1887 Amsterdam A few straggling K. of L. pickets still out.
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Sea Cucumbers and the Black Market
By: Frank Yunker
Date: 2015-06-18
When people think of black market goods, they often think of illegal goods. Drugs. Prostitution. Gambling. However, it is not the good that is necessarily illegal. "Black Market" refers to a market where the transaction is illegal.
Why should any transaction be considered illegal? If 2 consenting adults agree to a transaction, then what's the problem? The choice to use drugs is also personal. Some would argue society pays a price when individuals choose a life of drugs, but let's skip all those arguments and look at one simple item associated with the Black Market. Sea Cucumbers.
What is a Sea Cucumber and why is it a part of the Black Market? Good questions.
The Sea Cucumber is a marine animal, cousin to the starfish, found on the ocean floor. They are are shaped like a cucumber (hence the name) and serve the same recycling process in the food chain that other bottom-dwellers serve.
A quick google search of foods that look like the body parts they help makes it clear we need a new word - something like nutrispectraphyte - to mean an item that is nutritious for the body part it resembles. Generally, it involves vegetables and fruits. The walnut looks like a brain. The kidney bean looks like a kidney. The sea cucumber looks like a ...
Okay, so that's how it ends up as an aphrodisiac. Recent studies of the sea cucumber suggest it might be effective at fighting certain types of cancer. It may be dried and powdered and sold for medicinal purposes. In either case, demand is going to increase. And that means suppliers will do anything they can to bring more quantity to the market. And that's a tragedy.
Tragedy? When free market suppliers bring high demand products to the market?
The Free Market assumes a market trading private property goods. When oceans were free, unowned and nregulated, the situation was ripe for the "tragedy of the commons." Simply put, if no one owns the ocean, then no one has the incentive - or responsibility - to ensure the long term viability of the supply. The Atlantic Cod was devastated by bottom-nets that dragged away not only cod but the smaller fish the cod needed in the food chain. But each fishing vessel looked out only for their own profit and the harvesting of extra fish or the destruction of unwanted (though necessary) fish in the cod food chain ultimately destroyed the health of the supply. That's why nations now enjoy a 200 mile protected economic one of territorial water. It gives someone - a nation - both incentive and the responsibility to ensure the long term survival - economic and environmentally - of their portion of the ocean.
Until farm-raised sea cucumbers can dominate the market, the demand goes unsatisfied and the price rises. That leads to modern day pirates who sneak across territorial waters to throw down their nets for the Chinese delicacy. The Australian and Queensland governments have enough trouble maintaining the Great Barrier Reef without patrolling for unlicensed fisherman trying to take what is not theirs. Sea Cucumbers may not be "owned" per se by the Australians, but the right to fish in waters where they are found is. The waters aren't privately owned, but the state acts like a private citizen when they try to protect size of the limits caught.
The problem is not profit, though profiteers are vilified. The problem is the commons. The Black Market exists because their method of obtaining the item is illegal.