The price of silver is determined by the laws of supply and demand. That being said, if the price of silver drops too low, then mining companies may elect to slow down operations and simply mine less silver. The fact is, if the price of silver gets too low then these companies may mine silver but operate at a loss due to mining costs. Should silver fall to very low price, then these mining companies may scale back operations in an attempt to wait for higher prices or slow the supply of their silver reserves to the market thus helping to bring the forces of supply and demand back into balance.