JavaScriptDonkey wrote:stevecook172001 wrote:
The only way to stop this insanity is to completely stop that market from operating. The fact is, of course, it may prove impossible to do that. But, the point stands. A free market is not the answer to preserving a diminishing supply of a precious commodity. Indeed, it can produce outcomes that are the very antithesis of that which is most desirable in the long run. The market, as you have already implied, does not "think ahead". It just reacts in real-time to immediately previous information. That's great, of course, if you want a self organising system of resource consumption. Terrible, though, if you want to strategically manage that consumption with a view to the long term, particularly of a finite resource.
The free market is dumb, in other words.
In a truly free market people would be allowed to farm rhinoceros for their horns, supplying the demand and bring prices down.
It is only is a regulated market that rhinoceros are endangered.
Firstly, if it is physically possible to farm rhinoceroses, then I would possibly agree with this JSD. However, I don't actually know about the viability of farming them and so must reserve judgement.
Secondly, I am presuming that rhinoceroses probably require a very large range and so, although it may be possible to generate a large amount of money per individual rhino horn, the amount of land needed to produce that horn might be more profitably utilised in some other way, such as raising beef or cereals. I don't actually know and so must, again, reserve judgement.
Thirdly, even assuming that rhino farming were physically possible and even assuming that it turns out to be more profitable, given the land mass needed to produce a rhino horn, that doing so raises the largest profit for the farmer, there is the issue of turning over land for the profit of a given individual farmer, but at the expense of food production for the indigenous population in that area. For example in India, significant tracts of land have been bought up by multinational farming conglomerates and have been turned over to the production of biofuels for the international petrochemical market. In doing so, this has meant there is less land available to grow one of the staple crops of india, the onion. Consequently, the price of onions has shot through the roof in recent years, provoking the Indian onion riots some 5 years back.
However, assuming that rhino can be viably farmed and can also be farmed in such a way as to not deprive the indigenous population of access to essential renewable resources, then I agree, farming them for their horns would make some sense.
Notwithstanding any of the above, the rhino analogy I used to illustrate my point was merely that, an analogy. Like all analogies, it has it's use in basically illustrating a point, but will inevitably break down if pushed far enough. If it doesn't break down at some point, then it's not an analogy, it's the thing itself. Thus, the analogy I have used shouldn't be taken as a
literal example of the principle I was outlining.
As you will have no doubt read in the rest of my post, I was referring, primarily to the free-market acquisition and consumption of
precious and non-renewable resources such as hydrocarbons. When it comes to such resources the principle argument that free-markets are not suitable mechanisms for the strategic preservation of them for all of the reasons I have cited holds true. Indeed, one could even take the fact that rhinos are not allowed to be farmed as a rather appropriate analogy for the fact that hydrocarbons cannot be re-made once they are used up and so the analogy still stands.
