..well then.. that would be awful coming from someone that has indirectly made money off of offering the "best" protection for those high end cues.
So you to have benefitted from the price and cost associated with ivory.
Keep that in mind...
In fact an entire industry was created with high end cues and cue collecting, a lot of people were involved and benefitted... You cannot count the number of people that go to SBE just to buy and sell cues.
JV
Lol, that stretch wouldn't even qualify as a sincere attempt at beginning aerobics.
The "issues" with ivory have been around longer than both of us have been alive. Let's not forget the other industry attributed to the mass execution of elephants for their tusks.....the plastics industry spurred on by the search for an alternative to ivory for billiard balls.
The billiard industry realized the massive devastation and shortage of ivory that was happening and thus Brunswick sponsored a contest to find a substitute material and Bakelite was the result. From there all phenolics we have today were spawned.
As for me, we sell cue protection and make no judgement as to what those cues are made of. The ivory issue is complicated as are all the issues surrounding endangered species. It's not a "liberal" thing it's a humanity and decency thing. We don't have infinite resources on this planet and we don't have a backup planet.
We humans are very very very very good at destroying our habitat and not so great at managing it wisely. So there is no black/white liberal/conservative only line in the sand on these issues as far as I see it.
I imagine that if all the elephants were gone the the earth would absorb it and the ecosystem would adjust and it would just be another species that once existed and now does not. But that doesn't mean we have to exterminate them for what amounts to satisfaction of our vanity. I mean MUCH much much more than for any practical reason. I don't know of any practical need offhand where ivory has no substitute that isn't as good or better.
So the main driver of ivory demand is vanity in my opinion. And yes I know that there are a few people who "claim" that ivory is the best ferrule material. I would bet those people every bit of money I have ever held in my hands that this opinion cannot be scientifically proven in regards to performance and furthermore that they themselves likely could not tell the difference in hit and identify with certainty which ferrules were ivory and which were not in blind tests.
IF ivory had never been used in pool cues ever then this wouldn't even be a conversation right now. No one is lamenting the loss of ivory use in tennis racquets and golf clubs that I know of. So to me it's about hypocrisy and the fact that you can TRY to blame it on liberals but what you really seem to want when you do that is a free reign to rape the world's resources and if so then that's not conservative, it's just dishonorable and despicable. There are many conservatives who take conservation and stewardship seriously and who see all sides of this complicated issue.
