5 ms·

Why not legalize the trade and sale of ivory and have states become the sole monopoly of their sale? where so you think the money is coming from? Once it's leg

Why not legalize the trade and sale of ivory and have states become the sole monopoly of their sale? where so you think the money is coming from? Once it's legal you can start to squeeze the black market through legislation and regulation. If it's illegal then you're completely powerless. There's so many parallels here of drug legalization.

adamnemecek 10y ago
This will not work. What will happen is that a.) the legal market will serve as a cover for the illegal market b.) you have no way of determining origin of ivory c.) where would this 'legal' ivory come from in the first place? d.) enforcement of these rules is impossible or difficult at best. Currently, there are are 6 Fish and Wildlife service employees that are supposed to monitor all incoming cargo to NY and NJ ports for illegal wildlife products. That's very few people for the job. > There's so many parallels here of drug legalization. Upon closer inspection there actually aren't. The process of manufacturing drugs isn't actually all that bad (if you ignore the distribution and consumption).
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  This shifts the issue from elephants being killed indiscriminately for their tusks to an issue of state collected taxes and fees. In the long term it's much better to have the latter. You determine the origin by creating a system that leaves paper trails everywhere, from those that collect to those that sell, to exporters. The beauty of a legal system is that everything is recorded and on the books. Enforcement is easy when your project is self-funded through the internal and legal trade of ivory.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    You didn't answer the question where the legal ivory comes from.
    - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
      Did you know that a Rhino's horn and an elephant's tusk can be safely removed by trained zoologist without harming the animal? In fact they do it to elephants in captivity that destroy fences[0]. [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614538 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614538
      - adamnemecek 10y ago
        AFAIK, they can't remove the whole tusk. For one thing and for another, even if we ignore the morality of this, how do you ensure who removed the tusk?
  - kazinator 10y ago
    Elephants will continue to be poached, as long as the demand for ivory exceeds the supply generated by the licensed channels. Those channels will also need to harvest tusks from elephants. (Maybe not by killing them, but leaving them without tusks, which is still cruel and ecologically damaging.)
nanny 10y ago
I'm not sure I see the "many parallels". I don't think ivory should ever be legal, whether it's squeezed through legislation and regulation or not. Why not send our (the West's) soldiers and drones into Africa instead of the Middle East?
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  This is the same thinking of those that thing recreational drug use should be illegal. The reality is there will be a huge market for it potentially forever, and burning cash and power to fight it is an exercise in futility. Instead ask yourself what's something we can do right now that will completely take the oxygen out of the illegal ivory trade. Don't you see the legality is part of the mystique around ivory? When it becomes an every day product then morons will stop believing it has secret medicinal powers and move on.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    > The reality is there will be a huge market for it potentially forever, and burning cash and power to fight it is an exercise in futility. No there won't. The situation wasn't that bad until 2008 when CITES lifted restrictions on selling ivory which let some African countries sell their ivory to Japan and China. The situation has gotten a lot worse since then. > Instead ask yourself what's something we can do right now that will completely take the oxygen out of the illegal ivory trade. Where do you get 'legal' ivory?
  - melling 10y ago
    That sounds like a lot of ivory. There are 7 billion people on the planet. 1.4 billion in China where ivory is highly coveted. There are not even a million elephants?
  - moosey 10y ago
    The difference here is what is destroyed by a given regulation. Drugs by themselves are typically locally destructive to the user. In the case of legality, they have recourse to eliminate the destruction (rehab and other community sources) vs. the continuing destruction that is available in the modern prison system. The lack of positive recourse is destructive socially too, due to black market competition (which is far more murderous than legal competition). Drugs made legal might cause some destruction of rain forest, but might create instead better conservation. All in all, the regulations around drugs currently are nothing but negative. There is nothing positive about the ivory trade. Legal and illegal ivory trade is largely harmless at the consumer end, but at the production end we are losing an entire species, and that will have ecological costs that we can't even begin to summarize. Even if we cut off the tusks and sold those, poachers would continue to kill of those elephants as well (happened with rhinos, so this is demonstrated in a real world example). These are entirely different real world scenarios and should be treated as such.
legodt 10y ago
I don't think you understand where ivory comes from at all. Drugs come from plants and processing, ivory comes from slaughtering/mutilating endangered species
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  The brutality is there because it's completely illegal and underground. Are you telling me that modern science is unable to safely remove an elephant's tusk without destroying the animal? There's a huge difference between idiots in the bush hacking away with a chainsaw and trained zoologist in a lab.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    > Are you telling me that modern science is unable to safely remove an elephant's tusk without destroying the animal? Not entire tusks no. What will happen with these tusked elephants btw? Would you object if I pulled out your teeth? You would be under sedatives of course. I really want this necklace made out of your teeth.
    - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
      Are you really asking me if I'd rather have my teeth pulled out by a dentist or half my face and mouth cut off with a chainsaw? Which of these two would you choose?
      - adamnemecek 10y ago
        False dilemma. If you ban ivory sales the odds of you having it cut off with a chainsaw are much lower.
kazinator 10y ago
As long as this monopolized sale volume is zero, so that elephants aren't being killed, I'm all for it. Except that it won't make a difference in that case (see below). Your analogy is flawed because: legalization of, say, marijuana doesn't stop marijuana plants from being killed in large numbers. The goal behind marijuana being illicit isn't to protect the marijuana plant from extinction. (The goal is rather the application of an ideology that is fully understood only by certain people who want to control other people's lives.) Drug legalization only works when it makes drugs widely available and inexpensive. That's what removes the incentive of the hardened criminals to engage in trafficking, along with all the collateral crime and violence --- not the fact that anything has become legal. If some commodity is legal but controlled, and licenses are not actually handed out in any significant numbers so that it is still scarce, then the trafficking will continue exactly as before, in the same manner.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  I'm talking about harvesting and selling every single elephant tusk. That's 100%. There aren't that many Elephants born in Africa, and apparently we're able to track every single one of them. I'm advocating safely removing the tusk via trained zoologist with modern science so that it leaves the elephant without its tusk.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    > I'm talking about harvesting and selling every single elephant tusk. That's 100%. 100% of what? > There aren't that many Elephants born in Africa, and apparently we're able to track every single one of them. We definitely aren't actually. These are estimates. > 'm advocating safely removing the tusk via trained zoologist with modern science so that it leaves the elephant without its tusk. Yeah, that will not happen. Dude stop commenting you are just embarrassing yourself.
    - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
      Clearly we have a fundemental disagreement about how to stop elephants from being brutally killed in Africa. In the long term I believe safely harvesting the tusk by governments and selling them in a tightly regulated and legal marketplace will greatly reduce the ability for poachers to both harvest and sell ivory illegally, which in turn will drastically cut the occurrences of elephants and rhino's from being brutally killed throughout Africa. I'm not "embarrassed" by this position at all and I'm not sure why you suggest this. I have no issue with you advocating we keep the trade illegal. After all that's how it is right now and I don't see anything changing in the future.
mikeash 10y ago
Virtually everyone on the planet uses drugs of some kind, and they generally see nothing wrong with it. The vast majority of humans go through their entire lives without caring about ivory, and those who do care usually come down on the side of not killing elephants. The lesson to draw from the drug war isn't "bans don't work," but rather "bans don't work when you ban something nearly ubiquitous that people don't see anything wrong with."

adamnemecek 10y ago

This will not work. What will happen is that a.) the legal market will serve as a cover for the illegal market b.) you have no way of determining origin of ivory c.) where would this 'legal' ivory come from in the first place? d.) enforcement of these rules is impossible or difficult at best. Currently, there are are 6 Fish and Wildlife service employees that are supposed to monitor all incoming cargo to NY and NJ ports for illegal wildlife products. That's very few people for the job. > There's so many parallels here of drug legalization. Upon closer inspection there actually aren't. The process of manufacturing drugs isn't actually all that bad (if you ignore the distribution and consumption).

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
This shifts the issue from elephants being killed indiscriminately for their tusks to an issue of state collected taxes and fees. In the long term it's much better to have the latter. You determine the origin by creating a system that leaves paper trails everywhere, from those that collect to those that sell, to exporters. The beauty of a legal system is that everything is recorded and on the books. Enforcement is easy when your project is self-funded through the internal and legal trade of ivory.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  You didn't answer the question where the legal ivory comes from.
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    Did you know that a Rhino's horn and an elephant's tusk can be safely removed by trained zoologist without harming the animal? In fact they do it to elephants in captivity that destroy fences[0]. [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614538 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614538
    - adamnemecek 10y ago
      AFAIK, they can't remove the whole tusk. For one thing and for another, even if we ignore the morality of this, how do you ensure who removed the tusk?
- kazinator 10y ago
  Elephants will continue to be poached, as long as the demand for ivory exceeds the supply generated by the licensed channels. Those channels will also need to harvest tusks from elephants. (Maybe not by killing them, but leaving them without tusks, which is still cruel and ecologically damaging.)

nanny 10y ago

I'm not sure I see the "many parallels". I don't think ivory should ever be legal, whether it's squeezed through legislation and regulation or not. Why not send our (the West's) soldiers and drones into Africa instead of the Middle East?

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
This is the same thinking of those that thing recreational drug use should be illegal. The reality is there will be a huge market for it potentially forever, and burning cash and power to fight it is an exercise in futility. Instead ask yourself what's something we can do right now that will completely take the oxygen out of the illegal ivory trade. Don't you see the legality is part of the mystique around ivory? When it becomes an every day product then morons will stop believing it has secret medicinal powers and move on.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  > The reality is there will be a huge market for it potentially forever, and burning cash and power to fight it is an exercise in futility. No there won't. The situation wasn't that bad until 2008 when CITES lifted restrictions on selling ivory which let some African countries sell their ivory to Japan and China. The situation has gotten a lot worse since then. > Instead ask yourself what's something we can do right now that will completely take the oxygen out of the illegal ivory trade. Where do you get 'legal' ivory?
- melling 10y ago
  That sounds like a lot of ivory. There are 7 billion people on the planet. 1.4 billion in China where ivory is highly coveted. There are not even a million elephants?
- moosey 10y ago
  The difference here is what is destroyed by a given regulation. Drugs by themselves are typically locally destructive to the user. In the case of legality, they have recourse to eliminate the destruction (rehab and other community sources) vs. the continuing destruction that is available in the modern prison system. The lack of positive recourse is destructive socially too, due to black market competition (which is far more murderous than legal competition). Drugs made legal might cause some destruction of rain forest, but might create instead better conservation. All in all, the regulations around drugs currently are nothing but negative. There is nothing positive about the ivory trade. Legal and illegal ivory trade is largely harmless at the consumer end, but at the production end we are losing an entire species, and that will have ecological costs that we can't even begin to summarize. Even if we cut off the tusks and sold those, poachers would continue to kill of those elephants as well (happened with rhinos, so this is demonstrated in a real world example). These are entirely different real world scenarios and should be treated as such.

legodt 10y ago

I don't think you understand where ivory comes from at all. Drugs come from plants and processing, ivory comes from slaughtering/mutilating endangered species

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
The brutality is there because it's completely illegal and underground. Are you telling me that modern science is unable to safely remove an elephant's tusk without destroying the animal? There's a huge difference between idiots in the bush hacking away with a chainsaw and trained zoologist in a lab.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  > Are you telling me that modern science is unable to safely remove an elephant's tusk without destroying the animal? Not entire tusks no. What will happen with these tusked elephants btw? Would you object if I pulled out your teeth? You would be under sedatives of course. I really want this necklace made out of your teeth.
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    Are you really asking me if I'd rather have my teeth pulled out by a dentist or half my face and mouth cut off with a chainsaw? Which of these two would you choose?
    - adamnemecek 10y ago
      False dilemma. If you ban ivory sales the odds of you having it cut off with a chainsaw are much lower.

kazinator 10y ago

As long as this monopolized sale volume is zero, so that elephants aren't being killed, I'm all for it. Except that it won't make a difference in that case (see below). Your analogy is flawed because: legalization of, say, marijuana doesn't stop marijuana plants from being killed in large numbers. The goal behind marijuana being illicit isn't to protect the marijuana plant from extinction. (The goal is rather the application of an ideology that is fully understood only by certain people who want to control other people's lives.) Drug legalization only works when it makes drugs widely available and inexpensive. That's what removes the incentive of the hardened criminals to engage in trafficking, along with all the collateral crime and violence --- not the fact that anything has become legal. If some commodity is legal but controlled, and licenses are not actually handed out in any significant numbers so that it is still scarce, then the trafficking will continue exactly as before, in the same manner.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
I'm talking about harvesting and selling every single elephant tusk. That's 100%. There aren't that many Elephants born in Africa, and apparently we're able to track every single one of them. I'm advocating safely removing the tusk via trained zoologist with modern science so that it leaves the elephant without its tusk.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  > I'm talking about harvesting and selling every single elephant tusk. That's 100%. 100% of what? > There aren't that many Elephants born in Africa, and apparently we're able to track every single one of them. We definitely aren't actually. These are estimates. > 'm advocating safely removing the tusk via trained zoologist with modern science so that it leaves the elephant without its tusk. Yeah, that will not happen. Dude stop commenting you are just embarrassing yourself.
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    Clearly we have a fundemental disagreement about how to stop elephants from being brutally killed in Africa. In the long term I believe safely harvesting the tusk by governments and selling them in a tightly regulated and legal marketplace will greatly reduce the ability for poachers to both harvest and sell ivory illegally, which in turn will drastically cut the occurrences of elephants and rhino's from being brutally killed throughout Africa. I'm not "embarrassed" by this position at all and I'm not sure why you suggest this. I have no issue with you advocating we keep the trade illegal. After all that's how it is right now and I don't see anything changing in the future.

mikeash 10y ago

Virtually everyone on the planet uses drugs of some kind, and they generally see nothing wrong with it. The vast majority of humans go through their entire lives without caring about ivory, and those who do care usually come down on the side of not killing elephants. The lesson to draw from the drug war isn't "bans don't work," but rather "bans don't work when you ban something nearly ubiquitous that people don't see anything wrong with."