EPTThe grotesque face of capitalism - Page 2
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
the first problem with giving them away is you are in the middle of nowhere and no one within 20 miles has any need for owning a chick, nevermind 2 million. there is one entity, however, that would gladly take these chicks off your hands and save them from a freezing cold death, and that's the chicken farm 20 miles down the road who have the budget to sustain that many chicks. the problem with giving away your chicks to them is that they are a competitor, there is no reason to give away your own stock to pad a competitors pocket which would probably result in them gaining a competitive edge and your farm shutting down. here's what happens when you kill them. 2 million in product vanishes. you lose money but you could have lost more if you kept the chicks for a variety of reasons (demand too low, feed to high, blahblahblah). your competitor does not gain an advantage because you do not give them chicks allowing you to stay afloat and maintain some semblance of profitability and keep your farm operating. tell me what happens in a socialist economy when the (hypothetically) government owned chicken farm (for the same variety of reasons) runs out of allocated budget to keep the chicks alive long enough to be turned into mcnuggets. would the government: a. give the farm the money to feed and raise the chicks even though there is low demand and no one would buy them even if they were able to raise them. essentially waste money feeding chicks that no one is going to buy. or b. pay the farm market price to get rid of the stock immediately, cutting all costs associated with lost time and resources feeding and raising chicks that no one will buy. | ||
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QuanticHawk
United States32097 Posts
On December 17 2010 04:07 Nyovne wrote: Be VERY careful what you post in threads like this people. This kind of topic always invites the haters, the ignorant and draws trolls from out under their bridges faster then a lame sheep. The op is complete shit and the entire premise of his argument is based on a terribly weak link between throwing away baby chickens in Russia and capitalism. The op has made an asinine assumption that such treatment of animals only takes place in countries which practice capitalism (Mind you, this is in fucking Russia, which has wonderful track record of human and animal rights abuses throughout its history, which, if my teachers were correct, was definitely not capitalistic for most of last century) Then we reach the end and realize that his grant point was that he just doesn't like animals being mistreated, and that is a product of... capitalism???? What the fuck? Like I thought the chicken tossing was a metaphor for how careless capitalistic pig car, but he is literally going on how he doesn't like how animals are mistreated before we use them. It's an animal rights blog and the op has no fucking clue what capitalism means. | ||
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exeexe
Denmark937 Posts
It was easier to kill them - lazyness often leads to cruel solutions Your definition of capitalism as something that is completely incompatible with laws or regulations is more appropriately labeled as Anarchism Remember i made the distinction between other laws and ethical laws. I wasnt talking about laws in general but ethical laws. So labelling it anarchism is as wrong as it can be. 3clipse Why would you make that conclusion? My observation of how human mankind behaves under certain circumstances leads me to make such a conclusion Regulation can and should (to some extent) exist under capitalism Yeah - but STATE-regulation is not requirred for a society to be called capitalistic. And if you want to get as high a profit as possible which most capitalists will, then you dont want to be regulated by the state. So essentially STATE-regulation is not wanted by capitalists. we'd kill our own mothers for a dollar Some people actually have killed their own mothers - that is their mother was lying sick in their bed with heavy pain and only with a few days left. The reward was that their mother shouldnt go through unnecessary pain - that is they didnt got rewarded with money - that is they killed their own mother for zero dollar. tell me what happens in a socialist economy when the (hypothetically) government owned chicken farm (for the same variety of reasons) runs out of allocated budget to keep the chicks alive Its funny that just because i made myself clear that i am opposing capitalism then people instantly assumes i am here to defend socialism. Im not here to defend socialism, though if someone else want to answer your question here, they can do so. Mind you that the world, or the world of politics is greater than just capitalism and socialism. The world isnt black and white - Yes i know that thats how the media in the US is portraing the world and the world of politics, but thats because they wanna draw an imaginary image of an enemy and they wanna scare you. "If you dont choose us you choose the enemy" so to speak - but infact i can inform you that the world and the world of politics contains many more nuances than just capitalism and socialism and you have many more options than just us or them. Because the line between wrong and right, Is the width of a thread from a spider's web, The piano keys are black and white, But they sound like a million colours in your mind | ||
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Hithran
Canada57 Posts
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dronebabo
10866 Posts
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
On December 17 2010 05:38 exeexe wrote: tell me what happens in a socialist economy when the (hypothetically) government owned chicken farm (for the same variety of reasons) runs out of allocated budget to keep the chicks alive Its funny that just because i made myself clear that i am opposing capitalism then people instantly assumes i am here to defend socialism. Im not here to defend socialism, though if someone else want to answer your question here, they can do so. Mind you that the world, or the world of politics is greater than just capitalism and socialism. The world isnt black and white - Yes i know that thats how the media in the US is portraing the world and the world of politics, but thats because they wanna draw an imaginary image of an enemy and they wanna scare you. "If you dont choose us you choose the enemy" so to speak - but infact i can inform you that the world and the world of politics contains many more nuances than just capitalism and socialism and you have many more options than just us or them. Because the line between wrong and right, Is the width of a thread from a spider's web, The piano keys are black and white, But they sound like a million colours in your mind 100% true capitalism won't exist just like 100% true democracies don't. what you're talking about happens regardless of economic system which is why i pointed out that under socialism the same thing would probably happen (which since you aren't defending, i take it you concede the point). you are taking some obscure issue and associating the negative outcomes of the issue with capitalism and i've shown you otherwise. then you twist my argument into some anti-US agenda you hold about shadowy enemies or some bullshit. i understand there are nuances but you don't seem to since you believe such acts are the result of one and only one system. don't give me some cryptic poem and think that that answers anything. it just shows you have the answers to nothing. | ||
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Boblion
France8043 Posts
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zobz
Canada2175 Posts
You, the consumer, you, the worker, you the investor, you with your free speech rights have the power to do something about moral issues Without involving government, and we all must fix ourselves before we ask the system to take over our lives in all the areas of our incompetence and complete lack of conviction, to fix all our moral mistakes for us, to introduce the resources that we ourselves are incapable of producing, to prevent us from meeting the consequences of our own actions. If an evil is persisting it's because nobody has been willing to turn over the resources, of money and motive power, to prevent it; The main resource in the world is us, people, and what we're capable of. Not putting ourselves to work on these issues and yet demanding that work be found so that the million 'rights' you hippies insist everyone has can actually be payed for, puts unacceptable strain on the system and causes no justice whatsoever, since the person demanding justice did nothing and the person providing justice didn't care. | ||
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jon arbuckle
Canada443 Posts
And 'fixing ourselves' is an impossible process. Maslow's chart of self-actualization does not correspond to all people equally - i.e. my self-actualization differs from yours. Even developing an ethical system is an irreconcilable lifelong process because moral and ethical positions on phenomena do not arise naturally from the phenomena themselves. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about the death of a species, even numerous creatures of that species, but I may certainly see someone dumping baby chicks into the Russian cold and will perceive it as wrong according to preconceived moral tenets I hold dear (e.g. "baby chicks are cute and they shouldn't die like this"). However, even the ethical application of these theoretical moral positions, themselves dicey, is a dicier process: if I go and eat 20 chicken wings, what is my position on the tacit assumption that 10 chickens should die so I may have an unhealthy but delicious meal? How is this reconcilable with my position on the deaths of baby chicks? Especially when we consider the notion that "the main resource in the world is us, people, and what we're capable of" to be bound up with humanity's reliance on numerous other resources - in an environmental sense, on this solitary planet, and in a human sense, on the people who bake the bread with flour that was milled by people who received the wheat from farmers. Not everyone can work in the governmental system on their own, to be so thoroughly informed as to be relied upon to participate meaningfully in the political system. One of the most brilliant abstract inventions composed by humanity to confront this is government and bureaucracy: the management of larger issues on a discursive plain in an ostensibly mature and informed manner. What's outrageous then is the perspective of representational democracy as power, and how a system that should operate as a transparent glass construct operates more like a funhouse. But if moral position(s) of these people are unable to assert themselves as discursive properties in the deliberative governmental body informing ethical policy - you know, invective, people calling people "idiots," that sort of thing - then it's the system's fault at the institutional level: education, family, or otherwise. And because the governmental, institutional system forms so much of how I perceive the phenomena around me, then it becomes well within my right to question the operations of the political system to which I am subjected. That said, it's really pathetic (in the Aristotelian conception of pathos sense of the word) to critique capitalism based on its treatment of baby chicks. | ||
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susySquark
United States1692 Posts
I'm probably not allowed to make economic decisions because I'm still stuck in Rand's world. Nevertheless, I don't think capitalism is to blame for tragedies. There's nothing wrong with an honest, but "greedy" businessman - the cheating and stealing kind of greed is what's wrong with the world. | ||
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zobz
Canada2175 Posts
The government exists solely and fundamentally as a societal regulating body that is given the authority to act on certain issues which everyone can agree on. The government exists as something which everyone accepts because it is in all of their best interests. A body which has the resources and the authority to do things which affect everyone, when that is what's called for. If everyone does not agree, then they are being stolen from during taxation. To some extent this may be a necessary evil where humanity stands today, however there is very much extra pressure that many people advocate being put on government, to take care of even more shit that not everyone agrees upon. Most concepts of morality are in that cateogry. Someone who has no job and no money, and demands that you buy them a slice of cake at a party simply because you have money, as their right, is a lazy idiot, and deserves to be called as such. I believe that someone who has no job and no money, and demands that you donate to the charity for saving chicks in factory farms, regardless of whether you accept that as your own moral conviction and your own free will, is sometimes subject to a slightly more subtle fallacy, and slightly more forgivable at that. But calling them a lazy idiot just the same, if you think about it, is not much of a stretch. To put it a little more directly, someone who does in fact work, but not as hard as they possibly could, is not a genius or a tycoon with millions of dollars to really kick off a project like "charity for the chicks" by themself, does not either have the right whatsoever to address the problem differently, by setting up a large project involving millions of people, all of whom chip in a small amount, without asking them whether they believe in your project or not. If you can't afford a nice car, you don't deserve a nice car, unless the money with which you would've bought the car was actually stolen from you. If you don't have the power or the money to correct what you perceive as a moral travesty, then the responsibility for your inaction or your inability is yours in exactly the same way. | ||
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Lexpar
1813 Posts
On December 16 2010 09:48 3clipse wrote: I love this thread. Slaughter need not be brutal. Some animals bred for consumption are treated and killed humanely. It's a hell of a lot better of a deal than they would get in the wild in a lot of ways. Countless animals die of an extremely slow starvation in a wild as a natural population control process. The lucky ones might die relatively quickly (but certainly not painlessly), after a cheetah rips their throat open and its litter has their way with the remains. Then you have the argument that the niche of several species is to be consumed by humans. If we were not breeding and slaughtering them, they likely would be extinct. We grant them the right to existence. Seeing as we have no real way to objectively measure quality of life on a deep level, I would contend that if their basic needs are being met, their situation is superior to nonexistence. And then there's the issue that past a certain threshold of consciousness, should we really give a shit? Surely the well-being and happiness of a dog is worth the lives of 10,000 ants. I'd contend that the utility humans get from livestock far exceeds the possible detriments to the animals. I agree that the op's link is abhorrent; that's why it's a sensationalist news story. If this were the rule rather than the exception I might sympathize with your cause, but I do not believe it is. I disagree entirely with your three arguments (as I'm sure you expected me to). Your first is that wild animals can and do die in equally if not more painful ways than their factory farmed counterparts. I can't deny that in nature animals starve, struggle, and die gruesomely at the hands of other animals. That doesn't mean that there aren't millions of animals who live happy lives in environments that suite them. Still, we can't really judge how many or how few animals living in the wild are suffering or flourishing, so I won't dwell on it. What we can see and have direct control over is the living condition of factory farmed animals (which the chicks in the op obviously are). It's not a matter of argument: they are confined to living quarters not much larger than their bodies, they are never allowed to socialize or seek companionship, they never get a chance to exercise or live the life nature has built them to live. Instead they are fed food that is not part of their natural diet that is laced with hormones that cause them to grow too large for their legs and muscles to support. They can live and die without ever seeing the sun. We know without a shadow of a doubt that these are the condition on factory farms. While yes, animals can suffer in the wild, they are doomed to an entire lifetime of suffering without pause when they are raised in a factory farm. We, as an intelligent and omnipotent being force these condition onto animals, when we have the technological and economic power to give them happy lives, but chose not to. So do animals live shitty lives and die painfully in the wild? Yes, but they are free to live happy lives should they have the means: a Your second argument, that existence is inherently better than non-existence is purely a matter of opinion! You said it yourself, since none of us have experience in not existing, no one can take an objective and logical stance on the topic. Here is a fun example though. Human women routinely abort their children because they know they can't support it and give it a happy life. In this situation, we chose non existence over the pain of a pitiful existence for other human beings. Obviously in some situations we think we do know if it is better to exist or not exist. I'd contend that "granting the animals the right to existence" is purely justification on your part. We have the mercy to take a painful existence away from other human beings, but are gods when we grant an existence of pure suffering to animals. Nice. In your example you compare dogs to ants. Would it interest you to know that pigs are as smart or smarter than dogs. I guess you have to ask yourself if you would eat your pet dog. It's purely subjective to say that a the taste of a crispy slice of bacon outweighs the suffering we put factory farmed pigs through. Why is it abhorrent that these chicks should die in the freezing cold? After all, we had the grace to "grant them existence." They should be thankful. Right? | ||
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semantics
10040 Posts
On December 17 2010 04:24 mahnini wrote: right, because socialism would've saved those chicks. this probably happens in socialist countries as well except the people get paid for doing it. On December 17 2010 07:27 Boblion wrote: Bad management and animal abuse =/= capitalism. Things may look cute but chickens are as dumb as they come, not that intelligence is paramount to if eating meat is morally right, but frankly to me i rather just eat meat just because it's not pretty doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It's a food chain someone has to live a shitty life somewhere along the line. | ||
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zobz
Canada2175 Posts
User was warned for this post | ||
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reg
United States134 Posts
On December 16 2010 07:32 exeexe wrote:So remember that the capitalist mindset cares only for one person and that is himself. On December 17 2010 03:09 exeexe wrote: A 100% capitalist society has no room for ethical laws. The fact that there exists laws which are protecting animal life from the most severe abusement just proofs that its not a 100% capitalist society. Ah, the perfect blend of ignorance and stupidity. User was temp banned for this post. | ||
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Mickey
United States2606 Posts
Ethical one: No I'm curious about how they ended up in this situation in the first place. Don't most companies have a department specifically for reading the market's demand and adjusting their supply to minimize loss? | ||
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metalsonic
Netherlands95 Posts
On December 17 2010 04:07 Nyovne wrote: Be VERY careful what you post in threads like this people. This kind of topic always invites the haters, the ignorant and draws trolls from out under their bridges faster then a lame sheep. True , everyone got their opinion about politics and certain ideology's ( capitalism , facism , socialism , communism ) . This isn't really great for feedback , more interesting to discuss it with a few people , how more people there are the more opinions you get . Which basically usually escaletes into a flame wars . Though interesting to follow if it are politicians which are to discuss these matters then normal persons ( unless it are inteligent ones , the persons ) . I don't think showing a video of chickens who die revolves around capitalism . In every other kind of community it is highly likely the same would have happened if it benivited the people . | ||
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bebejugga
United States43 Posts
Although I do cringe at the terrible ethics behind this, the scary thing is, this company accounts for over 50% of poultry production in that particular German town, if I recall correctly. Germany already relies on imports for a majority of their goods.Their default = bad news bears. It was actually a really good article. I just don't know if I remembered it accurately =P | ||
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exeexe
Denmark937 Posts
On December 18 2010 20:46 bebejugga wrote: Mmm I read a report about this in the LA times today. Here it is: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-russia-chickens-20101217,0,978576.story | ||
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