I don’t know (or care*) about Rothbard’s position, but from an AnCap, anti-monopoly perspective the solution is simple. Consumer needs and wants will be better reflected without a monopoly on force, so whatever people in society want to see happen in this dog scenario will be more likely to happen under AnCap than under our current system. Heck, if enough people in a certain society that has no monopoly on force want to bring back human slavery, they will. It’s just far less likely for that to happen in anarchy than under Statism, because more people are opposed to slavery than for it. So if enough people in an AnCap society want dogs to have “rights,” they will de facto have them because some firms will take an interest in filling that market demand.
All governments do is distort market signals so that consumer voices are more poorly reflected, and charge through the nose for the service. Getting rid of government monopoly minimizes the distortion, but the problem of evil consumer preferences never goes away fully. To fix that, you’d have to fix human nature.
*Because the source of an idea has no bearing on its legitimacy
That’s true. So I guess he supports the mass-killing of dogs but not the mass-chopping-off of dog ears because, according to him, chopping off ears is cruel but killing is not.
Nice way of clipping the other part of my statement. I said I agree with the idea of equal rights for all physical human beings under the law, after all, who are you or I to determine when a human is no longer capable of action.
Mises agreed with me on the idea that mentally retarted persons are not technically human in the same sense you or I are.
I think I agree, but could you elaborate? Do you disagree that rights (and natural law) are just a shorthand for certain subjective preferences prevalent in society (which also happen to make societies work well if upheld)?
Of course he doesn’t. Only one person has the authority to declare what a certain utterance of sounds means objectively. What say you, Oxford dictionary? [&]
Though I will say this, according to the common usage of the word, he is absolutely correct.
Necessary- yes. Existing- in our minds, which when others respect them, works out great.
I think the only way animals will acquire rights is if a) they learn to build bombs b) they are cute enough to persuade others to use bombs on their behalf c) if those with bombs decide that there are less violent, more productive ways of saving puppies. (ie: boycotting, contract stipulation, peer pressure, not buying fresh puppy ears on ebay, etc)
Agreed. In more simplistic terms, the common sense he is refering to is an appeal to emotional reaction. When put in those terms, it becomes much more clear to recognize the danger that it poses.