Prokofy Neva

You mean your own empty rental towers dominating the view on several sims? I may have builds from 2005, but they aren't brightly coloured nor do they dominate your view. The view on that sim is out over the pond, not backwards to the other side of the road on to my one-story no-tell motel which doesn't harm the view -- the giant pink flamingo, enlarged out of the library flamingo, is indeed bright but I've never had complaints about it because as I said, microparcel owners looking backward from the main view they themselves have blighted are in a distinct minority of land owners there, many of whom have been there for 15-20 years. Your microparcels and 10L stacked-up skyboxes overlook a pristine pond without any builds AFAIK. Facts are curious things.

Excellent point, Comrade. There is no more new Mainland (as there was in the old days) so *every single auction plot is abandoned land*, whether let go willingly or confiscated, it is all part of the wonderful Circle of Life that is our Second Life.

Go and look. I have seen it with my own eyes, imagine that. I don't think I want to give you ideas where you might next try some ad farming, but thanks.

I would give up my tree house for that...I think...I have a lot of 1940s and art deco furniture I don't know what to do with...

When I glimpsed that pink stucco and the over-the-top castle externals, I, too, thought "Spanish Revival" and "Hollywood" but I also thought "Brighton Beach Russian Mafia McMansions". But that means they will be WILDLY popular in SL.

Once again, that does NOT explain how certain barons with literally thousands of sims, with the 10% bonus giving them one free sim for every 10 (roughly), still manage to keep all that land for sale at high prices. They can't. There is a limit. We're seeing it now. Look at the prices in Zindra. There is actually abandoned land in Zindra now which didn't use to happen.

After 19 years of observing this scene closely, I have a theory about some of the land where ugly prim builds have remained untouched for as many years, or land seems "paid for" for years on end with the owner never logging in, or land sits for sale for years at absurd prices, like certain micro-parcels around the grid. It seems clear to me that in earlier years, the Lindens offered free accounts to industry insiders to help promote their product. This may have been the usual tech gadget giveaway to journalists and various promoters at events and such, and giveaways to peers as often happens with start-ups in Silicon Valley. Not the free 4096 for life given to the early adapters who were inworld building and socializing. Giveaways of 512 or 1024 to people who then left and their land still sits there seemingly "paid for". People often theorize that there are rich or careless types who don't notice a $99 annual charge repeating among many charges. But rich people get rich by paying attention to costs like that. I think the reason we see so many of these types of parcels was that they were given away for free, but not mechanically abandoned. They have no external marking but maybe they are marked internally.

The reason why we see the softening of land prices in Zindra is precisely because this system does not go on forever for people who do reach their breaking point and don't have money to burn forever on SL like Musk on Twitter. Eventually, they let it go. I have seen certain land barons, if they aren't in a race to the bottom with each other, quite often now simply take their own land off sale, or event rent, so that they don't glut their own offerings. They DON"T have "the other parcels" selling to keep this artificial system going. They aren't selling *either*. They DON'T have the auction to keep snaring rubes in to pay inflated prices for parcels to keep the whole pricing system high. The rubes aren't biting. They DON"T have "growth" that can fuel capitalism in many RL instances because sign-ups have fallen and people don't stay or cancel premiums. They DON"T have a free-floating currency market because the State prints money and interferes, flooding the LindEx with cash to keep the price of entertainment for the masses low. They DON"T have a truly free press and free ad market that would bring a willing buyer and a willing seller together far more often. It seems counter-intuitive in a world flooded with ugly roadside billboards and extortionist ad farm land that SL has a poor advertising system but indeed it does as anyone in the land rentals business especially knows. It is not easy to find things with the badly-working search and the poorly-managed ad systems flooding the view because the company doesn't have its own networked ad system. And there are other factors -- telehub-adjacent land that once sold for US $2000 per region off the auction back when Lindens auctioned whole sims routinely on the auction is now worthless since the telehubs were removed and p2p put in. The Bellisseria 2048s and the homesteads not tethered to an island any more have also caused inflation and devalued Mainland. There isn't "tier free" land that you imagine by the tier on land baking under the Linden sun routinely being paid off by high sales of other parcels. It's all going down. The cashout now is 247, not 242. In a system where the government prints money AND land, you don't retain value. This ought to be clear to you.

That's an absurdity, and in fact, not how land barons behave. Let's say they got lucky and got prime land for only $1/m abandoned from the Lindens. After they have tiered, say, 4096 for one year for US $147, if they sell it for less than that, they have lost money obviously. You can't assume the other parcels somehow do better. Everywhere they are spending that tier and the land is not moving all year. At some point they break. The prices are all kept artificially high by some land barons bidding parcels up on the auction that they have no intention of actually paying for, or even flipping them instantly at a loss -- for that same reason. I think the reason we see more parcels going off the auction for less than $1/m is because land barons are less willing to keep fronting the cash to keep that artificial system -- encouraged and likely fueled by the Lindens -- in motion.

The devaluation of the Linden by several points in recent years has also hurt land barons.

I am still marveling at the Blake Sea sim that reportedly went for US $8000 on the auction, and the owner, who did not then re-sell it or offer it for high rents but only had some of it for low rents, and ruined the view with an ugly airport in sight in the sky. Even if that is an apocryphal tale, I routinely see Blake sims go for like US $2000, which is what sims used to go for on the original SL auctions in the early days.

Land is seldom sold these days for more than you paid. It might be that virtual worlds with controlled artificial economies tend to this state, I have begun to wonder that in recent years. We don't know what it would be like if the market was free and the currency also not controlled. But for these reasons you can't view land as an "investment"; it's a cost center. It is a sunk cost. It is the frame around content and experience, which is how the founder, Philip Rosedale, wanted it to be. He wanted to have land go for a flat rate always, as it does when the Lindens sell abandoned land for $1. The fact that parcels on the auction now go for less than $1 and are flipped inworld for less than $1 let's you know how much the value has been lost.

Happy to show you inworld.

If they do, it must be at a level of sim ownership way higher than mine (never more than 14 sims). The only discounts I know of are: 1. Grouped land, generating 10% extra tier to cover yet more land 2. After you tier an entire sim for $166, the next quarter sim is only $40 then. Not much of a discount. I've heard there are discounts for islands at a high bulk level, but not Mainland. I think what a lot of people don't realize is that after you have the $166 discount (every next quarter is only $40), then you can tier land for US $0.0030 per meter -- the cost of the tier factoring in the fee for converting Lindens to dollars to pay tier. So it seems like the person is crazy, but do the math. Let's say they want a 4096 to go for US $250 on prime Mainland or in Zindra or $500 in Blake Sea. They are only paying US $12.28 per month to hold that piece and keep it out for sale. Do the math. At that rate, they can keep losing $12.28 for many months before it doesn't make sense any more, if they collect US $300 or more at the end of the long wait. So let's say they wait an entire year, paying $12.28 for 12 months. They still net about US $103. That's why you see it for sale forever. At a certain point, such land barons start reducing the sales price. But you may not notice that happening.

Couldn't be happier! Even though I have land for sale I'd like to see move. Because people like you selling microparcels for a fortune are frozen in that pernicious activity which always ruins the view. Destructive? Yes, but not creative. Capitalism? Actually, no, as we live in an authoritarian state where the government lets you buy this land abandoned to flip -- and it should know better than that. It's more like oligarchy.

At Jade Koltai's new Bolivian sim.

Some forms of my satire seem to fly right over people's heads...Glad to get the precise number of void sims for this exercise now...

Yes, I have a small one I made and put out at the Memory Bazaar in Ross.

I'm not sure you can re-list a product when it is removed this way. Can you? I haven't had that experience but I only sell a few things. I do wonder why you don't get a second chance -- if they permanently delist you for one offense. So I'd like to clarify that.

I'm puzzled why I had to do this on one account, but not another. I'm also wondering if Linden Lab issues a 1099 form, in compliance with the law, for funds cashed out (hopefully, not for US dollars created to pay tier), then that will be a duplicate of, or overlap with, the 1099 that PayPal will also send out now, for Tilia and other payments. So I guess one can only keep good records and hope to sort it out at tax time.

Come now! I love that blue toxic waste soil texture in Heterocera called "coral" or something -- I use it on apocalyptic sets all the time. The only mainland I don't like and never buy is that really beat up one with the brown dirt that looks like an old baseball field. I like the pink mountain, granite, etc.

Wait. There's a go-kart in the Library???

I'll go first. That kudzu grass in the Linden library -- and the Lindens' use of it all over the Mainland. It never stays on the land it was deployed but strays from Linden land to your land and you can't return it. I say: one flick of the switch on the asset server, remove it forever. No one will miss it. The Lindens and Moles have much, much nicer grasses in the library or Bellisseria packs.

My impression is that those with hordes of alts and time to throw at this figure out the math questions most often used and program the bots to respond to them.

Contrary to the vehement claims in this thread, the Lindens appear to have cracked down on camping as a way to enhance traffic. And duh, they can do this not by literally banning a script (the Lindens seldom have met a script they didn't like). Instead, they can just nerf the algorithms (secret) in their wacky search system and make your camping efforts useless. But I have the impression they selectively crack down on bot farms in the sky above stores as well. And that's why we saw things in the last year like a club known to be filled mainly only with dance pads where you could earn a whopping $1L per HOUR -- ridiculous -- totally shutting down that sort of system, and moving to an "XP" system where I guess you get goods are rewards, not cash. And it is now EMPTY. Either they got a reprimand from LL OR they found their club, despite numerous efforts to buy e-labour and picks, ceased to work to show up in search. I get around a fair amount and I don't see camping or even money trees anymore. The reason for the demise of money trees is that bots harvested them, and while they kept injecting ways to defeat bots, the bots kept winning. So who wants money trees intended for newbies to go to somebody wrangling bots? There are various silly fishing and crystal games where you spend hours trying to bring traffic to venues and earning peanuts -- just buy the Lindens for God's sake, and be done with it. The only way to make Lindens now for ordinary people is either various low level clerk or bouncer type jobs or in prostitution. A lot of people used to be in the gatcha resale business which was a great entry to the economy for the unskilled -- there's less than that now since the really super-charged sessions with total mysteries got outlawed, and in their place came these machines that show what's coming -- so no one wants to play them as the rare isn't in the chute. The tiny percent of people who can make money with either skilled labour (coding, dress design) or who have huge amounts to invest in their land business (time and money) -- they don't make the economy for the rest of us. It's a real problem because it directly affects the life of the world and concurrency. Many, many people come on as newbies and ask how they can earn money. They are used to skilling and leveling up and making at least game currency. The Linden games are also very much nerfed now against all the people trying to exploit them. It really is a puzzle, the inertia to which virtuality tends and how to fix it.