Have to keep that RA busy!!
I make here a modest proposal. In my mind this is a no-brainer... but... in consideration of varied opinions, I'm perfectly happy to discuss, and analyze, various points of view on this. But I am most anxious that this proposal for change not sink out of community awareness.
Some time ago Linden Lab (our illustrious arch-landlord) made a surprising proposal (this was at the same time that they also made the surprising offer to allow us to purchase our discounted tier status AND they increased our sim capacity to 20,000 prims from 15,000... jeez... they must have chanced upon some special kool-aid brew...). This was that for an additional US$30/month, they would equip any *full* sim with 30,000 prims, from the current 20,000. We pay now US$195/month for our full sims. Taking this step would mean our month rate would increase to US$225, a 15% increase. For that cost, we would receive a 50% increase in the number of prims on the full sim.
For the record, for those not immersed in this subject in their day-to-day thoughts, our full sims are Neufreistadt, Colonia Nova, Alpine Meadow and Locus Amoenus. Monastery and Friedsee are homestead sims and are not eligible for this change.
It should be firmly noted that our economic underpining is our land. And land = prims... in other words, there is a direct mathematical relationship between the number of square meters that the citizen owns and the number of prims (more properly now called "Land Impact Units"... whew!) that that sized land enables them to use. On Neufreistadt, right now, there are approximately 31 prims supplied by each 100 square meters of land (the calculation is simple... 20,000 prims evenly distributed over 65,536 square meters of land = 0.31 per square meter). Right now, we charge L$5.8 per month for each of those prims (on Neufreistadt).
I'm going to use the very first parcel on our master parcel list in Neufreistadt as an example. 1600 Catfahrt has 336 square meters and contains 103 prims. At L$5.8/month/prim, the owner of 1600 Catfahrt pays L$595/month.
If we were to accept the Linden Lab offer and install on Neufreistadt 30,000 prims, 1600 Catfahrt would then contain 154 prims. If we kept the same rate/prim that we charged owners, their tier would raise to L$893/month. So by that calculation, for a cost to the community of an additional 15%, we would increase our revenues by 50% !!
But I'm not going to propose that. Some people might rightly complain that owners may not be able to bear the additional costs, even if they DO get more prims for their parcel.
Instead, I offer the following proposal. I suggest that we accept the Linden Lab offer for Neufreistadt and Colonia Nova (we can do AM and LA later when we see how this works out) and accept the increase in our monthly expenses of US$30 for each of these sims. In addition, I suggest that we LOWER the rate/prim that we charge each owner on those two sims by 16%... to L$5.0/prim/month. So the owner of 1600 Catfahrt will indeed see an increase because of their 51 newly found prims, but the increase will only be 29%, to L$770/month.
The net benefit of this step is that the owner will get MORE prims for a LOWER rate/prim, and the community will collect MORE money.
Please understand. I am NOT waving smoke and mirrors here. These are real numbers, based on the absolute understanding that the economic basis of the SL economy is prims, and their cost. The LL offer LOWERS the cost/prim for full sims. We should take advantage of this opportunity.
Sudane.........................