for; but the best things in SL have always been free-- Things like a good conversation, the delight in discovering a great build, an event that draws a friendly crowd. When those are gone, the wonder will be gone, and when that goes, SL will go, too.

Think about it this way. I can charge for movies in second life, but why would anyone pay to see a movie on a prim when they can get the same thing from netflix with a lot less aggravation? I can have a "live" concert in SL, but why wouldn't someone just turn on the radio or their MP3 player instead? The only thing different about SL is that you can share the experience.

What SL does better than anything else in the world is bring together people who never would meet in Real Life. I really hate to see that sacrificed so that people can spend all day trying to earn enough money to pay their tier. No fun at all.

Anyhow, Linden Labs needs to think of ways to put more FUN in SL; then the L$ would take care of itself, I think.

Thank you. This is a good start.

I guess unique logins is a better measure of population than number of registered participants. It would be nice to have some measure of total in-world activity. Say, total number of hours logged in, or (equivalently) average length of time logged in per unique login.

I know what GDP is in the RW. What does it mean in SL? And what does Gross GDP (Gross Gross Domestic Product?) mean?

Growth in total money supply means nothing without taking into account growth in population.

The population measure we have in these data is the number of unique logins, which, after a moment's thought, is probably a better measure of population than the total number of registrants. It would be nice if LL could capture the number of unique agents logging in.

Using unique logins as the denominator to estimate per-capita effects:

The percapita money supply has been shrinking, not rising over the last year.

In March 2005, there were about 13,123 Lindens in circulation for every unique login. In March 2006 there were 9,426 Lindens per login. The percapita money supply has been dropping by about 4% per month. A drop of this magnitude in a RW country would be a disaster beyond imagining.

It's wonderful to have a data series like this one to play with.

Thank you Robin!

*loves data*

Barbarra, while I agree with nearly all of your statements, it is hard for me to see any relationship with the Killing of Dwell Bonuses. You can enjoy all of this without taking part in the economic side of SL. For some 10 bucks per month (either spent for a premium account or buying L$ at the LindeX you can own or rent a little land, meet lots of people, socialize, chat, dance, build - and let those who want to "play business" play business.
This might be a solution. On the other hand: as Second Life really is resident created, maybe residents need to think of ways to put more FUN in SL. Actually, I guess this is happening already.

Some level of money supply need to be maintained though.

In RL the banking system takes care of the money generation, in SL we have stipends. It is true that the amount of $L generated verses the amount of $L sunk is a bit off, but completely remove money generation is not the answer.

Without input, the sink would simply continue to drain the $L supply, sure the $L value would go up, but the diminishing supply of tender will slow down trades in SL.

The relations between dwell and meeting people is that it is hard to meet people in an empty sim. Therefore incentives to raise dwell create crowds, which make it easier to meet people.


Sorry, thought that was a given.

The number of unique log-ins *is* agents. It's basically a trailing 30 day number of the unique agents who have visited SL, where agent=a single account. This number does not include Linden employees, trials or accounts designated "cancelled" as of the last day of the month. It does include alts, which is a much smaller number than most people imagine. I'll try to break that number out for you when the dashboard is updated.

"The percapita money supply has been shrinking, not rising over the last year."

Why should we expect it to rise, it's not like these new players are wealthy anshe chungs that invested heavy into sl...

Thanks for the data lindens more data is always good data

Btw. I know this might be requiring, but could you split up those data tables into 3 sections:


1. Including only Basic accounts.
2. Including only Premium accounts (without land).
3. Including Land holders.

That would give abit better picture on wether Sl community is growing by population size or by economy, those factors seem to cancel eachother out usualy due to large volume of stipend/club-seat-afk'ers driven float into the economy.

Or optimaly if you could split landholder into each group (512,1024 etc all way upto sim barons). I believe this would trigger much heavier investments for alot of people (of my character, or to put it this way i care less how much i can profit, the most important factor is how much can i loose).

PS. Information is the main driver of demand, please keep ut the good work.

Ok RBD, what is your real solution to balance the money supply with money sinks. If you take away all stipends and money supplies, there will eventually be no money left in the long run, everyone will leave, and there will be no sales because the value of the Linden dollar will be so high because it will be so scarce. Plus the fact that the population is still increasing so there does need to be some $Ls printed. I know it may take a while to burn the supply out, but it would happen if you keep taking a little away with each money sink and nothing to replace it.
Your only solution does not make sense at all. The only impression I get is that you don't like second life or Linden Labs. So why are you here?

I was playing with the data and have come to the same conclusion:

I don't know why anybody expects it to rise.

A while ago you could buy L$1000 for about US$4. Today you can buy L$1000 for US$3.33. Lindens have gotten cheaper.

The number of Lindens in circulation, per agent, is lower now than it used to be. Lindens are relatively more scarce.

Scarcity is always relative. One six-pack is plenty for me, not enough for a rugby team.

But the more scarce something is relative to the population, the more expensive it ought to be -- right? Apparently not. As Lindens became relatively less plentiful, the price fell.

This suggests that twiddling with the money supply is unlikely to affect the value of the Linden relative to the dollar.

Hey this is great Finally some data

Just a thought - one of the observations that's been drawn from this data is that the L$ keeps depreciating against the USD, despite the fact that L$ per capita rate is falling.

I think one of the the reasons for this is that L$ is falling against USD is that LL is in the business of selling L$ at deeply discounted rates through "premium" accounts.

Maybe that should be changed - instead of giving out L$500/week for a premium account, it could be changed to 5 US$/month in L$, at fair market rate. Maybe this way, the exchange rate won't experience continual downward pressure from "premium" rates.

Is there any reason why LL can't peg the rate against the USD eventually?
You just keep the Linden Dollar name so it doesn't sound like real money.

So for a premium account, you get say for example 9USD that you pay for the account converted into a stipend of 900L.

Not a bad idea, but ithink we'll have a problem selling this idea to the average SL'er, because they'll feel robbed. If it says 499L$ weekly stipend it can trigger a complain even if it trades 50% higher than 500L$ would, its not their goal, the goal is most possible L$ just for the ingame stuff.

If i asked ppl at the white house i guess they'd suggest something like this:
(howto save a nation from thesame disaster and take the credit 3 times for one job)

1. Since inflation is too high, but far from not high enough to scare off the average citizen "Buy" democratic support, by increasing moneysupply by 25% each week so that we get a monthly inflation of 100%, and they'll love it, (or 1200% annualy. Now after a while not many ppl are happy anymore since all goods have gone up in price in balance with inflation, so we can get now try step 2.

2. "Buy" democratic support, by cutting monetary supplies 30% faster than increasing it in step one. Keep cutting as long as possible, followed by step 3.

3. Stop any monetary adjustments.

Mission accomplished, you've now saved this nation from 3 problems. Get ready to get reelected By moving back to step one.

Got this idea from Jon Stewards show... "If the president has mislead us into the war, he has to mislead us out of the war."

You mean fixed USD vs L$ rate ?

In that case:
If there's 100% equal infation in USD and in L$ it'd work perfect.
But i doubt that, some other game (PE) tried that method, and what it does is create hyper increases on prices on goods, services and products. The market will price the inflation anyway, if you halt the price difference in one end they'll price the difference in the other end.

This was meant as a reply to my questioning the necessity of Linden incentives to enjoy SL without money or dwell incentives?

If so ... Barbarra, did you ever check out larger groups of green dots on the map lately; arbitrary groups where you don't already know the location? I am a little shy in crowds of unknown people but I tried exactly that experiment last weekend. And guess what I found: camping casinos. With one exception (from 6 cases) most people at these locations were "Away".

So, if it is "given" to you that "dwell incentives -> chances to meet people" I would like to question that "given" from personal experience; at least if "meet" includes "communicate with".

I am rather sure personally, that the reverse assumption "no dwell incentives -> a word of lonely residents" is not true either. Let us just wait and see. I am sure there will be many crowds in the map when I log on two months from now when the last dwell bonuses have been paid.

I have a naive way of looking at the economy so pardon me. I also don't lurk in here that much.

For Linden Lab, you give them 72USD a year in exchange for obvious things like
i) server space and infrastructure
ii) bandwidth
iii) employee time and effort

So its a balance of basically those 3 things. Item (iii) is more or less fixed, so if by using a simple example, you divide them equally, 24USD is used to pay salary. So LL should give you back 48USD worth in linden dollars to spend on the other two.

The value of the LL should reflect the ammount spent in real money to those resources. Its fake money after all and LL has control over how much money is pumped in. Basically, they can say, I'm buying back any ammount of linden dollars at a fixed rate vis-a-vis the USD. Then, anybody silly enough to sell their linden dollars cheaper to someone else instead of LL does it at their own peril.

Project Entropia is probably a wrong example to look at as there are other things affecting its economy and spending is essentially required if you want to derive any entertainment value from it.

I guess theres some validity on why some are against the basic account stipends. It also hurts LL because part of the money thats pumped in is used to upload content, which occupy space and sits there in the asset server forever. And since its free money, LL can't offer to purchase it back in exchange for USD, so they're stuck just helping people trade between themselves instead.

As i said always every single printed unnecessary(i agree there are also necessary ones according to the population growth) L$s are from residents' wallets(because of devaluation). This means, we paid for the telehub buy backs, not the LL. This shows again as i said always, telehub buy backs were not about only LL and telehub land owners, they were also about all residents.

Please be more careful while "buying back" things. Because it is residents who paid for these telehub buy backs, not LL.
Have fun with OUR money old telehub land owners.
---EDIT---
If you decide to "BUY BACK" things again, please "BUY BACK" with USD not with extra printed L$s.If you CANT, just dont "buy back", you can see it AS FREE because printing L$ costs nothing to LL butit is not free,it costs us.

I don't think it is a given. You know, I've never looked at the events listings once, ever. I've met plenty of people. I did spend a little bit of time in clubs when I first got here, but mostly because for a while it was personally refreshing to be just a punter, but I didn't meet anyone there that I formed a friendship there.

In the end, I found them somewhat contrived. There wasn't much actual interaction going on, and there was a sense of you were only invited there to raise the numbers.

I don't think people need incentives to meet people and congregate. It's largely human nature, we're social critters and like to form groups. I think we'll still see that with or without dwell. I'd really like to imagine that people already have enough incentives within themselves to socialise, create, do whatever it was that dwell was supposed to encourage.

Well waddaya know.

It's great that there's all this data coming out. Without them all previous debates on these topics have been largely moot.