No, I’m saying this law makes it less scarce, because it makes buyers leave the market.
I can’t make an informed prediction of how much ivory is going to leave the US because I know nothing about future rates of persecution or the effectiveness of the ivory trade. I imagine that a few people will “help” ivory owners avoid law enforcement by buying their illegal ivory at a sharp discount, then trading them for drugs and letting the drug traffickers get the stuff out of the country. Other, still legal ivory is going to be traded off too, since it is obvious the legal trend is going only one way. The economic incentives are pretty obvious, it’d be really weird if this didn’t happen at least a little. But I can’t know how much. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say 15% of ivory inside US borders is leaving it in the next ten years.
Agree to disagree?
No. On what do we still disagree? Much of my argument on the likely effect on the ivory market is prediction descending into outright speculation—but this is all a sub-point answering your refusal to judge whether this or the survival of the elephant species is more important. You disputed neither of my other points on why these are causally linked (ease of sting operations and the prediction other countries would copy this law). So this does not appear to be a false dilemma. Which is why I’d like to return to my main point: Isn’t helping the elephant species worth this law?
No, I’m saying this law makes it less scarce, because it makes buyers leave the market.
I can’t make an informed prediction of how much ivory is going to leave the US because I know nothing about future rates of persecution or the effectiveness of the ivory trade. I imagine that a few people will “help” ivory owners avoid law enforcement by buying their illegal ivory at a sharp discount, then trading them for drugs and letting the drug traffickers get the stuff out of the country. Other, still legal ivory is going to be traded off too, since it is obvious the legal trend is going only one way. The economic incentives are pretty obvious, it’d be really weird if this didn’t happen at least a little. But I can’t know how much. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say 15% of ivory inside US borders is leaving it in the next ten years.
No. On what do we still disagree? Much of my argument on the likely effect on the ivory market is prediction descending into outright speculation—but this is all a sub-point answering your refusal to judge whether this or the survival of the elephant species is more important. You disputed neither of my other points on why these are causally linked (ease of sting operations and the prediction other countries would copy this law). So this does not appear to be a false dilemma. Which is why I’d like to return to my main point: Isn’t helping the elephant species worth this law?
Suit yourself.