Japan's Gaming History Now Safe

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian today has covered the final part of the ongoing saga regarding the Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law in Japan. Thankfully, the law has been almost reversed allowing the continued sale of second hand electrical goods (including games consoles)." From the article: "The Japanese secondhand electrical goods market was officially estimated last year to be worth around £500m ... The government probably hoped the law would go largely unnoticed and bring a variety of benefits. By taking the money out of the secondhand market and injecting it into the market for new goods, regulation (of old products) and revivalisation (of the economy) would be achieved in one fell swoop. On paper, anyway. In practice it was rather different."

Comments

Right wing zealot mode

[IamGarageGuy 2]

Another example of government thinking that they can artificially manipulate the market.

Re:Right wing zealot mode

[God'sDuck]

And who do you think artificially manipulates the Japanese government?

Godzilla.

I'm grateful...

[parasonic]

The environmental impact of this law alone made it a preposterous idea to begin with. I'm glad that it was halted. I think that this would have made Japan look really bad in other nations' eyes. They probably didn't want to take any of the US's "credit" in collossal wastefulness.

Re:I'm grateful...

[MaWeiTao]

The Japanese are already extremely wasteful. You should see how often they toss out perfectly good mobile phones all in an effort to get the next best thing.

Something as simple as taking home leftovers from a restaurant is unheard of. You could have an entire plate of food left over and they'll look at you like you've got two heads if you ask them to wrap it.

They've already got laws which make it prohibitively expensive to own a car for more than a few years. They're pretty much forced into buying new cars every couple of years.

Even without these laws Japanese are always clamoring after the shinest new product. I bet the Japanese government didn't expect people to have a problem with those regulations. In fact, I'm surprised people were upset enough that they went out and had demonstrations. Good for them, I'm glad to see they did do something about it.

Re:I'm grateful...

[AnonymousPrick]

You should see how often they toss out perfectly good mobile phones all in an effort to get the next best thing.

I don't know what it's like in Japan - I've never been but I'd love to go!
Anyway, the battery in my cordless phone isn't holding a charge. So I thought, "I'll just go and buy a new one. It couldn't cost more than $10." HA! The battery was going for about $19 - the phone, brand new, costs $17! It actually pays to through the phone away and buy a new one!

Fucking marketing!

Re:I'm grateful...

[doctor_no]

If you libed in Japan you would know that Japan has one of the strictest recycling policies in the world. The very vast majority of electronics goods are recycled or resold (usually to other countries). Which makes sense because the cost of land for a landfill is astronomialy high.

In majority prefectures you have to dispose of electronic goods seperately from the rest of your garbage (which in turn becomes recycled). All electronic goods in Japan are required by law to have a certain percent recyclable. In addition, in Japan you have to seperate into "burnable/moeru gomi", "non-burnable/moenai gomi:, and recyclable garbage, and depending on where you like you have to further seperate organic waste (nama gomi), paper, glass (by color in my area), steel, aluminum, etc.

Revivalization

[Bombula]

"By taking the money out of the secondhand market and injecting it into the market for new goods, regulation (of old products) and revivalisation (of the economy) would be achieved in one fell swoop."

Wow, that was a winner of an idea. I wonder why they didn't think to apply the same regulation to, say, used cars?

"Revivalization" is a awesome word, by the way.

Re:Revivalization

[TorKlingberg]

I wonder why they didn't think to apply the same regulation to, say, used cars?

They already do.
The Japanese government is completely controlled by large corporations.

Re:Revivalization

[earthbound kid]

In case people think you're kidding, let me spell it out about the cars. In Japan, every car needs to have an inspection. The older your car, the most frequent and more expensive the inspection. After a while, it costs more to have your car inspected than to buy a new car. Thus most of the cars that you see in Japan are under 10 years old. In America, you still see a fair amount of cars from the 70s and 80s, but in Japan, you just don't at all.

My understanding is that the old Japanese cars are sold to Australia, since they're also right hand drive and relatively close.

Reminds me of a quote...

[lbrandy]

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. " -Yogi Berra

Amazingly true... especially in economics...

FYI

[XMilkProject]

For those that don't know, here is a little background info:

People in Japan never purchase used electronics, in fact they purchase new electronics at a pace which dwarfs American technology purchases. It's just sort of a Japanese thing... They always want the newest/best/coolest bit of technology.

There are however, many poorer countries around Japan, and there is an amazing market for these used electronics in nearby countries. For some time now there has been a massive organized sale of used electronics to other countries, creating pretty substantial profits.
This could be powered by anything from ebay to organized supply chains.

Basically the Japanese government felt like they could possibly direct some of this revenue to the electronics manufacturers, and increase the sales of new items, therefore promoting growth and new technologies, etc, etc.

The thing here to remember is that it never impacted the Japanese directly, as it is extremely rare for a japenese person to buy a used electronics item for themselves, but rather it impacted them indirectly by making it harder to profit from the resale of items.

Anyone feel free to correct me on this.........

Re:FYI

[earthbound kid]

Um, have you ever been to "Hard Off"? (Yes mods, that's really the name. It's a sister store to "Book Off" and, also amusingly, "Kimono Off.") All they sell there are used electronics and used CDs/DVDs/VHSs. Yet they continue to be in business. Heck, just wander around the oh-so-trendy-now Akihabara section of Tokyo. That place is jam packed with shops selling used monitors, used game systems, used everything electronic. Used video games in Japan sell for pretty close to the original price, maybe minus only $5 or $10. My friend said he got good prices for reselling his games, but I haven't tried, so I can't give you a quote on that. Used games are also in really nice shape, generally, so it's almost worth the high cost.

Anyhow, it's not true that Japanese only buy new stuff.

Crazy economics to ban secondhand goods

[Snamh Da Ean]

I can't get over the idea that they seriously considered restricting secondhand markets. Functioning secondhand markets reduce the new purchase price of consumer goods since you can get some of your cash back if you decide to sell; in other words, it makes you more likely to but the new good in the first place. Removing this option reduces the effective demand for the new good, which is contrary to what they were planning to achieve. In addition, the environmental effects of such a policy would have been potentially terrible.

When oldskool is outlawed...

[Locus Mote]

When oldskool is outlawed, only outlaws will be oldskool.

or... as Charlton Heston said...

FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!!!!

viva la Colecovision! hahahahah