Austin Winters that’s a load of shit. Of course all knock offs will not be of the same caliber. The points original poster is trying to make is a thought experiment.
If everything is the same, and there are Chinese manufacturers nikeshoeshot4sale.com that can fake something so well it looks like the real deal. Counterfeiting has been a trade for most of human history.
The point is, if there is a fake that is indistinguishable from the real thing what makes it different. Look up the menthol10s and look at their quality, it’s not hard to imagine that many replicas have gone under the radar ever since 2008.
Op don’t care about the fakes that aren’t true replications, op only cares about a replica that is so good it’s indistinguishable from the original. Why would it then just not be the original? Retailers and designers like Kanye West and Virgil are not getting hurt by counterfeiting. Many of the items being counterfeited have sold out or have not been sold for years, so the company is not getting a revenue stream from the product anyway so they cannot be losing money on a product not even being sold. Second of all, companies like Balenciaga with sneakers that have not sold out are still profiting despite having many thousands of counterfeits. Generally, the people who buy fake Balenciaga sneakers are not willing to spend $700 in the first place so Balenciaga is not losing any money because those people would not have been customers in the first place. People who can afford the real thing, and are willing to buy it, will almost always buy the real thing, so there really is no revenue lost here… Jordans, Yeezys, Gucci and Hermes belts, LV wallets, YSL bags you can find them in the back streets of HK, Taiwan, and other Asian markets. Take a trip to Asia and go see for yourself. Sometimes you can get solid quality almost as good as the original Nike-Huarache-Ultra-White-MensAA3841-100-Bespoke-Virgil-Abloh-Designer-Independent-Brand-OFF-WHITE-x-Nike-Air-Huarache-Ultra-Wa.html. I know cats sporting Rolex watches, LV belts and wallets, and Prada shoes and people think its the real thing because they look that authentic. Also, in the market people straight hussling people and selling them legit counterfeits and ripping them off from gold bracelets to iced earings. Whenever I go to Asia I cop me a pair of Yeezys and wear them like no tomorrow and always cats asking to buy them after inspecting for a few bills and thats approx few hun over the price I paid. I am in school now studying about the counterfeit game so i can capitalize
