From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun May 04 2003 - 20:40:29 MDT
--- Greg Jordan <jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 2 May 2003, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > ### Hunting is much cheaper than sterilization - from the
> taxpayer's point
> > of view, hunting has a negative price, that is, hunters are
> actually willing
> > to pay extra to be able to hunt.
> I was talking about total costs, not just costs to taxpayers.
What other costs are there?
>
> If we were going to auction off public land to the highest yield use,
> we'd have mass acres of coca fields. I have a suspicion you'd think
> that'd be fine.
They would only go for coca production so long as cocaine were illegal.
Legalized cocaine would be dirt cheap.
>
> I don't propose policy, because I am in no position to create public
> policy or even affect it by any significant amount. I suspect the
> same is true of you.
Ah, that is the attitude of a free citizen, now, isn't it?
>
> > > Also, whereas natural predators (not being heavily armed) pick
> > > off the weak and inferior, trophy-hunting hunters pick off the
> > > largest and healthiest specimens, a reverse culling that is
> > > obviously detrimental to the herds.
> >
> > ### What kind of evidence would you like to offer in support of
> > this claim?
>
> What evidence would you expect? I have a cousin who is a hunter and
> I've never heard him exclaim, "Wow, I caught a really scrawny,
> young, lame one today! Me big hunter!"
By the time a deer is big enough to be trophy material, he has mated
quite a number of times, so there is no chance of size being culled
from the genome.
Instead what does, in fact, occur, is that the dumbest deer get shot
and the smartest get away, which has led to a forced evolution of
rather cagey, intelligent deer which are far smarter than their
ancestors. Tracking a mature buck today pits you against an animal
smart enough to sense you on his tail from several hundred yards away,
and brave enough to circle around behind you (where you are not
looking), to get a peek at the opposition.
Getting "a big one" as your cousin enthuses, indicates a person who has
either outsmarted a rather smart mature animal, or perhaps shot one
whose mental faculties are damaged by brain worms.
>
> > ### Tell me more. How low cost is it? Is it cheaper than the
> > negative price of hunting? Will its proponents be willing to
> > outbid (with their own money) the hunters? Are you talking about
> > hormonal methods? What is their impact on
> > the psychology of the deer?
>
> If a veterinarian volunteers everything, it's free. I'm sure a
> hunter's lobby could outbid them, which obviously makes the hunters
> right. *rolls eyes*
You obviously have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about.
A program to sterilize the wild deer population will require a program
much like that used to vaccinate deer that is performed currently and
is entirely financed by hunter license fees. This program requires the
use of aircraft to overfly wilderness in grid patterns, much like a
search grid looking for lost hikers or downed aircraft. From the
aircraft, food chips dosed with sterilization medication are dispersed.
Of course, if there is no hunting, then there are no license fees to
finance such a program and you the taxpayer must pay for it.
>
> > Also, death of a sterilized animal of old age, disease, or
> > predation, is still more shocking than having its brains shot out,
> > even if starvation were not a problem.
>
> Everything dies sometime (for now). You're making a case for shooting
> every animal (and human) in the head right now.
Only if I and Rafal stupidly equate animal suffering with human
suffering. Humans in suffering go to hospitals. Wild animals do not.
Humans get treatment for their suffering, and in most cases die rather
painlessly. Until other animal species invent their own health care
technologies, they will continue to suffer because that is their
nature. We don't have to make it any worse than it is, and what you
propose DOES make it worse, no matter how noble your intentions are,
specifically because, as I've demonstrated, you have no idea what you
are talking about. Good intentions based on ignorance and stupidity
cause most human suffering in the world, and you want to perpetrate
more of it.
>
> > > I don't feel any need to remunerate hunters for loss of "hobby",
> > > any more than I would feel the need to remunerate child
> > > molestors for depriving them of the ability to molest children.
> >
> > ### Ah, here is the true belief at last. Hunting is evil. Hunters
> > are evil. They are scum, to be wiped off the earth if possible.
>
> Hmmm. You've moved from my statement on nonremuneration to putting
> words in my mouth like evil, scum, and wiping off the earth.
He put no words in your mouth. You specifically equated hunters with
child molesters. As I recall, there was a certain genocidal dictator of
the last century who was a vegetarian... should I then conclude that
all vegetarians are evil?
>
> > You see, the form of ethical reasoning that you are using, the
> > ethics of repugnance ("makes my stomach turn"), the type of
> > thinking exhibited by Leon Kass, and by Jeremy Rifkin, is a way
> > of answering questions which has no place in the civilized
> > society. If unopposed, it promises bad outcomes to
> > all those against whom it is directed, even you, once you find
> > yourself in the "repugners" crosshairs.
>
> My ethics involves a lot more than stomach-level "repugnance" :) But
> my reaction was to your imagination that hunting is pleasant, a gut
> reaction itself, so to speak. It would take a long time to explain
> my ethics, more than emails could sustain.
I've heard it all before, and found that the 'ethics' of vegetarians
breaks down to a type of transference psychology, where the vegetarian,
becoming a herbivore, starts to identify with other herbivorous
species, which tend also to be prey species to predatory species. In
identifying with prey species, they wish to eliminate what they
perceive as predators: hunters, for example. Some shrinks have
theorized that this was the core of Hitler's genocidal ambitions, as he
saw the jews as predators on the productively bovine Germanic people.
It is not an accident that vegetarians are predominantly anti-gun,
anti-military, anti-capital, and generally collectivist in attitude.
These are all rational conclusions from a prey species point of view...
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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