http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/3tlbr53<\/a>) \u201cCross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you\u2019d better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent — not to mention face fines and prosecution.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What\u2019s the bridge made of?\u201d Mr. Felten asks. \u201cIf it\u2019s ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar\u2019s headstock bone, or could it be ivory?<\/p>\n
\u201cConsider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique B\u0161sendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork — which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys,\u201d the Journal reports. \u201cBut Mr. Vieillard didn\u2019t have his paperwork straight when two dozen federal agents came calling. Facing criminal charges that might have put him in prison for years, Mr. Vieillard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Lacey Act, and was handed a $17,500 fine and three years probation.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the risks, why don\u2019t musicians just settle for the safety of carbon fiber? Some do — when concert pianist Jeffrey Sharkey moved to England two decades ago, he had Steinway replace the ivories on his piano with plastic. …\u201d<\/p>\n
Can you imagine what that costs — what ALL U.S. users of imported hardwoods are now spending in an attempt to constantly prove they\u2019re \u201cin compliance\u201d with feel-good United Nations \u201cforest stewardship\u201d edicts and the latest updates to the loony federal \u201cLacey Act\u201d … which the feds won\u2019t even cite?<\/p>\n
Could the pieces of your granddad\u2019s chess set be made of ivory? Might grandma\u2019s hat contain the fur or feathers of some now-endangered species — which it was perfectly legal to import in 1932, and for which no one ever bothered to keep any \u201cdocumentation\u201d? Could someone go to prison if you tried to sell those heirlooms to a collector, today?<\/p>\n
Can you imagine how many new jobs could have been created, if the firms being raided and fined over this nonsense were free to use those resources on something more productive, like building banjos, pianos, and guitars?<\/p>\n
No, no one wants to see the last elephant die, or the last stand of teakwood, or whatever.<\/p>\n
But what we\u2019re seeing here, incarnate in this Draconian, job-destroying law, is the pernicious anti-capitalist doctrine that Europe, the United States and Japan do not \u201cdeserve\u201d the wealth and improved standards of living they\u2019ve been able to create for their people through voluntary-exchange capitalism, that they must be made to suffer punishment for their ongoing crime of \u201cexploiting\u201d the Third World by somehow \u201cseizing\u201d from these perfectly willing sellers their \u201cendangered resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
The premise is familiar from the Washington dog-and-pony shows in which \u201cunderage\u201d teen-age girls from independent Latin American nations are hauled in to testify before Congressional committees about being somehow \u201cforced\u201d to work in Honduran or Guatemalan \u201csweatshops\u201d (whether air-conditioned or not) manufacturing garments for American consumers. Afterwards, only the lonely reporter from the Cato Institute bothers to draw from the cheery lasses outside on the Capitol steps the fact that they\u2019re paid much more than their nation\u2019s prevailing adult agricultural wage, that they\u2019re actually quite happy the \u201cgreedy capitalists\u201d came with their expensive machines to multiply the value of the labor of their townsfolk, that their only other option to support their families, should the \u201csweatshop\u201d close, would be prostitution.<\/p>\n
What is the best, time-proven method to make sure resources such as wood lots are not overutilized, threatening their ability to regenerate? Private ownership. Private owners have a vested interest in making sure the resources will still be there for their children and grandchildren, which is why private timber companies tend to re-plant their acreage, which can grow into stands so lovely they confused a studio publicist into initially bragging the 1992 version of \u201cLast of the Mohicans\u201d had been filmed in a North Carolina \u201cvirgin forest.\u201d<\/p>\n
In contrast, communal ownership famously leads to the \u201ctragedy of the commons,\u201d in which perverse incentives encourage the first users to grab as much as they can, regardless of whether the town green gets overgrazed, since \u201cSomebody else is going to get it if I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Do you suppose the United Nations \u201cforest stewards\u201d understand this?<\/p>\n
Mr. Juszkiewicz told The Associated Press the absence of the materials taken in last week\u2019s raid has hurt his company\u2019s ability to produce, and that he hopes to re-start production soon, since each day of non-production costs the firm a million dollars.<\/p>\n
Maybe he can make that up with some layoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That \u201claser-like focus\u201d of the Obama administration on jobs? Maybe they meant \u201con destroying jobs.\u201d Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, armed with sub-machine guns, again last week raided and shut down production at the factories of the Gibson Guitar Corp. in Memphis and Nashville, Tenn. Gibson manufactures acoustic and electric guitars, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,17,35,18,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-big-brother","category-earth-stewardship","category-economics","category-extreme-green"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-dI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":851,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}