I see often a lot of small government types or no government types deny or ignore the problem about environmental problems facing the Earth. I think that in a libertarian/anarchic society private courts would be used to punish polluters who try to exert environmental harm on the Earth. It would just be something implicitely enforced. I don’t think that the problem should be ignored nor do I think that more government regulation and or taxes via cap or trade is needed… but I do think that the issue should be tackled. Is there any concensious of what the community thinks on this issue?
The problem only arises where there is a lack of private property. If someone pollutes your airspace or your waterways, a libertarian code of law would allow you to sue them for tort. If there is a shortage of some natural resource (e.g., fossil fuels), the price will rise, and people will find substitute goods or adapt.
- The earth has not rights
- The private courts would punish the polluters who pollute someone else’s property.
Two problems with that. Say someone pollutes the air in your forest and all the trees there “die” (don’t know the proper word in English). The market price of the lumber is much lower than the actual damages done to the envirnoment. The other problem are wild animals, who are not anybody’ property.
Edit: and yet another: the polluter may pollute his own property, also not covered by civil torts.
I do not understand what the problems are. If someone kills your trees, you have the right to prosecute them for damages. Damages would be sought for the trees and everything else in the forest. I do not understand your concern with the wild animals. Why would someone sure himself for damaging his own property?
Yes, but the issue is the value of the trees/other things in the forest. You have to calculate the dameges you are you suing. The damage you as the owner suffered are equal to the market value of the stuff. The lumber may be relatively cheap, let’s say it was ordinary spruce, but the ecological value of the trees in the local ecosystem can be much higher and that is not taken into account in civil torts. I can even go dramatic and say that there could have been the last examples of some plant which had no commercial value.
Uhm, my concern is that I have a really hard time considering animals things. Mind you, I am no fanatic, I eat meat and I have no problems using animals for commercial purposes, but even then they deserve some level of respect and fair treatment.
He wouldn’t, that’s my point, in this case the enivrnoment can suffer, but the instruments of civil law are useless.
The goods in question do not have intrinsic value, only the individuals can value them.
Animals do not have rights. If you value wild animals enough to domestic one, then you have that right to do so. Also, there would be an incentive to treat pets with respect, else, your friends might no longer be your friends
The environment does not have rights, only humans do, and humans can own parts of the environment.
Is this a joke?
And to the rest: well, if this is your ethics, then there is really no point in the discussion.
No.
Perhaps complex issues require an open mind. Or, would you be friends with someone who mistreated his dog?
No of course I wouldn’t. I would personally intervene if I saw anyone torturing an animal, no matter whether it was his dog or a wild boar in the forest. I don’t recognize this kind of liberty. To me it sounds like “theft or murder are really a non-issue, thiefs and murders risk losing friends, case closed”
Theft and murder are wrong because they are violations of the rights of humans. If animals have rights, then we cannot eat animals, nor have them as pets, nor use their fur to clothe ourselves. Furthermore, we must walk the earth cautiously because we might step on an ant or a spider. We also wouldn’t be able to cut down a tree that has been homesteaded by a bird. We wouldn’t be able to grow food because worms have already homesteaded the dirt. We cannot breathe the air because microorganism have homesteaded the air. We cannot swim in the ocean because fish have already homesteaded the oceans. We must allow them to be free in the wild. And you have already admitted to eating dead animals.
The world (or life, if you prefer), is not a binary system, however tempting it may be to treat it this way. Too much Rothbardian heaven on your mind, I guess. Meden agan, there is a vast gulf between killing an animal to saturate hunger without unnecessary suffering and torturing it for fun.
No, the don’t have the same “rights” as humans, because they (probably) don’t have conciousness similar or comparable to the human, but are still capable of feeling pain. Quite obvious once you leave the binary owner-property paradigm.
So is it okay to kill a human for food?
No and I don’t see how what I said implies that. I did recognize that people have more or different rights than animals.
It is okay to kill a human under certain circumstances. It is okay to kill an animal under certain circumstances. The circumstances are different and I have never said otherwise. You on the other hand are saying that killing an animal is always okay, because either they have full rights and they homestead soil and rivers or are objects. Nothing between. Don’t you think that the fact that we say to “kill an animal” implies something? I mean, does it really require so much academic inquiry to realize that animals are not rocks?
So why is it okay to put an animal into boiling oil to make food, or enslave it as a pet or a beast of burden, but not okay to torture it? Why do I have the right to chop off the leg of pig and eat it, but not the right to kick it in the stomach for fun?
I can tell you what would not be the solution.
Huh?
You surely noticed that I said “without unncecessary suffering”. Boiling an animal alive is in my opinion unnecessary suffering. It is okay to kill an animal in order to eat it, because it is our nature, we as a species are omnivorous and always have been, a good farmer can breed a pig in decent conditions and a good butcher can put it down in a second. A creature capable of controlling its own actions is obliged to minimize suffering. That is my axiom. It is not okay to kick the pig in the stomach, because there is no point in it, nothing that would justify the suffering.
I don’t consider domesticating pets enslaving them, because they lack (or at least it seems so, so far) proper free will. And I don’t know, but have you ever seen a dog? They are acutally happy to be around people…
Hippie economics.
I say the boiling would be with the animal alive. I failed to say that the animal would be dead, then boiled in oil, as in deep frying chicken.
But there is a point and justification for a kicking a pig in the stomach, its for fun, for amusement. It’ll make the kicker happy.