• AdelleChattre
    +5

    I feel like if this was seized narcotics you'd have no trouble seeing their destruction as an aspect of keeping prices high.

    • spaceghoti
      +6

      That's an aspect I honestly hadn't considered. If you inflate the price by reducing supply then you make it so fewer people can afford it which shrinks demand. With less demand there's less reason to risk your life and liberty creating supply. Still lucrative enough for a few poachers to keep at it but not lucrative enough to make it a popular source of income.

      • AdelleChattre
        +4

        Sticking with the Drug War analogy, it's clear that seizing and destroying contraband does nothing at all to reduce demand. It's the most fundamental law of economics, isn't it, that reducing supply without affecting demand simply drives the price up. Whether it's token tonnages of intercepted drug shipments being burned in open pits or elephant's graveyards worth of ivory being crushed, the fact it does nothing to affect demand and only drives up the price may, in fact, be the point. Grandstanding prohibition theater. Or does that strain the analogy?