4 ms·
Tragic death, but sounds potentially unrelated to his ivory work. Aren't there startups working on producing fake ivory? Especially with animal products (meat,
by everdev 9y ago
Tragic death, but sounds potentially unrelated to his ivory work.
Aren't there startups working on producing fake ivory? Especially with animal products (meat, skins, bone, etc.) flooding the market with ethically man-made products seems far healthier to people and animals in the long run.
- adamnemecek 9y agoFake ivory wont help as there will be a premium for the real stuff. What you really need to do is make ivory seem very uncool.
- nerdponx 9y agoOr you can flood the market with high-quality fake stuff, to the point where people stop caring about the real thing. See also: diamonds.
- miketery 9y agoMy impressions is that most people still care about real diamonds though. Have thongs changed? Have prices changed?
- adamnemecek 9y agoIndeed. Also lab grown diamonds aren't much cheaper than real ones AFAIK.
- nerdponx 9y agoI might be biased by my own personal preferences, then. I certainly have no interest in a real diamond, when synthetics are so good.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoGood data exists to test your assumption, which I think is partially correct. http://www.idexonline.com/diamond_prices_index http://www.idexonline.com/diamond_prices_index The Diamond price index shows prices HAVE come down in the past 5 years by approximately 10%. Fake diamonds may be depressing the price of real ones, but it doesn't look like the market is flooded enough to solve problems like Conflict Diamonds right now. This is probably mostly because the price of lab grown synthetic diamonds is still in the same range as real diamonds for most large stones and engagement rings. As the price of artificial diamonds continues to decline this effect should continue to grow.
- miketery 9y agoIs a synthetic diamond chemically equivalent to a real one? Great that price is dropping.
- jacquesm 9y agoWe already have high quality fake stuff: plastics. Ivory does not have any practical uses as a material that you could not copy with some kind of bulk produced material. That's why piano keys were ivory until good enough plastics came along in the 1980's. The only reason the trade is strong is because of tradition, not because we don't have alternatives. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/what-is-it-about-an-elephants-tusks-that-make-them-so-valuable/262021/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/what-is...
- michaelt 9y agoThe aim is not to make fakes so good buyers choose them. The aim is to make fakes so good sellers can't prove their product is authentic - and therefore, authentic items can't command a price premium. This triggers adverse selection [1] and removes the market for authentic ivory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_for_lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_for_lemons
- jacquesm 9y ago10 seconds with a microscope (and not even a very good one) would identify the real thing. Ivory as an organic material is a lot harder to fake than a diamond, which is better when it has less irregularities (ok, up to a point where flaws are used to prove a diamond is the real thing and not a synthetic). Have a look at some ivory micrographs to see how intricate its structure is.
- oh_sigh 9y agoInstead of creating fake ivory, you could instead refashion other 'humane' ivory and pass it as rhino horn or whatever. Real, humane ivory is easier to come by than people think - for example, there are huge caches of walrus bones from inuit hunters over thousands of years which are just filled with ivory.
- jacquesm 9y agoThat's an interesting idea. And much more likely to succeed than to fake ivory.
- miketery 9y agoscarce resources are difficult to make uncool.
- everdev 9y agoI'm not sure. With rare things, you only need a few people willing to pay ridiculous prices for the behavior to continue. And the more rare it becomes, the more coveted as well by people who can look beyond the moral implications of killing elephants. But, if kids in China start wearing fake ivory necklaces to school and can buy them for a few bucks, why would you pay thousands more for something that is virtually indistinguishable? The trick is to make it so close to actually ivory (or genetically grown to be identical). If it looks like a bad knock off it won't work.
- adamnemecek 9y agoIt's not as clear cut. Luxury items have strange economic behavior but let's say that the a govt banned sales of Ferraris overnight. Would rich people go to great lengths to buy Ferraris or would they buy Lamborghinis?
- DrScump 9y agoImitation diamonds get better and better... but has that really harmed worldwide demand for the real thing?