• Oppyfan
    18
    The dog problem is a problem for libertarians and it’s an ethical critique

    Dog problem
    P1. Pets (dogs) are property
    P2. Stopping someone from using their property is a violation of property rights and is immoral by ANCAP standards
    P3. Someone having sex with their dog is using their property
    C. It is immoral to stop someone from having sex with their dog
    P4. REAs and private arbitrators will punish anyone who violates property rights in AnCapistan
    C2. You will be punished in ancapistan for stopping someone from having sex with their dog
  • James Riley
    2.9k


    Dogs used to be empowered. They were called wolves. They made a deal with the devil. Fuck them. :blush:
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    Stopping someone from using their property is a violation of property rightsOppyfan
    I think you could benefit from doing some thinking about the meanings of the words you're using, like "property" and "rights." E.g., wrt property rights, ever hear of zoning? And that's just part of the possible restrictions on your use of your property. Do some people object? What, precisely, matter some people?
  • Hanover
    12.9k
    C. It is immoral to stop someone from having sex with their dogOppyfan

    It doesn't follow that because you have the right to certain uses of your property that you have the right to do anything you want with your property.
  • ArguingWAristotleTiff
    5k
    I think it's illegal even if you have no morals about fornication with animals.
    Just a warning shot across the bow, stay out of my paddock and barn. :angry:
  • Cuthbert
    1.1k
    In AnCapistan, can something that is property also be something that has interests (i.e. it can experience harm or benefit)? If so, then the good people of AnCapistan may justify the State coming between a person and their property in a case where the property might suffer cruelty. For example, when a man beats his donkey then the AnCapistan Association For The Protection Of Donkeys may be given powers to remove the donkey to a sanctuary. If AnCapistan has no such association then they really need to set one up.
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    This is just the kind of problem which should be pondered by those longing for Ancapistan.
  • Janus
    16.3k
    P1. Pets (dogs) are propertyOppyfan

    False! Dogs are dependents and companions, not property.
  • Oppyfan
    18
    under a libertarian view you can do whatever you want with your property
  • Oppyfan
    18
    under a libertarian view you can do whatever you want with your property
  • Oppyfan
    18
    wrong under libertarian ideology everything has a owner
  • Janus
    16.3k
    That depends upon who the libertarian ideal is taken to extend to. Are you claiming there are no libertarians who fight for animal rights?
  • Oppyfan
    18
    I don’t think I’ve ever said that,you can be a libertarian and fight for animal rights just cause something is property doesn’t mean it doesn’t have rights.
  • Janus
    16.3k
    If an animal has rights then it does not qualify as property in the ordinary sense. Does your lawnmower or your car have rights?
  • Oppyfan
    18
    Your post comes from a place of not knowing libertarianism, they state that everything can be owned so that includes humans (self ownership)
  • Pfhorrest
    4.6k
    Why then cannot dogs own themselves?

    You’re right that if ancap principles were to apply and dogs were owned by humans then those humans could fuck their dogs all they wanted without interference.

    If the dogs have rights against that though, then either that implies a limit on the ancap principles or it implies limits on the human ownership of dogs.
  • Apollodorus
    3.4k


    But would it be any different in AnMarxistan like say, Communist Russia or China?

    Apparently in China they torture dogs before they eat them.
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    Don't be stupid.
  • Oppyfan
    18
    they don’t have the capacity to own them selves
  • Oppyfan
    18
    I don’t think there’s anything inherent in leftism with ownership of dogs in fact I think you can count dogs as ownerless
  • Hanover
    12.9k
    under a libertarian view you can do whatever you want with your propertyOppyfan

    If you're asking whether libertarians can logically afford animal rights, see: https://www.libertarianism.org/articles/do-libertarians-care-about-animals

    This article attacks the question of whether animals have rights in a libertarian scheme, not the question of whether bestiality ought be illegalized as violative of a moral norm. I do think the libertarian would have difficulty explaining why bestiality should be illegal if you could not show how the animal is harmed in the process.

    While I do think human on dog sex reveals some likely issues that the human needs to address, I'm not in favor of criminal prosecution of him unless there is identifiable injury to the dog. I don't see the behavior as immoral as much as extremely aberrant and likely a symptom of something bigger.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Pets (dogs) are propertyOppyfan

    having sex with their dogOppyfan

    Something doesn't add up.

    Property includes stuff like land, houses, diamonds, couches, lamps, mirrors, cars, etc., objects that most people can't get intimate with in a way that would make sex/intercourse/coitus a natural consequence.

    To have sex with a dog then means dogs aren't property like the ones I listed above - bestiality with a dog would mean we can get physical with it like we can/do with a human partner, an unmistakable sign that dogs, when humans have sex with them, are elevated to the status of a willing and eager mate.

    I wonder though if a dildo or a vibrator should also not be treated as property - they too are "mates" technically speaking. The key difference between dildos/vibrators and dogs being the former are non-living (like most other properties) whilst the latter are living, not only that they're also intelligent.
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    Do you suppose any libertarian will be down with another libertarian's hurting him?
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    Do you suppose any libertarian will be down with another libertarian's hurting him?tim wood

    I think so. A libertarian upstream can do whatever he wants with and on his own property, including dumping his shit in the stream. The libertarian down stream will gladly drink that shit. Same with pumping poison into the air up-wind. If the libertarian down stream/wind doesn't want shit or poison then he can damn the stream or build a wall up to space around his property. And the libertarian upstream will gladly allow his property to be submerged under water when the libertarian down stream builds a dam on his property to keep the upstream guy's shit out. It's really pretty simple when you think about it.
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    It's not often at my age I find something out categorically. But this erases all doubt, question, and ambiguity: I am not a libertarian.

    But I'm not sure it's just libertarians who behave in this strange way. In New England, many rivers were polluted by centuries of dumping by river-powered mills of waste and poisons into their rivers. Much clean-up has been done in the past 75 years. Swimming, e.g., is now often allowed. And the water, treated, is the water supply for many cities. One can trace with a finger on a map the Connecticut and Merrimac Rivers from north to south through city after city, each cleaning, treating, using, re-treating and returning to the river its water for the next city's use.

    Boston and New York City, however, have some the best and cleanest water in the country, testing better than bottled brands. In the 1930s Massachusetts - Boston - took four western Massachusetts' towns and made a reservoir out of them, called the Quabbin reservoir, and appearing on maps as a large lake in the middle of the state. How it all works and the history of it is pretty interesting.

    And NYC from a system of up-state reservoirs.

    But from all of this it would seem that there no libertarians in New England, except involuntarily.
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    But from all of this it would seem that there no libertarians in New England, except involuntarily.tim wood

    Yes, and thanks to the EPA and Nixon (?). (Not sure about the latter but I think he was behind some good anti-libertarian env. regs/statutes.) Anyway, in the pre-Columbian-invasion days, one might be a little leery of drinking right out of the river because, well, dead bison up stream and an occasional natural poison here and there and all that; but as a general principle, yeah, lots of fish and you could take a long deep drink out of the river. What we now call "fishable-swimmable" used to be "fishable-swimmable-drinkable" waterways.

    A little digression, but I've been known to drink long and deep out of streams that gave others the beaver fever (giardia). I'm not sure if I have an immunity or good gut biota or what, but it doesn't seem to bug me.

    Another digression: I think Audubon went up the Missouri in the 1830s and came upon thousands of dead bison that had drowned crossing the river, ala the wildebeests in Africa. The dead were a tiny fraction of what made it across. Anyway, they were hairless, blue, bloated and rotting in the hot August sun. The Indians would come down, gut them and eat visceral raw. Now there's some gut biota! People used to be tough.

    Now, back to our regularly scheduled programing.
  • khaled
    3.5k
    Stopping someone from using their property is a violation of property rights and is immoral by ANCAP standardsOppyfan

    I’m sure you wouldn’t think so if faced with a school shooter.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    You seem to be attacking a straw man version of libertarianism.

    So, for instance, one might think, a la Locke, that the state is not entitled to do to us anything that we would not be entitled to do in the state's absence. If there was no state, you and your friends would not be entitled to extract payment with menaces from me so that you can build a hospital or educate your children. So the state is not entitled to do these things either.

    In this way we arrive at a minimal state, perhaps with a minimal safety net welfare system (for if I have a large surplus of food, then intuitively the starving would be entitled to take some without my consent).

    But bestiality is immoral if there's no state and furthermore it is something others are entitled to use force to prevent, and so the state can stop it too. I mean, any right to property is grounded in a moral claim, yet it seems clear to most that there is no moral right to engage in bestial relations.
  • NOS4A2
    9.2k


    I would say that the person is abusing his dog instead of using his property, and I would stop him from doing so. To relegate a dog to the status of property alone and to excuse its abuse so that a man may gratifying himself seems to me to be a utilitarian position rather than a libertarian one. We don’t steal the dog because it is his property, but we prohibit it’s abuse because it is a sentient being.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.