
Shipwreck reveals ancient market for knock-off consumer goods - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/shipwreck-reveals-ancient-market-for-knock-off-consumer-goods/
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jacquesm
Before trade dress and other IP nonsense became the law 'knock-off' simply
meant culture transfer.

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gbear605
It’s culture transfer when a company makes something and then another company
makes a poor copy that sells for cheap? The only reason it’s cross-cultural in
our modern world is that Chinese firms tend to not follow American IP law.

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iak8god
You may find this short article interesting:

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-
too/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/) We Were
Pirates, Too Why America was the China of the 19th century.

~~~
chillacy
I find discussion on IP theft that spends too much time moralizing to be an
ineffective argument, in part because of the hypocrisy, but also because it
probably won't work on people with completely different values.

If we accept that we are Britain in the 1800s, and that we enjoy certain
benefits to being the reserve currency of the world, then the question
becomes, what strategically can the US do to remain the dominant player in the
world?

Can transfer of technology know-how be stopped, given the changes in the world
since 1800? If anything information is more available than ever, so it seems
like a losing battle.

What about a show of force, like the Opium War forced Beijing to open its
markets? Tricky as well, on one hand.. nuclear war. On the other hand, that
power disparity continues to narrow over time, if there were a time to risk it
all it would be now.

I'm sure there are other strategies out there as well, but those are two that
come to mind.

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eloff
Or instead of risking nuclear war, where there are no winners, only losers -
just accept that things change and you can't be top dog forever.

That said, I don't actually think China will replace the US as top dog. It's
growing faster yes, but has serious Japan-like demographic problems fast
approaching. The thing about demographic problems is they're predictable and
almost impossible to escape.

In absolute dollar value terms, the US is still competitive with China, which
means they'll likely never close that gap before their demographics catch up
with them.

~~~
vtange
Top dogs will always try to stay top dog for as long as possible and they are
willing. It is what people would naturally do even if the stage was a video
game, or if they were fighting for civil rights. Some people tend not to just
"know their place."

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eloff
I fully agree that it goes against human nature and history. However, it _has_
to go against those things. We live in an age of weapons so terrible that the
kind of global conflict that defined the first half of the twentieth century
must just never happen again because the consequences would be truly
unthinkable. Advanced civilization is a fragile thing. We gain a lot of
efficiency from extreme specialization - but we also lose a lot of resiliency.
A global nuclear war would end civilization as we know it, and who knows how
long it would take to recover - especially with the easily accessible
resources already consumed.

That's not to say that it won't happen - but we shouldn't permit it, or
support those who would.

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mc32
That a small percentage were authentic and the vast majority were copies seems
to indicate that clients could distinguish quality or provenance?

Other than trace elements which speak to provenance, was there a qualitative
difference in the ceramics?

