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> It isn't an unreasonable naive idea.

It's fundamentally misguided and it's not a solution. Between elephant extinction and elephant suffering, I will go with extinction every time.

Elephants are important for the ecosystem, IIRC something like 70% of all species in certain areas rely on them. If you remove them from the ecosystem by domesticating them, you are doing a damaging the ecosystem in multiple way.

No, elephants can't be contained on a farm. They are meant to roam whereby they disseminate seed of certain plants that rely on them to be disseminated.

Is that enough of a reason? Libertarianism is the answer only when you care about simple answers, not about working answers.




> Elephants are important for the ecosystem, IIRC something like 70% of all species in certain areas rely on them. If you remove them from the ecosystem by domesticating them, you are doing a damaging the ecosystem in multiple way.

I'm not sure why you think this is an either/or proposition. I mean, I accept that farming elephants isn't practical for a lot of reasons, but no one's talking about putting every living elephant on a farm.


Effectively that's what would happen under a legal ivory sales system. Poachers would effectively wipe them out in the wild.


Which they're doing anyway. It might not improve the situation, but it can hardly make it worse.


No universally no. Countries that have shoot in sight poaching policies have very low poaching rates.


How does due process work? Could anybody just murder anyone else and give a credible defense of "I thought that guy was a poacher?".


Why would that change if elephants were also farmed?


There are other ways of making the situation better?


The perfect is the enemy of the good?


Stop taking digs at libertarians--for the most part, market based systems succeed where every other plan conjured up by fallible man fails! Most of the other "working answers" involved force and in this case, eradicating the human scourge that have encroached on the elephants' habitat. I guess a secondary move would be to eradicate the human scourge who think they need ivory in their lives. So if mass murder is your thing, then by all means, find a non-market solution. But keep falling all over yourself thinking you care so much!




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