Revalue the L$ -> $1US = L$100

[elleevelyn]

2 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Theoretically, what would happen to the SL economy if LL were to devalue the $L so that $L 500 = $ 1 US?

Suddenly all the lindens people have in their SL account would be worth half as much real money. That wouldn't mean much to those of us who only have a few thousand lindens or less, but this could be devastating for creators who make and transfer out significant sums of money.

I assume the suggestion @Coffee Pancake made would be equally harmful to Linden Lab. Suddenly the lindens people have would be worth more money, so they'd want to transfer them out as real currency to make a profit.

with a significant value sudden devaluation then a way that this can be done is overnight. We log off with L$250 in our account. The next day we log in  and our account balance is L$500. The suppliers according to their own timetable adjust their prices accordingly

the other way this can be done is to adjust the money supply. To devalue, Supply Linden starts pumping LS into the Lindex. To revalue Supply Linden turns off/turns down the pump

a few years ago now Linden appeared to do this. Supply Linden appeared to be pumping approx. L$10 million blocks onto the Lindex on a regular weekly basis - the effect was the exchange rate moved to about USD1 = L$350. Was a whole lot of chatter about this at the time all over. Then after some time the pumping rate slowed and the exchange rate moved back to USD1 = L$250

only Linden could tell us what this was about (and they have never said). But it did mirror the mechanics of how to devalue and revalue a currency in a domestic market using money supply

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, gwynchisholm said:

Just up your own scale of spending if you want things to be comparable.

Though for most people, keeping this comparable to irl is not the point of the virtual currency. For a lot of people it’s not a translation of real world value, it’s just a game currency that happens to have real world value. I don’t look at a piece of virtual clothing like it’s worth $0.59 USD or something. The virtual currency operates on its own market and scale. A little plot of land costs under 20k l$ which is under $100 usd. I’d rather that than “oh this prime real estate costs the equivalent of $180,000 USD, or 43 million linden dollars”.

And then it’s all also a matter of personal scale. I’m one to tip 5 grand or dump money into giveaway orbs at clubs because for the few rare times I even go to places like that, $20 is a cheap expenditure for a virtual night out. Pizza Hut costs like $50 all in these days, so I consider linden dollar four figure sums to be cheap entertainment all things considered.

I'm in this situation too.

[Love Zhaoying]

I think the 2-currency model used in Cuba would solve a lot of the issues highlighted by the OP. 

[Tibbs McGregor]

On 4/2/2024 at 2:15 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

Say you were making clothing. Time from inception to store is about a week's work full time hours. You have to make the item, hand paint it 14 different shades and do 6 special patterns for the fat pack, rig it for 6 bodies, box art, documentation, set up huds and packages, list it and get up in a store or at an event. You keep 60% of the money you make after fees and tax and you get no paid time off, no healthcare, etc etc/

Still happy with a buck fiddy?

 

He made $17 an hour for ONE hour.

Is min wage (which is not a livable wage) really the benchmark here?

How is he paying for his comfortable home.

Are we forgetting that for most users SL is a 'hobby' or a 'hobby job' and for most it's not a full time career.  

Supply and demand controls pricing in SL just like in RL, if a creator wants to earn a RL wage, they can just price their items accordingly. 

If the DJ wasn't happy with 8000L$ from tips, then they don't have to do it, it's the beauty of choice. 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I assume the suggestion @Coffee Pancake made would be equally harmful to Linden Lab. Suddenly the lindens people have would be worth more money, so they'd want to transfer them out as real currency to make a profit.

People go on, and on, and on, about how on the Lindex you "don't buy L$ from LL but from other users".

This is in fact not really true.

 

When you buy $20 worth of shopping tokens, LL don't say "please hold while we find somebody selling that", LL take your $20, and give you the shopping tokens, when you sell $20 worth of shopping tokens, they give you the $20 and take the shopping tokens. They act as a "man in the middle" broker. They maintain two pools of currency, one of US$, one of L$, in escrow, as it were.

 

Here's the problem with the OP's suggestion ion a nutshell, say there's currently 250,000,000 shopping tokens sat in a carboard box under Supply Linden's bed. That is currently worth 1,000,000 US$.

But midnight tonight, the Coffee-Coin Law goes into effect, and now those shopping tokens are worth 2,500,000 US$, this potentially, might be good for LL, they payed sellers $1 mil, and now have stuff for buyers worth $2.5 mil, but...

 

Nobody is buying, so the shopping tokens end up devaluing as the market crashes, until they hit 250 to the Doh-lar and you're right back where you started. 

 

Then there's the other problem. The new law goes in at midnight, people are going to buy those STILL cheap tokens like crazy, then dump them back on the market 1 minute after midnight.

So LL sell $1 mil us worth of shopping tokens today, and buy them back again after midnight for $2.5 mil, so LL can also lose big on this.

 

And it still crashes the market.

 

It's a really bad idea, that ignores how currency markets, and margin selling actually work.

 

If self proclaimed special-snowflake "staving artistes", think they deserve more than double the money they charge NOW, they should just more than double their prices, and see how loyal their customer stay.

 

Just say no to the Coffee-Coin Law.

[Sid Nagy]

5 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Theoretically, what would happen to the SL economy if LL were to devalue the $L so that $L 500 = $ 1 US?

A) Still active merchants and land barons would double their prices and while going trough all the hassle would calculate last years inflations into it as well.
B) Long gone merchants with still stuff on the MP would not notice and their stuff would stay at the old price for a long time.

Devaluation of the money is only interesting for RL depts, like for government depts, morgages and CC depts.
It is a sign of a very weak economy if a country has to take such an action.

C) It would have very little impact on dept free societies like SL IMHO. It might bring down some land barons who would not adapt instantly to the new situation, because they pay for their land holdings in USD.

Edited April 3 by Sid Nagy

[Sid Nagy]

5 hours ago, Tibbs McGregor said:

If the DJ wasn't happy with 8000L$ from tips, then they don't have to do it, it's the beauty of choice. 

Just put out an add in the hiring section.
We hire DJ's, you don't get the tips but we pay you 8000L$ per gig.
Your IM box would be flooded in no time with applications IMHO.

Edited April 3 by Sid Nagy

[Sid Nagy]

28 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Just say no to the Coffee-Coin Law.

No worries. It will not happen. Linden Lab is very good in handling and collecting money.
They will not shoot in their own foot.

[Rat Luv]

My suggestion would be - make $1L equal to £1 👍

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Rat Luv said:

My suggestion would be - make $1L equal to £1 👍

There's always pesos, drachmas, shillings, yen, etc..!

[Rat Luv]

18 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

There's always pesos, drachmas, shillings, yen, etc..!

I'm going to contact every club I hosted at between 2011 and 2013 with an updated invoice for 20,000 Dogecoin 🤑

[Love Zhaoying]

I do find it confusing that the OP never said, "April Fool's!" - and neither was the thread locked after 4/1.

Maybe was not joke?

At least we had plenty of economic lessons from it..

[Scylla Rhiadra]

20 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

I'm afraid we need to call in @Scylla Rhiadrafor this one.  But I doubt even she would have solutions.  But yes, something different might work better for a "village or commune", something smaller, like SL

Yeah, I shouldn't go there. And there are no forumulaic, easy-to-apply solutions (I'm not a "purist" about anything, including socialism; in fact I distrust the entire idea of "purity").

But a key problem is that the world within which LL exists is a mixed-capitalist one, and the raison d'etre for the corporation, as for all corporations, is to turn over a profit. So long as that is the case (and it will always be the case), "socialism" in SL isn't ever going to exist except very imperfectly and partially, at a micro scale.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yeah, I shouldn't go there. And there are no forumulaic, easy-to-apply solutions (I'm not a "purist" about anything, including socialism; in fact I distrust the entire idea of "purity").

It's good to see you here!

I thought the thread was dead!

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But a key problem is that the world within which LL exists is a mixed-capitalist one

ETA: This is one reason I made the "two currencies like Cuba" suggestion earlier. (I know better than to go into details on it.)

Edited April 3 by Love Zhaoying

[Orwar]

   I fail to see how capitalism is somehow the 'issue' here (in fact, I've yet to see any actual issue at all). How much you can earn by doing things in SL is very much a question of supply and demand. Supply is entirely on your end; what are you trying to capitalise on? How is the competition? For demand, well, SL has a finite userbase (unless you do stuff so good it brings people in just to buy them, I guess?), and any given creation in SL will only appeal to so-or-such big a portion of that userbase (and then there's the whole 'getting seen' bit, but that's another question). 

   For hosts and DJs it's just tough luck, everyone and their dog has had the idea to make some pocket money by torturing themselves for 2 hours every few days and hoping to get some tips out of it, it's usually the first 'professions' most people will try (particularly hosting, as it has absolutely zero prerequisites other than 'can u english?' at most venues, and maybe being 30+ days old). There's so much supply of doe-eyed 'I can make moneys?'-types, so many venues, and a lot of  them thinking 'oh we'll become the new top place if only we can cram our schedule full to cater to people 24/7'. Trying to make it so everyone who chucks themselves into that ring earn a 'decent wage' for their time is just not feasible, nor do I think it's even something we should aspire to; SL DJs and hosts shouldn't be compared to service profession staff in the real world - if anything, maybe, they could be compared to the types who'll strum a guitar in a subway station or shopping mall. Live performers, same thing, really - but they're not 'entitled' to it just because they put time or effort into it. Especially not the 'local open mic club rejects'.
   Charge an entry fee and pay your staff if you want some fair distribution of income (of course it's quite likely it'll just kill your venue and send your patrons packing to a different one - unless your place is niche enough to still be interesting to a limited clientele; and, what, should LL monitor these venues' incomes and ensure the staff is being paid 'decently'? I've worked at such places, the distribution of wealth isn't exactly 'fair' - but my service wasn't indentured or anything, and it didn't take me that long to figure out it wasn't worth my time and that I wasn't enjoying it enough to consider it a 'fun pastime', and so I quit - not very complicated stuff, this).

   For creators, it becomes a question of supplying something unique (which often means it'll be niche, which reduces the potential customer base, because whilst most virtual barbies want to stand out, they don't want to actually stand out to stand out - but hey, at least you can raise the unit price a little bit without too many complaints?), or you can try to cater to everyone, and compete with thirty-eleven other stores creating the exact same 'generic jeans no 34 with the current trend-flavour of being unbuttoned', at which point people will ask 'which one did it best' or 'which one did it cheapest' - because no one needs thirty-eleven pairs of no.34 generic unbuttoned jeans. Glares at some of our resident shopping addicts. Right? Right. If income is your primary concern, then probably try to find a balancing point between the two. But also, if income is your primary concern, maybe don't look to SL for it.

   No one in SL is being exploited, everyone are here voluntarily. It's not like someone has monopolised some natural resources (well, maybe some land barons inflating prices of coastal/roadside land and holding it 'hostage' - but trying to fix that by changing the value of the L$ is a bit like going in with a bucket of paint and a paintbrush into a burning house; and LL doesn't 'really' have any incentive to fix it, because whoever owns the land pays tier anyway). There's of course very little regulation within SL's markets, so there absolutely are cartel-like structures and a whole lot of nepotism (which certainly isn't a concept unique to capitalism, though). Who gets to be in my super-cool event? Who gets a dev kit for my body? And I don't really see how LL would regulate that sort of thing without getting involved in some very deep resident-to-resident drama. I mean, sure, they've legally covered their backs so that they could just go in and say 'your creation is now ours and we control and distribute it as we please', but 28 days later there'd be 13 people left on the grid wondering where everyone went.

   Either which way, changing the value of the platform's currency wouldn't solve anything. But it would cause a whole lot of trouble for everyone, then it would mean people would just adjust their prices to the new levels, unless they left the platform completely because of the bother of it all.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Orwar said:

I fail to see how capitalism is somehow the 'issue' here.

Has anyone actually said it was? I don't think I have.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

4 minutes ago, Orwar said:

I fail to see how capitalism is somehow the 'issue' here.

Has anyone actually said it was? I don't think I have.

Some have strongly implied that capitalism run amok is a factor? Or maybe not. Hard to tell the real statements from the czarchasm.

[Kathlen Onyx]

You mean there is a limited amount of people that want a dumpster with adult animations? Who knew?

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

14 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Some have strongly implied that capitalism run amok is a factor? Or maybe not. Hard to tell the real statements from the czarchasm.

I think there are some problems with the economic model that LL uses -- most notably, the utter lack of regulation and consumer protections. But I don't think the issue flagged by Coffee is really part of that. My own initial point here wasn't "Capitalism bad!" but rather that you can't arbitrarily tweak one element of the system without damaging the rest.

Overall, the "system" here works pretty well I think.

[Orwar]

16 minutes ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

You mean there is a limited amount of people that want a dumpster with adult animations? Who knew?

   Not a limited supply of people. It's the bad onboarding experience's fault! Or the wages? Or what was it again. There's much too many obvious reasons the sky is falling down around here.

[Love Zhaoying]

28 minutes ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

adult animations

"Adult Economy" related: Someone needs to sell "adult animations" of (G-Rated) "Adulting" activities:

- Paying bills

- Mowing the lawn

- Washing dishes

- Cooking dinner

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

"Adult Economy" related: Someone needs to sell "adult animations" of (G-Rated) "Adulting" activities:

- Paying bills

- Mowing the lawn

- Washing dishes

- Cooking dinner

 

There are DEFINITELY adult animations of the last two. And for doing laundry too.

As I think I've noted before here, I own an electronic floor fan with adult animations. (Ouch?) There is I'm sure an adult animation for nearly everything in SL.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

There are DEFINITELY adult animations of the last two. And for doing laundry too.

As I think I've noted before here, I own an electronic floor fan with adult animations. (Ouch?) There is I'm sure an adult animation for nearly everything in SL.

I only meant "adult" in the context of "Adulting" as in, "I adulted today" = "I did stuff that adults do because life stinks and adults have to do those things"!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

I only meant "adult" in the context of "Adulting" as in, "I adulted today" = "I did stuff that adults do because life stinks and adults have to do those things"!

Ah!

Well, there's a system you can buy that lays down "dust" that you can then sweep up with an animated dustpan and brush. 

There probably should be one I can use every month when I pay for tier, or the rental on my apartment though.

[Orwar]

8 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, there's a system you can buy that lays down "dust" that you can then sweep up with an animated dustpan and brush. 

   In a similar vein .. Someone recently released a lawn mower. Which cuts grass. That grows. 

   And just the other day, someone was giving me a tour of their place, and she had to stop and clean the swimming pool because it had gotten leaves in it.

   .. SL is starting to get a bit too adult, it seems.