From: Greg Jordan (jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu)
Date: Fri May 02 2003 - 14:17:19 MDT
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. If there is a conflict between two
> incompatible uses of land, the rational solution is to offer the uses for
> auction, allowing either hunters or hikers to buy certain land use rights
> for some period of time (of course, the superior solution is to sell
> state-owned land outright, but this is a different story), so that the use
> with the greatest economic and human value (as measured by auction income)
> becomes dominant.
I was talking about total costs, not just costs to taxpayers.
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.
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.
> > 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!"
> ### 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*
> 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.
But I will admit that even nonhuman Nature is ruthless and cruel to
animals. I wish I could even suggest something to do about that, but it
pushes even my science-fiction imagination to its limit. For now, I'm
satisfied with not adding or contributing to Nature's cruelty fest as much
as feasibly possible. In the end, we may find a solution to the plight of
wild animals, probably around the same time we find the solution to the
plight we are in (which is much the same).
> > 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.
I *do* believe hunting is evil, by my definition of evil. But that doesn't
necessarily make hunters purely evil, since there is presumably more to
hunters than hunting. It may even be, as Augustine said, that evils are
imperfect goods - in this case, the motives that lead hunters to hunting
may actually be good, but just not carried out to the fullest
extent. Thoreau attributed his love of nature to hunting, a practice he
said he later outgrew and gave up. Perhaps what he really liked about
hunting was not exactly the killing of the animals, but a lot of the other
things associated with it, like being outdoors, having contact with wild
animals, testing his abilities, whatever.
> You understand that this is the archetypal in-group vs. out-group trick that
> manipulators of all kinds use to attack their enemies. You don't feel the
> need to treat others like human beings (i.e. no need for Rawlsian
> reciprocity, no moral symmetry, no empathy) once you manage to put them into
> the same group as child molesters. No limits now, all year hunting season on
> hunters.
In real life, I don't bother hunters. But if I feel like saying what I
think, I will. People who enjoy looking at paintings and people who like
to slash them can't live together peaceably in the same world. I'm the one
who is living in the world where people who slash paintings have more
power than the people who like to look at them. I have a right to say that
I wish they would stop - stop themselves, of their own volition. And I'm
exercising that right.
> 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.
And I just think my ethics and yours would be incommensurable. Yours would
apparently involve whoever has the most money can do what they want, and
mine would start somewhere around human happiness...
> In the long term, very strict limits on our freedom to force our likes and
> dislikes on others are indispensable for the civilized society. Giving free
> rein to one's emotions cannot be accepted, and only a material analysis of
> events may form the basis for value-independent decisions.
Emotions are free; there are no value-independent decisions. We are
already constrained and constraining in systemic ways that are not
necessarily dependent on our whim. For example, I am forced to accept
hunters' rights to kill wild animals I might have befriended. There is
nothing I can do about that. Limited freedom is the nature of the
universe, not just of civilization. When I use the word civilization, I
give it a kind of romantic subjective meaning of an ideal toward which we
should aspire.
Let me explain:
> Blowing holes in animals does not cause significant suffering (compared to
> their usual experiences), and this is a finding of fact.
This is preposterous. You are an animal, does blowing a hole in you cause
you no significant suffering? If you're going to try to argue that all
nonhuman animals are robots that feel no pain and don't care what happens
to themselves, you've already made a mistake, IMHO. Everything
else you build on that assumption depends on it.
> ### I do not see how a rational person could assign "blame" to animals, or
> see their killing as punishment. Deer are shot not out of spite, but as a
> pragmatic action, similar to spraying for mosquitoes, removing weeds, and
> clearing stones from a road.
But previously you argued that hunters hunted for fun, which I think is
closer to the truth. "Rational wildlife management" is just the
political excuse to back up the desire to have this particular kind of
fun. If this excuse was not available, another would be found.
> If humans decide to halt population growth, consensually, and based on sound
> ethical principles (not some green-ish sentimentalism), well have all the
> beauty we need. And enough deer to shoot, too.
To me, this is like saying, if our museum is big enough, we can burn some
of the paintings! I agree with the suggestion that we should decide how
much of the earth we are going to inhabit and how much should be left
wild, and then stick to it. But that suggestion will never be taken on,
since there will never be such a consensus. Those with the most money, the
developers, will have the final say. They will develop every square inch
of the earth, and humans will expand to fill every inch (even arctic and
undersea), unless something else stops them. Then they will no longer be
able to hunt or hike in the wild woods to observe anything. Something like
the Deathstar, a sphere of full human "development" (mechanical
or nano-buildover), this is how I envision earth's future, on the present
trajectory. It'll probably be a big weapon, too.
gej
resourcesoftheworld.org
jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu
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