Video
Harvesting of Big Game Animals to Be Legalized? Oxford Mathematical Equation May Approve
Cracking the code of rhino poaching ... A team of academics are building a mathematical model they hope will shed light on the complexities surrounding the illegal trade of rhino horns. The team believe their equations will provide policy-makers and conservationists a clearer path on how to protect the endangered mammals from extinction. – Reuters
Dominant Social Theme: If we work out a proper mathematical model, maybe it will show us that fighting poachers is a useless exercise.
Free-Market Analysis: It is well known from thousands of years of human experience that fighting the Invisible Hand of competition is a losing proposition. This hasn't stopped governments around the world from standing firm against poaching. And it hasn't stopped the poachers.
In fact, what's going on is that the trade in dead animals is simply the currency of Money Power that constantly seeks to expand the role of the state and will seize on any justification to do so.
Extinction is merely another gambit used to emphasize the necessity of the state. Not so long ago we reported on this trend when analyzing an AFP article in our article, "Now UN Blames Lord's Resistance Army for Elephant Poaching."
This was, as we pointed out, obviously an elite meme – actually, two of them rolled into one. The first meme was that the Lord's Resistance Army – all 20 of them – was extremely dangerous and warranted the on-the-ground implementation of US and NATO troops. The second was that poaching must be "fought."
This is, of course, another weary "war" to go with the war against drugs, the war against smoking, the war against cancer and umpteen other wars that Western societies are waging in endless iterations and without much success.
What can break the deadly failures of these "wars"? Well, in the case of poaching, perhaps abject failure will do the trick.
We see, in this video above, that a team of Oxford academicians is preparing a mathematical equation that will allow "stakeholders" to determine whether the illegal harvesting of big game animals should be legalized. This would mean presumably that rhinos would be raised so that their horns could be harvested. Elephants might have to give up tusks.
This is eminently sensible, of course. Trying to defend animals from human depredation doesn't work. Much better to breed them, legitimize the trade, monitor it and even attempt to create alternatives.
But the wholesale slaughter of beautiful big game animals has been tolerated because it massages the mythology of the state – which is to stand up against poaching by protecting target animals.
Now it has gotten to point a where the animals are almost all gone. Instead of simply reversing the policy, elites provide us with yet a new wrinkle. It is not market forces that will make this decision but a technocratic equation.
It really is incredible. Those in power will do ANYTHING to avoid granting credibility to market forces. Listen to the video above and you can hear it. The reason to legitimize animal harvesting – or at least the harvesting of horns – will be the result of ... a mathematical equation!
If the equation created by Oxford dons provides a proper justification, then those in charge may allow the market to operate. But first they have to run the numbers.
If the math adds up, the veracity of the Invisible Hand may be recognized. But only if it is supported by a complex "equation."
Conclusion: Somehow we are not surprised. The solution to the problem of poaching is to be realized via an academic equation presented to a variety of "stakeholders." Academics provide the evidence, government bureaucrats and environmentalists decide on its applicability. Eventually, the market is grudgingly recognized. We could have saved them the trouble ...
(Video from ReutersVideo's YouTube user channel.)
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Posted by howardtlewisiii on 02/23/13 01:56 AM
Right. I eat all the cookies in the bag to save them. This logic works because I pay your salary.
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Posted by provolone on 02/22/13 11:01 PM
Click to view link
It is easy for conservationists to sit in a place where leopards are not eating children and elephants are not destroying houses. However, if they had to live with some of these beasts they are dedicated to saving, perhaps they would have a different opinion.
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Posted by alaska3636 on 02/22/13 04:03 PM
There seems to be a sub-dominant theme here of institutional competence. Competence, or expertise, can only be granted by a particularly established criteria.
In this case, academics are sought for their mathematical expertise in the field of animal husbandry, instead of someone who might actually have experience raising and caring for animals. It seems like a contradiction when phrased in that manner: mathematics experts sought for advice on sustaining a desirable line of creatures.
I have this plumbing issue: my toilet clogs every time I flush it. So, I need a mathematical model to predict how to get me out of this jam. As a last resort, I might call a plumber.
I see this a lot in terms of defending the non-sense of Paul Krugman in the comments section of his articles on NYTimes. It goes something like this:
Critic: Krugman's line of thinking displays no understanding of the broken-window fallacy.
Defense: Oh so he got a PhD in economics from Harvard (Princeton?) for being an idiot? And a Nobel, too?
It's as if everyone can read, but not everyone can come to the correct understanding without going through the crucible of academia.
Yet, academia does not turn out experts. It turns out parrots. Expertise must be earned, not granted. And it's gaining is utterly the profit-and-loss mechanism of the free-market. People who have followed a passion, usually in their spare time, without quite knowing where it was going to go, and who stick with it, turn out innovations. Not people who repeat the work of others knowing full-well where it leads.
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Posted by Ol' Grey Ghost on 02/22/13 03:03 PM
Does anyone else remember when "poaching" meant to hunt wild animals while trespassing on the property of another, which in turn meant one was stealing from the property owner? When governments complain about people "poaching," what they are claiming is that they, the governments, own all the animals of the world, whether wild or domesticated, and if one hunts without the governments' permission, then one is stealing.
I've noticed in instances where a government gets out of the way and allows some collection of private individuals, like tribes, to exercise ownership over a certain wild animal and sell the privilege of hunting this creature, then the species is saved from extinction. The "Invisible Hand" saves the creature through the greed for sustainable profit...
