Particularly cows pigs and chickens are treated just awfully in the status quo.
There is already a discussion on animal rights, but it seems to avoid this question for the most part, assuming that animals are property.
Wombatron writes: I’m not sure that the same principle applies. Human beings have rights because of their essential nature. To have rights, an animal would have to be a rational animal whose nature did not conflict with that of humanity (Rothbard’s old “alien vampire” example). Perhaps borderline animals, such as bottlenose dolphins and great apes, could have rights similar to those of children, though.
It seems a lot of animals meat the criteria for self ownership, and don’t usually violate the libertarian rights of humans. Though, there’s the issue of animals knowing whether or not they are violating another’s right; for example a cow wandering onto a farmer’s property to eat his grass. Although it could also be argued that human beings might also make similar mistakes.
Animals can be homesteaded, trade, bought and sold, eaten, kept in cages, baked, fried, barbecued, made into leather, and so on. Thus, animals do not have rights, but their owners do.
You can do all those to a person (it would be immoral, but you can)
I’m fairly certain you’d respond by saying animals don’t own themselves thus they can be homesteaded without any immoral action. But that’s kind of the question. How does an animal not own itself if self-ownership is valid? To me, the rational nature of humans certainly is what gives humans any rights, but it doesn’t make self-ownership valid.
If you take the concept of self-ownership to its extreme logical conclusions, then yes, every animal has negative rights as well. But not only cows, chickens and pigs, but also bugs, amebae and gadflies.
One can now dismiss this on utilitarian grounds, which would render the whole ethical theory of rights questionable, or reject the objective nature of rights altogether.
I think the general response is that Human rights are exactly that. They do not apply to animals because animals are not humans, who derive their rights from their “essential nature.” We assume they are propertry because without rights we have no reason to view them as anything but property.
I believe that most people whould argue that one essential criteria for self ownership is being human, which they ovbiously don’t meat [:D]
Not sure if I believe that, or where I stand on rights in general, but I think that’s what you’ll see as a response from most libertarians who consider animals property.
Sphairon gets it: "If you take the concept of self-ownership to its extreme logical conclusions, then yes, every animal has negative rights as well. But not only cows, chickens and pigs, but also bugs, amebae and gadflies.
One can now dismiss this on utilitarian grounds, which would render the whole ethical theory of rights questionable, or reject the objective nature of rights altogether."
So really, how do libertarians reply to this. Rothbard obviously realized it otherwise he would not have given his alien vampire example.
I think that ibertarian ethics are too useful to give up. They lend themselves very nicely to the free market.
Personally I’m an Austrian and a political athiest. Austrians have ABTC and other predictions that are sound, but their writers are far from apt philosophers.
No he doesn’t get it. Actually what he’s providing is a reductio-ad-absurdum of the idea that animals have rights. Human rights apply to, well, humans.
If you take animal rights to their logical conclusion, your entire existence has been a violation of animal rights. By eating animals, you have violated animal rights, by eating the fruit of a tree or plant, you have violated the rights of the insects that homesteaded said tree and plants. By clearing a forest to build a farm, you have violated the rights of the animals that own the forest. By swimming in a lake, you have violated the rights of the fish that have homesteaded the the lake. You can’t walk down the street without being extremely likely to step on an ant, or a spider. What is more, you wouldn’t have the right to walk down the street because some animal had owned that partition of land before that street was built. The home you live in probably required that animals be removed from the area, thus, a violation of animal rights.
Yeah tha’ts kind of my point. It seems that libertarian ethics lead me to have zero freedom to do anything. Who’s the alien vampire now? If an ethical theory would condemn alien vampires from violating human rights, whats to stop it from condemning humans who violate animal rights?
I am willing to believe that higher animals have some sort of self-awareness but the fact remains : the concept of rights is not something that animals can understand. Besides, you can’t enforce animal rights without violating human rights, so I see no practical value in the idea of animal ‘rights’.
I don’t think he was advocating animal rights. I just don’t understand how self-ownership is exclusive to humans. Existing as something doesn’t mean you own it, unless. A stapler doesn’t own its stapleness, a man doesn’t own his man-ness, a chicken doesn’t own its chicken-ness. To own something you’d have to exist apart from it. All I’m suggesting is I don’t understand the idea of self-ownership as a good basis for property rights. Nothing more.
“What? How are libertarian ethics and animal rights compatible?”
I’m not developing animal rights outside of libertarian ethics, I’m saying that libertarian rights extend to both humans and animals since they both meet the basic criteria for self ownership.
“the concept of rights is not something that animals can understand”
Obviously many humans do not understand rights. Babies do not. Certain handicapable folks don’t. Obama doesn’t. HAH. No, but seriously, it is not necessary to understand others’ rights in order to not violate them. A man living alone on an island would still have libertarian rights even if he didn’t know the world around him was full of human beings.
“[Libertarian rights] are grounded in the nature of man: the individual man’s capacity for conscious choice, the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity and need to communicate and interact with other human beings and to participate in the division of labor”
Conscious Choice
Goals/Values
Pursue Ends/Survive/Prosper
Communication
Division of Labor
Animals always have the top 3. “Higher” animals have communication, and to a lesser extent division of labor. Ants have a division of labor… :\
Rothbard is letting me down though. Libertarian rights do not depend on being able to communicate with other humans, else one might say that chinamen didn’t have rights in america because we can’t talk to them. Division of labor isn’t a necessary condition either.
In short, man has rights because they are natural rights. They are grounded in the nature of man: the individual man’s capacity for conscious choice, the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity and need to communicate and interact with other human beings and to participate in the division of labor. In short, man is a rational and social animal. No other animals or beings possess this ability to reason, to make conscious choices, to transform their environment in order to prosper, or to collaborate consciously in society and the division of labor.
I don’t like appeals to Rothbard for or against. I think libertarians need to do more of what you are doing. Questioning ideas, and formulating our own responses, instead of appealing to libertarian canon, whether it is Rothbard or someone else.
Of course, I am a subjective ethicist, so I don’t have the problems the objective ethicists do.