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New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

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Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#221

Post by AngryData »

akramachamarei wrote: post #186
em-bee wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you assume that capitalism implies that everyone gets to participate. but that is not a necessary condition. you can have a capitalist system where not everyone participates. slaves did not participate in capitalism, but their owners did. one might even argue that employees do not participate in capitalism either (i am not familiar enough with the specific definitions to state that with certainty however).

No! The owners were not participating in capitalism either, precisely because their whole business is predicated on violating private property. If you wish, you can express it as a matter of degree. That by having ones bodily autonomy stripped, one is engaged less capitalistically, and the same for those which strip that autonomy. The violation taints both ways.

What part of capitalism precludes violating other peoples rights or property? By your definition much of US business isn't capitalist because of the prevalence of wage theft and rights violations, which is absurd.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#222

Post by akramachamarei »

AngryData wrote: post #221
akramachamarei wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No! The owners were not participating in capitalism either, precisely because their whole business is predicated on violating private property. If you wish, you can express it as a matter of degree. That by having ones bodily autonomy stripped, one is engaged less capitalistically, and the same for those which strip that autonomy. The violation taints both ways.

What part of capitalism precludes violating other peoples rights or property? By your definition much of US business isn't capitalist because of the prevalence of wage theft and rights violations, which is absurd.

You should do a little basic research before commenting. Property rights are part of the very definition of capitalism. Wage theft is illegal, because theft is illegal. If you believe that corporations are stealing wages from their employees and the government is tolerating this, then you should probably conclude that those businesses aren't capitalist; that's straightforward, not absurd. And you could probably break a great news story while you're at it.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#223

Post by akramachamarei »

quesera wrote: post #215
akramachamarei wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No! The owners were not participating in capitalism either, precisely because their whole business is predicated on violating private property. If you wish, you can express it as a matter of degree. That by having ones bodily autonomy stripped, one is engaged less capitalistically, and the same for those which strip that autonomy. The violation taints both ways.

Your argument sounds like a Smithian adaptation of the Brezhnevian "actually existing socialism". Neither system has ever existed in its purest theoretical form -- probably cannot, and even more probably should not. I don't think this is a useful point of argument.

I think you would have more of a point if we were still struggling to achieve a good "capitalist" society, i.e. where property rights are enforced, individual liberty, freedom of contracts.¹ But we've already gotten very far, unlike the many regrettable socialist experiments. If we were still feudal, or still keeping slaves, you might have a point, but in a global sense overall things are better than ever. The Brezhnevian notion fails because all the striving towards socialism tends to lead to suffering, and on the way you don't see incremental improvement. But I'm not a historian so please correct any ignorance of mine if you can.

1:I really want to emphasize these as the definition of capitalism, because capitalism as is often defined is not designed top-down with the attributes identified in it. It mostly organically emerges from basic rights. Take for example the Marxist phrase "private ownership of the means of production." (POMP) One does not set ought to ensure this directly, it arises naturally from property rights and liberalism. One would need to prevent POMP by chipping away at property rights and personal liberties: by seizing things, by getting in the way of consensual agreements.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#224

Post by AngryData »

akramachamarei wrote: post #222
AngryData wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of capitalism precludes violating other peoples rights or property? By your definition much of US business isn't capitalist because of the prevalence of wage theft and rights violations, which is absurd.

You should do a little basic research before commenting. Property rights are part of the very definition of capitalism. Wage theft is illegal, because theft is illegal. If you believe that corporations are stealing wages from their employees and the government is tolerating this, then you should probably conclude that those businesses aren't capitalist; that's straightforward, not absurd. And you could probably break…

You realize wage theft is documented as greater than all other forms of theft combined in the US right? It isn't some fringe theory, it is established fact.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#225

Post by akramachamarei »

AngryData wrote: post #224
akramachamarei wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should do a little basic research before commenting. Property rights are part of the very definition of capitalism. Wage theft is illegal, because theft is illegal. If you believe that corporations are stealing wages from their employees and the government is tolerating this, then you should probably conclude that those businesses aren't capitalist; that's straightforward, not absurd. And you could probably break…

You realize wage theft is documented as greater than all other forms of theft combined in the US right? It isn't some fringe theory, it is established fact.

If so, then we can safely call that behavior uncapitalistic. That's how the definition works. FWIW, I knew very little about wage theft, until researching it at your prompting, which I appreciate. Seems like wage theft is rarely actual theft, and most often a violation of contract, but in either case it's a violation of capitalism's seed principles. Sometimes wage theft is neither theft nor contract violation. That's my impression from Wikipedia, at least.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#226

Post by squibonpig »

Insanity wrote: post #89
sosodev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not lab grown or suffering. Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way. The problem is that it costs slightly more and our society is more concerned with cost than animal suffering.

> Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way. Breeding animals _specifically for killing them_, no matter how they are killed, is not what I'd consider humane. If we take 'humane' literally, it means to be treated as you would treat a human. I doubt we'd do this to humans. So the only way to be okay with this is adhering to a form of specieism.

I agree but it's also like massively enormously better and would be a first step many people would be on board with towards treating them humanely.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#227

Post by squibonpig »

abound wrote: post #4
bayarearefugee wrote: post #3

Humanity is almost definitely going to wipe itself out in the not too distant future through an avoidable (if not for the selfish greed of many of us) climate change resource war Great Filter event. This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.

One of my favorite questions to ask people is something like: "Imagine a button appears in front of you. Pressing it will snap all human beings painlessly out of existence. Do you push the button?" Some people get caught in minutiae about downstream effects, I tell them it can go however they want (house pets are free or gone too, planes land harmlessly, etc) In my circles, I've found it's about 50/50 button pushers…

If you've ever flown in an airplane and looked down at a town, it's outskirts and interface with nature, and the natural environment that surrounds it, you'll probably know the feeling. Our species, if it's even right to lay some kind of claim to the species or to the amalgam of biological, social, technical processes that we lump under that label, is a great colonial organism pervading a larger body. But like the bacteria that inhabit our bodies, even in the cases of bacterial infestations that are unhealthy for us, there's no ontological distinction between the bacteria and the body. The body is eating itself or burning itself up always like the body of a starving person; in doing so it produces beautiful and complex arrangements and unknowable futures, it produces itself anew and becomes somebody else. When we take moral judgements, which are no more than functional elements at work within the body, and attempt to apply them to the body at large, or to our representational, projected image of it, all we're doing is helping along the same process of self consumption (or immolation) that the body is already undertaking. Whether you press the button or don't press the button, the process, its beauty and its horror, continues along uninterrupted.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#228

Post by em-bee »

akramachamarei wrote: post #225
AngryData wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize wage theft is documented as greater than all other forms of theft combined in the US right? It isn't some fringe theory, it is established fact.

If so, then we can safely call that behavior uncapitalistic. That's how the definition works. FWIW, I knew very little about wage theft, until researching it at your prompting, which I appreciate. Seems like wage theft is rarely actual theft, and most often a violation of contract, but in either case it's a violation of capitalism's seed principles. Sometimes wage theft is neither theft nor contract violation. That's…

if then by that definition we are not in a capitalist system, then in which system are we? robber barons and anarchism?

keep reading on wage labor and in particular on wage slavery, and how it relates to actual slavery. in my opinion neither precludes capitalism.

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#229

Post by aziaziazi »

stouset wrote: post #185
aziaziazi wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimated scale of the torment nexuses : https://considerveganism.com/counter/

The fish counter is horrifying, I had no idea.

The fish counter comes from here https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal-welfare/artic...

One could argue there's a double count: about one-fifth of fish are caught to feed other animals (mainly fish, but also terrestrial animals). But I don't think one kill offsets another.

> around half of wild-caught finfish numbers are destined for reduction to fishmeal and oil, of which, respectively, 70 and 73% are used for aquaculture feeds

Re: New farm bill would condemn pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates

#230

Post by em-bee »

akramachamarei wrote: post #223
quesera wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument sounds like a Smithian adaptation of the Brezhnevian "actually existing socialism". Neither system has ever existed in its purest theoretical form -- probably cannot, and even more probably should not. I don't think this is a useful point of argument.

I think you would have more of a point if we were still struggling to achieve a good "capitalist" society, i.e. where property rights are enforced, individual liberty, freedom of contracts.¹ But we've already gotten very far, unlike the many regrettable socialist experiments. If we were still feudal, or still keeping slaves, you might have a point, but in a global sense overall things are better than ever. The Brezhn…

things are better, but they are getting worse again. wages are not rising long with inflation. why? because capitalism defines that the wages are set by market value.

as i see it only socialist tendencies are fighting against that. (i don't mean achieving a full socialist system)

is minimum wage capitalistic or socialistic?

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