Traveling abroad? Don’t take your mandolin or guitar. Or, if you do, expect to hire a lawyer to fill out the paperwork.
It’s all about protected wood. The ebony of Madagascar, for instance, is legally protected. Anyone transporting wooden items across borders is supposed to fill out forms proving the provenance of each piece of wood. Make a mistake, go to jail. And pay a hefty fine.
And travelers aren’t the only targets. Gibson Guitar, a world-leading instrument maker, was raided by federal agents last week. The agents seized wood used in the manufacture of guitars — in a previous raid, they’d seized pallets of wood as well as guitars and electronic files. Apparently they are out to prove that Gibson has been knowingly purchasing illegal materials.
I might as well confess: I’m skeptical of the whole shebang, the protecting of wood by criminalizing sale and possession. Prohibition of the materials seems the wrong way to protect renewable resources, just as prohibition of the ownership and sales of elephant ivory has worked to the detriment of elephant populations. It’s where elephants are owned and their populations managed that elephant populations have stabilized, rather than shrunk.
I bet that private property in ebony forests would similarly preserve resources as well — if that property were defended by a rule of law so that the capital value of the land the forests sit upon, as well as the trees themselves, would figure into the accounting of entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, our federal government continues to prove its anti-Constitutional, pro-tyranny bent.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “Forest for the Tyrannies”
Being a lib/prog means never having to say you’re accountable (for the results).
Your making sense.
Raiding Gibson Guitar! That is just stupid. Who was the idiot who thought that was a good idea. They should be fired.
when are we going to get rid of that nut case anyway, how can you trust a person that smokes, and what is he smoking?
My thinking is if you are a successful enterprise, employing workers, adding to the economy, they are going to shut you down. They want America to fail. Who are they? I don’t know but I hope someone exposes them soon.
I’M a lib/prog guitar player, and Gibson is my favorite brand. Wish i still had my 1953 CW and my 1970 SG. And sustainable agriculture is fine, if we could stop greedy corporations like APP from shaving off what’s left of the rain forests in Indonesia and wiping out the Sumatran tiger and rhino, or at least reserve some “private property” in places like that which don’t respect it anyway. Your solution is fanciful. CITES may unwieldy at times, but it’s better than pipe-dreams. Quit blaming Obama for everything and find out what the hell they’re putting in your TEA.