Quote:
Originally Posted by BaNaNaBoy69
If money were no object, I highly doubt one would choose fake over authentic. Then why don't you just go buy a knock-off of everything for a fraction of the price of the real thing? You can pretend to be rich without having to pay the big bucks. In China, anything you can think of is knocked-off, even products and brands at grocery stores.
Call a spade a spade - looks like a fake, smells like a fake, probably a fake. People who buy fake things are pretentious people with no pride who can't afford the real thing, period. They are posers pretending to be ballers, walking around thinking no one knows they are wearing or using fake things, when others can spot it a mile away because they own, sell or work with the merchandise. They might impress their ignorant friends, but those who know will just be snickering behind their back. I was one of those people when I was in college and didn't know any better, but no more! Yes, buying counterfeit supports organized crime and even terrorism. It's the same as people who put an M badge on their non-M car.
Buy within your means or don't buy at all. Save up or make more money until you can buy the real thing. I think it's more respectable to buy an authentic cheaper brand than a counterfeit luxury brand.
|
While it's an interesting and not uncommon line of reasoning you make, by your own statements, it's also true that non-luxury goods are also copied by makers in China. Your allegation of pretension is also not true. An awful lot of Chinese folks buy fake goods of all sorts and they readily will tell anyone they are fake. Those consumers may want to buy the authentic item, but that they didn't isn't a matter of their desire to appear to have done so.
Take art as another example. Surely you've been places and found prints of various works of art hanging on the wall. What makes those articles anything but fake versions of some authentic non-printed painting? Almost all the furniture most folks buy is a copy of some original furniture design invented by someone else. Every trench coat one buys is a knock-off of the Burberry original. The point is that your argument has a lot to do with the prices of things and what folks can afford, but the fact is also that many items are copied by other makers who also charge a lot for their wares. I can all but promise you that a consumer who bought a Brooks Brothers or Loro Piana trench coat isn't wearing it in the hope that folks perceive it to be a Burberry one. Ditto any consumer who buys Baker or Henredon furniture that apes original colonial designs such as Chippendale, Queen Anne or Hepplewhite, for example.
What if the person buys a fake non-luxury item? The same character flaws you allege regarding buyers of fake expensive goods must necessarily apply, yet the implication of your post suggests that you don't have the same disdain for such consumers. The fact is that there is no moral or ethical grounds for despising a person's act of buying a fake product. There is a thin thread of legal basis for such disdain, but to get on that bandwagon, one necessarily must take the stance of protecting the maker. It's an altruistic position few of us would care to espouse and carry to it's logical conclusion. After all, would you care to help finance, say Rolex, in its prosecution against the Chinese fakes? I sure won't.
I can tell you for a fact that being able to afford the "real thing" doesn't always have much to do with whether one buys a fake watch or not. All the peop0le who work on my projects in the PRC have purchased fake watches, iPhones, and plenty of other goods, including electronics, foods, appliances, household items, and clothing. The price has a lot to do with why they bought them, but not being able to afford the authentic articles doesn't. Even the most lowly paid, junior members of my team earn $150K+/year and they don't have anything to actually pay for out of their own pockets because they are living in the PRC and all their personal expenses are paid for by the client.
The practical reality is that for a time-only or time + date watch, there's hardly enough difference to warrant spending $5k+ on a luxury watch. If one isn't buying with a collector's purposes, there's just no need to spend the money, even if one has it to spend. If one likes the look of some fancy watch and wants that look for less money, a fake or a very close knock-off is going to work just fine.
When it comes to multi-complication watches -- those having multiple time-telling features -- it's something of a different story. I have yet to come across a cheap watch that offers minute repeater, perpeptual calendar, moon phase and other functions all in one watch that also works even remotely as well as the authentic high-end watches they attempt to replicate. Even some single complications are not well implemented in the fakes or even in non-fake, cheap mechanical watches. The moon phase is one such complication.