Term Limits for Babbage - A change of management.

[Shaunathan Sprocket]

It has been an exciting and challenging time running a city-state for the past 2 years. I see entirely why George Washington set the 2 year term limit in motion within the United States. After two years you feel exhausted in a way that's practically impossible to describe. Even the will to log in seems to not be there for me. I want new challenges, I want to move on. Also I think New Babbage deserves better than my absence. It's time for a new mayor. I hereby invoke a 2 year precedent.

Sadly, it's not as easy as hosting an election. New Babbage is an asset. It is profitable. And it is indeed worth something. It would also be a thoughtless act to simply sell to the highest bidder. Everyone here deserves more than that. I want to sell to someone who has vision, someone who will not only maintain what we have, but strive to grow and evolve it further. We have a unique situation.

Currently, a brand new (and vacant as a desert) sim costs someone $1000 USD to purchase and $295 USD per month to keep. New Babbage is 6 sims of thriving community and active renters, and to use an analogy, an appartment full of renters is worth more than an empty building. I am willing to sell New Babbage to someone for $6,000.00 USD, However there are some strings attached. I want the people of New Babbage to approve you.

If you are interested in buying New Babbage there is nothing I can do to "make" you continue New Babbage. Legally, you could wipe the sims, tell everyone to leave, and build a gorean wonderland (no offense to any who enjoy Gor). But, by having the land owners of New Babbage approve you, I think there's a good chance you'll take New Babbage on a path to greatness.

If you fancy yourself a mayor. If you think you can lead New Babbage, I invite you to post on a second thread I have started "New Babbage Election". Please go there and make your case to the people of New Babbage. Tell them what you will do as Mayor of New Babbage. PLEASE remember, if you win the election, you will have to pay me $6,000.00 USD for New Babbage so only post if you are serious please.

This thread is for any reaction, but only post on the "New Babbage Election" thread if you want to be the mayor. I ask the forum mods to keep this enforced. I think we can have an election before Valentine's Day. After we have a New Mayor, I'd like to share with everyone what I plan to be doing with my time, I think you will all approve.

IF YOU WANT TO RUN: If you are elected, and I receive payment in full. I will provide a "change of power" peroid where I'll make sure you have all the items, contacts, and permissions so that you can run New Babbage.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VOTE: You must be a New Babbage landholder with a positive number of days remaining in the rental board by January 25th. The size of your parcel or number of parcels you own does not matter. You simply must own a parcel of land by Jan. 25th. If I am not available you may do land deals through Charlene Trudeau, as she is authorized by me to sell land in New Babbage on my behalf.

For quick reference the place for campaign platforms is here:
http://newbabbage.ning.com/forum/topics/new-babbage-election

[Capt. Red Llewellyn]

ditto. to what Miss Viv said and all the eloquent people above....home...community...and the people. thank you for creating this land of ours and your time nurturing it as it grew into something that i think is special and unique on the grid and i look forward optimistically to the next chapter in our beloved sooty city.
~Red

[Shaunathan Sprocket]

I'm not burnt out as such...
However, I'm doing something VERY big with Brass Goggles, but that's a secret for right now, what isn't a secret is that I need free time, and I need some capital :)

[Remington Thursday]

See, now THAT makes sense. I can loan ya twenty bucks. How's that? ;)

[Shaunathan Sprocket]

How about 6k? :D

[Moses Mureaux]

I've only known you for a short while Shaun, but but for that time I'll say I've been glad to have known you. And while I would be sorry to see you go, I certainly wish you the best in your future prospects. New Babbage is a wonderful community, full of heart and spirit, which I am glad to call my Second Life home. And for that, you have my thanks.

[Kandace Commons]

I've talked to a lot of people about this over the last few days, but there's a couple things I'd like to say now that it's public:

I'm glad to see you came down from $8125 to $6000, which is more reasonable. The way your post reads, however, is that you're using the value of the sims to justify $6000, when in fact they're not worth anything, and could be considered to be worth actually negative values, making them a liability, not an asset. A brand new sim does indeed cost $1000, but you can only ever resell it for $900, so it's immediately a liability as soon as it's purchased, and most of Babbage's sims were purchased at the $1675 level, and can still only be sold for $900, so they're even more of a liability. If Babbage ever needed to be liquidated for any reason, and the existing residents were repaid their original investment (purchase price of land), the Mayor at that time would actually be paying out more than what the sims could be sold for. In other words, assuming best case, you get $900 for liquidating a sim, but to repay the investors you may need to shell out $1000 or more. Obviously this varies with each simulator, but none of them are assets. At BEST they're break-even, so they're a $0 asset, which is exactly what you have invested in the actual simulators as well since you pre-sell them all.

But it's true that the renters are worth something, so what's really being sold is a brand and entrenched renters. Whether that's worth $6000 I guess is an entirely subjective opinion on the part of individual buyers. Just keep in mind that you're looking at most likely a full year to make back the purchase price of Babbage with Babbage's current profit, before it's really profit. Most of the people I've talked to have pegged real value between $3000-$4500, especially everyone I know in the same business as Shaun, including leaders of other much larger estates. The people who seem to think that $8125 was a good deal have no experience in the SL land industry. My personal opinion is in the $2500-$3000 camp.

The other thing I'd like to address is that I've heard a lot of people who can't individually afford Babbage talking about forming coalitions to buy it. Personally, I think this is a horrific idea that will doom Babbage. The way Linden Lab has things set up, there can only be one actual owner of Babbage, one account that has ultimate power. All sims are a dictatorship in SL regardless of what agreements you may have in place. The only thing I can see coming from a coalition is bickering. I'd give it 24 hours before the members of the coalition had disagreements about policy decisions and other issues. It would be confusing for the residents, having no 'ultimate authority' and I think it will cause more problems than it could ever hope to solve. Everything could be done based on popular vote of the coalition members I suppose, but this is a mind-bogglingly tedious process, and all it takes is for one person to get pissed off and hijack total power. It's happened hundreds of times in other places. This is what tore Neualtenburg apart, for example, Babbage's one-time sister city. They pretended they had a democracy until the person who actually owned the sim according to LL got pissed off and enacted martial law. It ruptured and split into two, with one half realizing the 'democracy' was a failure and refounding Neaultenburg under different ideals on the mainland, and the other half changing their name and still pretending like they aren't a farce. Joint ownership also ripped Rivet Town apart, as another example. Maybe there's a group of mind-boggling Saint-like people out there who could avoid this, but I doubt it, I really do. Everyone here is human, and sooner or later we're going to piss each other off.

--Kandace

[Kandace Commons]

New maths: Talking to another estate owner about the fact that you basically eat the $1770 first month tier for Babbage, making it in effect cost $1770 more, means the same should you have to liquidate Babbage. So in reality you can't sell a sim for $900, the most you can sell it for is about $700, but you lose $100 in a transfer fee to LL, so you only make $600 from selling a used region, at most, when your residents invested $1000 in it originally.

That means every sim in New Babbage is several hundreds dollars upside down on its value, they're huge liabilities. To liquidate, you'd make $600 per sim in profit at BEST, but have to pay $1000 or more to buy out the residents in them. So at best, Babbage is a $2400 liability. (6 sims x $400)

[Kandace Commons]

Another point...

There's no information in your post. Are you wanting people who want accounting/business information about Babbage to ask you privately? Such as monthly profit and that sort of thing. There's not much in the way of information to go on here other than $6000, which is meaningless without other data to go along with it.

[TriloByte Zanzibar]

It's hard to tell if you're just ripping on the original post or trying to get the price down further... either case, the posts say a lot.

[Kandace Commons]

No, it actually says nothing. Nobody with an ounce of sense would buy Babbage before 'inspecting the books' so to speak. That's what my point is, I'm not ripping, I'm saying if he really wants serious bidders, he needs to have some avenue for laying that out on the table. If that's in private, that's fine, but it needs to be available. You can't say whether $6000 is a good or bad price if you don't know the basics, like how much monthly profit Babbage earns, how long to make back that investment. With no information regarding ROI, that post is all hot air.

[Ceejay Writer]

I'm letting Kandace's replies stand. Regardless of intent, there's good points being made. Anyone willing to buy Babbage SHOULD know what they are getting into, and should be asking these questions, of themselves and otherwise.

[Kandace Commons]

Thank you. I'm not trying to cause problems here, I have serious issues with Shaun as everyone knows, but I do still have a great deal of affection for Babbage and many if its residents. I think under the circumstances that Shaun stepping down is the best thing that could happen to it, and I'd like to see it carry on, but this is not an uncomplicated process. There's a lot of concerns here that no-one else seems willing to bring up. Shaun told me he was taking so long to post because I'd criticize him for having a crappy showing on the forum, and he's right, and that's what I'm doing. There is so much left unsaid by this post that it almost says nothing at all.