The flip side here is that we need to be more responsible as citizens.

It seems to me that the non-native animal problem can be traced to irresponsible owners, who, in turn may be able to lay *some* of the responsibility for their ignorance at the feet of unscrupulous or ignorant vendors.

Rational egoism (‘I’) is problematic. The paradox wherein acting in your best interest isn’t always in your best interest.

An apropos example:

Dumping a python in the Everglades when it outgrows it's cage or becomes too expensive to feed may not be a big deal, but when enough misinformed irresponsible snake owners dump multiple pythons, voila: native ecosystem becomes taxed. Ecological failure in the making.

Ecological failures could be exemplified by polluters acting in their own interest create aggregate environmental conditions with other polluters which in turn creates collective consequences to shared resources.

So, the fact remains that unless citizens decide to do a better job of governing themselves, we'll have Government trying to do it for us.

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