My only point is that many of the things we do as a nation aren’t conceived or implemented in the name of maximizing economic efficiencies and productivity... The same argument applies to the environment: While there are good economic arguments for why we should protect elephants, they come a distant second for me. I want to save elephants because they are wonderful creatures that make the earth a more glorious place. If poachers wiped out the last tiger on earth to harvest its organs on behalf of the highest-bidding Chinese plutocrat looking for a solution to his erectile dysfunction, global GDP wouldn’t noticeably suffer—but the world would undoubtedly be poorer.