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Comment by TheBeardKing | Hacker News Reader

I used to think more laws would be the answer to so many enviromental issues, surpassing the effects of individual choice. But the habitat loss described in this article is mainly attributed to illegal logging, which means personal greed drives up the price on the black market for things such as rare animal and plant species and exotic woods. Maybe the penalties for contraband aren't high enough? Or maybe we should completely block the import of rainforest species of wood, regardless of whether it was legally harvested. Outside of a massive armed defense from illegal loggers, what can stop them?

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Laws are meaningless without enforcement. For now it's a simple tragedy of the commons with global benefit without global support. So, really what we can do is pay these countries to enforce the rules on the books and or create other incentives to protect these resources.

If you care more about trees and birds than you do about the humans who are living in poverty who rely on illegal logging to survive, you won’t really create a system with the right incentives.

Outside of that, I helped with a project that uses old cell phones to help triangulate loggers by listening to their saws, which can be helpful.

And if we care about both ...?

It's not just caring vs not being about people. If we destroy the environment the impact is on 8+ Billion people. 'The needs of the many...' and all that.

I'm sure the market will fix it. /s

You read an awful lot into your parents comment that wasn’t said.

They never suggested not to care about both, for example. They also said nothing about the market taking care of it.

Developed countries (ie, the US) who have fucked up the environment trying to use the threat of force (law) against poor subsistence farmers in the rainforest as a last-ditch effort to save the environment vs. finding solutions that help these people survive in ways that preserve the environment.

Another great example of this is how international fishing outfits destroyed the lively hood of Somali fisherman by literally killing people with their fishing boats and also overfishing -- then poor fisherman can either die from warlords, die from starvation, or die trying to hijack international ships. The third option includes a chance of a million dollar payday.

Instead of working to help these fishing villages, the solution is private security firms and UN navy ships.

Poverty is not justification to excuse bad or illegal behavior. If you follow your line of thinking, you'd have to give someone a pass for just about any sort of environmental abuse, archaeological pillaging, improper waste management, poaching of endangered animals, etc.

At some point you have to draw a line. Must we solve global poverty at 100% before we enact environmental protections? Or should we allow the only habitable planet we have for generations to continue on a death spiral and explain to our great-grandkids "well people were poor..."

At the same time, completely ignoring systemic effects and saying "it's no justification!" certainly isn't the most effective approach.

There must be some sort of practical balance that we can look for.

Poverty is not justification to excuse bad or illegal behavior.

Entire books have been written on the very subject. Plenty of Russian works on the topic, though you might want to start with the classic primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables.

Though I'm making my point in a trite way, I think the problem is that you want to start from the bottom up. Hugo, for one, brought to light that it is a multi-layered problem and starting at the bottom, though easy and most common, might not be the right approach.

You could just nuke all developing countries you don’t like.

Or pass laws saying that native peoples are non-humans and allowed to be hunted.

Or maybe enslave a bunch of people and pass laws that say it’s ok.

You might be confusing law with morality.

People gain a monopoly on violence and then pass “laws” which equate to “how you must act or we will hurt you”.

In your world, it seems that wealth is the excuse for bad behavior.

So if you were starving to death, you wouldn't consider stealing some food to survive, but would hold firm to your principle "Poverty is not justification to excuse bad or illegal behavior"..and die? No. It sounds like the principle of someone who's never been near poverty.

In this world, being rich is more often the justification, if any were asked for, of bad and illegal behaviour, and on a grand scale.

While your effort for logging triangulation was helpful, your false dichotomy of caring about "humans" vs. "birds/trees" is not the best way to frame things.

You leave out the real beneficiaries - wealthy/corporations that benefit from the illegal goods.

My point is that you can beat people over the head as much as you want, but when the alternative is starving to death they will probably take the head beating.

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