How would an anarchical society be able to provide for animal rights? As someone who believes in them, what effective market forces would there be to prevent widespread battery farming and animal rights abuses? Or would animals simply be treated as profit-rendering tools?
Under anarcho-capitalism, there would be no animal rights.
Hot womenz might not date you because you spank your dog or monkey.
In that sense, not necessarily. Cat ladies could abound since the would be no state from preventing them from owning 50 cats in their homes. Also, people would be able to own African elephants and mate them so as to produce more of them. Right now, since they are not ownable as pets they are easy targets for poaching.
As an advocate it would be up to you to convince people that they should care, communicate that to the providers of animal products, and have them act accordingly. That is at least until the animals made a statement of their rights and demonstrated intent to enforce them, at which point we’d have to recognize them as equals in that sense and stop eating them. At least if that’s what they wanted of us. Until then, they are property. And as such the only acceptable way to influence someone as to how to use their property is through convincing.
Animal rights don’t exist, so they wouldn’t be enforced by a market-based law system.
What would be provided is whatever the group of people in question choose to provide. People that care about animals like me, would group with others like me. I would actively boycott and take every measure against the disrespect of animals that I could justify. Including defaming people and protesting.
That is what I would do, but animals still do not have rights.
That statement is meaningless because no one ever defines the term “rights”.
Just as a thought experiment, what would you say one day if animals demonstrared problem solving intelligence and a group of them made it clear somehow that they wanted to be left alone, not farmed or herded, etc.? Because the former has already come to pass, and it’s not impossible that speech and some level of more advanced intelligence is within the grasp of some animals. And, should they evolve a bit and start complaining about how they are treated, what next?
Then they must engaged as rationally acting entities and treated as such.
As someone who feels similar to the OP, I have/had similar concerns. But I think what it comes down to is: people that wish to protect animals need to, well, actively protect them. 
I don’t mean by force but through persuasive measures such as those suggested above. And there are quite a few people who feel similarly about this issue, it’s no small number at all, so I believe that helps.
Also I think you should keep in mind realistic goals–it’s true that in such a society, all animals won’t be protected, there will be instances where there are abuse and so on. But that happens even today with the use of force. And when you look at the grand scheme of things, through the entire world… clearly we’re nowhere near the point of being able to eliminate the suffering of even humans. So it’s not realistic to hold an ancap society to such a higher standard and complain that it’s flawed when it really isn’t all that different from the current situation.
This is a bit of what I took away from a recent and very long discussion about this topic. It’s not a perfect answer, but the reality today isn’t perfect either.
I do still think that this is a bit of a controversial issue among the “freedom movement” or whatever we’re going to call it, because the reasoning behind human rights vs animals rights is a highly philosophical and very difficult to grasp train of thought.
By the way, please ignore the irony of what PETA might call “animal abuse” in my avatar pic. lol They’re having fun!
Fair enough. How about this. I would protect the animals I have an affinity for and eat/kill the ones I do not.
This is part of the reason I think this topic is a controversial one, even among crowds such as ours. The terms and definitions aren’t always used the same, and I feel the reasoning behind human rights is complex and non-trivial to understand.
From “Human Action”, a relevant quotation:
"For man, animals are a material factor of production. It may be that one day a change in moral sentiments will induce people to treat animals more gently. Yet, as far as men do not leave the animals alone and let them go their way, they will always deal with them as mere objects of their own acting. Social cooperation can exist only between human beings because only these are able to attain insight into the meaning and the advantages of the division of labor and of peaceful cooperation.
Man subdues the animal and integrates it into his scheme of action as a material thing. In taming, domesticating, and training animals man often displays appreciation for the creature’s psychological peculiarities; he appeals, as it were, to its soul. But even then the gulf that separates man from animal remains unbridgeable. An animal can never get anything else than satisfaction of its appetites for food and sex and adequate protection against injury resulting from environmental factors. Animals are bestial and inhuman precisely because they are such as the iron law of wages imagined workers to be. As human civilization would never have emerged if men were exclusively dedicated to feeding and mating, so animals can neither consort in social bonds nor participate in human society."[p.624 of the Scholar’s Edition]
What chapter is that from?
Genuine question. I read it from time to time. Haven’t read that in awhile
XXI: Work and Wages. You will find the quotation in the last section entitled “The Work of Animals and of Slaves”.
Wow, this is why he’s the man I guess. He explains this better than anything I’ve read on the subject yet.
I’m not grasping the meaning of one sentence, though–“Animals are bestial and inhuman precisely because they are such as the iron law of wages imagined workers to be.” Not sure what he’s saying with “the iron law of wages” and such.
Animal rights (in the legal sense) would be provided for according to consumer demand, as with everything else.
Anarchy is just removing the monopolies on force, and what a monopoly on force does in general is distort consumer preferences so they are not as accurately reflected. Accordingly, removing that monopoly on force will allow consumer preferences to be better reflected, and so if people want more protections for animals, the market will indeed provide that.
If you believe in “animal rights” you can buy some prime time and present the general public
with “commercials” showing e.g. battery farming or butchery, promoting vegetarianism, etc.
I think he’s proceeding from a false premise, that man is inherrently different from and superior to other animals. Superior in intelligence, yes. But almost every aspect of our behavior has some primitive counterpart that can be found in the rest of the animal kingdom, and we are ourselves animals. Animals with a peculiarly advanced intelligence, self awareness and ability to think rationally and make decisions consciously rather than on mere instinct. We are however, still animals, and not the only ones to demonstrate intelligence on some advanced level. There are chimps I’d wager that have a better understanding of markets than most high school graduates.
Mises’ quote leaves out the possiblity that instead of man deciding to treat animals more gently, animals may one day demand to be treated more gently themselves. Likely? Perhaps not. But I see no reason why evolution need stop with us or endow us exclusively here on this Earth or elsewhere perhaps, with intelligence to the extent we have. Thinking so is hubris, even though the current reality has us at the pinnacle of advanced beings.