Newbie Issues: How Can You Buy Land When Linden Exchange Rates Won't Let You?

I've seen this before, but today I had a reminder. A relatively new person to SecondLife had come to Sentience (Sentience 97,127) and was interested in buying some land. We talked about the covenant, tier, and other things - and he decided to purchase a plot of land for 10,000 Linden dollars.

No problem, right? Wrong. The Billing and Trading Limits won't let him buy enough Linden dollars to purchase the land. I worked out something with him until he can afford the land, but with land prices on mainland as they are (about the same, if not more expensive right now) even a 512 m² plot is above the daily Linden Lab exchange limits for new people. Their answer so far has been to flood the market with simulators, which is probably costing them a pretty penny - and is still not effective.

On Mainland and Sims

The market is larger than [w:Linden Lab], and the cost of flooding the market with 400 simulators a month is thought provoking. Consider that on mainland, there are 4 simulators per server. Therefore, 400 simulators means 100 servers per month being added to the network. Consider the load this puts on the network as well, with presences over more and more servers!

If a server costs $4,000 US, 100 servers a month is... $400,000 US/month.

Remember First Land?

First Land, where a new person could buy a plot for 512 Linden dollars (1 Linden dollar per square meter) allowed new people a cost effective chance to own land almost immediately. I did it. So have many others. But some residents abused the system, creating alternate accounts and reselling first land at a healthy profit.

What is the answer?

There is no easy answer. For Linden Lab to get premium account signups, people have to be able to buy land. First Land was a great mechanism for this, but there is no question that it was abused. Still - shouldn't the trading limits reflect the change such that new people can buy land if and when they choose to? I would think and hope so.

My own experience with trying to increase my trading limits over the last 3 months have been less than stellar, and even when I spoke with Linden Lab representatives (and was shoved off on Lewis PR) I couldn't get a straight answer as to how it was decided when limits would be increased for individuals. And this was for research on Making Your Mark in Second Life: Business, Land, and Money - it wasn't for a simple blog entry.

So what will it be? How will Linden Lab fix this issue? With Voice? With sculptie prims? Or by addressing problems that affect the community - and their own bottom line?