SL’s Economic Statistics Hold Steady
by Jessica Holyoke on 30/08/08 at 12:20 am
by Jessica Holyoke
Positive Monthly Linden Flow growth stays positive
There are a number of theories flying back and forth regarding the state of the Second Life economy, with some advocating for less regulation as a means to make the economy flourish, and others arguing that the performance of a company is the same thing as a virtual world’s economy.The bottom line for Rivers Run Red, Electric Sheep Company, and even Linden Lab is in that the fortunes of these companies are in no way an economy. Any fiscal measurements of those companies are either a measurement of their success, or the strength of their specific sector. A company’s RL performance is not the same as a virtual world’s economy – or 6 economies — despite what some graphophiliac gadflies might say at great length.
total hours logged – bots breeding like rabbits?
But there is an in-world economy. And according to the Herald’s Economic Watchdog department, while raw Positive Monthly Linden Flow (the number of residents who gained Linden Dollars over a month before land costs are taken out) grew 1.53% over quarter 2, weighted PMLF grew 3.56% over the same time period. Total hours Logged In grew 16.53% over quarter 2.
holding steady at held steady at 0.18 — the QPC index (PMLF per hour logged in)
Looking at the Charts, PMLF growth slowed in Quarter 2 as compared to Quarter 1 2008. Total Hours Logged in still climbed. PMLF as a whole number continued to grow, so people are still making money.
total positive monthly Linden flow climbs
From the numbers, it looks like either more bots are being created or more people are spending less money per user in world, but the net effect is that the economy is stable.
Lord George A. Zimmer IV, High Inquisitor for his Majesty God Emperor Frizzle of Fry CI
Aug 30th, 2008
I like to call the first image the “PN Curve”
IntLibber Brautigan
Aug 30th, 2008
Jessica,
Thank you for confirming what I discussed in my own article. It is clear that the Lindens and over the top raging e-fascists determined to abolish every sort of commerce they dont like off their e-lawn (and other peoples e-lawns whether they like it or not), have killed what used to be a thriving, vibrant, free market economy.
Part of it is the left leaning PTA-fascists like slumlord Prokofy Neva, antiamerican Montana Corleone, other know-nothing nobodies (Fugazi or not), and part is the INGSOC idiots at the LL Ministries of Truth, Love, Peace, and Plenty spreading their reality distortion fields, hate for anybody who isn’t a FICish furry, gridwar inciting intolerance of non-furriness, and dumping of land to destroy the investments of those of us who actually built SL with our capital and hard work.
It’s like, take some British Keynesians and put them in charge of an economy whose basis allows for unlimited fabrication of money and real estate, just what do you expect to get? You had to know basing the three main company offices in San Francisco, Boston, and Britain would result in a staff which was lacking in any business sense or concept of fiscal discipline or economic development.
Hell if they’d based the company in San Jose, Nashua, and Dublin, SL would be a MUCH more different place.
No, LL needs people running the inworld economy with Austrian attitudes like those of Alan Greenspan, Ludwig Von Mises, Milton Friedman, etc.
Weasel Blackadder
Aug 30th, 2008
Intlibber, if you want to rubbish parts of your own country they go right ahead, though I have had occasion to travel to both San Francisco and Boston in order to meet with the the excellent US high-technology companies that are based there. However, please do not slag off Britain as being some sort of business disaster. Keynes has been out of favour here for at least a generation.
Sigmund Leominster
Aug 30th, 2008
@Weasel: I’m sure you’re right on that! The Thatcher Years introduced Friedman’s monetarism to a flailing Keynesian population and had a significant effect on the economy at the time. The depth of the change in policy has had a lasting effect with even the current Labour government having adjusted its economic thinking in order to take power.
Methinks Gordon Brown and folks have now accepted Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” as a useful text book, especially since Smith made his posthumous appearance on the 20 pound note. I think the Second Life(TM) economy would benefit from a little more stroking from Smiths “invisible hand” than it currently has. As an example, while being no personal fan of gambling, I think folks in an economy should be allowed to choose how they distribute their wealth, and if that includes stuffing it into the pockets of casino owners, so be it.
I’d be more concerned about the money supply within SL and how that is affected by people from RL converting real currency into lindens, or the reverse process. The “domestic economy” of SL concerns the shuffling around of the internal lindens; the “international economy” deals with how lindens get converted to other currencies. This will ultimately have an inflationary effect on the internal economy that the “invisible hand” will start pushing.
There IS an economy in SL but it is two-fold: internal and international. And like all economies, too much intereference can stifle real growth.
mootykips
Aug 30th, 2008
I agree with IntLib. “Fuck you I got mine” economics works perfectly in a game where nobody dies of hunger.
Prokofy Neva
Aug 31st, 2008
Jessica forgot to mention that the Lindens mysteriously stopped publishing the break-down of PMLF businesses this last month for some strange reason. The entire chart is removed from the economics page. If you dig into the raw statistics and googledoc files, you can still see the aggregate number, and if you remembered what it was last month, you can conclude it is still growing, but not by much, and you can’t tell if any categories suffered. And don’t forget PMLF numbers don’t include the land business, which is sheer Bolshevik ideology, and don’t include tier payments, which is insanity as well — which they could do for at least half the people who pay Currency Linden to sell Lindens to pay tier.
Re: “Thank you for confirming what I discussed in my own article. It is clear that the Lindens and over the top raging e-fascists determined to abolish every sort of commerce they dont like off their e-lawn (and other peoples e-lawns whether they like it or not), have killed what used to be a thriving, vibrant, free market economy….Part of it is the left leaning PTA-fascists like slumlord Prokofy Neva”
Intlibber is such a loon, completely oblivious to his internal contradictions, as Marx would say. How can I be “left-leaning” *and* a fascist, which is a right-leaning ideology? I’m neither. I don’t belong to the PTA.
I am not a slumlord — does Intlibber pay his tier on time and do his customers have to move out unexpectedly? Blub continues to print lies about me.
And wait a minute, with his goofy extropian techlib wacky ideology, he is for absolutism and extreme “propertarianism” when it comes to ugly 16 m2. You get to do what the fuck you want on your little e-postage stamp. So…what’s up with accusing other people of wanting to get others of their “e-lawns”? As for wanting to affect people on their own e-lawsn, sure do, when it comes to *devaluing all the other properties on the sim*, visual spamming, which is indeed repetitive textures across a sim, not just something in your mail box (duh), and hijacking traffic that is unearned, i.e. by parasiting on land right next to a genuine business that earns its traffic.
You don’t allow people to come on your website and put up ads unless they pay you; in SL, somehow it’s the other way around, I’m supposed to pay extortionist rates to get these freaks off the sim.
Intlibber is out of touch with basic norms of civilization required for thriving capitalism. Ultimately, he wants to parasite off the state, too, as I’ve seen time and again in the G-team meetings.
Weasel Blackadder
Aug 31st, 2008
Good comment from Sigmund, and Intlibber has also made the same point that there is are real problems in SL where LL keep banning the things that make the economy work. To be fair, they are being pushed by external regulation, but if they stop some activities then they have to consider what can replace them.
I think that Mono will have a generally beneficial effect on SL, just making things work quicker makes things possible that were previously impossible. What would be even more transformational would be more pervasive integration with internet protocols, especially HTTP. That would bring web content into SL and make SL a general web access platform. Do that and residents would pretty quickly develop new revenue streams for themselves and deliver growth into the SL economy.
IntLibber Brautigan
Aug 31st, 2008
lol at Prok,
Fascism can be both right or left oriented. Naziism is often described as right wing because of its nationalism, but only by people who completely ignore the socialism of the Nazi state. While Leninisn/Trotskyism was internationalist in orientation, Stalinism, which also is considered leftist for some odd reason, was strictly nationalist exactly like Naziism.
So Proks’ definition of right vs left is purely based on whether one is nationalist or internationalist, an extremely narrow policy metric upon which to base such an evaluation, but is typical of leftists, who take socialism as a given and judge everybody on whether or not they are for one world government.
The rest of us generally judge people on their economics. Marxism is Marxism whether that marxist is for or against internationalism, and Marxism is ALWAYS leftist.
You, Prok, have avowed your undying love and admiration of Barack Obama. This is the Obama who was trained to be a crack community agitator using the Alinsky method (Alinsky was a self confessed leftist-anarchist agitator), by American Marxists like the Reverend Cone, Reverend Wright, among others who are self confessed socialists/marxists. Black Liberation Theology was devised by the VERY white Rev. Cone as a means of injecting Marxism and Marxist revolutionary theory into the African-American community.
So, therefore, as a self avowed follower of Obama, you therefore must endorse his history of using Black Liberation Theology to rally the communities of Hyde Park, which eventually led to him running for Illinois State Assembly, and then for US Senate. Are you, Prok, thus a Marxist sympathizer? What sort are you? You seem to despise Leninism, paranoiacally seeing Leninist Conspiracies everywhere you look. That sort of behavior is positively Stalinist in style.
And Stalin, being a nationalist socialist, is about as close as you can get to being a Nazi, short of being an out and out anti-semite as well.
My phrase “PTA-fascist” is to describe your soft-core fascism as that typical of suburban soccer mom’s everywhere, whose sole political motivation is to do whatever it takes to keep their kids safe, property values up, and minivan air-bags fully inflatable, even to the point of eliminating the US Constitution in the process.
Just as it being the soccer mom’s of America who are destroying things in RL, you and your transportation of soccer mom bolshevism into SL are wrecking things here.
Mony Markova
Sep 3rd, 2008
Yess agree with Siggs, too much interference will spoil the economy, except that well this is a Barbie Economy.
Kudos Jessica for using metrics/per user instead of bulk economy measures since the latter are misleading, also I could suggest to use the “currently logged” numbers and average of those numbers per last month as a more faithful indication of total population, since the accumulative totals of created citizes is a useless metric.
Also (and I know I am asking lots of stuff) another request to Jessica, pls stop using hours connected as an Economic measure, that is a social activity measure not an economical one. I can be logged one hour per week and trade lots of money, or be logged all week and live our of free servers.
Cheers.