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A new fresh and different discussions on animal rights

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Player replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 4:22 PM

What about more intelligent beings? Let it be aliens or more plausible future robots. Why should much more intelligent and capable creatures respect you, a lower being if you yourself didn't respect lower beings?

Animals aren't able to understand, recognize and respect our property, but we recognize their capability of suffering and still make them suffer (zoos, circus, bull-fighting...). Can we claim moral superiority? They are less intelligent and don't have the capability to choose, but we do, and we choose to inflict damage on them, how can claim the moral high-ground?

In the SCI-FI show Stargate Atlantis a more intelligent and powerful race feeds on humans claiming we do the same to animals.

With that case, why should another race protect us? Even robots if they truly achieve intelligence?

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Re: aliens, please read this.

Why does many a man write? Because he does not possess enough character not to write. ---Karl Kraus.

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Player replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 4:32 PM

Thanks, I'll read it.

Edit: I did, and it has nothing to say about this, it said intellectually interesting thoughts on the flag-pole situation, but nothing related to the subject of the thread.

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Spideynw replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 4:54 PM

E. R. Olovetto:
What standing do the dead or their kin have and why?

I did not say the dead had standing.  The dead cannot make a legal case.  Their kin have standing because they have suffered a loss.

At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.

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Spideynw replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 4:55 PM

Player:
You are going back again, a baby cannot defend himself in front of judge, he can't speak! But he still has rights against aggression.

Really?  And who is going to defend those rights?  Who gets to decide what "abusing" a child is?  And how is it going to be decided who gets the child instead of the parent(s)?

At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.

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Player replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 5:01 PM

1. Initiation of force, simple as that.

2. You have no right to the kid, you are only 'carrying the flag' of actual legal tuition because the kid choose you before, but he should be free to leave any moment and go live with their neighbors and you should not use force to stop it, that would be kidnapping. As I said, an easy example, Bart Simpson should be free to leave home and ask the flanders for adoption/asylum/guest/whatever you want to call it.

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Spideynw:

E. R. Olovetto:
What standing do the dead or their kin have and why?

I did not say the dead had standing.  The dead cannot make a legal case.  Their kin have standing because they have suffered a loss.

So, I've just slit your throat. You're dead. Nobody should punish me if you have no kin. Correct? Hmm


Why does many a man write? Because he does not possess enough character not to write. ---Karl Kraus.

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Spideynw replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 6:07 PM

E. R. Olovetto:
So, I've just slit your throat. You're dead. Nobody should punish me if you have no kin. Correct? Hmm

That may be the case.  Who will pay to prosecute you?  And to whom would you owe restitution?  And who would pay to punish you?  The only thing I can think of is that there may be some kind of insurance agency that one could hire to prosecute in case of death.  But if someone does not hire such an agency before death, I cannot see why anyone would have standing to punish you.  Do you?  It seems to be a gray area to me that the market would have to resolve.

At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.

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Spideynw replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 6:08 PM

Player:
You have no right to the kid, you are only 'carrying the flag' of actual legal tuition because the kid choose you before, but he should be free to leave any moment and go live with their neighbors and you should not use force to stop it, that would be kidnapping.

A baby/small child can choose to leave his or her home?

At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.

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Player replied on Fri, Oct 30 2009 6:18 PM

Why shouldn't he?

He may be small, he won't be able to sign contracts, but he is not stupid, he knows more than anyone else what he wants and needs, let's not fall into arrogance!

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AJ replied on Sat, Oct 31 2009 6:11 AM

Spideynw:
Who gets to decide what "abusing" a child is?

The courts that consumers support. It may turn out that they support your position, or not.

Either you want a society where private courts decide the law, or you don't. If private courts decide the law, they are free to choose "unlibertarian" rulings.

Now it may turn out that any private court handing down rulings at odds with your position will not be viable on the free market, and will soon lose all market share. However, that seems a very different argument from the one I think you're making.

Think outside the monopoly paradigm. Net-based microsecession | Why anarchy hasn't worked

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Kakugo replied on Sat, Oct 31 2009 8:09 AM

And you'll bog down in a quagmire once again my friend.

Pretty much like Global Warming (sorry, I meant Man-made Climate Change) this is a deeply emotional issue which has absolutely nothing to do with logic. People that will agree with you on many economical and political topics will jump at your throat because you say decisions regarding hunting should be left to landowners or because you say that animals should be treated like property. Also apart from a few isolated and very laudable exceptions most people will call you a monster if you eat venison or small birds but won't give a damn if you slaughter a whole school of tunas as long as you stamp "dolphin-friendly" on the cans.

Sorry for the rant, please go on.

 Yes, it's time for the Dr Goebbels show!

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AJ:

Spideynw:
Who gets to decide what "abusing" a child is?

The courts that consumers support.

I would agree this would be the case, when a parent takes the other parent to court over child abuse issues.  But that is the only case I can see this occurring.

At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.

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AJ:

If private courts decide the law, they are free to choose "unlibertarian" rulings.

Thus, we are no longer in anarchy.

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JackSkylark:

AJ:

If private courts decide the law, they are free to choose "unlibertarian" rulings.

Thus, we are no longer in anarchy.

No, they would just go out of business.

At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.

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Why? The vast majority of humanity does not consistently support the NAP.

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JackSkylark:

Why? The vast majority of humanity does not consistently support the NAP.

so what? the vast majority of humanity does not recognise that animals have the same rights as humans, in so far as the majority extend rights to humans (which is not  that far)

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring

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JackSkylark:

Why? The vast majority of humanity does not consistently support the NAP.

Because that is how markets work.  A court that hands out unjust rulings (which is what is inferred by non-libertarian), would quickly lose customers, because it would be an unfair court.  People don't need to understand libertarian philosophy in depth when they go grocery shopping right?

At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.

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Pablo replied on Sun, Nov 1 2009 6:21 PM

K.C. Farmer:
Animals have no concept of property.

Have you ever seen a birds nest? How about smacked a bee hive? Ever seen a dog mark its territory?

K.C. Farmer:
Animals can be property only when a human claims them to be so and maintains them as such.  Just because an animal is on your land, doesn't necessarily mean the animal belongs to you.  In addition, animals you claim as property can make you liable if they trespass on another person's property.  So there is a cost associated with ownership of animals.

How does this relate?

K.C. Farmer:

Animal rights is a form of group rights.  Libertarians are concerned with individual rights, and more specifically individual human rights, primarily the right to property.

The torture of animals violates common morality, but does not violate individual human rights.  The response to such action could be severe, which infers a cost to the person who tortured the animal.

Applying moral views on the treatment of animals does not confer rights to the animal.

I agree with all of this. What were the first two statements trying to convey?

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Spideynw:

Because that is how markets work.  A court that hands out unjust rulings (which is what is inferred by non-libertarian), would quickly lose customers, because it would be an unfair court.  People don't need to understand libertarian philosophy in depth when they go grocery shopping right?

This is a diversion from the thread, as I'm not talking about animal rights at all. I was merely pointing out that if we are discussing the concept of poly-centric law, as in no fixed legal code, then there is no ultimately fair or unfair court rulings. Just and unjust rulings are subjective in the market and are not defined as libertarian and non-libertarian, unless a rothbardian legal code is in effect. 

And you make a dreadful over-simplification of anarchist law by comparing it to a transaction. To go shopping for a legal code should seem fishy to most people. Even Rothbard favored a monolithic legal code, which is a monopoly of law. It is the provision of law services that cometition comes into play in an anarcho-capitalist society.

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