[leovailati]

Other people in this thread bring up great counterpoints. Namely, gaming is not nearly as intensive as mining and whatever value gaming brings to society is more than that of mining.

I'd also say that gaming at least occupies the human who is playing. Mining would be running in the background: the human would still be consuming energy doing something else. So one doesn't replace the other. Therefore using the inefficiency of one to justify the inefficiency of the other is not a valid argument.

One last observation: you're assuming that all these video cards would still have been produced. Maybe production of hardware has gone up to serve the mining demand.