By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
My new name for "Mainland" is "Maimland" -- for all the reasons you know or will find out soon enough.
Flea Yatsenko is one of those ancient oldbie nuisances now way more active on the forums, possibly because he lost a RL job or retired or who-the-hell-knows. Like most people in SL, he is anonymous. He might be the old account of a later Linden -- I've heard that rumour about him but I know which Lindens he is NOT because I know the old alts of a few Lindens -- if that's any help.
FYI for those who go WAY back: He is NOT Blue Linden's old alt, who is Fleabite Beach -- similar name but different person AFAIK (as I've already explained to one person).
(I've never believed much in the "Prim Tax Revolt" hagiography and Founding Fathers' Story as a result - it was engineered by some Lindens, against other Lindens, in my view.)
Flea Yatsenko might be an old Linden alt but I actually don't think so as old Lindens tend to get completely clear of SL (except, of course, for Patch Linden). He might be a former Linden still on the grid who was once an avid oldbie user and was hired for a time by the Lab and then let go (you find people like that) but I actually don't think so, either. But he is an oldbie curmudgeon of the values of his 2007 birthdate which means undying hatred and contempt for "land barons" so I'm happy to fight him regularly on the forums where he posts smug assholery daily now. He is the kind of oldbie that KEEPS "Phoenix Preview Group" as one of his groups on his profile because he loved Phoenix. I don't. Nor Firestorm, its bastard child.
Flea has a small inworld store on half an island named Cougar (he either rents half or owns the whole island and rents out the OTHER half, I don't know) -- he has an MP store and sell builders' supplies in full perm which I personally will never buy as they tend towards "sewers" and "caves" as he himself notes.
Given that Flea is on an island as a renter or owner himself, he has no use for Mainland nor concern for it. The end. He feels himself vastly superior, as a user of Blender and maker of sewer parts, to any other schmo who even buys his FP stuff to "create" their own stuff.
Flea describes himself as "Lower 30s, from midwest USA. 3dArtist and programmer."
He may have written that back in 2007 and never corrected it -- I find a lot of that. People who are from the midwest and write "USA" instead of "US" tend to be Trump voters, but surprise me. He's like virulently against AI if he is a "3D artist". As a programmer, chances are good that he belongs to the high-asshole-quotient of SL made of people who HATE LANDOWNERS, HATE GATCHA AND BREEDABLES, HATE COMMERCE BY OTHER PEOPLE ("no business but my business") and fit many other cliches of this type of persona.
Indeed they do think that SL should be a RenFaire with themselves at the apex of this severe triangle and they imagine the world would "thrive" if they got rid of all those other people who weren't edgy enough and Apocalyptic enough to buy full-perm sewer parts.
Why do I make up this composite character analysis of "Flea"? Why do I push back against his "You think you know me but you don't and don't you know who I AM!" sort of nonsense posted to me on the forums?
Because...everything he posts on the forums is consistent with this type of person. People who joined SL "for creativity" who view themselves as superior beings just by their profession -- yet suffer from the large dose of poor self esteem and insecurity common to Code-Cave Nation -- and now they, too, are losing their jobs to AI. Some of them have really, really gone off the deepend in recent years and of course they are busy ruining our country now getting into the wires at the White House.
Yet...despite all his "advantages," somehow, I think the sewer that the event cartel SL Syndicate built for their "scoop 'n poop" hunt was NOT made of Flea's stuff, but I could be wrong and can't confirm because it's over and I avoided it, anyways.
Here's Flea's comment, in the huge LindEx thread, and my reply as this is the sort of thing that gets pulled. The discussion is about why the Linden dollar is devalued considerably now, and whether the Lindens are doing this consciously (of course they are, yet fanboyz continue to doubt):
I think it might be intentional to try and shift more towards a commerce based economy. It hurts land owners who collect rent in L$ the most and I think it's encouraging people to spend more L$ by making it cheaper to buy L$. I think merchants who embraced PBR are doing pretty well (but it does depend on what they sell since some items benefit a lot more from PBR than others), and a better buy rate for L$ is basically reduced buying fees for people buying. Merchants can charge more if they are adding PBR since they no longer have much competition since there's so much baked or raw texture only stuff on SLMP.
Landlords don't have much to offer if they want to raise their prices, because people will go for the cheapest land, so they are kind of locked in. Land prices are kind of stuck no matter what the L$ does since it's very difficult to add value to land to encourage people to spend more. They want the most LI for the least L$ and that's out of a landlord's control.
That said if this is intentional, either fully or partly, LL should increase the LI of sims so land owners can raise their prices to be more in line with the changing L$.
XXX
My reply:
Yes, it's intentional.
But land is commerce, too, and this shift isn't going to produce the desired results, so gleefully rejoicing in it as it kills off a hated class in the society is premature.
Rather than encouraging more people to spend money, what we see are people LEAVING and CASHING OUT to LEAVE. I see this DAILY among my tenants whom I interview. I think other people don't have this feedback and input from the grid and therefore cherish all kinds of illusions about it. I do not.
You have an awful lot of big ideas about land rentals for someone who is NOT in the rentals business.
Landlords have plenty to offer besides lower and lower prices or more and more prims. Depending on the person and the offer, there is actually even now a lot of diversity in this space and even on the Maimland, as I now call it. Despite even the harshest conditions thrown at them, smallholders do continue to thrive in important ways.
Linden policies starting from PBR and continuing to subscription perks unrelated to Maimland -- except for some appalling giveaways to the high-buying sailing community -- have contributed to the stampede OUT of SL COMPLETELY (that's what you and others need to grasp); to Bellisseria (but with churn, not increase in subscription sales) or even to a homestead rental or ownership, now decoupled from islands (which doesn't make up for swathes of abandoned Mainland YET, but maybe that's the end goal.)
To pretend that it is "very difficult to add value to land" is to undermine the entire concept of secondary rentals -- which is of course, what you and other oldbies in particular -- and many Lindens -- want to do, I get it. That is your mission. So even if I describe in lavish detail how this is done or not done, what the variety is in this space, it won't mitigate your prejudice in this regard so I will put it on my blog, rather than here, where you will only misconstrue it as "a personal attack" and AR it -- and get the AR to stick.
People do not need more prims, and offering more primmage on Maimland will not save it because only political will can save it with both an enforcement of the TOS and use of prudential judgement on the Lindens' part.
No one uses the prims they have -- it is extremely rare. If you cut the number of sims you own as I have in recent years, curiously, you only get MORE customers if you offer CHEAPER rentals with MORE variation as to the latest skyboxes etc. MORE UNPAID WORK.
The Lindens -- for now -- have to keep the land sales model that provides the most revenue for them. Obviously on the ever-declining number of sims, the 25,000 or so consists of at least 10,000 islands that provide the bulk of revenue for LL. Then comes homesteads and now Bellisseria -- the tipping point where Bellisseria *regions* (although not possibly *end owners of Bellisseria parcels*) now outpace the Mainland. Bellisseria is the green growing tip of SL and its best product. You can't sail off an island. Therefore the Lindens are busy with "Mainland Expansion Project" adding to certain large island dealers' holdings with sealanes to the Mainland -- which also have the effect of diluting the value of the Blake Sea, and opening up new but still expensive OTHER sailing land ultimately to INCREASE sales of highy-expensive prime sailing land which adds to the economy and fees for LL on cashout. This has the Lindens' concentration now -- not some interior nothing flatland with no roads or water that gets abandoned.
At the Maimland Appreciation Society, I have a sign: "WAIT HERE. I HAVE GONE FOR HELP." But everyone landing there and getting the freebies knows I am not coming back. Yes, I did return yesterday to pick up a cat I no longer want to feed.
Despite its decline, the Maimland is still SOME revenue that the Lindens don't want to just delete like they did the old Linden Homes until they can think what to do. For now, they are trying something new: putting abandoned directly to sale. They need to do more of this. It might work.
What many don't grasp about the hated landlords' sector is that includes your friends, just trying to offset their costs by renting YOU a piece of their dream. It includes your favourite breedables auctioneers who need big parcels where they can hijack a Mainland sim with 20-40 visitors nightly. It includes transportation games and spam cars you never play and never use but still pay tier -- even as they force OTHER tier-payers off the sims they invade.
A lot of landlords are forced to charge LESS than the tier they pay. Obviously they can't do that for long but you'd be surprised at the number of Odd Hobbyists (as I call them -- increasingly, I am one of them) who don't mind/are now forced into paying tier they only offset. Obviously a poor person like me can't do this for long! But others can because maybe they have six-figure incomes, who knows. Music venues. Experiments in building. Various RP games involving armed forces. Adult clubs. You name it, people have it -- and they put out rentals, or vendors, to offset costs. They are Governor Linden's children like all of us on Maimland and deserve to live, too (unlike other land dealers, I don' believe in trying to vilify, incite hatred, or attack people who are simply not hardcore land dealers -- who must make back every auction pay with fierce tactics). I advise not playing the auction.
In order to have a viable society, there has to be a diversity of entrees into the economy. It can't be all content creators at the very top who are constantly rewarded and feted and ushered into special private sessions with the CEO. Or it can, but even the Lindens grasp that this is not enough because those people need CUSTOMERS. The customers have to have some kind of land where they show off all the stuff they buy, whether outfits or furniture or homes or breedables. Land may only be a bracket for content, as Philip conceives it (he wanted to make it a flat, fixed price like land in The Sims Online) but in fact, owners add value in all kinds of ways, location adds value, Linden protection adds value, etc. And that's a good thing because if only a narrow sector of people at the top add value, the society declines. That's why the secondary economy is important as well -- so people can offset costs.
The different philosophies that infuse the Lindens, their closest cohorts, and some top people in the economy range from technocommunism to technolibertarianism to old Labour Party socialism to Curtis Yarvin's neoreactionary philosophy that actually draws from an old essay on Linux, still ardently beloved by some on our grid. Let 100 schools of thought contend, even if 1,000 flowers cannot bloom.
XXX
This is also a wonderful takedown in this thread by the Count of the odious Teresa Tennyson (whom I have blocked, but I see in his response).
What were you doing in the late 20-teens, when not only was the exchange rate worse for business people, but land costs from Linden Lab were higher?
Well dear, myself and other Estates were closing down dozens and hundreds of private islands because it was not longer worth it to keep them around. In response Linden Lab aka Altberg came up with the buy down system for full sims and Homestead islands so that private Estates would have a normal profit margin and this would hopefully halt the never ending decline of sim closures on the grid.
That is what was happening in the late 2010's. The grid went from 36000 regions to 27000 regions. What joy we had, what money was lost. What hate towards Linden Lab came from it.
Also you forget that in the past during 2010's Second Life had much more active users compared to now so the buy pressure for land was higher compared to these days. This made it that during those times Estates could function on smaller margins.
You have no idea how many private Estate companies have collapsed or how they were damaged by Linden Lab policy over the years. Hundreds of them. Some were big, some were small.
The thread is not about the general economy or land market but about the Linden Dollar rate. I do not see what is hard to understand that businesses want a stable Linden Dollar currency. We pay incredible heavy taxes on the Linden Dollar token so the least the platform provider can do is to properly manage its currency.
XXX
Imagine being someone who would CELEBRATE intentionality meant to harm rentals agencies -- which this smug asshole is doing from his armchair warrior's couch.
I think the Lindens are consciously evil, but sometimes unconsciously evil and even when intentionally malign, they are never as intentionally malign as their own fanboyz.