True. And personally, I care for animals more than I care for people. Actually, I can watch human cruelty videos, but I can’t stand animal cruely videos (after I saw few of them). So to me animals have higher value than humans. I may sound psychotic or “sociopathic” but that’s what I feel when I see pain induced to animals and pain induced to humans. These are just not equal things to me. In short, I’m “ok” (in a sense, that it doesn’t strike me as much as animals) with human sufefring, but it is very hard to watch animal suffering.
Even if animals do have rights, you have to consider the effects of enforcing them. Making it illegal to slaughter livestock won’t end the sale of meat for consumption, it’ll just drive it underground like every other prohibition. The living conditions for animals in this position would likely be significantly worse than in the open, with increased risk of carrying diseases. Like other prohibitions, we would probably witness the rise of organized crime in order to protect outlawed property. Ultimately, I don’t think animal “rights” would help animals very much at all, and would probably bring harm to humans.
Also, the well being of animals is becoming a issue of interest for eaters and we are already seeing the market shift to meet the new demand. If you pick the top 10 restaurants in any given U.S. city, I’d be willing to bet that none of them are serving Perdue chickens. Locally sourced, organic, and free range are part of dinner culture lexicon now; menus actually boast legitimate vegan food besides salad now. Its this shift in values and bourgeois consumer base that are going to lead to an increased quailty in life for animals, not 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.
I know there are different schools, I didn’t know people were still falling back on the natural rights framework, as in libertarianism had moved past that. As I said before, maybe you should read something other than Rothbard.
You don’t believe animals are actual thinking, reasoning, emotional beings capable of problem solving? That they are just drones or atoms bouncing around reacting to stimuli? If this is your belief I must say it’s completely wrong and maybe you should put some time in understanding how animals work (or at least get out that view).
I recently read how a buffalo in Hong Kong was being taken to a slaughterhouse, the buffalo came to a complete hault, and no one could move it no matter how many tried. They realized the buffalo was crying. When they assured the buffalo it would not be killed it finally moved, and was spared. This isn’t some dumb animal just reacting to stimuli, it knew what was going to happen and showed emotion, it’s purposeful action was resistance, and did not move til it knew it would be safe.
I also suggest reading about the bonobo.
So Bert would you like to tell me which animals in the meat industry are hoping to sell me their goods? How much do they usually charge?
Well, they’re are generally born into these “camps” and raised from birth onwards until a preferred size, and then taken into a slaughterhouse against their will where their goods, which is their own flesh, are taken from them and sold at the benefit of the master owner. They can’t price their own labor and are not compensated for it. The master owner may claim that they are better off as slaves this way, and that they get free food and housing, regardless of how low quality it is.
some are just plain autamatons, like dogs
I think it’s clear dogs aren’t just automatons, with the fact that they help people and other dogs in times of need and can show emotion and pick up or sense “bad” things.
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.
I value everything with an equal foundation. Thus, the dog who is a stranger and the person who is a stranger to me are on the same “value scale” from the start. Also, RD is going on about natural rights, not me.
I think this idea of intelligence and action is not being perceived correctly. Seems to be that since animals are “limited” by the fact they are what they are they are not intelligent, or as intelligent (if not more in their own ways) than humans. Just because a whale is a whale and not a human does not make it uncapable of rational, emotional, and intelligent thought.
Locally sourced, organic, and free range are part of dinner culture lexicon now; menus actually boast legitimate vegan food besides salad now. Its this shift in values and bourgeois consumer base that are going to lead to an increased quailty in life for animals, not rights.
You do realize it’s animal rights activists that are the ones actively pursuing these things and are the ones who are going undercover filming the conditions of slaughterhouses and the workers mindlessly beating the animals; of which the videos make the news and then grocery stores pull those brands off their shelves and the companies go under investigation and then meat sales drop by a good 10% range.
Animals rights wouldn’t drive the meat industry underground like prohibition (I might have to put this on the list of dumb things vegans hear). People like myself are not trying to outlaw the slaughter of meat, we’re trying to life better for all living things. If people want to eat meat, go ahead, but I would like to make sure they are knowledgable of every step in that process. My brother and his girlfriend hunt and fish; and they’ll use every bit of what they kill, nothing goes to waste, but they know the process and how to do it and are aware of this as well as things like the meat industry. They, in my opinion, are “better” for taking a more direct approach. Most people don’t know the process of how to get a steak, they just order and eat while completely unaware.
Bert,
I’m well aware of the positive effect of animal rights activists, but its the activism which has the effect, not “rights” in and of themselves.
I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I think you or even vegans in general want to prohibit the slaughter of animals for consumption – but isn’t this the logical outcome of saying that animals have rights? I mean, if they do have rights, it would seem absurd to then allow humanity to run roughshod all over them. The difference between believing that humans have a moral obligation to treat animals as humanely as possible is quite a leap from saying that animals have a right not to be mistreated, eaten, etc. Its the latter position that I take issue with.
Wait, so you’re saying that if the animals in the meat industry were not enslaved, they would be able to price their own labour and engage in voluntary exchange with humans?
Voluntary exchange, maybe, but not death.
So you’re saying there would be stalls owned and run by cows, chickens, sheep etc. from which we could buy goods? In fact you said that this occurs in the meat industry. Would you provide me with an example? Or you could just admit that animals are not capable of engaging in such activities.
They are forced into those activities.
Animals are forced into marketing their products to me?? And even if they are arguendo, are you saying that if they were not forced then they wouldn’t engage in such activities? My point is precisely that animals cannot produce a good and sell it to me, that they cannot engage in production and market exchange of goods. Is this a Narnia forum or something??
I understand how natural law applies to man, but I have to disagree that animals do not act purposfully. They are smart. They do have purposeful behavior. Some humans do not comprehend this behavior and thus label it as, instinct or primal. There is a communication barrier.
The difficulty I am having is not letting my love for steak cloud my judgement. 
From a purely scientific standpoint, humans are omnivores. It is in our nature to eat meat as well as plant based life. Why is it ok to eat one type of life form and not the other? What criteria makes a life-form morally edible?
Aristippus, I just created a large circle and it’s come back to that animals are forced into the market, and the good is their own life, which is against their will of wanting to live. You build up on whether they can market themselves; but in a way we do see it in forms of advertising, and as stated they themselves are the product. Though, does one being able to market their labour matter wether or not actions are purposeful under the scope of praxeology? Do I actually have to market and sell my labor to be free from coercion? If the sole idea of freedom rests on the positive of being able to “engage in production and market exchange of goods” then we need to rethink libertarianism. If one chooses to opt out from engaging in production and market exchanges and by this loses their rights (in the negative) under the scope of the libertarian framework, then something is horribly wrong.
A lot of normative notions of natural rights. Unfortunately, if any rights are natural and objective, then they are independent of any particular values of freedom, survival, animation, emotional capacity, or cuteness. The entities you encounter in the world can be divided into two classes, based entirely upon their capacity for behavior–(1) those things you can potentially affect only through force, and (2) those things you can potentially affect through either force or agreement.
The whole concept of rights derives from people’s experience with type (2) entities, and likely had more to do with people’s hated enemies than adored pets, since it is the agression of enemies, hopefully without the cost of war, people most acutely needed to control.
What choices are there to protect your values from a man-eating lion or rampaging rhino? Whatever choices there are, are 100% yours, and typically run the spectrum from fight to flight.
What choices are there to protect your values from pillaging baby-piking barbarians? You have the same fight/flight options as with the rhino. But in addition to that, there is the possibility of pursuading the barbarians to choose to change their behavior in your favor, perhaps by agreeing to give them a few bags of gold at regular intervals going forward.
Rights are capacities of entities, and those capacities are completely independent of your subjective valuations of those entities. The entities either objectively are capable of rights in some context, or they are not.
And the issue isn’t miscommunication. The issue is more an incapacity of one of the entities for any agreement-forming communication at all. People who don’t speak each other’s languages still find ways of understanding the other’s values, and avoiding conflict with those values.
My best friend Fido doesn’t have rights. I have rights, and I use that capacity in others to try to protect Fido, who is incapable of having, let alone creating, such understandings himself.
If you want to leave animals alone, you can. But as a matter of fact, it is entirely a unilateral decision on your part which you make, ostensibly, because you value the animals. The animals don’t ponder why you do that and have no notion of reciprocation. And acting unilaterally according to your own values has nothing to do with rights. That is simply what people do. Rights are different. Right are a concept that emerges when mutual decisions can be made.
“Animals” really needs to be broken down by species. I think we can agree that arguing about whether a dog, dolphin, or chimp act purposefully is totally different from arguing the same for sea urchins, gnats, and goldfish.
Taking primates, the problem is that we are projecting what its like for us when we act onto what we observe in gorillas and chimps. We even do it with other people, but at least here we can assume that action for me is the same as action for you since we are both human. When a chimpanzee uses a tool to pull ants out of a hole, it really looks like he is aiming at an end (eating those ants) and using means to acheive it (putting a stick in the hole). We might even see a juvenille learn this behavior from an adult. But whether or not this is actually the case can’t be observed from the outside. We don’t see purposefulness in other people and animals, we see it in ourselves and apply it outward.
Here’s an example. Imagine you see Alice and Bob. Alice hands Bob a metal coin and Bob hands alice a loaf of bread. You think to yourself “ah, an exchange just took place. Alice was paying Bob money because she valued the bread more than the coin.” Then, you look over, and Bob gives Alice the coin back, and Alice gives Bob the loaf back. Now you think it must be some sort of return. But then they exchange again! And again and so on!
We want to see economic behavior in such a situation, but maybe they were playing a game like catch, only with metal coins and bread. The same goes for how we look at animals. We want to see purposeful behavior.
I, for one, see nothing wrong with that. I also greatly enjoy eating cows and pigs on a regular basis. If other people weren’t killing them for me, I’d kill them myself.
I don’t consider wild animals like bears to own territory. They may “think” so, but I don’t care what they “think”. Now what?
It’s not that they’re dumb and without reason and emotion, it’s just that they’re not human. I don’t consider them to own themselves because I don’t consider them to have human-level comprehension of ownership. Thus either they’re owned by humans or they exist unowned in the wild. If you want to call the former “slavery”, that’s fine by me. I then have no problem “enslaving” animals.
That aside, I don’t agree with causing pain to living things simply for its own sake. But that to me is a different matter.
The last time I checked, non-human animals weren’t butchering themselves and putting themselves up for sale. It’s humans who butcher non-human animals and put them up for sale.
Even assuming arguendo that non-human animals can act*, that in no logical way leads to the conclusion that non-human animals have rights.
- For the record, I think many, if not most, non-human animals can act to some degree.
I’m surprised no one has actually challenged you to provide an actual source for this, so let me be the first to do so.
I have. Not all non-human animals are bonobos.
Do you assume that, were it not for these stupid evil meat-eating humans, cows and pigs and other food animals would be living blissful lives in a wild Garden of Eden? If so, then you’re gravely mistaken, because if it weren’t for stupid evil meat-eating humans, food animals wouldn’t exist at all. But maybe you think it’s better to have never existed at all than to have a painful and torturous existence?
That aside, do you think that food animals understand the concepts of “labor” and “compensation for labor”? I think you’re engaging in a huge degree of anthropomorphization.
Yes, I agree that dogs aren’t just automatons. Plenty of animals aren’t. That in no logical way means they have rights.
Then you must consider yourself a mass murderer, because you’re aggressively killing bacteria and other microorganisms on a regular basis.
How do you define “rational thought”, “emotional thought”, and “intelligent thought”?
This is really beside the point though. Your real point concerns what you wrote a bit earlier, namely that you value everything with an equal foundation. Were that really true, you wouldn’t act at all. Since you’ve been posting on an internet forum, and posting on an internet forum is clearly action, you’ve clearly been acting. Through performative contradiction, this means you really don’t value everything with an equal foundation.
And the corrollary to this is that 90% or so of the meat sales go on. That looks like a pretty big majority to me.
I feel like I’m certainly aware of what goes on in slaughterhouses and the like. Like I said before, I don’t agree with inflicting pain on animals (including humans) simply for its own sake. For one thing, animals can and often will fight back. For another, abusing food animals can adversely affect the quality of the meat and other food products they “provide”.
@ Bert
Life feeds on life!
You will never change that. Though I understand where the sentiment you have comes from, since I feel it myself even when I kill only a fly that has bitten me. I still feel sorry for the fly. But what can I say except: Thats life.
Nevertheless I am quite sure one day we will grow steaks artificially like we already can with skin. I saw an article recently that argued that maybe in 5 to 10 years we will be able to do that. So it’s technical progress not animal rights that will make things better for animals, and believe it or not but also McDonalds.