> <i>But instead of reducing demand, more poachers may enter the market, because the high value of the tusks means they can make more with less work. The cost of the good is not related to its real-world rareness, but to the cost of paying people to obtain it, which may be high or low.</i><p>This doesn't rationally follow at all.<p>The rareness (low supply) of a good is the net sum of how hard it is to obtain, due to all the possible reasons for that.<p>More poachers may enter the market, but with fewer elephants left alive, they cannot find elephants so easily, which means it takes more time and effort: the MTBE (mean time between elephant) goes up, making the hunt more costly. They may have to engage in increasingly hostile and violent turf wars with other poachers.<p>More poachers entering the market will not prevent a reduction in demand; it isn't something "instead of reducing demand".<p>If the market maintains the same level of interest in the good, the demand curve stays the same, and the only thing that changes demand is the current price point, which determines where on the demand curve the market is.<p>The author of the article doesn't seem to understand the difference between a reduced demand due to a movement of price along the same demand curve and actually reduced demand, whereby the market is less interested in the good, and buys less of it at <i>every</i> price point.