Reading a book by Arthur Schlesinger about the Kennedy years. "One Thousand Days". In the part I read last night he talked about the rhetoric of the Eisenhower years about capitalism and free trade, and the reality of the US economy. Quite different. Sort of like the current rhetoric and reality.

However, capitalism without checks leads to things like the company store, economic slavery where there is only one place to work and where there is only one place to buy, where debt owns people. Sort of like the IMF on a local scale.

Unlimited capitalism, greed, is not enlightened. It is by definition selfish. Your beloved Ayn Rand with her economic Rambos, ignores the infrastructure necessary for her heroes to function. And prosper.

Because where capitalism runs without checks, there is no middle class. Peru, Columbia, Mexico, etc., are all more or less capitalist economies, with very rich and very poor people. Not much in the middle, to create markets, to run sophisticated enterprises.

Unrestrained capitalism would result in every elephant shot for it's tusks, every fish being dragged from the sea, because there was a market for the product.

Your model for managing wildlife requires an interruption of the "free market". A government strong enough to suppress the poachers who would, and do, operate anyway.

One afternoon in the Serengeti we drove through a brush fire set by poachers to drive game, saw a Cape Buffalo with an arrow (!) in it's side, saw the poacher's three donkeys. (You really, really have to wonder about anyone who will stick an arrow into a Cape Buffalo.) The guide notified the Rangers, kids with green shirts and AK-47s, and we all visited. They wondered about shooting the donkeys, decided to let the lions get 'em.

It was a bit strange knowing the poachers were very close, and to know they were armed with arrows. Maybe they had guns, didn't want to use them because of the noise. These were poachers for food, though.

And that's in an area in which the animals make a lot of money for most people and the government. Not all.

The unrestrained free market always works, but not to everyone's benefit.

Arf