Needless to say, the auctions for land at Central Grid are totally speculative — since nobody is able to deploy any sort of highly-interactive content on OpenSim-run grids yet (scripting is partially supported), and inventory transfers between avatars don’t work

So it’s too soon to say that all the OpenSim-based grids are “hurting LL’s economy”… they will, eventually, as OpenSim slowly improves and acquires all features of the LL-run grid. But this is something that will take a couple of years yet… and *then* we can measure the impact it might have on LL!

Alas, Zero Linden has already announced that LL is planning a common effort to join all these grids… so by the time OpenSim becomes “mature” enough to run real alternatives to LL’s own grid, it might happen on an already-integrated SL-compatible metaverse

LL has lately been taking their sweet time processing payments. They take the full 5 business days now. That means you get your money after 7 days, or 8 days if you posted your payment late into the first day. Some content creators I have talked to are now refusing to accept lindens for jobs and only deal with paypal directly.

Though content creators represent only a small number of the people, they represent a large margin of the economy. If more of them are recently starting to shy away from accepting lindens, it would be reflected by an apparent slight slippage in “the strength of the economy based on the people who use it” when you are looking strictly at LL’s figures.

One way to cause a recession for sure is irresponsible media coverage and fear mongering. Enjoy your aids.

LL has lately been taking their sweet time processing payments (5 full working days, which means you might get your money after 7-8 days counting weekends). Some content creators I’ve talked to have started refusing to take Lindens for jobs and instead do paypal directly. While this represents only a small margin of overall users, content creators make the most money and this could explain why “the strength of the economy based on the people who use it have only slightly slipped.”

The total number of users will always rise and fall periodically but it’s the strength of the economy based on the people who use it that matters and whether money is changing hands or not is not always apparent.

Why would you put money in a box like this, giving it to another person through a prim who might take it? Why wouldn’t you just put it in PayPal money market?

“I’d have it all, if it weren’t for those pesky Leninists……”

Se voce quer saber se falo portugues so tem que viajar pro meu sim e fala comigo! Mas, provavelmente ela nunca vai chegar ai por causa da realidade que ela so’ fala merda e nao atualmente faca nada com valor. Que pena que a vida dela e’ gastado em nada importante.

As far as Mony, I totally agree that this is a puzzle. Unfortunately LL doesn’t exactly give us all the pieces to work with so the picture tends to stay incomplete.

As far as non-english speakers and all that, all I’m trying to say is that there are more dynamics to consider than just the people that we see everyday. You have to take into account all the economic dynamics in different countries on an individual basis if you are to understand the world economy. It would be foolish to deny that one country’s progress from 3rd world to 1st world (terms I find somewhat ethnocentric) would have an effect on the overall numbers of the world economy. In SL, this means the growth of Brazilians in SL (for example) and the comparatively recent boom in money circulating in that community would definitely have an effect on SL’s overall economic numbers and should be taken into consideration when looking at this puzzle.

Given the complexity of this topic I would refrain only to comment on the metrics to determine if there is a recession and to measure the size of the economy. Comments of socio-logical nature, os share of wealth among the classes and nationalities, well, I mean -too deep for my poor little brain- I am only trying to process the metrics issue at this point.

My 2 cents say that TOTAL dollars converted to lindens DIVIDED by active population… in a given time has to be the best metric to measure the size of the economy…

This will give you $Lindens in world per capita… u can also use the same metric without diving it by total active population… giving you a total lindens in the marketplace, but since there are new people coming in… the econmy tends to have a growth driven by population growth. This is why to meausre its behavior you need PER CAPITA measures. Dont loose your sleep if an unknown number of them are ALTs. Ok instead of population divide it by unique IP addresses if u can get that data…

What happens to that money inside the system? It does not matter, it is only a metric, only an indicator, not a perfect know-it all follow-up all measure. Economists and business analyist use metrics to help determine an unknown situation… and determine the health of the economy… or best strategies…a shared and understood metric is what is needed, even if it is imperfect.

I bet there is NO recession in SL. Maybe there is a lower total spending per capita… now that is interesting for business owners, but again terms will be confussing, we are in baby-diapers here.

By the way to those internationally interested… I am not english speaker an not a U.S. national, I dont get why that matters anyhow… we are talking economics, no socio-economics, dont complicate your self over an already complex matter.

Cheers anyway

Meanwhile, deposits at ACE have increased by 2.3 times since the bank interest ban. The number of listed companies has grown to 10, and our trading volumes have increased massively. The investing public is recovering, and they value that ACE was prescient in establishing its zero interest, full reserve, no withdrawal limits policy from its inception.