“”"It’s the sort of evil, vindictive post for which you and others at SC are known, Seola, which you seem hardly aware of as making you look rather unattractive.”"”"

Yeah and you’re known for making stuff up and making it out that people say things they didn’t say.

If you are really stupid enough to think that lower land sales doesn’t affect rentals, then you are even lower on the thought train than I thought.

You don’t think much more attractively priced parcels will make people consider buying land they have full control over as opposed to renting? And what’s your business? Oh yeah, rentals. God the connection wasn’t even far fetched and you still didn’t get it. Oh that’s right, because a post making a connection doesn’t sound as good as “FIC!!!! SOCIALIST!!! CAPITALIST!!! ELITEST!!!”

Ironically, while you lay blame on others with your names, you are an elitest with the attitude to boot.

No, I don’t rent during the trough and sell during the bubble because there are *people* on that land who are *renting*. I wish to have a stable business and not acquire a reputation as someone who sells out from under tenants some piece of land just because they can fetch more for it.

The only exception would be if you can’t rent something because a club has moved in or something.

I don’t understand who you are lecturing here, Martin. Huh? I’m not the one railing against a free market. Others are. I don’t object to it. But it is a synthetic thing, at root, because the Lindens artificially control it. Someone like you, believing in it as real, makes it possible for them to go on doing this.

Why do you think I’m deriding landowners? I’m a landowner myself. You’re coming to the wrong address with this. In fact, I’m trying to battle both Inigo and Seola who made nasty cracks to me in this thread about me somehow being a rapacious land baron. I’m not. Either of those things.

So, what’s your problem then, you want me to defend rapacious land barons? Why? They can take care of themselves. As I’ve just explained already, they create liquidity in the market and make it possible for people always to be able to at least get something for their land. So I have absolutely no objection to them.

I’d assumed that you’d do the same. After all, you are well established in the rental market, you could easily do so – though you probably wouldn’t want to this time round seeing the state things are in at present. I’m definitely sitting this one out.

Dealing in land, on a daily basis though – I agree, that’s way too much like hard work!

I guess my confusion and may be it’s because I am english we don’t think about things in the same way what is wrong with a free market economy that we now have in SL? That might not have been the idealised plan that people had when they first came here but someone has to pay for it so why not let it be the land owners like me who invest up front in real dollars so that everyone else can buy their slice of SL?

The market will peak and drop like any other and like any other there will be those that weather the storm and those that don’t. But remember when you all get cold feet who are you going to call first? It will be the land owners like us that will take your land off you in the hope the good times return.

Land ownership on scale is a risky business, just because people like me are willing to take the risk why do you deride us in such a venomous way?

Martin Squeegee can be found in his office in JULIA CREEK.

Instead, I cautiously, over time, sometimes taking months, buy pieces of land *which I keep*. Sometimes I might sell to a neighbour looking for prims; in Ravenglass the sim, for the longest time I kept that price *up* by selling or buying at $7-8/m.

If I *keep* land to *rent it out* — can you grasp that difference? — I’m not part of the land bubble, as Nobody falsely claimed about me, and land’s factor as a land bubble action is of no interest to me. Unlike other island barons, I simply refuse to grow. I won’t grow under these circumstances. The Lindens have a racket where they constantly lure people into seeing fast money to be made, which they then “reinvest” or “plough back in” to expanding — which simply leaves them hugely overexposed. I’m not interested in that in SL and grow very slowly, periodically pruning back.

Why would I dump hundreds of tenants to sell off my main rental stock in a bubble? Then what? Buy new overpriced land? Wait to see if land prices come down? Why lose all those customers and create instability for my own business and for SL?

So often people who aren’t in business in SL take ready snipes and pot shots and sit on the sidelines hating and laughing and pointing. What do YOU do in SL that entitles you to that kind of crap?

Why would I be pissed off that cheap land is coming? *I’m an end-user, too*. If cheap land is coming, at long last I might be able to pick up a 512 for prim land I need in some of my existing sims, for example to meet the demand for mainland 2048s which I have run out of, or commercial land. I couldn’t justify buying at today’s or even tomorrow’s prices,so if the Lindens whack out a new continent and lower prices, that’s great for me, it means I can go on being a mainland business instead of reluctantly being pushed into more costly private islands.

What’s to take advantage? If I can sell a parcel of a beautiful, sugary waterfront that I loved and was able to get before Anshe made prices ridiculously high by cornering the market, which then unfortunately got clubs, campers, and malls next to it even being awesome Linden-protected waterfront, what of it? I was able to sell to a land baron who sold it to another store. Now I can either buy a new less risky parcel when prices are lower or just tier down, whatever.

No, I raise the problem of the overall Linden tactic of constantly gulling the landbarons and then breaking their backs because it’s immoral, and as some may find when they get class action suits going some day, illegal. It’s nasty. It’s a pretty immoral start to the Metaverse, but I suppose, not unlike other historical advances in technology, like the rail lines financed and built by robber barons.

And stop grizzling Prok. You *know* how this works because you’ve done it before. I suspect you are just pissed off because the cheap land is coming, but, like me, this time round you are reluctant to take advantage, for the same reasons?

That is, of course, until one of the open source groups decides to disable that function.

So, instead of that free experience you sought, or thought should come for only $9.95, instead, at today’s prices, you’re going to have to pay the $9.95, and then buy land for more like the price of your cable bill at $33 US, then buy the 90-day subscription fee for $7.25/month to keep the tier and the $400 Lindens a week stipend will offset that a bit ($5.92).

If it seems like sort of expensive entertainment, I understand. Then it might make sense to rent, at the fraction of that cost, or just fly around until this current real estate bubble bursts, then you’ll get the 512s purchased for about $20 US.

Screw that. I just deleted Second Life from my computer and won’t be bothering to go back.