Bruce Sterling explores the dark side of globalization after a walk through Belgrade.
They say you can't understand people until you've walked a mile in their shoes. I just walked across Belgrade in a brand-new pair of Nikes. Now I understand something: The citizens of this city are the vanguard of a new phase of capitalism. They're busily subverting conventional multi-national commerce and creating a dark parallel process - call it black globalization.
RTWT. I'm not sure I agree with Sterling on the scope of the threat to intellectual property and international trade, but trade in faked brandname items is huge. And he's right that it is tied to attitudes about other IP.
Provocative thought: sounds like his experience validates global brands, rather than destroying them.
If all a brand is, is a logo anyone can put on the same basic set of shoes... then its value is 100% illusion. But if that Nike swoosh and some guarantee of authenticity are the difference bewteen shoes that fall apart in weeks and quality shoes, then the brand's role as a guarantor gives it real and not just illusory value.
The system will eventually find an equilibrium point at which the quality of the knock-offs is sufficient to make the authenticity trade widely viable. At which point some "faker" sources may begin to acquire independent value of their own.
Don't laugh - this has happened with some skilled art forgers.
Sterling is right that there are growing corners of the world that are anarchic facsimiles, and that there's a threat in that fact. But those threats don't come from brand knock-offs, they come from much more serious things.
Not every country can be competitive. What then? In the 19th century, we Americans counterfeited many things (e.g., the novels of Dickens) without paying royalties. It's typical of amibitious young countries on the make. On balance, I'd rather have a country copy than than ask for handouts. It nurtures ambition that later can be channeled into legal activities.
All education has a price.
It appears some people are getting educated about shoes. Perhaps the education is transferable. To clothing.
All a consequence of incomplete de-Serbification of the Balkans. I knew some kind of dangerous "fake state" would result. :p
Serbs once had lavish vacation villas, leftist crap destroyed everything to the point that by the time we wrongly bombed them, they was already well into the ditch.
Btw, many applicants to the terrorist training camps bragged about their "service" in Kosovo killing serbs, and the frudulent fake news about supposed attrocities, is now, well, exposed as a fraud and a fake.
I agree with Joe. I bet of you questioned the wearer of those shoes, all they would care about is the ability to get a decent pair of shoes.
Anybody that can make a decent product would soon find their own logo having value in itself.
As for the war crimes against the serbs, the first indicator that something was wrong should be that the left didnt complain. and looking behind the CNN leftist fraud, you will get angry.
The Serbian economy, and especially infrastructure took a serious pounding a couple of years back, and the Serbs simply can't affor real Nikes, so they buy the counterfeits.
And btw, going to war over Kosovo was a mistake. What was going on there was a civil war, not genocide. The KLA conducted terroris attacks to provoke reprisals by Serb police. The credulous Western opinion bought was then led to believe that those reprisals were genocidal atrocities.
Plus the serbs are Christians and those cutting off serb heads was muslims ... so naturally the Christians are the enemy, and the Terrorists that went on to join Bin ladin in afganistan was the good guys.
Now 100s of 800 year old churches all over Kosovo have been burnt, and the people being purged from the land are the serbs.
Thats what happens when the left and their leftist media is in charge.
The only way the left would hate the serbs more is if they was Jews.
They are orthodox not protestant/catholic christians. That makes a big difference.