English – The Conversation | From fake medicines to watches, counterfeits are everywhere and getting harder to catch by Gediminas Lipnickas, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Adelaide University

AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information.

The article warns that a massive, rapidly expanding global market for counterfeit goods—from fake medicines, cosmetics and sunscreen to luxury watches, clothing and electronics—poses serious health and safety risks and is becoming harder to detect, especially as online shopping platforms and second‑hand marketplaces lower barriers for fraudsters. While some buyers are unwitting victims, others deliberately seek fakes because of high prices, limited supply, and artificial scarcity created by brands that restrict releases (e.g., Rolex and Supreme). The true scale of the trade likely exceeds the estimated US $467 billion in 2021, with counterfeit items accounting for about 2.3 % of global imports. The author suggests that improving product availability, abandoning restrictive distribution practices, and educating consumers about warning signs—such as unusually low prices, vague seller information, and poor‑quality images—can curb demand for fakes, while buying from official or authorised retailers is the safest way to avoid harmful counterfeit products.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/from-fake-medicines-to-watches-counterfeits-are-everywhere-and-getting-harder-to-catch-281525

#Healthauthorities #onlinemarketplaces #luxurybrands #artificialscarcity

DURIAN, ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY, AROMA, UNHINGE, INSECTICIDE

Cousin Danny's, Saturday, November 8 at 07:30 PM EST

Record release show for Durian's new album PECKING ORDER at Cousin Danny's.

• Durian (NJ) - https://duriangrind.bandcamp.com/album/pecking-order

• Artificial Scarcity (PHL) - https://artificialscarcity.bandcamp.com/album/empires-to-ashes

• Aroma (PHL) - https://aroma4.bandcamp.com/album/facial-defilement-and-reconstruction

• Unhinge (PHL) - https://grandvomitproductions.bandcamp.com/album/unhinge-s-t

• Insecticide (PHL) - https://insecticide-grind.bandcamp.com/album/consume-this-vile-world

$15, doors at 7:30pm, space is wheelchair accessible, bathrooms are down a flight of stairs.

https://philly.askapunk.net/event/durian-artificial-scarcity-aroma-unhinge-insecticide

I randomly bought this book in a quirky bookshop in Copenhagen for the sole reason that it said all the wrong things right on the cover.

(Sales: the single most important profession. NLP™: not natural language processing but neuro-linguistic programming. Meta: the Meta Model™ and Meta Publications™.)

I just started reading it and boy oh boy, I was not disappointed. It's outrageously hilarious.

"Persuasion engineering".
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3003250W/Persuasion_engineering

#RichardBandler #Sales #ArtificialScarcity

Bitcoin is not digital gold. Gold is a separate mineral that comes from the Earth. Bitcoin is artificial scarcity, artificial wealth redistribution, and legalized gambling.

#BitcoinCritique #DigitalGold #ArtificialScarcity #WealthRedistribution #GamblingRisk #CryptoDebate #GoldVsBitcoin #CryptoCriticism #FinancialFreedom #MarketManipulation #CryptoTruth #InvestSmart #EconomicDebate #BlockchainIssues #MoneyMatters #CryptoSkeptic #GoldStandard #FinanceTalk #CryptoFlaws #RealityCheck

Economists Invented Austerity And Paved the Way to Fascism.
WE MUST FIGHT BACK!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkn0296wKFk

understand the scam of economic oppression…

#Austerity #Fascism #Scam #ArtificialScarcity #WealthTransfer #ClassWar #PunchDown #Misery #Profit

"Programs like the New Deal, the GI Bill, or the UK’s vast program of counsel housing showcased Western governments not just as pillars of capitalist values but also as architects of quasi-communistic structures. Initiatives like the Works Progress Administration or the military itself demonstrated state capacity for collective organization on a mass scale.

The postwar boom lifted millions of regular (predominantly white) people into new middle-class lives typified by safety, social dignity, consumerism, creative opportunity, and rest. Advances in automation, building materials, and agriculture supported this transformation, which proved that governments could create powerful systems of public good overnight. By the 1960s, the children of those who had demonstrated this collective power dreamed of applying that capacity on a global scale, regardless of race, gender, and nationality.

Instead, we got nothing but scarcity.

In Acid Communism — a title that winks at our need to re-aestheticize everyday life, elevate our consciousness, and see through the paper tiger of capitalist realism — Fisher points to scarcity and artificial restriction as the primary generator of wealth for those in charge of the postwar order.

Inflation was the buzzword of the 2024 election, which was due in part to real scarcity — as were the various supply chain crisis during the pandemic, which made the richest Americans 40 percent richer. But corporations have also been price-gouging without consequence, creating a form of artificial scarcity that erodes the value of pay increases through inflation. Fisher identifies this pattern as a defining feature of neoliberal capitalism: “A system that generates artificial scarcity in order to produce real scarcity; a system that produces real scarcity in order to generate artificial scarcity.”"

https://jacobin.com/2025/01/mark-fisher-neoliberalism-acid-communism/

#Capitalism #Neoliberalism #LateStageCapitalism #ArtificialScarcity #Abundance #CapitalismRealism

"The ghostly emptiness of capitalist realism obscures the potential for collective joy and abundance. Mark Fisher’s writing offers a glimpse of the possibilities that lie beyond the seeming inevitability of the present."

https://jacobin.com/2025/01/mark-fisher-neoliberalism-acid-communism

#CapitalistRealism #MarkFisher #ArtificialScarcity #CulturalTheory