2 ms·

>Imagine people throwing away furniture, crushing cars, and burning books because they can't be sold. This is value being destroyed. It's "use value" being des

by dmorgan 14y ago

>Imagine people throwing away furniture, crushing cars, and burning books because they can't be sold. This is value being destroyed. It's "use value" being destroyed, not "economic value". This is the reason why economies get a huge boost after a war: because stuff has to be bought again, infrastructures have to be re-built, etc... (the well-being of the society is taken back, of course, but economy itself, i.e levels of employment and development rise, because forces before non utilized (unemployed people, savings, etc) have to be utilized. And the disturbed status quo brings up opportunities for growth in areas stifled before by established players. >Please read up on the "broken window fallacy." I'm not making the same argument. With a good such as an e-book, if you could read it and then re-sale it, then there would just be one copy sold by the parent company. If it could be resold even more, then from one original buyer you could get 10 meta-buyers, all of them not giving a penny to the author. (And those are not pirates, in which case you wouldn't know if they would have bought it if they couldn't get it for free. Those are actual buyers). So, in essence, the author loses 1/average_resales. That might be good for other companies and the economy in general (as per the "broken window fallacy"), but it's not for the PARTICULAR industry under discussion. Heck, the author might be financially forced to give up writing altogether, all the while enough people to sustain him _enjoy_ and _pay_ for his book.

pyre 14y ago
You're only considering economic value from the point of view of the original creator. Shops that resell things derive economic value from the sale of the used goods. They provide the service of consolidating and coalating these goods into a single place (and repairing them from a broken state in other cases).
sixbrx 14y ago
If you're going to consider that the author "looses" a sale because of a resold, used physical book (which was the original subject, not ebooks), then you should factor in the losses due to not allowing resales at all - because such books are much riskier investments and are less likely to be bought in the first place, especially if they are technical books with non-trivial prices. I've convinced myself to buy many a book because I knew I could resell them easily and legally if I didn't like them.
- Dylanlacey 14y ago
  This is similar to videogames resale (Another area under heavy attack by the publishing industry). If a title is middling, but not great, people will still buy it, and hope to sell it for cash or store credit once "done". They will experiment with games they're not certain about because they're not "Stuck" with the original. People who aren't willing to take the risk that the game is worth full price can then buy the resold version at a lower price later. They take a "Newness" and time premium, but save money. If resale isn't possible, fewer people will buy the original game because it's a riskier proposition. This means both that there are less primary sales, but ALSO that there are less people discussing the game (They've not played it, they can't talk about it). People who would have bought the game secondhand, possibly liked it and been encouraged to buy the next title by the same developers firsthand simply won't buy it, so there's even LESS word of mouth.

by dmorgan 14y ago

pyre 14y ago

You're only considering economic value from the point of view of the original creator. Shops that resell things derive economic value from the sale of the used goods. They provide the service of consolidating and coalating these goods into a single place (and repairing them from a broken state in other cases).

sixbrx 14y ago

If you're going to consider that the author "looses" a sale because of a resold, used physical book (which was the original subject, not ebooks), then you should factor in the losses due to not allowing resales at all - because such books are much riskier investments and are less likely to be bought in the first place, especially if they are technical books with non-trivial prices. I've convinced myself to buy many a book because I knew I could resell them easily and legally if I didn't like them.

Dylanlacey 14y ago
This is similar to videogames resale (Another area under heavy attack by the publishing industry). If a title is middling, but not great, people will still buy it, and hope to sell it for cash or store credit once "done". They will experiment with games they're not certain about because they're not "Stuck" with the original. People who aren't willing to take the risk that the game is worth full price can then buy the resold version at a lower price later. They take a "Newness" and time premium, but save money. If resale isn't possible, fewer people will buy the original game because it's a riskier proposition. This means both that there are less primary sales, but ALSO that there are less people discussing the game (They've not played it, they can't talk about it). People who would have bought the game secondhand, possibly liked it and been encouraged to buy the next title by the same developers firsthand simply won't buy it, so there's even LESS word of mouth.