I'd like the lindens to read this do not take offense to it but ...... Removal of the stipends would actually lead to problems... 1 you would lose a big user base..... 2 you need to get rid of any sinks for the theories that the economist came up with that the economy can survive without the stipends. The fact you bring in an influx of L is actually keeping the economy afloat. I'd like to add in that 1 any new influx of money has to be purchased at an amount not everyone have the money in their pockets to do this and it would actually end up lessening the job basis that already exists in SL (which there isnt a huge job basis for starters...)
Also without getting rid of sinks while getting rid of stipends you actually cause an outflow of money... I gather the plan to put your own money out into the system but to make people pay for it is slightly unfair. Mind you stipends in retrospect seem to be a mass part of a monthly fee.... In theory look at the tier fee's for a 512 sq meter plot of land vs the monthly fee to go premium.... The premium monthly fee is 10 dollars vs 5 dollars for just land ownership. Do you plan on some sort of compensation in this retrospect if you do ultimately get rid of the stipends?
The wiser decision would be to have the stipends fluxate with value of the L and actually make it a part of the monthly fee IE we pay 10 dollars..... a month 5 of which is actually un stipulated to charge as far as being fair on charges.... now split the 5 dollars up into 4 weeks... then you have 1.25 USD worth of L a week that should in fact be given without cutting down costs or compensating some type of land area.... IE giving the basis of land for a premium account to be 1024 by default. One way or another if you get rid of stipends the cost for premium either needs to be cut down or a land value needs to be given in compensation...
To deal with sinks its not a smart idea to keep it if these are actually the plans.... 1 you creating a system that makes it hard for content creators to get things going for themselves at all.... Thus you end up effectively making a big part of how SL operates intentionally harder then it already is and make yourselves seem to be a bit greedy.
In closing i'd like to state that any removal of stipends would actually be a bad thing. A controlled method on the other hand would be favorable.... looking at the current value of L as far as a week average and then giving a stipend based on that. There is no good way to actually stabalize the economy of SL unless the users are willing to stabalize it or you actually start to put some safety area's into Lindex.
I'd like to put into theory what i have stated b4. Those users that choose to sell mass amounts of L at a higher price mabye penalize them instead of all users... Look at it this way allow a certain margin over a given time if people go over that margin take a higher cut then look at the quanity at which they are selling if its high at that value take a bit more of a cut.
Removal of the stipends makes the whole community suffer for some problems that a few people cause and justly is unfair...