Buying used/Renting games = Piracy

[icefaii]

I am an economic major in my last semester and this is my point of view.

People that argue buying used game help employment seem to forget that the money being saved up from piracy usually only ends up in two places: 1.) Banks. 2.) Consumption in other products. Regarding to the first point, those that knows a bit of economics should know the positive economic effects of having higher national saving when more money are put into a bank. Now the second point, it is rare for people to stack their money at home, so the money that are not being saved up naturally goes into more consumption. These consumption might not be video game market related, but the money circulation in the overall economy should be the same.

For example, in one economy where used game market thrives, you have a profit of say $500M. However, in another economy where piracy thrives, these $500M profit are merely divided into other markets like food, gas, and clothing etc. Therefore, it is weak to argue that used game market help employment and piracy hurts it when they should overall have the same economic impact, since money can only be used in saving or consumption.

Now the case may be different if the money were mostly spent on import than local consumption because import is in effect, giving money to other nations; however, one could also argue that import helps our own specialization in production. More data and statistics are needed for this argument.

Piracy is not the only blame for the loss of jobs, there are many of other contributing factors. While it is true that piracy hurts the developers and particular market. But the overall economic effect of piracy, as i would argue, should not change since the extra money kept from piracy would be used in consumption in other markets. Unless these consumption are mostly imports that is.