If you live in Washington state, please support Initiative 1401 (http://saveanimalsfacingextinction.org, http://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Animal_Trafficking,_Initia...) on the November state ballot (you have until Nov. 3 to submit your ballot). This initiative will help with reducing the amount of illegal wildlife products coming to the US. Most of these products come to the US from Asia so ports in Washington state are a prime destination for the ships smuggling these products. California has recently passed a similar law.
As a Washingtonian, I'll be voting yes on 1401, but I have a general question for the crowd here.
Paul Allen has donated millions of dollars [0] to make sure this initiative gets through, which I think is great in a vacuum because I agree with what it accomplishes. However, in general I am against the concept of one individual person driving the success of an initiative because they feel passionate about a specific issue.
Is it more acceptable when the issue is seemingly benevolent?
Flip it around to Eyeman's initiatives, which when not being soundly turned down by voters, get overturned in the courts. My point being, even if it's one individual driving it, it's still one-person-one-vote (and the courts act as a buffer for when we collectively make a bad choice). I don't care who's behind 1401: is it a good idea or not? In this case, I vote "yes" regardless of what drove it. In the case of all of the Eyeman-driven "advisory votes" (what a waste of paper and ink), I vote "no" (which translates to "maintain" on the ballot) across the board.
I'll be an opposing voice: please vote against Initiative 1401, which alienate the property of those who already own such items, and further reduces the incentives for those who live near such animals to farm them, rather than to poach them.
Elephants are endangered because they are not owned; cattle, for example, are not endangered because the demand for them is profitable. The right thing to do, if one wishes to preserve endangered species, is to make it possible for people to legally raise, own and harvest elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers and the like.
I suddenly found myself finding big-game hunting a whole lot less morally repugnant when I realized that the big money that goes into it is very much used to keep many species alive. Operators of paid hunting areas have a very strongly vested interest in keeping their revenue stream going, and thus, in keeping viable populations around.
I am not pro-hunting by any means, but given a world where wildlife is hopelessly outmatched by man for resource competition, the only way to keep endangered species populated is to harness some aspect of humanity to fight for their preservation in ways that matter. Paid big-game hunting and animal cultivation is an effective way to do that and should be done more.
The conflict between man and wildlife is one-sided enough that blanket "protection" is not sufficient to save many animal populations. They need active cultivation and encouragement if they're not to be wiped out through attrition (via illegal poaching, loss of habitat, etc). Simply making it more illegal isn't going to prevent that.
This works nicely in theory, but (just like with other humanitarian efforts in the region) there is no way of ensuring that the money the hunters pay actually ends up funding conservation efforts and not some official's new car.
There is nothing to indicate that the situation is dramatically different in other countries.
Also your argument doesn't explain why the populations of many of the species protected by Initiative 1401 have been declining. If what you are saying actually works in practice, the populations should have been increasing.
> alienate the property of those who already own such items
how does it alienate the property?
> further reduces the incentives for those who live near such animals to farm them, rather than to poach them.
why would they poach them if there is no market for ivory?
> The right thing to do, if one wishes to preserve endangered species, is to make it possible for people to legally raise, own and harvest elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers and the like.
Can you actually make a proposal how one would transition from the current state of affairs to the one you are proposing? Can you talk about some possible issues with your proposal? For example how would you prevent extinction of elephants in the wild?
They won't be able to sell their property; if one can't sell something, it has lost all value. As such, it violates the Fifth Amendment.
The initiative also enables law enforcement to seize such items without warrants, which violates the Fourth Amendment.
> why would they poach them if there is no market for ivory?
Because there is, and always will be, a black market for them. And because megafauna such as elephants are pests. Poor farmers would just as soon kill them than see their families starve because their crops have been eaten or trampled.
> For example how would you prevent extinction of elephants in the wild?
I imagine that elephant ranches would be pretty close to a wild environment. Even were they not, would you rather have elephants go extinct altogether, or survive on ranches?
> They won't be able to sell their property; if one can't sell something, it has lost all value. As such, it violates the Fifth Amendment.
It doesn't and you know it so stop bullshitting. The government isn't seizing property, it just makes some antiques worthless. Which, again, is not the same as seizing. And the government has every right to ban or restrict the sales of something. We, as a society, have already accepted this trade off.
> Because there is, and always will be, a black market for them.
The size of this black market would be a lot smaller. Ivory isn't drugs, people don't "have" to buy ivory, unlike say heroin. What's the size of the black market for Kinder Surprise eggs, another thing that's illegal to sell? It's probably pretty small, because people don't need to buy Kinder Surprise eggs.
> And because megafauna such as elephants are pests. Poor farmers would just as soon kill them than see their families starve because their crops have been eaten or trampled.
Sure, some farmers kill them and will continue killing them. The question is the magnitude. These farmers aren't killing nowhere near as many elephants are poachers are.
> I imagine that elephant ranches would be pretty close to a wild environment. Even were they not, would you rather have elephants go extinct altogether, or survive on ranches?
This would lead to extinction of elephants in the wild.
> you rather have elephants go extinct altogether, or survive on ranches?
Nice false dichotomy. I would rather have them survive in the wild. Which is achievable if there's a global ban on ivory sales.
When I read the title I first thought about mammoth ivory, which is another kind of legal ivory. I still find it hard to believe that so much mammoth ivory can be found and wonder wether if it is also used as a way to sell poached ivory.
That's actually mentioned in the OP at one point: elephant ivory is sometimes passed off as mammoth ivory since the latter is easier to take out of the country.
The headline of this article is misleading. Markets don't 'fuel' demand. They match existing demand with supply. The demand comes first, and exists in the mind of those who want to buy ivory (or drugs, or whatever the case may be).
If there is demand for legal ivory, and the market supplies legal ivory but allows illegal ivory to be laundered into legal ivory, then the presence of the legal ivory market indeed does fuel demand for illegal ivory: The supply side of the legal ivory market is the demand side of the illegal ivory 'market'.
Markets are not static entities that exist on top of some underlying substrate of supply and demand. Supply and demand change according to market structures.
Yeah, also the big difference it seems to me compared to say the idea of legalizing drugs is that this is a market of theoretically finite supply. Therefore, as the supply shrinks it increases the incentive to find other sources. This is in contrast to a legal drug market which would include legal production and therefore, in theory, crowd out the illegal supply.
You are absolutely correct that markets merely service demand rather than create it. However, the market may surface demand that was previously inert.
My favorite example is "collectable computers" since I lived this during the late 90's and early naughts. A lot of people wished they had that old computer they learned on, or wanted desperately as a kid, but circumstances had kept them from it, and they had largely resigned themselves to never owning one. And then Ebay happened. And it created a market that allowed sellers from everywhere to put what ever crap they wanted to "online" to a wide variety of possible buyers. And suddenly, people had a way to actually service their desire for an old computer.
Altairs, IMSAI's, PDP 8's and PDP 11's. Stuff that was "worthless crap" could find someone who would cherish it and pay for it. I found myself buying pallets of stuff from SRI's "junk" sale for $50, only to sell the 10 HP calculators in a box on that pallet for $2,500 on EBay, old PDP parts to collectors for $300 - $500, and just playing with a really nice set up custom built instruments.
So did Ebay "fuel" the demand? It certainly felt like it from a non-economist point of view. It was the only thing different now than before. But no, the demand was out there and Ebay simply made the market for it.
The Ivory market is the same way, its constrained to legal sources but the demand exceeds those sources. If there was no market for ivory the demand would remain boxed up, with people who wished they could having something of ivory but won't cross the line of legality to get it. That demand would go dormant. And many times it has been proposed to do just that, ban all ivory sale and transport. And that would hurt the poachers, but it also would hurt the folks who have "legal" ivory and could benefit from converting it into cash. The solution to both problems simultaneously still eludes us.
Markets can very well fuel demand, new products, advertisement and artificial scarcity can fuel demand rather well. Much of modern economics revolves around not only fulfilling demand but also creating it.
If there was no way to acquire legal Ivory and all forms of Ivory would be illegal and culturally unacceptable people would want it less, if it will be viewed as morally abhorrent to have an Ivory statue as a center piece in your living room less people will want it.
If artists could not get their hands on Ivory they will result in using alternative materials, most people don't want a block of Ivory they want a masterfully crafted art piece again driving the overall demand for Ivory down.
A colleague of mine ordered a Steinway grand piano from Hamburg with an ivory keyboard (legally made in Germany). He went through a long process of trying to get it into the US (including a few phone calls to the Secretary of the Interior), but there's an absolute ban on importing ivory to the US. In the end, he had to get a plastic keyboard made for the piano before it could be shipped here; the original ivory keyboard is in a closet in his mother's house in Berlin.
"...but there's an absolute ban on importing ivory to the US."
This is not true even for African Elephant ivory, at least not yet. [1] There is also legal ivory trade in Mammoth and other animals such as wart hog that can easily be found at gem shows, knife and gun shows, etc.
I talked to a guy from the Ukraine at a knife show who was selling Mammoth tusks recovered from Russia and apparently had quite a time at the airport but he was able to bring in his supplies for sale.
Fair enough. (I hadn't actually looked up the statutes; I just believed him based on all of the hoops he jumped through to try to do it.) There does appear to be a ban on commercial imports; even though the ivory in question was legally sourced and sold in Germany, he can't get it into the US.
(Though this was probably 15 years ago...it looks like the law might have changed and he could get his keyboard now!)
19 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 50.9 ms ] threadPaul Allen has donated millions of dollars [0] to make sure this initiative gets through, which I think is great in a vacuum because I agree with what it accomplishes. However, in general I am against the concept of one individual person driving the success of an initiative because they feel passionate about a specific issue.
Is it more acceptable when the issue is seemingly benevolent?
[0] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/paul-allen...
Elephants are endangered because they are not owned; cattle, for example, are not endangered because the demand for them is profitable. The right thing to do, if one wishes to preserve endangered species, is to make it possible for people to legally raise, own and harvest elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers and the like.
I suddenly found myself finding big-game hunting a whole lot less morally repugnant when I realized that the big money that goes into it is very much used to keep many species alive. Operators of paid hunting areas have a very strongly vested interest in keeping their revenue stream going, and thus, in keeping viable populations around.
I am not pro-hunting by any means, but given a world where wildlife is hopelessly outmatched by man for resource competition, the only way to keep endangered species populated is to harness some aspect of humanity to fight for their preservation in ways that matter. Paid big-game hunting and animal cultivation is an effective way to do that and should be done more.
The conflict between man and wildlife is one-sided enough that blanket "protection" is not sufficient to save many animal populations. They need active cultivation and encouragement if they're not to be wiped out through attrition (via illegal poaching, loss of habitat, etc). Simply making it more illegal isn't going to prevent that.
This is the reason why the United States Wildlife Service has imposed a moratorium on imports of all hunting trophies from Tanzania and Zimbabwe. You can read more about it here http://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/questions-and-answers-s...
There is nothing to indicate that the situation is dramatically different in other countries.
Also your argument doesn't explain why the populations of many of the species protected by Initiative 1401 have been declining. If what you are saying actually works in practice, the populations should have been increasing.
how does it alienate the property?
> further reduces the incentives for those who live near such animals to farm them, rather than to poach them.
why would they poach them if there is no market for ivory?
> The right thing to do, if one wishes to preserve endangered species, is to make it possible for people to legally raise, own and harvest elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers and the like.
Can you actually make a proposal how one would transition from the current state of affairs to the one you are proposing? Can you talk about some possible issues with your proposal? For example how would you prevent extinction of elephants in the wild?
They won't be able to sell their property; if one can't sell something, it has lost all value. As such, it violates the Fifth Amendment.
The initiative also enables law enforcement to seize such items without warrants, which violates the Fourth Amendment.
> why would they poach them if there is no market for ivory?
Because there is, and always will be, a black market for them. And because megafauna such as elephants are pests. Poor farmers would just as soon kill them than see their families starve because their crops have been eaten or trampled.
> For example how would you prevent extinction of elephants in the wild?
I imagine that elephant ranches would be pretty close to a wild environment. Even were they not, would you rather have elephants go extinct altogether, or survive on ranches?
It doesn't and you know it so stop bullshitting. The government isn't seizing property, it just makes some antiques worthless. Which, again, is not the same as seizing. And the government has every right to ban or restrict the sales of something. We, as a society, have already accepted this trade off.
> Because there is, and always will be, a black market for them.
The size of this black market would be a lot smaller. Ivory isn't drugs, people don't "have" to buy ivory, unlike say heroin. What's the size of the black market for Kinder Surprise eggs, another thing that's illegal to sell? It's probably pretty small, because people don't need to buy Kinder Surprise eggs.
> And because megafauna such as elephants are pests. Poor farmers would just as soon kill them than see their families starve because their crops have been eaten or trampled.
Sure, some farmers kill them and will continue killing them. The question is the magnitude. These farmers aren't killing nowhere near as many elephants are poachers are.
> I imagine that elephant ranches would be pretty close to a wild environment. Even were they not, would you rather have elephants go extinct altogether, or survive on ranches?
This would lead to extinction of elephants in the wild.
> you rather have elephants go extinct altogether, or survive on ranches?
Nice false dichotomy. I would rather have them survive in the wild. Which is achievable if there's a global ban on ivory sales.
Markets are not static entities that exist on top of some underlying substrate of supply and demand. Supply and demand change according to market structures.
My favorite example is "collectable computers" since I lived this during the late 90's and early naughts. A lot of people wished they had that old computer they learned on, or wanted desperately as a kid, but circumstances had kept them from it, and they had largely resigned themselves to never owning one. And then Ebay happened. And it created a market that allowed sellers from everywhere to put what ever crap they wanted to "online" to a wide variety of possible buyers. And suddenly, people had a way to actually service their desire for an old computer.
Altairs, IMSAI's, PDP 8's and PDP 11's. Stuff that was "worthless crap" could find someone who would cherish it and pay for it. I found myself buying pallets of stuff from SRI's "junk" sale for $50, only to sell the 10 HP calculators in a box on that pallet for $2,500 on EBay, old PDP parts to collectors for $300 - $500, and just playing with a really nice set up custom built instruments.
So did Ebay "fuel" the demand? It certainly felt like it from a non-economist point of view. It was the only thing different now than before. But no, the demand was out there and Ebay simply made the market for it.
The Ivory market is the same way, its constrained to legal sources but the demand exceeds those sources. If there was no market for ivory the demand would remain boxed up, with people who wished they could having something of ivory but won't cross the line of legality to get it. That demand would go dormant. And many times it has been proposed to do just that, ban all ivory sale and transport. And that would hurt the poachers, but it also would hurt the folks who have "legal" ivory and could benefit from converting it into cash. The solution to both problems simultaneously still eludes us.
If there was no way to acquire legal Ivory and all forms of Ivory would be illegal and culturally unacceptable people would want it less, if it will be viewed as morally abhorrent to have an Ivory statue as a center piece in your living room less people will want it.
If artists could not get their hands on Ivory they will result in using alternative materials, most people don't want a block of Ivory they want a masterfully crafted art piece again driving the overall demand for Ivory down.
This is not true even for African Elephant ivory, at least not yet. [1] There is also legal ivory trade in Mammoth and other animals such as wart hog that can easily be found at gem shows, knife and gun shows, etc.
I talked to a guy from the Ukraine at a knife show who was selling Mammoth tusks recovered from Russia and apparently had quite a time at the airport but he was able to bring in his supplies for sale.
[1] http://www.fws.gov/international/travel-and-trade/ivory-ban-...
(Though this was probably 15 years ago...it looks like the law might have changed and he could get his keyboard now!)