[jstanley]

Sure, but that's not a fundamental thing, it's just a unit that's convenient to trade.

It's like wondering whether gold is worth more than Microsoft by comparing an ounce of gold to a share of Microsoft. Or to an ounce of Microsoft share certificates!

The only sensible way to make the comparison is by total market cap. And I seriously doubt that rhino horns are worth more than 15 trillion USD.

[ben_w]

> The only sensible way to make the comparison is by total market cap

From the perspective of smugglers and their stuff, that's about the worst possible comparison.

So much so that yours is literally the first time ever that I've heard anyone even suggest market cap for a smuggled substance; looking at the definition of that term, I don't think that term is, or even could be by analogy, meaningful in this context.

It's always money per mass, £$€ per imperial or metric, never anything else.

[yreg]

> Sure, but that's not a fundamental thing, it's just a unit that's convenient to trade.

How is price per unit of mass not fundamental?

I refuse to believe that you are actually confused that one commodity costs more per gram than another one.

[gus_massa]

My guess is by weight. (It also may be by volume, that I guess is very important to transport illegal things, but it's too abstrtact. [1])

Comparison by weight is useful to give an idea of the price. It's just like measuring distances in football fields. Don't worry too much about that. Also, a cargo ship full of gold [2] is probably very valuable, but a magical cargo ship full of rhino horns will probably collapse the market and be worthless.

Here is a list of most expensive materials per weight https://brightside.me/articles/the-17-most-expensive-materia... it includes saffron and antimater that have a very short shelf life, a few radioactive things that are expensive only beacuse they are difficult to produce [3]. If I had to stock huge quantities, I'd be very conservative and store gold and platinium.

[1] Gold has a huge value per volume ratio. Toilete paper not.

[2] Assuming it doesn't sink.

[3] Aluminium used to be very expensive, until someone invented a method to make metalic aluminium easily.

[ryankrage77]

It would be atypical to trade a physical commodity for a share. This is the purpose of money.

[ryanjshaw]

You seem to be down voted by level 0 thinkers. No doubt they will down vote me now too.

You are completely correct. While the statement is factually correct regarding the cost of rhino horn, it is completely meaningless information.

We may as well throw in the cost per gram of a heart transplant while we're at it.

I will say that annual demand is probably the more meaningful figure to work with, and it would be even more useful to express that in terms of "how many more years of this level of demand will lead to the extinction of rhinos."

[usuehfjfi]

Yeah, not fundamental.

When you go to the store you compare bananas by the size of the company that produced them? Or by the price per kg?