Strongest case I read for Animal RIghts. Animals to be treated as Marginal Cases.
I find it strange that so many of my fellow libertarians and anarchists oppose and ridicule animal rights with such passion. For one thing, an animal right is perfectly libertarian in that it is a negative right. Unlike incoherent positive rights, such as the ‘right’ to education or health care, the animal right is, at bottom, a right to be left alone. It does not call for government to tax us in order to provide animals with food, shelter, and veterinary care. It only requires us to stop killing them and making them suffer. I can think of no other issue where the libertarian is arguing for a positive right–his right to make animals submit to any use he sees–and the other side is arguing for a negative right!
Nor is libertarianism inconsistent with animal rights, unless one is an exponent of contractarianism, an ethical theory riddled with problems. The nonaggression principle states that it is morally wrong to initiate force against others (or their property), except in self-defense. The question is whether this principle applies to animals. Are animals part of the ‘moral community’ that is covered by the nonaggression principle? In his recent essay ‘Why Animal Rights Don’t Exist,’ Tibor Machan argues that animals cannot have rights, which is to say that the nonaggression principle cannot apply to animals. Does his argument succeed?
Animals will be left “alone” when they stop killing people in the wild, dammit. You can not treat them as ordinary humans because they (most of them at least) are not aware of NAP. Bees bite, flies bite, mosquitos bite… so leaving them “alone” is kinda absurd. I hate saying this, but animals should be treated as either very small children or as simple property. Maybe both.
MaikU I don’t know if that’s a serious statement, but cows and pigs don’t kill people in the wild, and those are the ones killed in the thousands daily. Wild animals like bears? Well, don’t be in their domain, their territory. I was recently thinking about praxeology and NAP involving animals, people may say animals are “lower” in regards to reasoning, intelligence, morals, etc., but I disagree, it’s just on a different plane, and if we take a praxeological approach we can’t judge their actions, just seeing which are the most efficient (watching various primates and how different communities act towards problem solving and communication, it’s an interesting subject and disproves that idea that animals are “dumb”). If we hold animals in a lower sense that they are dumb and without reason and emotion are we not putting them on a level of slavery by capturing and killing them for our benefit because a belief in those views?
I want people to be free so that they can make stuff and trade it to me. When animals can produce goods/services and market them to me then I’ll give a crap.
Animals can neither act, nor have the potential to act. Nor have they ever acted in the past like some of the “marginal cases”. Hence why they don’t have rights.
I actually disagree with you and Mises on this point. Animals probably do act, but just by nature have an extremely limited imagination compared to humans (and of course there is a huge amount of variation in this between individual humans).
I don’t think imagination is a necessary prerequisite to action. Mental streams of thought themselves aren’t even necessary. Pick any habit you might have for example- and habits can be more complex than scratching an itch.
I didn’t say it was a prerequisite of action - rather I was giving a reason why animals, though they can act, are very different to man in the content of their action.
You’re addressing RD, correct? I’m not sure if you’re aware but Mises states that animals do not act. As I noted above I disagree with him on this. In any case whether they act or not is irrelevant to questions of ‘rights’.
In any case whether they act or not is irrelevant to questions of ‘rights’.
Why? Isn’t the potential to act, acting, or previous action the quintessential determinant of Natural Rights?
To clarify my point, I do not believe that animals can act in the purposive human sense, as described by Rothbard in the first pages of MES. (To give you the source of my opinion).
I was addressing RD, of which, RD you’re falling back on natural rights (I thought libertarian thought moved past natural rights)? Also, it may not be purposeful in a human sense, but it’s purposeful for those animals. Are you suggesting animals act without reason, purpose, or emotion?
(I thought libertarian thought moved past natural rights)?
There are different schools of thought in libertarianism. Rothbardians tend to adhere to both natural rights ideology as well as Hoppean argumentation ethics. I haven’t studied the latter, so I can’t say, but I certainly believe in natural rights.
I believe that animal “action” is merely response to certain stimuli, without purpose like humans. Or, I should say, there could be some mixture between animal “action” being purely a matter of reflex and purpose. As Rothbard writes:
There is no need to enter here into the difficult problem of animal behavior, from the lower organisms to the higher primates, which might be considered as on a borderline between purely reflexive and motivated behavior. At any rate, men can understand (as distinguished from merely observe) such behavior only in so far as they can impute to the animals motives that they can understand.
Now being 100 percent serious: Animals, not all, but some, do, in fact, act in a misean sense. They can plan things, they calculate and they think, even if their thinking is very very undeveloped so to speak. So those animal, in my opinion, can be seriously considered no lower creatures than a small babies and we should respect them and their independence.
Sure, I am aware, that you can not take an animal to court if he agresses upon you etc. But equally you can not take a baby to court either. However, it would be much more safer for babies and for animals if they had care takers which could be responsible for their actions. So here we go, it is in best animal’s interest to call them and use them partly as property (I say partly, because you can not do whatever you like with it, you can not torture for example, so they won’t be 100 percent real property when you can do whatever you want).
Some animals are intelligent enough to require care taker, some are just plain autamatons, like dogs (I hate dogs).
To conclude, animal rights are the good idea, but it is infested with non-thinking leftist social-anarchists.
You are confusing values with natural rights. You may value the cute little furry creatures of the forest more than you value any person, but natural rights are not something you can ascribe to anything anymore than you can ascribe gravity. As a simple matter of fact, animals don’t have rights, and that has nothing to do with how wonderful they are. You can choose to treat animals in ways you think they would “like”, but they cannot do the same for you. You have rights, they simply don’t.
Now this is not to say there isn’t some super smart empathetic animal out there somewhere. I don’t know. I haven’t encountered one, or heard of one described. But if you think you find one, the test isn’t too hard. Just enter into a peaceful agreement with it. You can imagine how it will look, since Walt Disney shows such imaginings all the time. Just let us know. It will be a very interesting revelation to the world.