When Trade is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Trade
The following letter to The Economist ended with a great line, that I've used as the title for this posting:
SIR -- Your article on tigers outlined the cost to their conservation of refusing to countenance markets ("Market failure", April 21st). I have argued that the only way to save the tiger is to sell it, but conservationists have maintained that commerce and conservation are antithetical. Their principal strategy has been to prohibit tiger hunting and the trading of tiger parts. Policing has thereby become the cornerstone of conservation polices and, predictably, it has failed to stave the decline of tigers in the wild.That great line -- "When trade is outlawed, only outlaws trade" -- surely that is not new? Well, I looked it up on Google, and found only two other references. And guess who those are from? The same person, Barun Mitra: see "Commerce for Conservation" from April 17, 2007 in the Hindustan Times, and also "Environmentalists Can't Save the Tiger" from 2005. Both are on the same topic as the letter above, but go into more detail, and give examples beyond crocodiles.
Some of the poorest people in the world live in close proximity to valuable resources like tigers, yet they have no incentive to conserve and manage the resources sustainably, allowing criminals and smugglers to profit from poaching. This is bad for the people and very bad for tigers. In contrast, 2m crocodiles are harvested each year from facilities as far apart as Australia, South Africa and the United States. The international availability of farmed crocodiles has virtually eliminated crocodile poaching. Clearly, when trade is outlawed, only outlaws trade and the only market failure here is the failure to let markets operate.
Barun Mitra
Liberty Institute
Delhi
So thanks for this great line Barun!
Labels: economics, environment
posted by Thomas R. Stone @ 10:13 PM
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5 Comments:
Try Googling "When guns are outlawed".
As I write this, the lead result starts with another great line.
So yes, the line from Barun Mitra is obviously a play on the more famous one about gun control: "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." Thanks for pointing that out... that famous line slipped my mind.
Contrary to your blogging and countless other writers on the subject, I still think this phrase is apt and points out the value that gun ownership can have as a deterrent to crime. There are statistics on this issue that go in all directions, so I don't want to get in a statistics-tossing war with anyone here. While certain weapons are not needed for self-defense, many others, including some types of guns, can provide self-defense and deterrent to crime, so they should not be outlawed... lest only outlaws have them.
I am glad you researched Barun Mitra's history.
If he ever takes a second to actually look at the Tiger Conservation issue, he might realize that those farmed tigers he is advocating we use for conservation, have absolutely no conservation value.
Their gene pools have been so compromised by inbreeding that they couldn't survive in the wild.
One chinese tiger farm put on a show for its "tourists": 3 tigers couldn't kill a cow! The handler had to go into the ring, take the cow out and slaughter it to feed the tigers the meat afterwards.
How are those tigers supposed to chase and hunt wild game once in the forests?
Well, most importantly, part of the argument that Barun is making is that many of the animals being bred will not be put back in the wild -- they will be used to fulfill the market need that is leading to the poaching of the wild animals. If farmed in large numbers, this will drive down the price for all "tiger parts", thereby effectively eliminating the market for "outlaws" to trade in tiger parts (as his pithy quote notes). With low prices, there is little or no incentive to kill wild tigers. Therefore, the wild tiger population will cease declining and could actually rebound over time -- a goal of conservationists. He cites many other animal examples in his writings (aligators, ostriches, and so on), where similar results have been had.
On the point of trying to reintroduced tame/farm-bred tigers into the wild, I do not have the facts on this matter. If what you say is correct as of today, I can only suggest that this is a young industry (obviously, because people like Barun wouldn't have to argue about it if there were already a lot of tiger farms and well-established practices). If there has thus far been a lot of in-breeding, well, then better selective breeding practices need to be developed, along with and the development of good reintroduction techniques for those animals that are intended to be re-introduced into the wild. I'm not aware of anything unique to Tigers that would make this impossible to accomplish.
I'll note for the record that I find dubious some of the claims I've read about the need for "tiger parts" in the first place. At least some of them seem to be irrational, unscientific claims about medicinal purposes for various tiger parts. So another approach I would advocate (though Barun might not, I don't know) to help the Tiger population rebound would be to advocate against any irrational, faith-based uses of tiger parts. Perhaps doing so could reduce the demand side of the equation, while legal tiger farms helps the supply side of the equation -- and together these two factors would work to lower the prices for tiger parts and hence the incentives for people to kill wild tigers.
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