Imagine if the dupings and rollback didn't happen

http://mrtouchngo.wordpress.com/2012/05/...allacious/

3. Duping is good for the economy.


What are facts?!

Every time I hear or see this argument brought up, I’m caught between the compulsions of strangling the nearest person or smashing my head against my desk repeatedly so I become a drooling vegetable who won’t be bothered by such idiotic statements.

First problem with this statement: what the hell does “good” mean?

“Good” is a value word, meaning its definition changes from individual to individual – this word is so broad that there are, and I am not kidding, forty-one definitions of it on the dictionary.com iPod app. You can ask one person what a “good” economy is, and they can answer, “A good economy is an economy where distribution of wealth is equal.” You can ask another person who might possibly say, “A good economy is an economy where there is no competition in between businesses.” Good is based on opinion.

So, the first thing you must do when using the word “good” in any context is either freaking define it in a way that isn’t overly broad and therefore eliminate a somewhat satisfactory amount of ambiguity or make the definition clear from context. Most of the time, it’s apparent that when someone says “duping is good for the economy,” it is meant to be synonymous with “duping is beneficial for the players of this game.” (Feel free to provide another replacement definition for me to address if there is sufficient evidence behind your claim.)

What’s funny is that this is completely wrong and shows that dupers who try to throw this around, despite being intimately involved with the economy, in reality have no actual understanding of it.

How so? You think that duped things deflating in price is beneficial for the players of the game? Yeah, sure, in that one specific area of those duped items, but what about in other areas?

But before I start on the more logical part of this rebuttal, let me point out that the “duping is good” argument has never actually meant that dupers are philanthropists or philmaplerists. It’s just an excuse to continue doing what they’re doing; do you really think they’d stop once they realized that duping is bad? HA!

Let’s continue.

First off, duping causes massive fluctuations in market prices for almost everything. Did you know White Scrolls used to be 300 million mesos each? Did you know that once upon a time, the nx:meso ratio used to be 1:20? Heck, it was even 1:5 at one point! And then, because of the opening of MTS in El Nido, which had a ludicrously large amount of MTSable duped GM scrolls, it jumped up from a cozy 1:30~50 to 1:100~110 (300m+ zhelms anyone?). It was, quite honestly, insane. If you think that erratically changing prices are at all beneficial for the economy, seriously, go take an IQ test, since I suspect that ol’ Dubya may be smarter than you.

Secondly, here’s the million dollar question: What effect has duping had on legit players who are trying to actually make money?

And here’s the answer: A negative effect. Duping has made it much harder for Maplers to make money, and also a hell of a lot harder for Maplers to get by without money.

Tell me, my very benevolent dupers, how does duping at all benefit Maplers when they don’t have money to spend on the items that you so very kindly made cheaper?

It doesn’t.

I’m going to go off on a tangent here and mention another effect of duping and hacking, but it’s not so much economic as social.

Because of a result of the duping of all those EE hacked equips, we saw the emergence of something we’ve always seen but never noticed as prominently. What I’m talking is about e-thugs. People who just slap on a craven and automatically think they’re the hottest pomegranate in the game. You know what I mean. Nowadays it’s all about those $1,800 Skittle NL set users.