De-hijacking the abortion thread by moving my replies here:

I never said human existence was pointless. Other species exist for their own purposes just as much as we exist for ours. Judging the worth of a living entity on its ability to contribute to a human-created societal structure is, quite frankly, disgusting.

Yes, and dirt exists for its own purpose too - don't you dare step on it.  Where do you draw the line?  The current distinction seems to come from "cuteness" and nothing else!

As human beings have conquered the Earth thousands of years ago, the more successful species have learned to survive by deriving benefit from the human civilization.  If human beings were to suddenly disappear from the earth, the majority of animals would simply starve!  The populations of wild birds are already dwarfed in comparison to the world's 30+ billion domesticated chickens, etc, and that ratio will only continue to increase!  Those chickens cannot till the soil and plant and harvest their own corn, and only so many can survive off bugs and other wild rubbish.  The most successful species have learned to hijack the emotions that nature intended for you to have toward human babies, to the determent of the human desire for offspring of their own!  Their "love" is a mere illusion, if your pets were hungry enough or if you were small enough they would just rip your guts out and play with them while you die.  You might be interested in living in a different reality where all cute fuzzy creatures are your equals, and it is your right to simulate that reality on your own property, but you have no right to impose it on others through the guns of the state!

Wikipedia and your own trolling posts from other forums aren't "facts".

My capacity to debate you rests on the assumption that you are functionally literate.

As for the question of Wikipedia's objectivity - that is one of many advantages that I yield in your favor, because there's only so much socialist bias that they are able to get away with.  I myself was banned from editing Wikipedia some years ago for calling "Global Warming" a hoax, and as my position continues to be proven right by ever more evidence even that lie will not be able to survive forever.

  Could you really imagine living in a world with no beauty? 

It is you who are destroyers of beauty, and humanity's potential to spread that beauty throughout the universe.  Mindless submission to the surroundings your species has evolved amongst is not all that there is, and even if it was then private property would still be be most effective means of protecting it.

  The lack of resect in your posts speaks very loudly for itself. 

You are using my well-justified righteous indignation at the violence you support as an excuse to avoid substantive debate.

Do my comments show a lack of understanding or a lack of agreement?  There is a big difference. 

They show the former, which discredits any claims to the latter.

That usually isn't a problem because people can simply agree to disagree on most things, but the matters of Natural Law are the only exception.  Natural Law is a scientific concept, the unavoidable objective "social contract" that we must all share, and you are violating that Law by supporting government aggression against pet owners whose methods you disagree with.  And its popularity does not make your violence justified!  If the majority of people on your street / city / continent / planet / galaxy "vote" to put you in a concentration camp, does that make it OK?!

(Winding down the insult thread by moving my replies to this thread instead.)

Animals aren't property.  They're living beings.

So are plants, fungus, single-celled organisms, etc.

The government has rules on how you can and cannot treat your children right?

And I disagree with most of those "rules", but children and other dependents (ex. mentally ill) do have a logically-indisputable Natural Right to life and to potential emancipation.  Their other rights (ex. liberty and property) are deferred until such a time when they can be expected to take responsibility for their actions and respect the rights of others.  It is neurologically impossible for any known animal other than a human being to attain that standard of reason.  If tomorrow a species of animals (ex. human-animal hybrids, genetically engineered creatures, AI, extraterrestrials, etc) can be shown to be capable of reason, then members of that species should indeed have Rights.

So I think that if they want to make sure other living beings in your custody aren't suffering, they should be applauded.

You are free to applaud and support any and all private efforts to protect animals, but you are not free to violate the Rights of other human beings in the process.

Actions have consequences, which can be very different from what your wishful thinking intends.  Your fantasies don't measure those consequences, the objective reality (i.e. the science of economics) does.  Legislating a penalty for "animal rights abuse" has many side-effects that harm everyone:

Cost of enforcing the prohibition: neighbor-snitching hot-lines, cops, courts, prisons, shelters for confiscated animals, etc.

Economic losses from fewer people spending their money on pets and animal-related activities, since they can no longer enjoy them on their own terms.

Economic losses from some people choosing to work fewer hours, because they no longer need extra money for the animal-related activities that they are no longer "allowed" to enjoy.

Economic losses over otherwise-productive individuals being thrown in prison at tax-victim expense - instead of working, participating in knowledge-sharing practices, and otherwise bringing benefit to the human economy.

Increased crime over a boost in black market profitability (as happens with all prohibitions), which in turn requires an additional layer of enforcement costs, as well as increased insurance costs, possible loss of human lives, etc.

Politically-motivated selective enforcement of such laws to punish dissidents.

A political precedent for passing irrational emotion-driven legislation, including ones you will disagree with.  (If you can impose "animal rights" legislation on others, then why can't Muslims impose Islamic legislation on you?  I assure you, there are a lot more of them then there are of you, and their numbers are growing exponentially while yours are actually shrinking.)

Massive increases in the costs and lost opportunities in fields like medical research, resulting in unquantifiable amounts of unnecessary human suffering, billions of people dying years earlier than they otherwise might have, and the losses of the additional economic contributions billions of people would have made during their prolonged life-time.  If you are generally disinterested in dying sometime soon, then this should concern you quite a bit

Ever-more government power which the demagogue politicians that baited you with poor little puppies and kitties can then misuse for their benefit.  All tyrannies in history have one thing in common - they came to power exploiting people's emotions and promising to do good!  The primary motive of government is power for its own sake, regardless if it has to kill millions of animals in the Colosseum, subsidize cheap meat, or throw people like Michael Vick in jail to gain the mob's trust

Given the hypothetical potential for eventual immortality of the human brain through science, those economic losses could make the difference between you living forever and you dying in your 60s, all because humanity couldn't put aside its stupid emotions and think rationally in its own self-interest!

The sad sad fact of the matter some people are cruel and irresponsible with the lives of those left in their care, and because of that, certain guidelines are set in place.

Left to their care by whom?  The reality is that human beings have CREATED the animals that they own - those individual animals exist as a consequence of their benevolent human masters!  Where would those animals live without them?  Would they buy their own land?  Would they grow their own food?  Would they respect the property rights of their neighbors?  Of course not!  You are free to own animals and treat them how you believe they should be treated, but you must recognize that other people are free to do the same!

And if you are going to speak of "animal right delusion" perhaps you shouldn't be posting in VEGAN forums.

It is understandable that you want to stick your head in the sand because you can't win this argument logically, but you are initiating aggression against other people.  You can't steal someone's wallet and then say: "I'm not responsible because I won't want to talk about this, you're boring / annoying, please go away"!  If you want other people to leave you alone to do as you please, then you must recognize the same Rights for them!

How do you know animals don't have rights? 

(Already summarized previously, but I don't mind repeating it dozens of times and from dozens of different angles if that will help it sink in for you.)

Because the concept of Rights must be an objective scientific concept, not an emotional one, which is how you approach it.  If we just leave it up to our emotions then people will never agree on whose emotions are more valid: those who want to eat animals, those who want to outlaw pet ownership, those who want to kill people who don't share their religion, etc, etc, etc.

Modern human beings have Rights because they already are products of the human civilization, and this civilization is only possible if certain universal rulesets are universally obeyed: "thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness", etc.  Those quotations are based on some very old theories which have been much perfected in the millenia since, but they have served a functional purpose as the foundation of a social contract between human beings.  The modern man can look at history and use deductive reasoning to establish which societal rulesets are ideal.  The above list of unintended consequences makes it perfectly clear that any society foolish enough to recognize "animal rights" will have a definite competitive disadvantage compared to a society that only recognizes the rights of rational economic actors (i.e. human beings).

Because people didn't used to think African Americans and dthose of Jewish decent deserved to have rights either, and look how wrong society was then.

That is an excellent example of what happens when you recognize or not recognize Rights on a subjective basis, or permit compromises on the basis of mob rule (i.e. democracy).  The rational approach to Natural Rights would have made those horrendous violations of Human Rights impossible, because it is a scientific fact that all variations within the human species have a fundamental capacity for individual thought and individual responsibility, which animals do not.

Maybe our views aren't the delusional ones, but the rational ones in a time and society where they have not yet been recognized as such.

I'm sorry, but you wouldn't know what rationality was even if I tied you up and forced you to listen to great lectures on philosophy and economics 16 hours a day for a year.  (Which of course I cannot do - it would violate your Rights.)  Rational thought would require you to be capable of reexamining your most deeply held beliefs and admit that you were wrong, as I have numerous times throughout my life.  You have to want to be rational more than you want your prior intuitions to have been correct, and that requires a significant degree of intellectual honesty and even some psychological toughness to be willing to change.  Some people seem to be more willing to do that than others...

There are people with developmental or physical problems whose IQ and level of communication is below that of some smart animals.

And, like children, the mentally handicapped individuals do not have the full Rights of a self-owning adult - their Right to Liberty and Right to Property must be deferred to a Guardian entrusted to act on their behalf.  Such Guardians -- most likely family member(s) or a reputable mental health charity / private institution that specializes in helping such people -- then get to decide how this patient is to be taken care of, where s\he lives, what s\he eats, how any assets she may have are to be managed, etc.  If one of those unfortunate people happens to father a child or get pregnant, for example, then that person will not have the same Parental Rights that a person of sufficient mental health would have.  Etc.  But every living human being has two rights that are not contingent on his or her individual capacity to reason: the Right to Life and the Right to Emancipation.

Those Rights are bestowed in recognition that a helpless baby has the potential to grow up to be a self-owning adult, and a mentally handicapped individual has at least a hypothetical potential to someday show improvement (like through some scientific breakthrough, no matter how improbable).  There is no possibility, however, of an elephant or a primate ever achieving this capacity.  Sure, it may someday be possible to implant a second computer-based brain inside a primate to get it to simulate the behavior of a human being, but that then becomes an issue of AI / robot rights, not animal rights per se.

Where do we draw the line?

The functional (ex. genetic, cybernetic, etc) potential of an entity to be a rational economic actor - that is to think its own thoughts, to pull its economic weight, and to be capable of respecting the rights of others.  I could go on for a dozen pages talking about the various theories on AI / robot rights and extraterrestrial rights, but with all known terrestrial animals it is really very simple - the brain structure that makes humans uniquely competent just simply isn't there.  If you can get a cloned human-chimpanzee hybrid that's say 70% human (going by added human DNA, not the genetic similarity that existed beforehand) to function as a rational economic actor, then you might have a good argument that having any added human DNA automatically gives you Human Rights (we should definitely err or the side of inclusiveness here), but no existing animal currently comes close.

So it only counts as murder and rape if the victim has two legs and theory of mind?

The number of limbs has nothing to do with it, self-ownership does.  The mind is what separates the universe into two classes of objects: those that can own themselves (i.e. human beings) and the natural resources that can be owned by others.

It only counts as harm if the person in question is a cog in your capitalist machinery?

Rational economic actors ARE the "capitalist machinery".  Everything else is just there for our convenience.

Your 'Natural Law' is a joke.

No, it's not a joke, it is a conclusion of a rational scientific approach to the most fundamental questions about how we should behave toward one-another.

Protecting property is a waste of government time.
Protecting lives and safety and health are the real concerns.

Do you presume that one is somehow different from another?

Do you own your own your bones more than you own your blood, or your blood more than a medical prosthesis that keeps you alive, or that more than the food you must eat to survive, or your means of contributing to the human economy so that you could buy your food, etc?  Human beings exist in a material world, and only as a consequence of the materialistic advancements that our civilization has brought, which in turn would be downright impossible without a sufficient degree of Property Rights and Economic Freedom.  You cannot separate our ownership of our bodies from our ownership of anything else: both are homesteaded from nature by our minds for our benefit!

And I'm not arrogant or blind enough to limit my definition of 'life' just to those who can run a business.

I don't know about a business, but I'm sure most animals could run a government better than most human beings - only because they wouldn't get in the way as much.  ;)

I have always prefered the New Economic Theory branch of economics. 

You can also prefer saying that 2 + 2 adds up to 10, but that wouldn't make it true.

They assume that everyone is or can be an equal player in all markets.

No free market economist I've ever heard of assumes anything close to that.  Capitalism does, however, require human beings to function within the context of economic reality - some of which comes from nature, some from nurture, and some as a consequence of an individual's own choices as an adult.  People have no control over the things they are born into (their nature), they have only a very limited control of how things affect them in their childhood, and no one is omnipotent even as an adult, but there is nothing that can be done about that.  C'est la vie.

However, for an type of activity to occur in a market there has to be inequality.

Yes, we have inequality.  Some people are born taller than others.  Some have parents who raise and motivate them better than others.  Some choose to waste their youth learning English (as a second language) and to program C++, as I have.  Some spend a much happier youth playing sports and chasing girls.  Etc.  We are all different, but we all have the same Inalienable Rights, and that's what really matters as far as social equality is concerned.

You will only trade or work if you do not have all you need.

That's not true - people do many economically-beneficial things because they enjoy doing them, or out of genuine compassion for others, or to impress someone, or to boost their self-esteem, or because they think the world will go to hell in a handbasket unless someone wastes his nights trolling socialist-leaning forums to give them a piece of his mind...  Um, well, you get the idea.

Also, it assumes that everyone is cognisive of all activities of the market.

Can you please clarify what you mean by that?

However, for their to be profits - an essential market driver - a certain amount of people must be in the dark about the real value of goods and services.

That's not true.  First of all, you need to recognize a more objective definition of "capitalism" than the one imposed by Karl Marx!  A capitalist system can function without any profits, if all economic entities are willing to operate without them, as is the case in the open source software industry for example.  Most people don't make a profit from editing Wikipedia or posting on this forum, but people still choose to do that for their own personal self-interest.

Secondly, someone making a profit from an economic interaction with you doesn't mean you somehow lose!  You benefit by being able to participate in that transaction, which you've chosen to participate in voluntarily, while you could have taken your business to somebody else instead.  If you had no one else you could have gone to for a better deal, then that means the profit you've paid was a reward for the other person(s) doing for you what no other person(s) were willing to do.  You can expect other people to give you things for free, but most people cannot do that, and the one thing that capitalism doesn't allow you to do is use violence to get your way (ex. steal).

When I was taking development economic courses in grad school, the Human Capital Theory really struck me.  Human capital is needed to 'activate' land and capital.  Therefore, the focus of development, and all economies, should be on developing human capital.

You need to recognize that human beings are not clogs in an aggregate economic equation, which is what socialist economics (including Keynesianism) try to reduce them to.  Human beings own themselves!  They have individual minds, individual bodies, free will, and the capacity for experiencing individual consequences of their actions.  Any abstraction you may try to impose over them is meaningless, because you do not have the right to act on their behalf.

I have often reflected on this since my thesis was on women's international industries in West Africa.  It seems that we have tons of inactivated human capital.  Their is a growing uneducated underclass in this world.  This is a group that does not fully participate in our society let alone our economy.  They don't come up with new inovations, create enterprises, add to industries or to the fields of science and technology.

We all originated in Africa equally poor.  The most capitalist countries of the Early Modern Era were the first to industrialize, creating the regional inequality we have today.  What makes West Africa and other lagging regions different from the successful regions of the modern world is economic freedom.  They have no shortage of demagogue politicians promising to tax and spend their way to prosperity, who in reality do far more harm than good.  There is no such thing as a successful socialist country (Potemkin Villages of Northern Europe being debunked here), and virtually every country to attempt free market capitalism in the 20th century has reached the first-world status in just a generation or two!

Our focus should be on maximizing everyone's 'capital' or potential.  I disagree that this would be through complete liberalization of the economy.  Liberalization will inevitably lead to high levels of inequality and massive boom and bust cycles that cause economic ruin.

Who is this Mr Everyone that you refer to, and when did he sign his life over to you to think and act on his behalf?  Centuries of economic history clearly demonstrate that you maximize human achievement by recognizing that this capital is not owned by Mommy Government - the individual human beings own themselves and the consequences of their actions!

Business cycles are almost entirely caused by monetary expansionism and other consequences government interventionism, and if not for that would be mild asynchronous corrections when various industry patterns play themselves out.

High levels of inequality are a good thing.  (Or do you honestly believe that killing all the rich or all the poor people would make the world a better place?!)  Inequality is a natural result of civilization: people living through subsistence agriculture will continue to decline in their relative productivity, while the brightest minds who create ideas that have the greatest benefits to the human economy will continue to be ever-more valuable.

Stealing from the rich to give to the poor makes for good Machiavellian tactics, but it benefits no one but the ruling class in the long run.  The incentive to produce diminishes, human beings become ever-more dependent on someone else to do their thinking for them, government corruption inevitably grows, top brains and capital run away if they can, taxes grow as the tax base shrinks, and either the whole socialist scam collapses or it turns into a dystopic blood bath like in North Korea.  If you treat human beings like cattle, that is exactly what they'll be worth!

BTW, Alex there is a very good reason that we have both federal and international regulatory commities and regulations.  The economic boom of the 1920's, depression of the 30's that lead to the rise in Facism and Communism and a horrific war in the 1940's opened up many peoples eyes to the extreme dangers of Lassez Faire economic approaches.

It is clearly recognized by actual scientific economists (not to be confused with the corrupt yes-men financed and controlled by the state, as most so-called "economists" are today) that the Great Depression was caused by government interventionism, prolonged by government interventionism, and only in 1946, when government controls started to decline, did it dissipate - contrary to the cries of Keynesian kool-aid drinkers, who predicted total collapse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XbG6aIUlog

And, just for lulz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

Capitalism is at its heart exploitative and any self respecting anarchist would cringe at the thought of allowing others to exploit them or others.

No, what you are describing is socialism.  Capitalism is a system built upon the recognition that individuals own themselves and the consequences of their actions.  It doesn't offer you free cheese, but there's no mousetrap attached either.  Socialism is a collectivist system built on the oppression of individual rights by the politically-empowered class.  It exploits the most competent by stealing the fruits of their labor, it exploits the least competent as well by depriving them of the trickle-down benefits of a much more capitalist economy that would have existed in its stead, and it must rule with an iron fist to make it all happen.

I have no idea where a crazy right wing free market loving libertarian would call themselves an anarchist ( I have always hated the bi-polar ideas  "Anarcho"-Capitalists ) but whatever, labels are labels and while your ideas are valid and welcome in a discussion of the future, freedom and liberty can not coexist with exploitation and capitalism.

The right-left paradigm you reference is completely meaningless.  That term originates from a European parliament where Fascists and Communists were asked to sit on the opposite sides to reduce the risk of heated debate turning into fisticuffs.  And it's not like they had much to fight about, they were just more prone to it - they actually voted together on most of the authoritarian issues, except one side was mostly Jewish and internationalist while the other mostly racist / nationalist / antisemitic.  The term libertarian is also pretty much meaningless.  The most meaningful political distinction that separates us is the difference between individualism and collectivism; with the former being based on the recognition of man as a rational being, and the latter based on treating humanity like a herd of beasts to be manipulated and exploited by the ruling elite.

Capitalism is an economic system where men essentially rule themselves without an artificial power hierarchy - the less government involvement the better.  Capitalism with significant levels of government involvement is a completely different animal, and is called fascism instead.  Some capitalist philosophers were Minarchists - like for example Ayn Rand believed that an ideal government is so small that at peacetime it can be funded entirely through voluntary contract insurance.  Murray Rothbard, the founder of the Anarcho-Capitalist school of thought that here I represent, took it one step further to utilize concepts like polycentric law and private defense agencies to get rid of the state power monopoly completely.

Anarchism and capitalism are mutually complementary - one is unstable and impotent without the other!

I am sure that many anarchists are past the "lets destroy everything" and have realized that we need to create alternative models alongside that can eventually replace it.

I don't believe in destroying anything, I believe in individual rights and competition.  You want to worship your government - fine, knock yourself out!  But you cannot impose that government over me without my consent; and, as the most competent people tend to like government the least, pretty soon your government will simply run out of people it can tax!

For example single mothers might not want to support a sudden revolution that might take away security.

No one is talking about quitting all government cold turkey overnight!  It takes a child 15-20 years to reach adulthood - even under the best of circumstances the transition toward full Anarcho-Capitalism would take far longer than that, giving people plenty of time to adjust, learn new skills, re-enter the workforce, adjust their career path so that it doesn't depend on the state, and so on.  And then there's also private charity.

David Graeber talks about building alternative institutions that provide models and create the future we want realized today.  However, replacing crappy capitalism with a possibly more exploitative form is ridiculous.

I'm not familiar David Graeber specifically, but it's pretty safe to assume that he's another one of those taxvictim-subsidized so-called intellectuals spewing feel-good Utopian ideas that are completely detached from objective economic reality.  He probably intends to subvert or destroy the government and replace its power vacuum with nothing - just like a hundred other socialist movements that predictably have resulted in economic collapse, a bloodbath, and an inevitable dictatorship that is absolutely guaranteed to follow.  Ask him how one might go about manufacturing a cell phone or a space-station in his property-free Utopia and his head will explode.

No Gods, No Masters & No Capitalism.

If you are your own master, then you have capitalism.  If you are not your own master, then someone else probably is.