[Rockhounds] Blood specimens

[Rock Currier]

One patrician east coast academic I read commented that the only thing worse
than being a country exploited by a colonial power was to be one that was
not exploited by a colonial power. How much has Germany and Japan suffered
by loosing a war to the Americans? So if we stop buying specimens and rubies
from Burma, will the people be better off or worse off. We will, each of us,
have to make up our own minds about that. If western dealers stop going to
Burma to buy rubies and specimens, those rubies and specimens will be
smuggled across the border into Thailand and sold there to western dealers
as being from what ever locality the western dealers want them to be from.
No one has to eat gems and minerals. But what about oil. If we don't buy oil
from a particular country because we don't like their politics or the way
they treat their people, will that hurt the people who run that country?
Certainly not tillothers will also not buy their oil. Suppose instead of oil
they are the only source of a drug that will keep you alive. To buy or not
buy, that is the question. There are no easy answers.

Rock