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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (980)	9/5/2011 4:00:55 PM
From: grusum	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Do you agree with the purpose of the Lacey act? what i'll agree to is that the intent of the act is good. i think the people behind it are probably good people. but they simply don't understand economics, or the way 'things work'. if no one interfered with the free market, there would be more ebony in the wild too. the price would approach an equilibrium with the ebony in the wild. it's the same reason we can still find oysters in the wild. without oyster farming, oysters (and pearls) would be on their way to extinction. prices are falling to a point that it's no longer worth the effort to hunt wild oysters for pearls. you simply have to open too many of them to find a single pearl. and while they're more abundant than they were before oyster farming, it still takes some effort to find even one oyster. the same would be true for ebony if you let the market handle it. the growers would eventually make ebony so cheap that most people wouldn't bother looking for it in the wild. so while the intent of the lacey act may be good, the consequences of it will be the opposite of its intention.