A conservationist case for capitalism
(Text adapted from "A Personal Vision of Vanishing Wildlife," April 1990, National Geographic magazine)
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Observations: Many people in Africa are poor. People need money to live. People want to live. People, not just those who are starving to death, always wish to live better. People who have easier, more fruitful means of making a living, will choose that. People are also capable of thinking long-term. Sacrifice is inimicable to people who think of themselves, and to people who want to live. Solution: raise the standard of living. Prosperity, education, and rational long-term action follow naturally. Including protecting wildlife. The single best (and only genuine, long-term, stable) method of raising the standard of living is by promoting individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism. Governments who protect animals but not people cannot expect to protect their animals from their people. (Prosperity by capitalism even applies in degrees; the more free people and economies are, the more prosperous they are. However, the only moral society is on that completely recognizes individual rights). (See Andrew Berstein’s The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire Capitalism).
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