Dog problem
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
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
Comments (32)
Dogs used to be empowered. They were called wolves. They made a deal with the devil. Fuck them. :blush:
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.
Just a warning shot across the bow, stay out of my paddock and barn. :angry:
False! Dogs are dependents and companions, not property.
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.
But would it be any different in AnMarxistan like say, Communist Russia or China?
Apparently in China they torture dogs before they eat them.
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.
Quoting Oppyfan
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.
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.
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.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vsz0HU6L2yg/XB-uMUfENBI/AAAAAAAAicI/n0oEEy1v6Cc0cWifbQAKvH_Ou8Z7etg7ACLcBGAs/s1600/mistake.jpg
I’m sure you wouldn’t think so if faced with a school shooter.
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.
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.