Month: July 2016

President Kenyatta Burns Ivory, Raising Its Price, and Increasing the Incentive for Poachers to Kill Elephants

If President Kenyatta wants to save elephants, instead of burning ivory, he should sell it on the open market, moving the supply curve to the right, and lowering the price of ivory. A lower price of ivory would reduce the incentive for poachers to kill elephants.

(p. 10) NAIROBI, Kenya — What do you do when you have more than $100 million worth of ivory sitting around, just collecting dust?
You burn it, of course.
That is what Kenya did on Saturday, when President Uhuru Kenyatta lit a huge pyre of elephant tusks as a way to show the world that Kenya is serious about ending the illegal ivory trade, which is threatening to push wild elephants to extinction.
“No one, and I repeat, no one, has any business in trading in ivory, for this trade means death — the death of our elephants and the death of our natural heritage,” Mr. Kenyatta said.

For the full story, see:
ELLEN BARRY. “A Year Later, Nepal Is Trapped in the Shambles of a Devastating Quake.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., May 1, 2016): 10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 30, 2016, and has the title “A Year After Earthquake, Nepal’s Recovery Is Just Beginning.”)

“Robots Take Away Subhuman Jobs”

(p. A21) Joseph F. Engelberger, a visionary engineer and entrepreneur who was at the forefront of the robotics revolution, building robots for use on assembly lines and fostering another, named Seymour, to handle chores in hospitals, died on Tuesday [December 1, 2015] in Newtown, Conn. . . .
. . .
Mr. Engelberger was a force in robotics from its early days, in the 1960s, when his company, Unimation, in Danbury, Conn., developed the Unimate, a robotic arm that would greatly accelerate industrial production lines.
. . .
Labor unions and some corporate managers resisted robotics at first, worrying, as Mr. Engelberger later put it, “that the robots can take all the jobs away.”
He disagreed with that notion.
“It’s unjustified,” he told The New York Times in 1997. “The robots take away subhuman jobs which we assign to people.”
Unimate proved to be more precise than the human hand in completing some repetitive and dangerous tasks. Automobile makers employed the arm to weld and move vehicle parts, apply adhesives to windshields and spray-paint car bodies — jobs that had posed chemical hazards to workers.

For the full obituary, see:
JEREMY PEARCE. “Joseph F. Engelberger, a Leader of the Robot Revolution, Dies at 90.” The New York Times (Thurs., DEC. 3, 2015): A33.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date DEC. 2, 2015, and has the title “Joseph F. Engelberger, a Leader of the Robot Revolution, Dies at 90.”)