Throwing up our hands and saying "China is not responsible because not every variable is within our control" is counterproductive.

You're assuming I make China solely responsible for this. I do not. However it would be nice for all parties who are able to reduce impact, to do so within the gamut of their responsibility and influence. Africa must take responsibility for managing poachers and local smuggling networks, and other countries can work to reduce demand. China has an enormous populace so has a massive influence over demand. Pressure must be applied to all points of the problem.

I agree, it's as if one would accuse the drug consumer of being responsible for Mexican drug cartels torturing and beheading innocent civilians which is part of their business strategy.

That is not to say that I approve of drug abuse, but everyone can only be held accountable for his own actions, not for the actions of others.

It would be something different if the Chinese government actively encouraged import of Rhino parts, but they don't allow this as far as I know.

> everyone can only be held accountable for his own actions, not for the actions of others.

Once the rockets are up / who cares where they come down, / „That's not my department“, / says Wernher von Braun.

Are you arguing that every drug abuser caught should be charged with murder?

You kill the Rhino, you are responsible for killing the Rhino.

You buy Rhino horn, you are responsible for buying illegal goods and creating demand. (which is not equal to actually killing a Rhino or a human being!)

You fail as a government to prevent import of illegal goods, you are responsible for not controlling imports with 100% accuracy.

You tell me if you know of any country in the world that is capable of preventing imports of highly sought after illegal goods to a degree that puts producers of these illegal goods out of business.

If that was possible there would not be any illegal drugs in the West.

I think the poster was pointing out that the statement

> everyone can only be held accountable for his own actions, not for the actions of others.

is very broad, and isn't at all supported by just one example of drug user/cartel, because there are plenty of other cases where that's not true.

I honestly can't come up with a single example where someone should be held accountable for something someone else did except for cases that involve enabling others who suffer for some kind of psychological illness or are otherwise incapable of acting responsibly as one would expect from an adult.

Sure, you just came up with a couple counterexamples on your own.

Another one:

If you're a mob boss and you tell your henchmen to murder someone, you're also on the line. That's a pretty direct one. But you could also argue that the witness who accepted a bribe to lie for the mafia is guilty of something, as may be the guy who stocked the weapons that day, or their getaway driver.

And at least legally, in the US, if your buddy is robbing the bank and you're his getaway driver, and he kills a police officer before dying himself, you're now on the line for murdering that police officer.

I think there's really a sliding scale of complicitness which makes it pretty complex.

> You kill the Rhino, you are responsible for killing the Rhino. You buy Rhino horn, you are responsible for buying illegal goods and creating demand. (which is not equal to actually killing a Rhino or a human being!)

If you buy an illegaly obtained human heart, are you not culpable for the death of the former owner?

If you hire a mercenary to obtaining a human heart, are you completely free from all blame for the subsequent murder?

> If you buy an illegaly obtained human heart, are you not culpable for the death of the former owner?

Not if you do not know that the person has been killed for you to receive the heart or even worse, you ordered someone directly to kill someone. There are plenty of people dying in accidents or of natural causes and some do buy organs (usually bribing doctors) to get ahead in donor waiting lists.

You are culpable for bribing someone and risking that someone might have been killed for the product (at least if you didn't make sure where it came from), thus it is illegal. But you wont be charged with murder.

> If you hire a mercenary to obtaining a human heart, are you completely free from all blame for the subsequent murder?

Well of course you are directly to blame for any of these murders. You ordered it so there's not much of a difference between killing the person yourself and paying someone to do it for you.

So what about the mercenary? If you're directly to blame, is the mercenary innocent? "Just doing his job"?

For me both are to blame for the murder about equally. I believe that in most Western countries the punishment for the mercenary (btw it's an assassin, mercenaries can do legitimate work like providing security in war zones) would be slightly worse.

But I'm not 100% sure about the last point, never had to deal with assassinations so I never felt the need to research it.

I think I can see the problem with his argument. He argues that in judging a person's actions, I should only look at that action in isolation, so as not to hold the person accountable for others' actions.

If I were to look at the isolated action of buying Rhino horn, I could easily argue that no harm is done by trading Rhino horn that has already been cut off a Rhino. But that's not what happens in his argument: He notes that the isolated action of Rhino horn buying is in fact illegal, but ignores that the origin of this rule directly contradicts his moral reasoning.

I do not view a persons action in complete isolation, that's not what I said.

I just say it is a different thing if you kill a Rhino yourself (or order someone to kill one for you) than walking down a market in Hong Kong, seeing some Rhino horn for sale and then deciding to buy it.

Buying the Rhino horn is not legal in any civilised place (because it most likely comes from illegal sources), but the punishment is also not the same one that you would get for walking into your nearest zoo and killing a Rhino yourself, and rightly so.

Agreed. Everyone can only be held accountable for their own actions. So let those who can influence demand do so, and let those who can control supply do so.