Land for Sale Should Not Be Able to Have Builds on It

[Prokofy Neva]

So normally, I'm not for adding draconian unfreedoms to Second Life where there are already some of those, but it's also the case that the FU Hedonism that prevails in SL and its corollary, "I can do WTF I want on my land" -- in fact takes away or limits the freedom of others. It "interferes with the enjoyment of Second Life", as the aptly-named Art. 2C used to say -- which was removed from the TOS long ago likely because it was overbroad.

Right now we are increasingly dealing with people who sell their land or ads for their goods or ad space by putting Trump or other political kiosks on their land, by putting up signs supporting BLM, or similar causes. I'm a Biden voter and I support BLM generally, but I'm against the use of signage in blackmail to get people to "buy back the view".

So here's my proposal, see what you think:

1. Once you set a land to sale, all the builds fly off it automatically and it is locked and you cannot build on it again unless you take it off sale.

That means no signs at all, not even a modest for sale sign

That means no sky signs saying BUY ME

Nothing.

It shows up on the map as yellow and as yellow if you fly around in world, that's enough. It's on search.

2. This also gets rid of people who abuse the "for sale" function to in fact rent houses. They figure that way, they get on the map fly-around view. Currently, you cannot see that a land is "for rent", as distinct from "for sale" by flying around -- only through listings in search. So people set their land to a ridiculous price, then put it for rent. Or they put it for a normal price for sale and for rent, getting more look-sees that way.

I almost never do this, because I find it an unscrupulous practice. You are invading the product of rentals into the space of the product of sales, and for free. 

It's confusing to customers because they aren't sure if they rent it, will it be sold out from under them.

If you aren't quick indeed it may be, after they have paid rent, and that's also unscrupulous.

It does work to bring in more rental customers, no question about it. But I think it's wrong, and I personally, using self-service, do not want people to rent something, then have it bought while they weren't looking, and me not there to even refund them right away. It's wrong.

3. There is also a set of people who think it's fine to put a piece of land, say a rocky little 512 in what the Herald used to call "working class neighborhoods" of Second Life like Athabasca or pick a blighted Mainland sim, at like $10,000 or even $100,000, and even say openly, maybe a newbie will click on it and buy it not realizing. Maybe a Japanese or an Uzbek person, say, who has currency in the millions that only equal thousands in dollars, will buy it and not realize, hahaha. And that is criminal in my view. Wrong, wrong. The Lindens can't do anything about this, it's a resident-to-resident dispute. It is impossible to get to every newbie and education them on this idiotic criminal practice. I hope few are scammed by it, but a few are now and then so I'm for getting rid of it. That is, you will still be able to put your land for sale for that unsuspecting newb, but you can't also build on it, rent it, whatever. You put it to sale, you're done, no more. My proposal would reduce the number of people who do this evil thing because they can't do that AND go on living or using that land, too.

4. Clubs also put their land to sale to get in the flyby view. There is no colour for the map that says "club". So they hope, gosh, maybe bright yellow land for sale will attract more customers.

All of these dysfunctional and criminal behaviours are the product of not just human nature but one particular thing: the lack of advertising space in SL.

That may seem counterintuitive, given the plethora of ugly ads in SL, but read what I said.

Because of the lack of advertising space that is normal, regulated, visible, like RL -- which we used to have in SL at the telehubs -- we have a proliferation of many ugly things trying to get in the view. If the Lindens sold the splash page (they used to); if the Lindens brought back infohub ad boards; if they also had roadside signs that were tasteful and non-laggy, it would partly cure the ugly ads and help the economy. Just think of the improvement to the map and the world if you could no longer put land to sale and keep builds and signs on it. You don't need a spinning for sale sign; the map shows it for sale, and the only people to see the spinning monstrosity are those who live next to it, not potential buyers, except for a tiny number of fly-bys.

Every time I spend $1000 for a search/places ad, which I've found is the bare minimum to get looked at, or better yet $10,000, that land will rent. The number of people who tell me they have been looking all night and finally found my offering lets me know just how dysfunctional ads are. I can't spend zillions each week to put my land into classifieds; I already spend thousands for it at least to be in search/places, which works, but not as well as higher-priced classifieds.

The big SL companies that have thousands of RL dollars to spend on advertising win, and that's fair in one sense, but not in a world with a controlled economy where there isn't anything between that and a 30/wk search/places but random classifieds of $1000 or $10,000. Again, it's crippled, and it's because the Lindens do not care that you sell or rent your land and if anything, are happy to hinder that function because they want people to buy their land. Understood.

I think with a scripting by Lindens that forces all builds to dump and never deploy, the Lindens have removed their problem of endlessly chasing ARs for political signs, or any kind of illegal sign or activity (you can still AR ad farms with some restrictions).

3. There is absolutely no good argument to keep the status quo. If someone thinks, oh, I should get to keep my build until I sell, well, no, you shouldn't if you are selling it because that's the loophole for abuse by people a) snagging clueless newbs b) invading the sales space with rentals -- when they already have 3 kinds of ways of advertising rentals: 1) search/places 2) classifieds 3) the rentals category in search.

Oh, and it cleans up the sky to some extent. I really cannot think of anything good about leaving things as they are, but knowing the forums regs, they will probably have some edge case that they would like to warp the entire world around.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[AdminGirl]

You have valid points for your proposal, but there are good reasons for allowing builds on for-sale land.

Sometimes it can take a long time before your land is sold so being able to keep your build means you can still have a home in the interim.

The option of transferring objects with sale would be made redundant in your scenario. I've seen people keep the previous owner's build to use, even when those objects don't transfer in ownership.

And sometimes decorating a parcel (as a form of advertising) can help its sale.

As for the signs you mention - there's always the derender function. It's not ideal but it's much better than disallowing builds altogether IMO.

[animats]

If SL did that, a big chunk of mainland would turn to bare ground. Much of Zindra is owned by a big landlord who puts in filler buildings and cranks up the price.

Landlord-owned filler building. Kama City in Zindra only looks like a city because of such dummy buildings.

I don't see how the business model works.

[Prokofy Neva]

11 hours ago, AdminGirl said:

You have valid points for your proposal, but there are good reasons for allowing builds on for-sale land.

Sometimes it can take a long time before your land is sold so being able to keep your build means you can still have a home in the interim.

The option of transferring objects with sale would be made redundant in your scenario. I've seen people keep the previous owner's build to use, even when those objects don't transfer in ownership.

And sometimes decorating a parcel (as a form of advertising) can help its sale.

As for the signs you mention - there's always the derender function. It's not ideal but it's much better than disallowing builds altogether IMO.

1) Transferring objects for sale was an idea I believe Philip Linden or another earlier Linden had for the idea of "adding value" to land. It was part of their ideology that is rooted in a hatred of land, and a deep resentment of the re-renting/sale of their server space which they allowed only because they saw from "emergent behaviour" that this was the only way that anyone besides top scripters or graphic artists could enter the economy (outside of sex services or club staff) and became very popular and a reason for users to buy servers.

They hate hate hate land in the way urban ideologues have always hated land and peasants, whom they view as backward and a brake on progress to the glorious future. 

Their goal for the glorious future is to become free of land as intrinsic value; they want their income to come from taxing content sales and taxing LindEx currency sales, and ultimately only sim hookups, not sims themselves. And that's in part practical and not ideological; land is a huge cost center for them as servers need to be kept on a "farm," they need electricity, cooling, maintenance, staff, configuration etc. etc. and it would be better if "the Lab" did not have this burden, the same burden that power groupings in history from the Bolsheviks to the railroad tycoons have faced.

Philip at one point wanted to have all land set to sale only for $5/meter. That is, he wanted no value that accrued from location or landscaping or any other factor, and make it like toilet paper per yard. Fortunately other Lindens, including the ones with PhDs in economics who were regulating the economy, convinced him that this would crash the market possibly irrevocably. In a sense, Lindens still live their dream with their auctions and their opening prices, which can be curious, and auctions that sell without even any other bids. They live their dream with the price of abandoned land, which is $1 whether roadside or waterfront or mountaintop, G, M or A. But that's only a fraction of the economy, and they have never tried to implement Philip's dream.

So the idea of having the build sell was supposed to create that content value *on* land yet not land that they so crave. They thought it would encourage builders to make houses and then sell them together with the land -- that land would become secondary to content. Oh, and with this trend, they would undermine the equity and power of the land barons, who constituted a considerable opposition to many of their dreams and ideas, even as they made them possible, and reward the small class of builders who were their friends and alts. 

But it didn't work. No significant percentage of people ever used it. I know because I spent years commissioning builders and selling land under it, or renting it, as did others in earlier years. And the reason is simple: the first thing people did when they bought the land is take off the house, even if an expensive high-end designer's work. It's not how human nature works in the virtual world; it's not like real life. In RL, you have an extraordinary burden and expense to take a house off a piece of land and move it. That's why most people who aren't Trump's Russian oligarch buyers don't demolish houses and rebuild on the space. Most people shop until they find a house they live in, and remodel it, but don't remove it. In SL, you can easily remove it and put anything, so people do. They could care less about top designers. They care about middle-brow and low-brow designers, and those people didn't want to be in the land business, they wanted only to be in the prefab business.

So it is not worth devising policy for a tiny fraction of people who buy houses on land they have bought. Raise your hand if you have ever bought land with the transfering house with it and kept that house out on the land. I did that...once? In the last year, and I think perhaps once in the 10 years before that. It is an edge case. Policy should not be devised around edge cases. Raise your hand if you have ever bought a build that *didn't* transfer that you kept. I have done that perhaps 3 times in my history of SL? And have to walk on pins and needles on those builds ever since so they don't return -- to builders who no longer exist or aren't in world. You may have seen it. But it's a tiny edge case and policy should not be built around tiny edge cases.

If you want to sell a house with land, take a picture of it while it is on the land, put that in the "about land" menu, write a description of it saying buyers get a house, and if someone wants it, you ship it to them. If you defraud them, word will spread rapidly not to buy from you so you will not be motivated to do that.  Meanwhile, the build doesn't have to be on that land. Because everyone in search will see a picture and that's enough; the tiny fraction of fly-bys who see it without the house are also an edge case around which policy should not be built.

2) If your land is taking a long time to sell, then your price is too high for the market. I think the problem of the extortion to "buy back the view" and the invasion of the map with rentals, not sales is such a big problem that it should be dealt with by this method, even if a few people who can't sell their house for weeks or months are inconvenienced. If you are selling your land, you want the end of that cost of tier, or you want to move. So move. Rent, while you wait for the land to sell if you think waiting for weeks will get you that price (and of course not end users, but some big-name land dealers, can wait a very long time because their sale prices are forced to be high in high value areas like waterfront and adult. But again, I don't think policy should be built around them.

3) I realize that certain big-name dealers believe that builds help their sales, and they sometimes put extremely elaborate builds out (that are cookie cutters but you don't realize it at first) thinking that helps. When I have bought from them, I ditch their ridiculously complicated and kitschy builds. They are builds that real people do not put out on their land. Look around at real people living on real land they owned, and you don't see this embellished nonsense. Again, put in a picture as an ad, put a description, put a link to a website in the description, but create the giant loophole through which invaders of the rental space and extortionists then drive through. Since the overwhelming majority of people who buy your land will not put out your build, which will either be simple and low prim and out of date, or overly kitschy, it's not a real sacrifice to have this function of builds dumping and land locking if put to sale.

4) I refuse to make policy around "de-render" when it is not in the SL Viewers. I will not use third-party viewers. And actually, there is a sizable number of others who won't. De-render is not a solution for your visitors who have to put it into effect as you can't regulate their world with your de-render.  Let the Lindens manage the world they have made without de-render as if it didn't exist in a third-party viewer if they can't or won't add de-render to their own viewer.

I don't think the Lindens will ever entertain this proposal. That's because their beliefs in forums' regs and content queens and content as king are so deep-rooted and so crippling that they will not be able to see the value of not scaring away customers who have given up on land buying or even SL in general because of blight on land.

If it is true what is being said here and there in Concierge group, that the Lindens will bar political signage and it can be AR'd, well, let's see it work then. I have not yet seen any AR of that nature work.

 

 

Edited September 9, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[AdminGirl]

19 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So it is not worth devising policy for a tiny fraction of people who buy houses on land they have bought. Raise your hand if you have ever bought land with the transfering house with it and kept that house out on the land. I did that...once?

 

I do agree that probably only a small number of people make use of this option, both as sellers and buyers. However, "devising policy for a tiny fraction of people" versus allowing an option and allowing people a choice are two different extents. When it comes to giving people choices, there will almost always be abuse but it doesn't necessarily mean that removing the ability to make choices is the solution. At the end of the day, those who are holding onto land , regardless of their intentions, are still paying for it. And until they have sold it, it still belongs to them. It makes sense that the owners would still have the right to do whatever they want with their land.

 

30 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If your land is taking a long time to sell, then your price is too high for the market. I think the problem of the extortion to "buy back the view" and the invasion of the map with rentals, not sales is such a big problem that it should be dealt with by this method, even if a few people who can't sell their house for weeks or months are inconvenienced. If you are selling your land, you want the end of that cost of tier, or you want to move. So move.

 

It's true that if land is taking a while to sell, then it is too high for the market. But then again, so? If it is your land, you can sell it for however much you want, and do whatever you want with it as long as it is still yours. That's the point of owning land - that it's yours.

Making someone pay rent somewhere else when they should be allowed to use their land makes little sense. And if that is the solution for people in those scenarios, the same could be said for people in your scenario - those who are repulsed by their ruined views can just as easily move or pay rent elsewhere.

There are times the world map is plagued with yellow, with some potentially being "extortion to buy back the view" or rentals, and others being the usual sales. There are also times when you really have to search around to find yellows. So really, this problem you're describing isn't "such a big problem that it should be dealt with...". It's just one of many things that move with the market.

If LL removes flexibility with land ownership, it just won't be good for LL.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 9/9/2020 at 1:56 AM, AdminGirl said:

I do agree that probably only a small number of people make use of this option, both as sellers and buyers. However, "devising policy for a tiny fraction of people" versus allowing an option and allowing people a choice are two different extents. When it comes to giving people choices, there will almost always be abuse but it doesn't necessarily mean that removing the ability to make choices is the solution. At the end of the day, those who are holding onto land , regardless of their intentions, are still paying for it. And until they have sold it, it still belongs to them. It makes sense that the owners would still have the right to do whatever they want with their land.

 

It's true that if land is taking a while to sell, then it is too high for the market. But then again, so? If it is your land, you can sell it for however much you want, and do whatever you want with it as long as it is still yours. That's the point of owning land - that it's yours.

Making someone pay rent somewhere else when they should be allowed to use their land makes little sense. And if that is the solution for people in those scenarios, the same could be said for people in your scenario - those who are repulsed by their ruined views can just as easily move or pay rent elsewhere.

There are times the world map is plagued with yellow, with some potentially being "extortion to buy back the view" or rentals, and others being the usual sales. There are also times when you really have to search around to find yellows. So really, this problem you're describing isn't "such a big problem that it should be dealt with...". It's just one of many things that move with the market.

If LL removes flexibility with land ownership, it just won't be good for LL.

But it's not about "allowing you to use your land". If you buy it, of course you can use it.

It's about enabling you to abuse the system -- in ways a normal RL market could never let you do -- by enjoying the use of your land AND putting a ridiculously high price on it that means it may never sell or sell in a year. Why should you be rewarded for doing that? The way to understand is not that you are harmed by not being able to enjoy the use of your land while it is for sale. If you want to enjoy it, don't sell it. The way to see it that is by enabling you to enjoy staying AND putting a high price, you are making it further possible for other abusers of the system. When you are prevented from keeping a build on land and living on it, and have to sell it for a normal price, the entire market changes. You don't then have to pay a ridiculously high price to have a home; that is what makes you sit on a 512 you bought in 2006 and think you can sell it for $20,000 even if it is not waterfront.

And the number of people who are end users trying to sell their one parcel and wanting to wait for a better price are simply a minority compared to those many rentals that want to invade the buy-view map, and clubs that want to invade the buy-view map, and political causes that want to invade the buy-view map. So I'm not for rewarding those abusers.

There is never a time when you have to search for yellow. That may be the case in the 16 sims you see in your view. But trust me, it is not the case generally.

I'm not for depriving people of ownership because others want to abuse a system -- you are. You want to enable abusers to go through this loophole in order to keep your ability to get a high price. And when I point out that is abusive, you want to compound this abuse by telling me that if I don't like the view or that practice (which isn't about you in your bungalow setting something to $20,000, but land dealers putting big and sometimes grossly kitch builds up -- why, I can move, thus suffering a loss.

You aren't willing to look at this in the round and how it affects all the components of the community. It is not good for anybody but the rapacious few. Changing it elevates everyone to a better place.

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

But it's not about "allowing you to use your land". If you buy it, of course you can use it.

It's about enabling you to abuse the system -- in ways a normal RL market could never let you do -- by enjoying the use of your land AND putting a ridiculously high price on it that means it may never sell or sell in a year.

 

So, you're saying that nobody lives in a RL house while they're waiting for it to sell?

[AdminGirl]

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm not for depriving people of ownership because others want to abuse a system -- you are. You want to enable abusers to go through this loophole in order to keep your ability to get a high price. And when I point out that is abusive, you want to compound this abuse by telling me that if I don't like the view or that practice (which isn't about you in your bungalow setting something to $20,000, but land dealers putting big and sometimes grossly kitch builds up -- why, I can move, thus suffering a loss.

You aren't willing to look at this in the round and how it affects all the components of the community. It is not good for anybody but the rapacious few. Changing it elevates everyone to a better place.

 

Ok don't accuse me of wanting to enable abusers just for not agreeing with you right off the bat. I was simply bringing in my perspective - someone who has been in sl less than 2 years and is not in the sl real estate market - so admittedly I do not understand the mind of someone who abuses the system the way you describe. However, from having this discussion with you, I have learnt a bit about them. And yes I am willing to look at this in the round. I'm engaging in this discussion with an open mind.

My suggestion for you to move was in response to your suggestion for others to move or rent elsewhere while they're trying to sell their land (and rendered homeless under your proposal). Of course, mine wasn't a genuine suggestion. It was to highlight that that solution is just as viable to you as it is to someone trying to sell their land and not having a home in the interim.

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The way to understand is not that you are harmed by not being able to enjoy the use of your land while it is for sale. If you want to enjoy it, don't sell it. The way to see it that is by enabling you to enjoy staying AND putting a high price, you are making it further possible for other abusers of the system.

 

I do empathize and understand your perspective. But in reality, there is no one way of seeing something. There are always going to be various other perspectives, including that of LL. And not every opposing view is hostile.

My perspective is from someone who never even thought of abusing the system and saw how your proposal could affect someone like me.

One alternative solution is to charge people for putting up land for sale, similar to how they started charging for listing events. Or maybe just charge people to make their land sales visible in world map.

Edited September 12, 2020 by AdminGirl

[BilliJo Aldrin]

On 9/8/2020 at 2:23 PM, animats said:

If SL did that, a big chunk of mainland would turn to bare ground. Much of Zindra is owned by a big landlord who puts in filler buildings and cranks up the price.

Landlord-owned filler building. Kama City in Zindra only looks like a city because of such dummy buildings.

I don't see how the business model works.

I live in Kama City and I think the empty buildings are great. They make the area look much more urban and alive, instead a wasteland of bare, empty lots.

[Qie Niangao]

The builds don't bother me so much, but I hate that there's no way to be sure what the reverted terrain actually looks like - no viewer debug tool nor script function nor anything, AFAIK - so if "For Sale" completely reverted all terraforming, that would be most useful to the buyer. Yeah, I get it that the seller wants to show how flat it can get so maybe one clueless newbie sees where they could plunk down their prefab, but I doubt it generates an actual sale even once per millenium per parcel. (The downside would be losing terraforming that relates the parcel to adjacent land, so neighbors could suffer.)

The "for sale or rent" thing is super annoying, but I don't see this proposal having much effect on that if adopted. With or without builds, land dealers set rentals for sale to get the yellow on the map, and maybe even sometimes genuinely intend that either rental or sale is a valid option (although yeah, the listed sale price is usually absurd). It's dumb, but it appears to be a deeply rooted superstition.

It may be that some more "standard" rental arrangement would allow complying rentals to be map color-coded, distinct from sales. I doubt this would ever happen.

[Mollymews]

On 9/12/2020 at 1:24 PM, AdminGirl said:

One alternative solution is to charge people for putting up land for sale, similar to how they started charging for listing events. Or maybe just charge people to make their land sales visible in world map.

that's not a bad idea that.  Costs 30L (or some such amount) a day while our parcel is set For Sale.  Auto-debited daily

edit add

thinking about it for a few more minutes then probably not a good idea. We probably end up with 8 meter high Contact Me signs all over the mainland saying Contact Me if you want to know how this parcel can be yours. Just to save paying the fee

Edited September 14, 2020 by Mollymews

[Pussycat Catnap]

Some of those builds are annoying. Some of them really help to understand what is possible on that land.

I built a cliff house for myself back in 2012 or so, and stayed in it until 2015:

I only built this after seeing something like it on the land of that 'big Zindra land baron' on a nearby region.

- To this date, that house remains my favorite ever design, and I still have the pieces of it in inventory in case I ever live on a cliff again.

 

Other times when I have gone to an area looking at the land and considering a purchase or not - it's been those builds left by land barons that have gotten me to deciding for or against. If I like one of their ideas - I often do my own take on the same theme. If their ideas all look bad, it helps reveal to me that I won't be able to make what I want in that area.

 

That noted - yes some of these builds are just blighted eyesores with for sale signs... but not all of them.

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 9/11/2020 at 9:24 PM, AdminGirl said:

Ok don't accuse me of wanting to enable abusers just for not agreeing with you right off the bat. I was simply bringing in my perspective - someone who has been in sl less than 2 years and is not in the sl real estate market - so admittedly I do not understand the mind of someone who abuses the system the way you describe. However, from having this discussion with you, I have learnt a bit about them. And yes I am willing to look at this in the round. I'm engaging in this discussion with an open mind.

My suggestion for you to move was in response to your suggestion for others to move or rent elsewhere while they're trying to sell their land (and rendered homeless under your proposal). Of course, mine wasn't a genuine suggestion. It was to highlight that that solution is just as viable to you as it is to someone trying to sell their land and not having a home in the interim.

I do empathize and understand your perspective. But in reality, there is no one way of seeing something. There are always going to be various other perspectives, including that of LL. And not every opposing view is hostile.

My perspective is from someone who never even thought of abusing the system and saw how your proposal could affect someone like me.

One alternative solution is to charge people for putting up land for sale, similar to how they started charging for listing events. Or maybe just charge people to make their land sales visible in world map.

I don't see a downside to charging people $30 a week to keep their land for sale. Just like a search/places ad. Completely reasonable. That will curb the abuse.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't see a downside to charging people $30 a week to keep their land for sale. Just like a search/places ad. Completely reasonable. That will curb the abuse.

I'm sure you don't see a downside to any new rule that might cut down on your competition.

Where exactly is this "search" located / hosted? I see an option to list my land in search for $30 L per week, but I never list any of my properties and they all show up in the inworld search.

Is there some other search that I'm not aware of... and thus have no interest in using since inworld search works just fine for me?

Edited September 20, 2020 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a line

[BilliJo Aldrin]

On 9/17/2020 at 3:10 PM, Pussycat Catnap said:

 

I built a cliff house for myself back in 2012 or so, and stayed in it until 2015:

 

 

 

 

Very impressive build. I've seen too many people that just rezzed a giant cube the dimensions of the property, texture it grass on all sides (if you are lucky), then plop a house on top. No real effort, no real imagination.

 

[Blush Bravin]

Having been in SL for so long I have seen first hand the abusive methods that some land dealers use as a means of either obtaining desirable land or selling off undesirable land parcels. While I abhor these tactics, I also abhor the suggestion of removing the freedoms associated with mainland. There's an easy alternative and that's private land or Linden Homes. Those of us who love mainland have learned to play the wait it out game with those unscrupulous land grabbers. Long live the wild west freedoms of Mainland!!

[BilliJo Aldrin]

21 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

Having been in SL for so long I have seen first hand the abusive methods that some land dealers use as a means of either obtaining desirable land or selling off undesirable land parcels. While I abhor these tactics, I also abhor the suggestion of removing the freedoms associated with mainland. There's an easy alternative and that's private land or Linden Homes. Those of us who love mainland have learned to play the wait it out game with those unscrupulous land grabbers. Long live the wild west freedoms of Mainland!!

Its funny, but no matter what the problem of the day is with mainland, it seems the  solution offered by some forum residents always is "we need a new rule to ban that".

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

6 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I'm sure you don't see a downside to any new rule that might cut down on your competition.

Where exactly is this "search" located / hosted? I see an option to list my land in search for $30 L per week, but I never list any of my properties and they all show up in the inworld search.

Is there some other search that I'm not aware of... and thus have no interest in using since inworld search works just fine for me?

One of the problems with people fed on Chomsky in college is that they can't grasp any differences in scale or magnitude, and their impugning of ugly profit motives and greed and rapaciousness to people can be wildly wrong.

Once again, I'm a minor player and a small businessman in SL. I do not have a grasping and greedy profit motive because I have a RL job, often more than one, so I do  not depend on SL for my livelihood. I have no motivation to suggest a policy or criticize a policy other than common sense, logic, and the desire to have a healthy economy and a civil society -- not that this appears possible in this particular form of virtuality, but one can dream, can't one.

I've also been in SL long enough to know that people you imagine are old white guys in top hats like the Monopoly game or Soviet propaganda from the 1920s are in fact Black single moms in Michigan and retired gay postal workers in Ohio and wounded war veterans in California who just want to make a living online, and that is their right.

To imagine that I have some kind of "competition" is ludicrous. A person who has Mainland rentals doesn't have "competition" -- they have commiseration. The other few Mainland dealers aren't their competition; they are their fellow sufferers. Let me see. There's a race to the bottom to see who can charge the least for a 512 and still make tier? Oh? Really?

The island dealers are the big players who might worry about "competition". For me, even Bellissaria can't be a competition, literally, or figuratively, in my interest in observing the system as a whole. People who are *selling land* as distinct from *renting land* aren't my competition, obviously, in anything. In theory, people might not rent if land got cheaper -- but then, that's not logical, as the tier rates remain the same *for everyone*. Tier, not purchase price is the real expense in the business. Phillip Linden used to talk about how he'd like to remove arbitrage from SL; I've never heard any other CEO talk this talk -- and they couldn't, as long as land is the basis for their revenue, and the illusion of a free economy is the basis for anyone other than end users wanting to buy their product.

Yes, some people use ANOTHER search which is land for sale in the search system, not the land map. Especially in the land business, who want to price their land looking at low and high prices without flying all over the map, you know? 

One of the fun things about this thread is that we learn a lot about "BilliJo's" business model and ethics and her understanding of the world in general, and that's useful, I suppose -- and the icing on the cake is that I'm accused of advocating policies to remove my putative "competition" from someone selling micro parcels. Ok, then.

I do care about people who *do* make their livelihoods in SL. And I do care about the Mainland not being a cesspool.

This idea that removing "freedoms" which are in fact are licentiousness and event criminal acts harms the "free economy" assumes that there really is a free economy (there isn't) or that curbing crime reduces freedom (it doesn't, it makes it possible for more people to have freedom).

Blush Bravin suggests "waiting it out". How long? I've waited 4 years for ad farm policies; I waited 7 years  for griefing of a particularly nasty form to stop; I recently waited more than 3 years for the Lindens to ban someone sending me RL info and RL death threats. I'm nothing if not a waiter. But how long?

I'm not content to see the solution to the Mainland be only "Bellissaria" (which isn't Mainland, thanks for admitting that) and "private islands". I like Mainland and its freedoms. I also think that many of the boons we take for granted today (an end to abandoned land collapsing into 16m purchasable parcels (!!!), an end to blatant ad farming) came about because people didn't become goofy about Mainland freedoms but had some notion of rules that enable freedom for more than 16-m ad farmers, you know? That.

 

Edited September 20, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 

Yes, some people use ANOTHER search which is land for sale in the search system, not the land map. Especially in the land business, who want to price their land looking at low and high prices without flying all over the map, you know? 
 

 

Yes i found all my parcels using the in-viewer search. I was asking if there was another one you have to pay for because all my land is listed, and i'm not paying anything.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

8 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Yes i found all my parcels using the in-viewer search. I was asking if there was another one you have to pay for because all my land is listed, and i'm not paying anything.

 

Many people don't use that free system because it is crowded with ad farmer sales. It's also annoying to work and try to pick out the parameters you need, the cursor slips, the choice doesn't stick, etc. It's just not used by renters, I find. Whenever I ask people who they found my rental, they say either search/places, classifieds, or word-of-mouth. Occasionally the MP, They never search land sales to find my land for rent, not sale.

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

3 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Many people don't use that free system because it is crowded with ad farmer sales. It's also annoying to work and try to pick out the parameters you need, the cursor slips, the choice doesn't stick, etc. It's just not used by renters, I find. Whenever I ask people who they found my rental, they say either search/places, classifieds, or word-of-mouth. Occasionally the MP, They never search land sales to find my land for rent, not sale.

 

I'm not a renter, so it works fine for me, and there's no cost.

[Rowan Amore]

I only have a mainland plot because I didn't want a linden home but I don't actually live there nor would I ever.  I certainly would never rent on mainland.  I've rented on a private estate from the same company since I've been in SL.  I prefer not having to live next to some idiot who has no concept of what is aesthetically pleasing.  The only time I'm ever at my mainland is when my home is unavailable.  I've never seen the appeal of living where there are basically no rules.

[Ultima Cloud]

I'm with you. In the 14 years I've played I think I've only spent 5 minutes on mainland.

[Malin Sabra]

I often take the time to decorate land that I have for sale or rent. I don't agree with this.

Nearly all my land is for sale or rent. If someone buys it they return my rental meter. If someone rents it I take it off the market. (I do not price my land at ridiculous prices with intentions to have it show up in search) My prices are within Market range and often lower than other bigger sellers.

I like to deco and landscape sometimes and I'm very against skyboxes at ground level and ugly platforms and such.

If someone buys my land I usually give them the option to keep and use my deco (very often the reason why they buy it is because they loved the deco) when this is the situation I will also offer them the option to share my deco to their group (if they deed land to group) so they can move my items around if they want. The only time I will remove is if the person puts the land back up for sale using my deco as their selling point.