A chart of information for the CDSL 24-01 conversation

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Sudane Erato
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A chart of information for the CDSL 24-01 conversation

Post by Sudane Erato »

At the meeting the other day when some citizens gathered to discuss possibly revising the law about what to do if a sim is faring very badly financially, Bags made the proposal to make action dependent on a sim failing to take in 75% of its cost for 3 months and for the estate as a whole to fail to take in at least 90% of its cost for 3 months. That's a lot of numbers, so I made the proposal to create a chart and everyone could examine that would keep track of these numbers. So I have. You can see it here:

Now, nothing is as simple as we'd like to make it, so its very important to reveal, and discuss, a number of assumptions that we make in showing a chart like this. Some of them I've recorded right there below the numbers.

1) This chart is intended to show ONLY the ratio, or percentage, between our COST of each sim and the amount of tier that we're collecting on each sim. No other expenses of the community are factored in here.

2) When I say the amount that we're collecting, this is not the ACTUAL amount of money we get each month from each sim. This is the amount of money that each tier box is charging its owner each month, and it can be very different from the amount that owner pays that month. Two things could make this different. One, the owner may be behind in their tier and simply not paying. That isn't shown here. Two, the owner could have already paid for this month, maybe months ago. They don't owe tier, because we already have it. That isn't shown here either.

Why are the differences in Item 2 not too important? Well, let me explain them separately, because they are different.

1) If a citizen is behind on their tier, community policy gives them not very much time to pay up or get out. At any given time the amount of arrears is very very low compared to the total amount collected each month. One of two things happen. Either they pay up, which collects the missing tier, or they get ejected from the parcel and the tierbox becomes empty, meaning it then shows up on our chart. So, yes, the amount we lose to arrearages is not zero, and might be a small adjustment on the chart numbers (maybe sometime I'll figure out what that adjustment is), but its quite small.

2) If a citizen is ahead on their tier, and therefore pays nothing into their tierbox on a given month, thereby causing our income that month in our financial reports to be less, there's nothing lost there! We have their money already. Its in the bank, collected ahead of time. There is no adjustment needed for that situation.

Now I love to visualize data if I can, and this data gave me the perfect opportunity to do so. On the graph, you can easily get a feeling for the overall picture of the financial health of the CDS, since the cost of our sims and the tier revenue we collect are the overwhelming majority of our finances. We are not hugely profitable... there is no question about that. But we are also not hemorrhaging money. We are stably break-even. Sadly, I don't have the tier box data from earlier than last October, so we'll want to watch this chart as I add to it each month going forward. To get more history, we'd need to look at numbers collected in the financial reports, the actual monthly income and expense. That's not available broken out by sim.

Oh, when looking at the graph, do keep in mind that the data flows to the left... the most recent bar is on the left. That's because when I add a new month, I add it on the left, and push all the older data rightward. A chart always opens on the left, and one usually wants to see the most recent info... which will be to the left.

Another thing to keep in mind. These numbers are considerably affected by the exchange rate of L$s to US$s. For the February report that was 251 (in fact the number changes constantly). We pay tier to LL in US$s, but we collect tier from our citizens in L$s, so the exchange rate is central. Recently its varied from about 245 to almost 260, while, at this time, the rates we charge for land do not vary at all. So that exchange rate has an important impact on our profitability, especially since we hover around break-even.

Sudane................................

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Re: A chart of information for the CDSL 24-01 conversation

Post by Rosie Gray »

Thank you for this informative post, Sudane. Food for thought!

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Re: A chart of information for the CDSL 24-01 conversation

Post by Guillaume Mistwalker »

Thank you for this, Sudane. I am worried about you constantly getting more work to do, but I am sure everyone appreciates it.

If we have this sort of information at the time when we are most desperate, it would be useful. But is there anyway to reconstruct this information after the fact? Where did the information, which this graph is based on, come from?--from Casper?

This seems to suggest, to me, that the plan for the sims would be to get rid of the lowest common denominator when the CDS is in an especially precarious position, but determining that "precarious position" seems to me to be best left up to political decision-making than to a law in which mandates a certain threshold (which we might not recognise or remember at the time).

Bagheera's plan seems to suggest to me that the sim which earns 75% for three months is (more or less) an outlier and is bringing the rest of the estate down--though that is just what it implies to me, it could also be that the sims are consistently earning 90% and this one has 75%. But, what do we do if all of our sims are earning 90% and we simply can't discern which one is the "problem" sim? In other words, what do we do when there really is no "lowest common denominator"?

I suppose we can all be cautious and plan. We all want to plan for this eventuality and I think we should propose guidelines and seek to ensure that the RA has a role to play when the decision comes to get rid of a sim, but at the same time I think it is best that we recognise that there ought to be room for some emergency politicking. Here I take some inspiration from Cicero, who argued that the Republic was able to be flexible to meet any emergency or demand: "Salus populi suprema lex esto" ("The welfare of the people must be the highest law.")

The problem for him was Caesar and his damned "dignity"...

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Re: A chart of information for the CDSL 24-01 conversation

Post by Sudane Erato »

Guillaume Mistwalker wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:19 am

If we have this sort of information at the time when we are most desperate, it would be useful. But is there anyway to reconstruct this information after the fact? Where did the information, which this graph is based on, come from?--from Casper?

This information ultimately derives from the Casper website, where it is recorded who occupies which box. The info is copied and pasted from there into our spreadsheets and, measured against a list we keep of all parcels and their tierboxes (the infamous Master Parcel List), the info shown on this chart and graph is extracted.

There is no way to get the information after the fact. The info is part of what we collect each time for the census, since it records the status and owner of each tierbox. We must simply clip and paste it each time, and then preserve the data we need in a sheet like this one.

But I think that if we do this regularly (and now that I have it set up, it's an utterly routine part of my monthly reporting) we will see very clearly how each separate sim performs over time. We might even have a year of advance notice as we see a sim slipping towards the status that Bags' proposal defines. We're nowhere's near it now, as you can see from this graph.

Sudane............................

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Re: A chart of information for the CDSL 24-01 conversation

Post by Bagheera »

Guillaume Mistwalker wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:19 am

Bagheera's plan seems to suggest to me that the sim which earns 75% for three months is (more or less) an outlier and is bringing the rest of the estate down--though that is just what it implies to me, it could also be that the sims are consistently earning 90% and this one has 75%. But, what do we do if all of our sims are earning 90% and we simply can't discern which one is the "problem" sim? In other words, what do we do when there really is no "lowest common denominator"?

When I made that "proposal," I tried to make clear it was just supposed to be a guideline towards furthering more discussion. I made up those percentages on the fly as a sort of demonstration of the direction my own thinking was going...but I hadn't crunched any numbers so it wasn't intended to be a definitive solution.

Gaius, you have just identified a hole in my logic - which is GOOD! - so yes please, what DO we DO when there really is no lowest common denominator?

Thank you Sudane, for all your hard work. This is great :)

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Re: A chart of information for the CDSL 24-01 conversation

Post by Guillaume Mistwalker »

I do not know what we do, Bagheera, and I am not sure if we can or should try to get to that. But I think we should deal with principles, and the largest principle I have been pointing at--and the one which I think others have agreed with--is that the RA should be the body which ultimately makes the final decision about a matter of such importance. It would obviously be a matter which would need to be debated and considered gravely, but otherwise I don't think I have a solution.

One option is to include a proposal for when there is no least common denominator, but I don't think we can come up with a "one size fits all" solution in the law. As difficult as this is, I think it is best for us to entrust future generations of RA members and citizens (hell, I am talking about us in the future) are able to come to a sound and reasonable conclusion.

That said, I think we should still have a framework in the law that can be referenced by future generations (or future us) that spells out what we should do in circumstances like this, where there is one sim that is bringing the estate down, and in circumstances where we have not a lot of money left in reserves.

Gaius Nebuliens Curio (Guillaume Mistwalker)
si enim pecunias aequari non placet, si ingenia omnium paria esse non possunt, iura certe paria debent esse eorum inter se, qui sunt cives in eadem re publica. (Cic. De Rep. 1.32.49)
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