2018 October 15

I have respect but very little compassion towards animals.🐶 They are not humans, even if many are incentivized through food, shelter and other rewards to behave in ways that comfort us. 😍

Animals have an important part of the ecosystem that we all depend on 🌎, livestock produces food🐖 and fiber🐏 and pets give us companionship🐈 and provide other services like deterring mice🐀 or retrieving birds while bird hunting.🐦 Domesticated animals have special needs♿ that only humans can provide due to their breeding.🏠 It’s important to respect their natural needs to maximize profitablity and success with our relationship with animals but our relationship to animals shouldn’t be about caring or love.

Many today think that domesticated animals should be considered a special type of property, and people who fail to maintain them🔎 should be punished more severely than those who fail to maintain other equipment such as an automobile or their house. 🚗 But I think we should be more worried about the waste of finite resources not infinitely reproducible animals.

Domesticated and bred animals are simply organic matter that took energy and labor to construct 🐓 – yes people should maintain them under the right conditions like any other piece of machinery – but they are indefinitely reproducible 🔧 through animal husbandry. They are no more special than any other type of property and indeed I would argue that as organic matter that will rot away in the soil, they are less important than many other types of property.🍗