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Comment by ramblerouser | Hacker News Reader

Yes. A $100 counterfeit handbag costs American companies at least $100 in lost profits, possibly a lot more if she would have bought a $500 genuine handbag instead.

It's interesting to see that there are enough chinese people working in the US that they are posting lots of stuff here defending at least some of their government's actions. I don't blame them, but its something to keep in mind when discussing what levels of immigration we as Americans feel is in our best interest.

You seem to post a lot of comments about China. I appologize if you aren't actually Chinese, I've just noticed a lot of Chinese people advocating for the interests of China on here lately.

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This crosses into personal attack and even dips a toe into nationalistic smear. Those are things we want to keep well away from this site, so please don't post like this in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: It looks like you've been using this site primarily for ideological battle. That's a violation of the guidelines and is incompatible with the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. It also looks like you've been using multiple accounts to do it, which is abusive. We ban accounts that do these things, so please don't.

> Yes. A $100 counterfeit handbag costs American companies at least $100 in lost profits

What do you think is the reason the economist sounds so dismissive of that idea?

Great question.

>“Displaced”? So let me get this right. If my wife buys a Coach handbag for $100, and it’s a counterfeit from China, and she enjoys the handbag, then the “cost” to America is $100? I’m guessing that no actual economists participated in the writing of this government report.

This "economist" (your words) seems to think that the value his hypothetical wife gets from the handbag she or others thinks is a real Gucci offsets the fact that Gucci spent a fortune on their brand and China gets to take a big fat bite out of Gucci's sales because the US isnt willing to stand up to China on trade.

lmao that ain't his reasoning muh brah. His point is about target demographics. The typical person who buys a knock-off -- is s/he such that, had the knock-off been unavailable, s/he would have purchased the real thing instead. Only if you answer to that question is yes will you assess the cost to be $100.

minor: 1. Coach (US), not Gucci (Italy). 2. The author is a legit economist (expert on monetary policy), content from his blog has been posted on HN regularly. He recently posted a series of comments on China. If you're interested check them out at:

https://www.econlib.org/parmesan-cheese-and-sunbucks-coffee/

https://www.econlib.org/how-should-we-think-about-the-theft-...

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/category/china/

Some percent of the time the answer will be yes, and the loss is the difference in price, probably a lot more than $100. It is not unreasonable given no other information to assess the loss at $100, as the report being criticized does. If counterfeit goods didnt hurt sales one way or another, why would brands care so much about stopping them?

I didnt like this economist's article. A lot of economists are also political commentators who like to bring toy economic arguments to bear on problems that really aren't captured by economic theory at all. He appears to be one of them.

> lmao that ain't his reasoning muh brah

Please don't, and please don't use HN primarily for political or ideological or national battle, as described elsewhere.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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