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Has WSJ released any figures as to the prevalence with this or are they just presenting individual accounts? If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of

Has WSJ released any figures as to the prevalence with this or are they just presenting individual accounts? If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care, that’s the free marketplace baby, capitalism at full health.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care, that’s the free marketplace baby, capitalism at full health. A free market, by definition, has full transparency; if you can unwittingly get a counterfeit, it's not a free market.
- monadic2 6y ago
  A counterfeit is meaningless in a free market—intellectual property is an unnecessary constraint on the market to incentivize production of goods. A brand is just a label, immaterial to the quality of the received commodity. The term I would use for folks who buy an expensive item, sight unseen, and expecting proportional quality, from a third party market is “sucker”. Regulating counterfeit sales will just keep prices high and competitive pressure low, fucking us all over. Why not simply regulate the quality of the item and force brands to compete on things that matter? Say, require phones to have offer a version with a headphone jack so you aren’t forced to shell out endless money for dongles and bluetooth sets every X years.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Would you feel the same way about counterfeit drugs? Motorcycle Helmets? (https://www.webbikeworld.com/a-look-at-dangerous-counterfeit-motorcycle-helmets/ https://www.webbikeworld.com/a-look-at-dangerous-counterfeit...) You really want regulators to design technology? That’s about like the EU forcing USB2 charging ports on phones when USB-C was a better standard.
totalZero 6y ago
"Capitalism at full health" means that: * companies do not face rampant infringement of their brand name (which they own, it is part of their means of production), and * customers aren't swindled with intentional bait-and-switch practices (which would mean that they are not free to make choices in the market), so no, counterfeiting has no place in healthy capitalism even if counterfeits often pass for the real thing.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Actually, that is 100% the natural conclusion of capitalism. It doesn’t care about states or boundaries, all you really need is the ability to control capital.
untog 6y ago
> If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care Except that the other end of that spectrum is kids toys with lead in them. Or, hell, adult toys with lead in them. Point is you don’t really get to say “the harmless counterfeits are fine, just stop the harmful ones” when you don’t know which ones are harmful. The only way to avoid that ambiguity is to stop counterfeits as a whole. A total lack of regulation isn’t capitalism at full health, it’s poison, often quite literally!
- monadic2 6y ago
  Ahh, what’s an example of capitalism working sanely in a regulated industry?
  - true_religion 6y ago
    All industries? At no point do we have pure unregulated capitalism anywhere in the modern world. But for a specific example of high regulations and decent outcomes look at the food industry, whether that be restaurants or the food supply chain or farms. All of it is highly regulated for good reason.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      I'm not sure about all the regulations being for good reason. Some do exist to protect existing players, like taxi medallions. And some, are perhaps outdated in the name of "protecting the consumer" when online reviews and reputation systems tend to achieve similar results with little oversight.
      - untog 6y ago
        There’s a difference between “regulation is a good reason” and “the regulations that were created are good”. Taxi medallions is a good example: NYC streets were flooded with taxis and it was slowing down traffic. And there weren’t enough passengers for drivers to make a living. So limiting the numbers did make sense. But the way it was implemented was far from perfect.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

> If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care, that’s the free marketplace baby, capitalism at full health. A free market, by definition, has full transparency; if you can unwittingly get a counterfeit, it's not a free market.

monadic2 6y ago
A counterfeit is meaningless in a free market—intellectual property is an unnecessary constraint on the market to incentivize production of goods. A brand is just a label, immaterial to the quality of the received commodity. The term I would use for folks who buy an expensive item, sight unseen, and expecting proportional quality, from a third party market is “sucker”. Regulating counterfeit sales will just keep prices high and competitive pressure low, fucking us all over. Why not simply regulate the quality of the item and force brands to compete on things that matter? Say, require phones to have offer a version with a headphone jack so you aren’t forced to shell out endless money for dongles and bluetooth sets every X years.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Would you feel the same way about counterfeit drugs? Motorcycle Helmets? (https://www.webbikeworld.com/a-look-at-dangerous-counterfeit-motorcycle-helmets/ https://www.webbikeworld.com/a-look-at-dangerous-counterfeit...) You really want regulators to design technology? That’s about like the EU forcing USB2 charging ports on phones when USB-C was a better standard.

totalZero 6y ago

"Capitalism at full health" means that: * companies do not face rampant infringement of their brand name (which they own, it is part of their means of production), and * customers aren't swindled with intentional bait-and-switch practices (which would mean that they are not free to make choices in the market), so no, counterfeiting has no place in healthy capitalism even if counterfeits often pass for the real thing.

monadic2 6y ago
Actually, that is 100% the natural conclusion of capitalism. It doesn’t care about states or boundaries, all you really need is the ability to control capital.

untog 6y ago

> If I’ve gotten counterfeits they were certainly of the quality i was expecting from the brand name and I really don’t care Except that the other end of that spectrum is kids toys with lead in them. Or, hell, adult toys with lead in them. Point is you don’t really get to say “the harmless counterfeits are fine, just stop the harmful ones” when you don’t know which ones are harmful. The only way to avoid that ambiguity is to stop counterfeits as a whole. A total lack of regulation isn’t capitalism at full health, it’s poison, often quite literally!

monadic2 6y ago
Ahh, what’s an example of capitalism working sanely in a regulated industry?
- true_religion 6y ago
  All industries? At no point do we have pure unregulated capitalism anywhere in the modern world. But for a specific example of high regulations and decent outcomes look at the food industry, whether that be restaurants or the food supply chain or farms. All of it is highly regulated for good reason.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    I'm not sure about all the regulations being for good reason. Some do exist to protect existing players, like taxi medallions. And some, are perhaps outdated in the name of "protecting the consumer" when online reviews and reputation systems tend to achieve similar results with little oversight.
    - untog 6y ago
      There’s a difference between “regulation is a good reason” and “the regulations that were created are good”. Taxi medallions is a good example: NYC streets were flooded with taxis and it was slowing down traffic. And there weren’t enough passengers for drivers to make a living. So limiting the numbers did make sense. But the way it was implemented was far from perfect.