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Environmental Enforcement Agents Targeting Guitars
tetrahedrassface writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal agents again raided guitar maker Gibson this past week, seizing several pallets of wood and computer documents. At the heart of the issue is the wood that is being used in guitars and whether or not it comes from sustainable sources. The company insists it is being harassed and made to 'cry uncle' to the government's enforcement laws. The article notes that exotic fret and tone woods are protected in order to prevent the equivalent of 'blood diamond like trade,' but the ramifications now extend to guitar owners. If you play a vintage guitar, or a hand-built guitar made of old stock woods that were legally obtained years ago, you better not fly with it. John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says, 'there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified.' Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, 'I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar.'"
Most Musicians tend to vote progressive. Now that your ox got gored, how do you like that hope-n-change now?! Reap what you shall sow.
Let people allow their governments to be bribed by large multinational logging firms and allow their forests to be mowed to the ground! That's what the Free Markets and Capitalism says should be done! And when their ecology degrades to the point where people are starving to death, landslides and whatnot - like Haiti, the Free Markets will come to the rescue! Somehow. Anyway, this is what should happen
And it's not Gibson's problem where the wood came from! No sir! They paid for that wood! That's how the Free Markets work, after all.
This is how is should work:
No government regulation. India gets to sell all the lumber they want - regardless if it's sustainable or if causes the extinction of any furry or otherwise creature. And when their eco-system is trashed where more are impoverished and starving - Oh, well! Not our problem! The Free Markets will take of it. People will starve to death, the population decreases, the forest will eventually come back - problem solved.
The World would be sooo much better if Governments stayed of things, taxes were low, and the poor get back to work!
Just shows you how far to the right America has come. Reagan couldn't win a Republican primary these days, even though he's their patron saint. Once upon a time the Republican party wasn't anti-conservation and anti-science. Now you have to deny evolution to get a seat at the table.