The prohibition of ivory has obvious parallels to the prohibition of alcohol and marijuana. A good in demand is being produced whose supply the government seeks to curtail or eliminate altogether. The regulations on automobiles, washing machines, appliances, shower heads, lightbulbs, motors, toilets, and so on, are in the same category.

Less obvious are the cases in which the government bans supplies and then undertakes to replace the goods being produced by its own management of production. This is the case with police services, court services and national defense.

Central governments typically monopolize the supply of defense. The results are lower quality services at higher prices (via taxes).

In plain terms: more wars than otherwise, larger wars than otherwise, a military establishment, wasteful military expenditures, a military that can’t win even the wrong wars it is asked to fight, or else kills and wounds far too many people in the course of winning it or arriving at a stalemate, incompetent people drafted to do tasks where their skills are wasted, people badly trained, failure to choose efficient defensive strategies, failure to defend against real threats while projecting force against unreal and exaggerated threats, and a hugely expensive force that is mostly support with fewer and fewer actual fighters.

Then, because the government is a monopolist in defense supply, it “defends” places across the world that have nothing to do with defending Americans, if you can even call its intrusions into other countries defense, which you cannot. A monopolist supplier of defense doesn’t even have to supply domestic defense. It can redefine its mission. The supplier will produce enemies so as to assure its existence and rationalize the seizure of wealth from the population. This too is part of the reduction of services while raising the price.

Government would, if it could, outlaw all personal defense by guns, pepper spray, fists, martial arts, swords, clubs or anything else if it could. It would suppress the supply of this too and attempt to become the monopoly supplier via public policing. This is an area where lobbies have managed to educate enough people that concealed carry laws are on the books. But this doesn’t stop some governments, state and federal, from seeking to control the supply via control of weapons, bullets and other means.

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