[alex_young]

Seems like another way to read this is to say that unchecked capitalism leads to some pretty unhealthy behaviors.

If people weren’t trying to get rich selling tusks we would have more elephants and if people weren’t trying to get rich with GME stock we would have less fear of our other investments being randomly targeted.

[throwawayboise]

If people could not become rich by profiting from their efforts, we'd all still be living in teepees and spending our days foraging.

[alex_young]

My criticism of unchecked capitalism isn’t the same thing as opposition to capitalism itself. In fact it’s easy to argue that capitalism cannot function without the limits we place upon it.

[tradri]

taking the anarchist's approach: if people are happier owning tusks and using the stock market as a casino than seeing elephants and having stable finances, let em do it.

[alex_young]

Do anarchists really believe that the profit motives of the few outweigh the collective interest of the masses?

[cylon13]

It's a pretty varied group defined around a negative. That's like asking whether atheists believe a specific positive statement about the world. That said, to try to answer your question, my guess is left anarchists would say "absolutely not, capitalism is full of unjust hierarchy and the profit motive is bad news altogether", and right anarchists would say, "there's no such thing as the collective interest, but nobody gets to violate the individual rights of anyone else for whatever motive".

[chii]

they do, because they believe they themselves are going to be at the top. If you showed them where in society they will end up (i.e., at the bottom), they will change their tune.

[danShumway]

> than seeing elephants

I don't want to strawman anyone. Are there really Anachrocapitalists who believe that the market should decide whether or not we have mass extinctions, or is this post mostly satirical?

There are so many problems with this idea, not the least being that markets aren't designed to eliminate niche ideas, they're designed to support them -- and because wild populations of elephants are a shared common resource, even a small number of people who are happier owning tusks means that their preferences suddenly outweigh the vast majority that want them to stop killing elephants.

Markets aren't designed to stop people from irreparably damaging commons and messing up the world for everyone. That doesn't mean markets are bad, it just means... that's not what they were ever designed to do. You're using them to try and fix a problem that they're not optimized to fix.

This is very much a, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" proposal. We don't need to solve literally every single problem with Capitalism. We especially shouldn't look at every single problem and say, "Capitalism doesn't solve that, so it's not a real problem."

[giergirey]

Does it not seem plausible to you that perhaps one factor in the reduction of poaching was local people realizing there was more money to be made from tourists drawn to see elephants, rather than from poaching them? Government action helped too, no doubt.

[danShumway]

I expect that the major positive impact of tourism was providing motivation for local governments and local citizens to crack down on poaching. I am skeptical that you can convince every single poacher to stop poaching and become tour guides. I am also skeptical that the person paying money for ground elephant tusk elixirs is going to view a vacation as a suitable substitute.

Reducing demand certainly helps, but tourism and poaching are not exclusive markets, you can have tourism and poaching happening at the same time -- and demand for one isn't necessarily going to reduce demand for the other. If 100 people are giving tours, and 20 people are deciding that they'd still rather just shoot elephants because they don't like dealing with tourists, then you still end up with zero elephants. Reducing demand is only going to be one part of the puzzle, a slight reduction isn't enough on its own to solve the problem.

And regardless, looking at market demand as a part of the solution is still kind of missing the point. Sure, we might be able to leverage some market forces to help with the overall problem, but it's still a problem regardless of what the market says about it. The market in this case is at best a tool, it doesn't define what the right outcome should be.

It doesn't matter if the vast minority of people rich enough to spend money on this prefer elephant tusks or tours. It should not be their choice to make. We don't want the market to decide whether or not we have mass extinctions. If we end up with zero elephants, saying, "well, the market just didn't create enticing tours, so we'll never have elephants again" is not a valid response.

What percentage of the population is rich enough to go on wildlife tours to another country? They don't have the right to choose for everyone else whether or not elephants go extinct.

[nradov]

In general there's no valid reason to fear our investments being randomly targeted. GME short sellers have only themselves to blame by pushing the total short interest to unsustainable levels and failing to hedge. That is a rare situation which hardly impacts any of us.