Capitalism is the root cause of counterfeit commerce – it leads to a race to the bottom for the lowest production costs through illegal methods, which fuels the market.

The parasitic nature of counterfeit commerce is the chief impediment to mitigating or erasing it. The key to understanding the dynamics of counterfeit commerce correctly lies in this. The imperative of capitalism is to extract surplus value in ever more inventive ways. It aims to accomplish this by dual, interrelated means. Firstly, driving down the costs of production in order to build a margin realized at point of exchange; and secondly, driving up hierarchies of positive status differentiation that make the propensity to consume so intoxicating as to be irresistible. Counterfeit commerce is the parasitic counter culture of this. It deploys illegal means to accomplish precisely the same ends. When all is said and done their market position derives from offering acceptable duplicates at affordable prices. The moral objections to the trade need to be tempered by a sociological understanding of the immense opportunities for extracting surplus value that are produced by the general pricing mechanism under capitalism. The unavoidable logic of capitalism is to produce opportunities for undercutting the legitimate market and fiddling. A vast, global inverse culture of consumption, that unapologetically robs Peter to pay Paul by audaciously violating fidelity to contract, constitutes the shadow land of the general price mechanism. Despite the admonitions and interventions of the law enforcement lobby, one is struck not by the precariousness of counterfeit commerce, but by its extraordinary tenacity.