A firm called Pembient has a plan to combat rhino poaching by making synthetic rhino horn using keratin and rhino DNA. They can undercut prices for the real stuff by a long ways, and nearly half of a sample of people in Vietnam said they’d be willing to switch to their fake version. And they can do this without killing any rhinos. Sounds like something we should all support, right? Not according to the International Rhino Foundation. It’s executive director, Susie Ellis, makes the following pair of specious claims:
Selling synthetic horn does not reduce the demand for rhino horn [and] could lead to more poaching because it increases the demand for “the real thing.”
Actually, yes it would reduce demand for real rhino horn. These two products are substitutes, and nearly perfect ones at that. This is quite literally Econ 101.
The second part of the statement is…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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