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That’s fair though, isn’t it?

That reflects the lost income potential from the shoplifting. Not just how much money it took to physically build an individual unit (and package and ship and stock it etc).

Now if they never sell at MSRP, then probably a slight discount from MSRP when reporting is fair. But definitely not just the BOM cost or similar…

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Isn't the income potential only lost if it causes a loss of a sale (either because it runs out of stock, or if the shoplifter would have otherwise bought it)?

Nope, because shrinkage is an expense against inventory in the accounting books; fundamentally, it's a "tax" on your COGS to get to your revenue. Overreporting losses is just a bit of financial kabuki to shift underperformance over to something other than executive leadership.

I wouldn’t consider how the accounting system treats this as relevant to what the real opportunity cost is.

The accounting approach is driven by taxation, and governments strong preference for maximising their tax take.

Is it though? When I share a song on a public BitTorrent tracker and get caught. Should each infringement be worth six figures?

This is about stealing something physical, not bittorenting a song.

Eg an Apple laptop has a cost to build (cost being money, materials, time). If Apple sold that laptop at $2k, I don’t think they would value the loss at six figures. Given how little Apple discounts things, they probably value the loss (fairly) around the MSRP or ~10% or that.

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