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Some people are defending capitalism while some are against it. That can not be denied. However there are a small minority who are in doubt, and to those i would like to show them this video:
(Some people may find this disturbing)
http://rt.com/news/cruelty-million-chicks-die/
Some people call this video
Poultry cruelty - a million chicks left to die
However i would like to call it The grotesque face of capitalism
I dont know how people after seing videoes like this can defend capitalism, but somehow they manage to find their inder brutalism while suppresing their hearts, and they can carry on, joining the capitalist machine.
So remember that the capitalist mindset cares only for one person and that is himself.
So thats my blog for today :D
  
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What the hell. These chicks were all gonna end up as dinner anyways.
The true shame is all of these workers left without jobs and possibly no way to provide income for their families. That is the unfortunate face of capitalism. Not dead birds...
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Are there even any pure capitalist nations left? It's this kind of thing that causes governments to step in and adopt aspects of other economic systems in an attempt to amend capitalistic principals to better suit the complexities of modern economies. Being "for" or "against" capitalism seems pointless when the only realistic option is to evolve a mixed economy iteratively as need change. I don't see how this could have been prevented in a socialist system. Maybe there should be public welfare services for poultry in case they lose their "jobs" like this?
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If you think the worst part about capitalism is dead chickens, then capitalism is looking pretty good. A much more convincing argument would be footage of the actual people who have been taken advantage of in third-world countries. Also, the alternatives to capitalism have far greater consequences.
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I don't see why this case of animal cruelty should say anything about an economic system. I may as well make the case that command economies are evil, citing the fact that Stalin staved millions of his people. You don't think kindness or ethics can exist under a system of open market transactions? Quite a logical leap.
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On December 16 2010 08:32 Enervate wrote:
If you think the worst part about capitalism is dead chickens, then capitalism is looking pretty good. A much more convincing argument would be footage of the actual people who have been taken advantage of in third-world countries. Also, the alternatives to capitalism have far greater consequences.
QFT. The evils of capitalism are really apparent in third world countries where consumer demand leads to the oppression of people.
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On December 16 2010 08:32 Enervate wrote:
If you think the worst part about capitalism is dead chickens, then capitalism is looking pretty good. A much more convincing argument would be footage of the actual people who have been taken advantage of in third-world countries. Also, the alternatives to capitalism have far greater consequences.
It is, more often than not, the corrupt governments of those third world countries that keep their people wallowing in poverty. Excluding cases of actual slavery, sweatshops can only exist when the conditions outside of them are even worse and people in the region have no other way of subsisting.
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On December 16 2010 07:32 exeexe wrote:
So remember that the capitalist mindset cares only for one person and that is himself.
This is true, but that is human nature. Capitalism is ultimately about human nature. Some people give to charity because it makes them feel good. You can frame this objectively as altruistic or you can frame it subjectively as the charitable person engaging in pleasure seeking behaviour - caring about him or herself, just like everybody else. Some people help other people because it makes them feel good. Some people don't eat meat because it makes them feel good not to. Not entirely, of course, but action is dictated by the sum of one's desires - I may hate shovelling snow but I may hate having a stuck car more. I don't "want" to shovel the snow but I want the alternative less so I do it. I may not "enjoy" giving away money, but I may desire it less than knowing that my charity can ease suffering. Capitalism is not evil. People can be evil and people can be virtuous. Capitalism is only about the freedom for people to seek their own goals, whatever those may be. You can't be mad at capitalism for dead chickens, you can only be mad at people.
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On December 16 2010 08:45 jgad wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 07:32 exeexe wrote:
So remember that the capitalist mindset cares only for one person and that is himself. This is true, but that is human nature. Capitalism is ultimately about human nature. Some people give to charity because it makes them feel good. You can frame this objectively as altruistic or you can frame it subjectively as the charitable person engaging in pleasure seeking behaviour - caring about him or herself, just like everybody else. Some people help other people because it makes them feel good. Some people don't eat meat because it makes them feel good not to. Not entirely, of course, but action is dictated by the sum of one's desires - I may hate shovelling snow but I may hate having a stuck car more. I don't "want" to shovel the snow but I want the alternative less so I do it. I may not "enjoy" giving away money, but I may desire it less than knowing that my charity can ease suffering. Capitalism is not evil. People can be evil and people can be virtuous. Capitalism is only about the freedom for people to seek their own goals, whatever those may be. You can't be mad at capitalism for dead chickens, you can only be mad at people.
Yes and no. You're right, people will always do what they want to do, and what they want to do is dictated by what is mentally pleasurable, but the means a society rewards individuals for certain behaviors will influence what they actually want to do.
And capitalism isn't really synonymous for free market.
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On December 16 2010 08:58 Half wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 08:45 jgad wrote:On December 16 2010 07:32 exeexe wrote:
So remember that the capitalist mindset cares only for one person and that is himself. This is true, but that is human nature. Capitalism is ultimately about human nature. Some people give to charity because it makes them feel good. You can frame this objectively as altruistic or you can frame it subjectively as the charitable person engaging in pleasure seeking behaviour - caring about him or herself, just like everybody else. Some people help other people because it makes them feel good. Some people don't eat meat because it makes them feel good not to. Not entirely, of course, but action is dictated by the sum of one's desires - I may hate shovelling snow but I may hate having a stuck car more. I don't "want" to shovel the snow but I want the alternative less so I do it. I may not "enjoy" giving away money, but I may desire it less than knowing that my charity can ease suffering. Capitalism is not evil. People can be evil and people can be virtuous. Capitalism is only about the freedom for people to seek their own goals, whatever those may be. You can't be mad at capitalism for dead chickens, you can only be mad at people. Yes and no. You're right, people will always do what they want to do, and what they want to do is dictated by what is mentally pleasurable, but the means a society rewards individuals for certain behaviors will influence what they actually want to do. And capitalism isn't really synonymous for free market.
Pure capitalism I would say is. Corporatism is perhaps the more accurate word for what most "anti-capitalists" object to and which is the non-free-market component of the mixed economy we have come to know as "normal".
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I dont know how people after seing videoes like this can defend capitalism
So chicks are immortal under other economic systems?
I could understand using this video to argue against eating meat, but you need to make a better case for how this is uniquely a problem with capitalism.
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im not sure what this has anything to do with capitalism. i could put up a picture of a gulag and say that its the grotesque face of socialism and it'd be as misleading, false, stupid, and nonsensical as this. Or I could evoke Godwin's law and say that Nazi = National Socialism = Socialism and put up a picture of the Holocaust. Seriously, if you think capitalism is the sole cause of this, and is the world's biggest evil, then move to Cuba or North Korea. I'm sure you'll find that small animals aren't slaughtered there.
At least take the time to post an educated argument next time.
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On December 16 2010 07:55 gogogadgetflow wrote:
The true shame is all of these workers left without jobs and possibly no way to provide income for their families. That is the unfortunate face of capitalism. Not dead birds...
Truth.
If having to kill a bunch of baby chickens were the worst capitalism could do, I'd take it immediately.
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Man I don't know how people can still eat meat after seeing this shit, forget capitalism. These animals were going to be brutally slaughtered anyway, whats the difference? So hypocritical. You're pointing at the wrong problem.
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I love this thread.
On December 16 2010 09:28 Lexpar wrote:
Man I don't know how people can still eat meat after seeing this shit, forget capitalism. These animals were going to be brutally slaughtered anyway, whats the difference? So hypocritical. You're pointing at the wrong problem.
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.
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I don't know why people are so damned eager to blame any problems in our society on the foundation of capitalism just because making money was somehow involved. There are no doubt things that we are doing wrong but that doesn't inherently mean that there isn't a capitalist way to do them right for fuck's sake.
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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.
So with laws in place animals are treated better etc. What we saw in the video is just a glimpse of how the world would be if there were no ethical laws, that is the grotesque face of capitalism.
People say this doesnt happen everyday so theres no reason to be concerned for this particular case, but i say take this one particular case as a guide of how things would be if there were no ethical laws in place. Thats why its important. In this video we can see how capitalism really is, and not the everyday version which includes a capitalism that is not yet fully incorporated.
Adressing above comments:
Then people begins to talk about socialism. As if the only viable option to capitalism is socialism. That is not true.
Then people begins to talk about Stalin. I dont know why Stalin is relevant for this discussion, no one ever said Stalinism is better than capitalism so i will just ignore that comment.
If you think the worst part about capitalism is dead chickens -
i dont
Some people give to charity because it makes them feel good
And some people donates to charity because they feel its the only way they can help. If they had the freedom perhaps they would voulenteer for a red cross job in a 3rd world country, but you know - they have a 8am-4pm job they wont/cant escape from.
For clarity -
(Killing for fun) I dont like when animal A kills animal B and then animal A walks away without eating animal B.
(Killing for food) But i have nothing against when animal A kills animal B and then animal A eats animal B.
Where A and B refers to 2 different species.
But if animal A raises animal B with the purpose of eating animal B later then animal B must be treatet well before i like it.
Thats where capitalism and me dont like each other. In the capitalist mindset it doesnt matter if animal B is treatet well.
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Netherlands19135 Posts
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.
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Why didn't they just give them away... I'm sure someone would've made chicken nuggets out of them or something... Putting the face of capitalism on this is probably misleading though...
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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.
So with laws in place animals are treated better etc. What we saw in the video is just a glimpse of how the world would be if there were no ethical laws, that is the grotesque face of capitalism.
I would argue that as long as all means of production are privately owned, a system is 100% Capitalist. Your definition of capitalism as something that is completely incompatible with laws or regulations is more appropriately labeled as Anarchism, which I am not condoning.
On December 17 2010 03:09 exeexe wrote:
People say this doesnt happen everyday so theres no reason to be concerned for this particular case, but i say take this one particular case as a guide of how things would be if there were no ethical laws in place.
Why would you make that conclusion? Because you see something horrible on the news you instantly assume that this would be the norm in lieu of regulations? Would you take up smoking crack if it became legal? With a strong media, businesses still have a disincentive to do shit like this for the simple reason that people will boycott their products.
On December 17 2010 03:09 exeexe wrote:
Then people begins to talk about Stalin. I dont know why Stalin is relevant for this discussion, no one ever said Stalinism is better than capitalism so i will just ignore that comment.
It was sarcasm. Dead chickens are an even weaker argument against capitalism than a psychotic dictator is against communism.
On December 17 2010 03:09 exeexe wrote:
But if animal A raises animal B with the purpose of eating animal B later then animal B must be treatet well before i like it.
Thats where capitalism and me dont like each other. In the capitalist mindset it doesnt matter if animal B is treatet well.
Ok, I can kind of agree with this, but it's human cruelty you hate and not capitalism. Regulation can and should (to some extent) exist under capitalism. It's strictly under anarcho-capitalism that you would be free to do whatever the hell you wanted, and I would claim even this system is not "immoral"- its success is failure is completely up to us and what kind of world we want to build. The heart of your critique seems to be centered around a very bleak , "we'd kill our own mothers for a dollar" view of human nature.
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right, because socialism would've saved those chicks. this probably happens in socialist countries as well except the people get paid for doing it.
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quick scenario: it's the cold russian winter and your chicken farm isn't doing so well. you've done the calculations over and over and you have enough money to buy chicken feed for 2 million chicklets, the problem is you have 4 million chicklets. you have a two options: give them away or kill them.
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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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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Why didn't they just give them away...
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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This is how they killed the baby chicks that are used for food in the zoo I worked at. Put them in the fridge and left them to die. At that temperature they probably died of dehydration before hypothermia.
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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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Bad management and animal abuse =/= capitalism.
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Blaming the fucking system for 'allowing' atrocities to happen is just an excuse by a lazy idiot who can't live up to his own moral code and do something about such atrocities himself. A lazy idiot who thinks that it's the government's job to impliment his morality for him. And neither is there anything wrong with him for being so uninvolved in matters he supposedly cares more deeply about than any greedy capitalist, nor is there anything wrong with the concept of blindly shoving more power and responsibility onto the authority figures whose way of gaining their authority is highly unreliable, and whose resources are highly limitted by a reality that is more restrictive of how easy it is to abolish "evil" in the world than most people so adamently against such evils are willing to face.
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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Actually it is highly reasonable to expect government to reflect the morality of its people. This is the foundational tenet of a representative democracy.
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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Just finished reading Atlas Shrugged so.....
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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Everyone cannot be happy taking on an extra workload in order to rightfully earn new levels of power and responsibility. This is true. Many people are habitually stuck with a certain level of humility and contentedness, or else so much power and responsibility (money and influence) is just not what they want out of life. There may be something to be said about how such people could improve their philosophy, but that's not where i'm going. People who don't try very hard and don't expect very much are one thing. People who make unreasonable demands that they are unwilling to work to rightfully earn are a bigger problem as i see it. I put people who feel the system is inadequet when it doesn't impliment their morality for them into that category.
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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On December 16 2010 09:48 3clipse wrote:I love this thread. Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 09:28 Lexpar wrote:
Man I don't know how people can still eat meat after seeing this shit, forget capitalism. These animals were going to be brutally slaughtered anyway, whats the difference? So hypocritical. You're pointing at the wrong problem. 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 luxury right of any living being.
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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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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Derailed.
User was warned for this post
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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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Financially savvy decision: yes.
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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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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Mmm I read a report about this in the LA times today. Apparently the company who was responsible for this claimed that they did it because they felt they were being targeted by the government in a way?
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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oh my god i want some of these
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EPT
