My cat literally gets everything and anything he wants. I found him in a barn a few years back. Since then he has been vaccinated for everything, de-wormed, treated with antibiotics, and had blood, fecal, and respiratory screenings to make sure he is healthy. It wasn't cheap. If it wasn't for me he would be dead because he had tapeworms, round worms, feline chlamydia, and a bunch of other respiratory diseases...

So, honestly... who's really the slave?

(March 26, 2014 at 1:40 pm)KUSA Wrote: Why don't you ask the animals what they think about it.

Oh snap they don't give a fuck.

OK, you're justifying animal slavery by our greater mental capacity.

(March 26, 2014 at 1:44 pm)No_God Wrote: My cat literally gets everything and anything he wants. I found him in a barn a few years back. Since then he has been vaccinated for everything, de-wormed, treated with antibiotics, and had blood, fecal, and respiratory screenings to make sure he is healthy. It wasn't cheap. If it wasn't for me he would be dead because he had tapeworms, round worms, feline chlamydia, and a bunch of other respiratory diseases...

So, honestly... who's really the slave?

Little player. I hate a cat like that once too

(March 26, 2014 at 1:23 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(March 26, 2014 at 1:20 pm)alpha male Wrote: If we owned humans and rewarded them for their labor with food and shelter and medical treatment, and put cruelty laws in place to prevent abuses, it would still be slavery. The only real differentiator you note is that animals don't have the mental capacity to have a concept of money. Does that justify enslaving them?

I'm saying there's a different metric involved based on the capabilities and expectations of the organism in question. The reason we value money for our labor has nothing to do with the money itself, but with the value we place on it as a means by which we can continue to survive and obtain goods. Animals don't have that same value, but they do gain something they value from their labor, same as us.

Then my first point above applies: If we owned humans and rewarded them for their labor with food and shelter and medical treatment, and put cruelty laws in place to prevent abuses, it would still be slavery.

(March 26, 2014 at 1:44 pm)No_God Wrote: So, honestly... who's really the slave?

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

(March 26, 2014 at 1:49 pm)alpha male Wrote:

(March 26, 2014 at 1:40 pm)KUSA Wrote: Why don't you ask the animals what they think about it.

Oh snap they don't give a fuck.

OK, you're justifying animal slavery by our greater mental capacity.

Glass house assertions.

Your religion justifies it by Dominion.

(March 26, 2014 at 1:44 pm)No_God Wrote: My cat literally gets everything and anything he wants. I found him in a barn a few years back. Since then he has been vaccinated for everything, de-wormed, treated with antibiotics, and had blood, fecal, and respiratory screenings to make sure he is healthy. It wasn't cheap. If it wasn't for me he would be dead because he had tapeworms, round worms, feline chlamydia, and a bunch of other respiratory diseases...

So, honestly... who's really the slave?

First, there's a lot more to this than pets.

Second, the cat is still really the slave. You own the cat. Benevolent slaving is still slaving. You wouldn't excuse ownership of a human because the human was pampered.

I do justify animal slavery because of mental capacity.

But then I only really use chickens and fish as slaves personally.

I hate the use of animals in the circus, I avoid eating beef and pork.

When a chicken dies I have less sympathy for it because I doubt the chicken is thinking

Quote:oh no I'm about to die and I haven't even completed my bucketlist yet

I doubt the chicken is even thinking anything that a human could relate to in consciousness it has the brain the size of a tip of a thumb.

And I'd just like to add that even though this is the case I still buy free range eggs as opposed to the normal ones because I think even animals with brains the size of thumb nails don't deserve to be treated like battery hens are.

Also I have owned cats and they live much longer safer comfier lives than those cats in the wild.

Release your cat! End the slavery!

(March 26, 2014 at 1:50 pm)alpha male Wrote: Then my first point above applies: If we owned humans and rewarded them for their labor with food and shelter and medical treatment, and put cruelty laws in place to prevent abuses, it would still be slavery.

Humans value their freedom and self determination, traits that our greater mental capacity allows us to conceptualize. Meanwhile, the majority of domesticated animals seem just fine with sticking around the humans; in fact, that's an evolutionarily beneficial trait for them.