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THIS WEEK’S BRUTAL killing of a rhino in its enclosure at a French zoo points to a new European frontier for greedy poachers that must be closed as a matter of urgency, environmentalists and officials say.
With skyrocketing Asian demand for rhinoceros horn to use in “medicine” or as a display of wealth, Europe’s museums, auction houses, antique dealers and taxidermist shops have long been targets as traditional sources dry up.
In many museum exhibits, stuffed rhinos already sport fake horns to discourage thieves.
But in 2011, police agency Europol warned that zoos too, could fall prey.
Monday’s killing of Vince the white rhino marked the first time a European zoo had been breached in this way.
Why rhino horn?
Despite a dearth of scientific evidence that it has any curative powers, rhino horn commands astronomical prices of about €57,000 per kilo – more than gold or cocaine.
The highest price ever recorded by French conservation NGO Robin des Bois (Robin Hood) was €100,000 for a kilo of powdered horn in a private sale in China.
One horn can weigh four kilos – comprised exclusively of keratin, the same substance in human hair and fingernails.
Demand for the commodity is soaring in Vietnam and China, where it is thought to cure anything from hangovers to cancer.
Why a zoo, and why in Europe?
Wild rhino numbers are plummeting. About 1,400 are killed every year, out of an estimated population of 25,000 – mainly in South Africa but also in Asia and India.
In the last eight years alone, roughly a quarter of the world population has been massacred in South Africa, home to 80% of surviving rhinos.
Today, it may be easier to poach in a European zoo than an African game park, where just about every rhino has its own guard.
There are about 160 rhinos in European zoos – a potential goldmine for horn smugglers.
What can zoos do to protect live animals?
According to Europol, zoos and other public places with rhino horns on display or in storage, must remain on alert for “possible ‘visits’ from persons likely to defraud or attack them to obtain specimens.”
The NGO Robin des Bois recommends ramping up zoo patrols and giving guards the right to fire warning shots.
It also wants to boost customs procedures and surveillance of postal services to stop the horns, whose sale is illegal everywhere, from ever reaching the Asian market.
Education is also needed to convince possible consumers that rhino horn does not have any of the healing powers it is credited with.
Another worrying development is a rise in the theft of live animals from European zoos in the last 15 years – anything from monkeys and flamingos and penguins, according to Robin des Bois spokeswoman Charlotte Nithart.
“If this first blow (for zoo rhinos) is not followed with rigorous security measures, it is certain to be repeated in another zoo in France or in Europe,” she told AFP.
The fiat issue is the interesting one, since money is supposed to be scarce in the sense of not unlimited, but by letting go of being tied to an tangible scarcity like gold or silver, the question becomes what this commodity then becomes. Production, GDP, people, trust? I honestly have no idea anymore, even if I understand ‘currency’, what money actually is, and what it’s based on.
Does anyone on here know what money really ‘is’ except this stuff to pay the rent and all, while seemingly getting less valuable on pretty much a weekly basis? It must be based on some sort of scarcity or else this inflation would presumably have gotten out of hand yonks ago.
So anyone? What is money in layman’s terms? And why does it ‘work’ if not tied to something like gold?
@Mick Tobin: It’s not based on scarcity at all bank’s create more money in the global economy when they issue loan’s. It is very questionable if it has a reliable long-term value as a savings instrument due to devaluation and cost of living increases etc.
Basically it has a NPV that can be defined in the short/medium term after that it’s just a made up number of questionable value.
@Daniel Kelly: It seems as though you mean that money is created on the basis of loans, but doesn’t that mean that the ability to repay these is then the scarcity, i.e. the most trustworthy economy with regard to that has the most valuable currency, in other words, that the scarcity on which money is based is in the end actually this abstract, future-projected notion of trust – about which one may end up being completely mistaken?
@Mick Tobin: money is based on confidence of the population.. if that goes then kaboom
@Bri Lyons: I’m still assuming it is necessary that money is founded on a scarce commodity, and given that this commodity is seemingly confidence or trust, the implication following from this assumption is that trust needs to be bounded, i.e. limited, but that is a seemingly paradoxical stance to take, since it implies trust has to be able to run out for money to ‘work’.
Perhaps I’m missing something, and trust is in turn founded on something else, i.e. growth. But then we run into the finite world problem.
@Mick Tobin: it’s was invented simply as an instrument to enable people to barter for goods and services more efficiently, this system worked very well for the best part of 5000 years, unfortunately a middle man got involved in this trade off called the bank, and that is where the problems seem to manifest them selfs from, the founder of the original concept was obviously a very clever individual, but as we’ve seen the devil’s in the detail,
@kevin mc cormack: It wasn’t a singular invention, salt apparently did the job in several societies, as did gold, but banks grew out of the need for safekeeping, and then bankers discovered they could give out IOUs which then became money, backed up by gold, because people started using those instead of the actual gold, and then the bankers discovered they could give out more IOUs than the gold in stock covered – I guess that’s where it really began.
@Mick Tobin: Money serves three functions – as a unit of account ( how much things cost), a store of value (it can be kept to be used later, and a means of exchange (you can swap money for other things, like food and drink).
As you suggest in your posts, confidence and trust are key – for anything to be acceptable as money, people have to be confident that they will be able to exchange it for something that they want. Again as you note, salt (and other items ) have served this function in the past. In the last hundred years or so, we have gone from fiat money – notes and coins backed by gold reserves in the central bank – to “symbolic” notes and coins, and now, increasingly for everyday transactions, by plastic cards or mobile phone apps. Physical money is disappearing!
@Lesidees: It’s the other way round mate, fiat money is not backed by a tangible commodity. Other than that you’re naming the standard functions taught in school, while the point here was to try and think beyond this, since what money really is and does is a genuinely hard question as I’ve gathered. But I agree with you that it’s not a good thing if ‘physical’ money is disappearing, but this notion of physicality is not the issue. It’s not about bank notes and coins, but about what it is which gives value to these things, in other words, the question is what it is that supports our money. You’ll find some suggestions in this comments thread as to what some of the answers might be.
@Mick Tobin: yes, my mistake re fiat money.
I don’t have a view on whether the physical disappearance of notes and coins is a good or bad thing. As for what gives money its “value”, I think the answer is public confidence in the ability to exchange it for goods and services. Nothing more, nothing less
Where does dracula keep his money?
@Jimmy Chickens: In a blood bank. Oh Jimmy Chickens you are so funny!
@Jimmy Chickens: up his hole?
@pkunzip doom2.zip: …good one
@Dan Moran: why thank you
This is the most interesting journal comments section I’ve read in a long time. More of this please. Oh and for what it’s worth currency is whatever you put value in. We seem to have a more consumption than ever, so it’s more and more difficult to put your finger on what currency actually is anymore.
@Sean McCarthy: To tie in with your remark on consumption, I think I sussed it in the other thread, with the conjecture that if money needs to be backed by a scarce commodity even if it’s a fiat currency, then this commodity is confidence in continued growth. And because growth is bounded in a finite world, money ‘works’. But it’s not a very nice conclusion to arrive at.
@Mick Tobin: most developed economies are based mainly on service industries and not on finite commodities. People pay for ideas, entertainment and knowledge not sure if they can be described as finite or bounded.
Anyway. I think you are right that intrinsic value of currency is based mainly on the holders level of “confidence” in the propensity of whatever economy backs it up.
@Diaspora’d: It’s the world that is finite, and how I see it now thanks to the folks who’ve responded is that the commodity on which money is apparently based, is not a traditional tangible commodity, but an abstract one: confidence in continued economic growth. If the world is finite in terms of its resources and the number of people it can sustain, then that is by implication a scarcity (and I think that is also quite scary).
@Mick Tobin: no, not confidence in continued growth, but confidence that the money will be able to be exchanged for goods and services
Mick Tobin : As I remember from school, money is three things ..
A means of storing wealth
A means of exchange
And I can’t remember the last one but I got 10/10 in the quiz on my third attempt !!
@Gerry in Europe: Not that you learnt it in school but I think, or rather I am afraid, that what follows from money being backed by ‘confidence in continued growth’ while we live in a finite world in which this is impossible, is that money is also a means of ensuring ever worsening inequality. I haven’t quite figured out how this really works or why it is apparently a necessary consequence of the modern concept of money, but I’ll get there, even if it’s a conclusion I detest.
@Gerry in Europe: a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account!
@Mick Tobin: I don’t see where you get that modern money is necessarily (?) a means of ensuring increasing inequality. Interested to read more of your thoughts on the matter.
One things for sure it doesn’t grow on trees.
@Liz O’Neill: unless you’re a fruit seller…
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