Example: I believe that IP is a direct contradiction of nature, sacrificing the advancement of humanity and the world for selfish gain, and therefore is sinful.
Edit: pls do not downvote the comments this is a constructive discussion
Edit2: IP= intellectal property
Edit3: sort by controversal
Mine: Kids are pretty great, actually. They are smarter than you think and can make sense of a lot of stuff you wouldnt expect them to. You should treat their thoughts and feelings with the same respect that you would give an adult.
If you look at the facts kids are leaning towards progress. Less underage sex, less drug and alcohol use, and women are more educated then ever. Boys are starting to lag though:/.
I don’t think “less underage sex” is a good thing. It means that humans remain in a state of childhood longer and longer. They’re achieving life milestones at later and later ages. I’m not gonna say when the correct time for everyone to start having sex is, but when I was in high school 15 or 16 was a lot more common than 18+
Is this an “I turned out fine” opinion, or is this based on something more concrete?
Do you actually think it’s a bad thing to have sex at 16 years old? I think it’s a bad thing that young people are so terrified of living their lives for so long
No, I never said that but it does show that this serious situation isn’t taken lightly.
What serious situation
If you dont think sex shouldn’t be taken lightly phew o boy.
That’s actually a crazy thing to say that we need more under age sex.
That being there are 2 types of people, the ones who cherish childhood and those that want to go up.
We need teenagers to start living their lives again, which it seems like they’re not. A lot of people under the age of ~24 are in a really poor state, developmentally
And mere sex is the way to do it? What about laws restricting social media from being as predatory and anxiety-/depression-contributing towards young people, as has been well-documented over the past, entire decade? As that other Lemmy user said, where is your scientific evidence that younger sex is the way beyond just your own opinion? Encouraging sex without solving the hypercapitalist issue is just pouring more gas on the dumpster fire, if anything.
Teenagers slept around because they were bored. Now they can learn coding and game. They are legitimately using less drugs. Drinking less and having sex left because they are busy developing skills for work and life.
This is so dystopian
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Sex has nothing to do with emotional or mental maturity except with more education you are less likely to have casual sex. It has nothing to do with “becoming a man or woman”. Plenty of adults are extremely accomplished without getting sex involved. Sex is literally just an act of putting your genitals together. How does that make an adult from a child? It doesnt.
It literally does though
I think Gen Z voters reversed the trend in many nations including Germany and the USA, at least the males have a strong conservative bias compared to Millennials.
Unpopular Opinion: Kids are great? get off the stage
U should lurk more lemmy comments. Mfers here really are anti children
Plus you can make them do a ton of chores for twenty bucks a week.
Ah yes, the lovely child labor.
/s
I also apply this logic to animals. A lot of people, even some pet owners, are quite far divorced from our connection to animals, and don’t spend enough time with them. Even wild animals, they are far more intelligent, inquisitive, emotional, and communicative than most people give them credit for, and coexistance with them would actually be a wonderful thing. I’m not religious, I don’t say grace, and I eat meat… But anytime I eat an animal I try to at least be mindful and thankful for the animals sacrifice.
“Humans are the weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give up their flesh that we may live. Humans are able to survive only though the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures to gain food through the use of fang and claw.”
Hey, thanks for this answer. I am under the impression that there is a lot of negative talk about having kids in the News/internet etc, which made me very anxious about the decision to have my own. And while I think that it’s important to vent about the difficulties of parenting, I sometimes miss people who voice the positive things about it.
My kids bring me great joy. I share my hobbies with them and adopt theirs. Spending time with them is not a loss or hindrance. Having kids is not for everyone and that’s fine, but the negativity online it outright toxic.
You should definitely not feel bad about that. And please don’t let the doomers on this platform influence how you feel about your decisions. They have a very negative view on the world because they are terminally online, don’t go outside, don’t see all the wonderful things life has to offer just around the corner or down the street. I mean, times are tough, shit happens, that’s a fact. But kids actually are better at adapting to changing times than we are.
That’s a mixed bag. They can be very smart, but they still don’t have the experience to properly contextualize many things.
I like to call them little adults in this context.
As in, they are adults, but still growing. If adult is the end game, we should treat them as such.
This doesn’t mean don’t protect them tho respective of where they are at, which is dynamic and surprising.
Kids aren’t dumb, but they are stupid.
They are still growing and cannot handle the full dose of reality yet.
Absolute free speech is overrated. You shouldn’t be able to just lie out your ass and call it news.
The fact that the only people who had any claim against Fox for telling the Big Lie was the fucking voting machine company over lost profits tells you everything you need to know about our country
People in the US often misunderstand what sorts of speech can be “free”. There’s plenty of restricted speech in the US - hate speech can intensify the sentencing on crimes, libel and slander are both punishable civilly, speech that directs or is likely to incite “imminent lawless action” (e.g. yelling fire in a crowded theater - that is actually the legal reason for why you can’t do that if there isn’t a fire).
That doesn’t even begin to cover the sorts of speech that are heavily suppressed by the government and media but aren’t legally restricted - like how the media chooses not to cover large popular protests sometimes (famously, the antiwar protests around the invasion of Iraq/Afghanistan), or gives disproportional representation to counter protesters to give the illusion that both sides are equally popular, or how anti-capitalist stances are generally ignored or downplayed. Not illegal, but if you can’t really engage in those sorts of speech publicly, they may as well be.
While I’m tempted to agree, the big problem here is that if the government can decide that some speech is illegal, they can use that to silence people they don’t like.
Obviously the system we’ve got now in the US isn’t working, but we need to tread carefully when giving the government power to decide what is or isn’t the “right beliefs”.
It’s not perfect, sure, but we as a society should be capable of deciding that some things aren’t okay without giving the state carte blanche to censor as they see fit. If the system can be abused, then we ought to fix it, not forgo it entirely.
Plus, governments and companies already suppress or ban a bunch of speech, often in favor of the ruling class. I doubt outlawing harmful speech like parent comment suggests would be the straw that breaks democracy’s back.
Hard to be the breaking point when it’s already broken. But if it weren’t broken already… then I think it actually might.
What we could do is make “journalist” a protected profession. So just like you can’t call yourself a fiduciary unless you hold to a certain set of ethical guidelines, you wouldn’t be able to call yourself a journalist unless you agree not to lie (among other things). So if you forgo the title of journalist, you can say whatever you want (obviously the other laws still apply, so you still can’t slander or libel, and if spreading misinformation causes harm you can still be liable). But if you are calling yourself a journalist, you voluntarily assume a higher standard for what you are allowed to say.
I think that would avoid any first amendment issues. But I’m not a lawyer, so please don’t take my word for it 🤣
That is exactly what was on my mind when I wrote the comment.
Nah,
If I walk up to you on the street and tell you to hand over your money or I’ll kill you, that’s enough to land me jail. Its maybe even enough for you to be justified in punching me in self defense, if you feared for your life and there was no other way you could ensure your safety.
But suddenly if I say I want to put a million people in a gas chamber that’s A-OK? Suddenly no one can punch back or else they’re “just as bad”? Suddenly the lines are super blurry and the slopes are super slippery and its absolutely impossible to tell what a threat of violence is.
Its a crime to say you’ll kill one person, its your right to say you’ll kill a million.
I understand and sympathize with your point, but unfortunately the law will never be that simple.
To use your example, you walking up to me and saying “hand over your money or I’ll kill you” is not justification to respond with lethal force per se. The missing element here is assault - in other words, I have to believe you both are able and intending to do me harm before I can respond with force. If no reasonable person would believe that what you said was actually a threat (like, for instance, if you were a five year old) then I’m still not justified in harming you in self defense.
Suddenly the lines are super blurry and the slopes are super slippery and its absolutely impossible to tell what a threat of violence is.
Yes. They are. And that was your first example, the one meant to be unequivocally black and white.
The problem here is fundamentally an epistemic one. The law is not a thinking, reasoning being. It is merely a system of procedures. The law does not know - it cannot know - the difference between right and wrong. It only knows what the rules are, and those rules may be wrong.
You might think that there is absolutely no reason to advocate for the mass murder of an entire group of people. And under 99.9% of circumstances, I would agree. But if the zombie apocalypse broke out, I might find myself in favor of killing all of the zombies - and legally, there’s no reason that wouldn’t be genocide.
The law doesn’t know whether zombies are people. It doesn’t know whether or not we are. Therefore, there must be some way to have discussions about the law that are above (or outside the scope of) the law. That’s what politics is, fundamentally: the discussion of the law that’s untouchable by the law. Even if we tried to make certain political stances illegal, we wouldn’t succeed, because that is one area in which the law is necessarily blind.
So we can’t curtail the first amendment.
We can’t execute Nazis.
But we could lynch them, as that would be a political act and not a legal one.
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Agreed, news needs to be held to a higher standard than it is now. There’s a whole list of journalist code of ethics that basically distils to be truthful, minimize harm, be independent, and be accountable.
*some example of minimize harm;
- don’t dig through a celebrities trash looking for condoms
- if there’s an accident you don’t show pictures of the dismembered victims
- don’t identify victims of abuse
- don’t claim an accusation as fact until proven (this why every news stations says “allegedly” all the time)
I thought of a few stupid things, but everyone talking about kids made me think of this one.
I am strongly against Trickle down suffering.
“I put up with this terrible thing when I was your age, and even though we could stop it from happening to anyone, it’s important that we make YOU suffer through it too.”
Hazing, bullying, unfair labor laws, predatory banking and more. It’s really just the “socially acceptable” cycle of abuse.
Strongly agree. Someone has to break the cycle of abuse, it’s wrong to contribute to the cycle so that it can continue harming others in the future.
Edit, one example that comes to mind is the extremely long shifts in the medical field in America. One guy who was really good at being a doctor happened to be someone who voluntarily took on very long hours. Now there is this persistent mindset that every medical worker must accept long hours and double shifts without notice and without complaints.
There are a few cases where it benefits the patient to avoid handing off the case to another doctor, but generally it just limits the pool of people who are willing to go into the medical field, and limits the career length and lifespan of the people who do go for it.
I agree, and I take it this far: “I worked hard and paid for my house, why should some lazy loafer get housing for free? I paid 24,000$ in tuition, why should kids get free college?” I think that, at some point, one guy has to be the first guy to benefit from progress, and all the people who didn’t benefit just have to suck it up. I would 100% pay a much higher tax rate if it meant that homelessness was gone, hunger was gone, kids got free education… I’m Canadian, so I don’t need to say this about health care. Yeah, I paid an awful lot of mortgage, but if someone else gets a free house? Good!
UBI is coming to Canada sooner rather than later.
Trickle down suffering is a great term for it, I’m going to use that for future use.
I sort of disagree. Some pain and suffering is what helps some people become better versions of themselves. Doesn’t work for everyone though, so it shouldn’t be the default experience, but rather a last resort.
It’s not pain and suffering that you admire its perseverance. You can have one without the other.
Perseverance against what if not pain?
The fact that this is your reply goes to show you need to learn more.
Sorry, I’m not into S&M play.
Yes, facing adversity does build resilience. However, creating adversity for another just because YOU had to face it is wrong. I had a professor who called our career a “brotherhood of suffering” and would purposely create artificial stumbling blocks and make things more difficult because he had the same done to him. It’s perpetrating a cycle of abuse. I’ve now gotten to the point where I’ve taught in university and in the hospital and I try to break that cycle. It’s still a very difficult path, the content and pace are still taxing. Many still don’t make it to graduation, why make it harder then it needs to be?
Misguided pride or PTSD perhaps?
I agree with OP, and I think you may as well but are stating it differently. Hardships and difficulty so indeed provide the opportunities to better oneself, but that shouldn’t come from contrived abuse like bullying or hazing. Those are instances of someone using their previous difficulty as an excuse to make it harder for someone else which I don’t believe is morally correct.
Maybe, maybe not. My thought for the comment was “tried to help, didn’t work, off you go and experience as is”.
Because not everyone learns the same way, so we can’t apply a fix-all universal method. Some kids, adults even, don’t get it until they experience it themselves.
What that “it” is changes from person to person and every time we think “why don’t they just understand”, maybe it’s that they can’t understand and need a different way of learning “it”. Which sometimes is painful.
Unavoidable pain and suffering, sure. This is about contrived, otherwise unnecessary suffering to “prove a point” or pay it forward in a negative way.
Ah yes, the “poverty builds character” argument that’s often used to justify poverty.
Nah mate, it’s the “rich ppl need to experience poverty in order to empathize” argument.
Why should anyone need to experience poverty in the first place?
Because resources are finite and frugality is needed at times.
Global agricultural systems produce 4 million metric tonnes of food each year. If the food were equitably distributed, this would feed an extra one billion people (paper)
Food is clearly not finite, we produce more than we already need, so why does it cost money? Why don’t we give food to people simply because they don’t have enough pieces of paper or coins of silver?
The ancient people of Teotihuacán decided to stop building pyramids and instead built everyone homes, in a sort of luxury social housing, that “In comparison with other ancient Mesoamerican patterns of housing, these structures do look like elite houses.” (Source) This one is especially fascinating and maddening.
It seems that a peoples society can just, you know, make the decision to build and provide a luxury life for everyone, even in the “hard” ancient days of old. Why can’t we provide a good life for everyone? Why are people obsessed with the idea of suffering being a prerequisite to urban society? It would require proof of a large scale, urban society with no evidence of hierarchy being able to collectively build some sort of intricate sewage technology without any top-down management or something… https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/aug/chinas-oldest-water-pipes-were-communal-effort
Poverty is artificial, it’s a product of using social violence through some abstract currency to protect people from literal violence. Money isn’t the root of all evil, but evil is the root of all money.
Nice theorycraft, but it’s just theory. In real life, it doesn’t work.
For one thing, by our own definitions, life is inherently evil. It takes, consumes, destroys, selfishly breaks down something else in order to sustain itself. We may rationalize it in different ways, but it can’t escape that attribute. And as long as an individual has to sustain themselves, they will have no choice but to commit evil. But we selectively view badly those who indulge themselves.
Another is that perfection cannot be achieved, wastage is unavoidable. We have to produce more than is needed or we will end up with less than required.
Accidents, logistics, incompetence, corruption and the like cannot be completely prevented. There will always be something beyond the calculated parameters that can and will eventually overwhelm a system.
And let’s not forget about the desire to control. Whether tyrants or the utopic society you’re implying for, it’s about control, whether to control oneself or all others. But is the mind that easily controlable and should it be? The desires we have and the willpower to pursue or restrain them aren’t that easily defined.
We are not all of the same mind. Neurodiversity proves that people are different in thought and in feeling. The pursuits and responsibilities two different individuals can maintain for themselves over their lifetimes can go below or above the set standard and a civilization must take into account the satisfaction of its citizens in order to avoid its own downfall.
Also, what was achieved in one society will likely not be accepted in another. So good luck expecting everyone, everywhere to accept a unitary system simply because it’s better. I sincerely have my doubts that anyone can succeed in that.
This all has to take into account the planet’s uneven geographical resources distribution as well. Our current production rates barely give a damn about sustainability. Soil nutrition, water consumption, population density, logistics and so on have to be taken into account, so this means population relocation, specialized production specific to regional conditions, limitations of product diversity and availability.
Anyway, what you want can’t be done and if it can be done, it can’t last because people aren’t static pieces of paper. A near-perfect distribution of basic needs requires a level of sacrifice and constant maintenance that we lack the willpower and stare of mind to accept responsibility for at this point in time.
…
Tl;dr:
To make it simple with a one-off example, will you feed fascists or racists if it meant their continued oppression of minorities? And if so, can you ensure everyone else will do the same?
Equal or equitable basic needs indeed need equal or equitable behavior, but we ourselves lack that. And due to that lacking, we make do with what we do have.
What should be doesn’t matter, only what is.
I agree completely, also, that Teotihuacán link was a fascinating read, thank you for that.
it’s okay to tell billionaires to kill themselves
agreed. also its fine to be happy when bad people die. The world instantly becomes a better place, why shouldn’t we all throw a party?
including that Brian Thompson health care CEO asshole.
I believe that the more wealth a person has, the more likely it is that they abused and harmed others to achieve that wealth. Therefore, the more wealthy a person is, the less I trust and respect them.
I don’t think that it’s wealth generation is equal to immorality. But the more wealthy you become the more insulated you are from the struggles of regular people.
If capitalism was not so psychotic, inhumane and bloodthirsty, I might agree. In the current world market? If you are worth more then double/triple what your average local family house is worth, I will probably hate their personality and what they stand for.
They’ll still get the benefit of the doubt and I’ll still engage, because everyone is their own person, but they are playing 3-0 behind and have lots to prove. There’s a reason upper management is full of similar personality types.
What about dentists, doctors, programmers, etc.?
I feel like this should be more about those involved in the upper echelons of megacorps.
I think you just proved my point. Your willing to give them the benefit of the doubt (a moral judgment) but you’re gonna be wary of them.
Nothing is wrong with that stance.
Mine is related: I believe in an estate or “death” tax, at least on the ultra-wealthy. These people have exploited workers their whole lives to “earn” it, and almost certainly used unethical loopholes to hide it and keep it from being taxed, so at least recover the taxes before it’s dropped in the lap of their heir. They won’t even personally be negatively impacted by it since they’re already gone. Sure, the next-of-kin gets less, but that’s the whole point; they did even less to actually earn it!
The death penalty should be used only for white collar crimes and violations of the public trust. These crimes have the greatest impact on society, and usually have the strongest evidence reducing the chances of a wrongful conviction.
there should be no death penalty.
The death penalty is just legal murder, and, by the very nature of bestowing that privilege onto some power structure, creates a perverse incentive. Now whoever controls the legal system gets to decide who is worthy of living and who is worthy of dying simply by deciding what counts as a “white collar crime”
That kind of power is resented by those worthy of wielding it, and coveted by those who would abuse it. The perfect recipe for despotism.
A stronger argument IMO is that those types of crimes are premeditated, calculated and committed by those who have many other options. So deterrents are likely to actually work against them.
Not that I agree with you. But there’s an argument to be made for using deterrents where they are likely to work. Rather than against the desperate or impulsive.
The free movement of people is a human right!
Note that capital is free to go whatever it wants to.
Say communism without saying communism… Ok, give me your clothing because I need it for work… You said it… It’s capital for production means
Why are you using so many ellipses?
Well, I got it right here in the name.
Everything is fair in fiction. No matter how sensitive or dark a topic is, fictional settings are the only place where anything should be allowed.
This does not mean that attacking/defaming people is ok, just that “I don’t like this” or “this is insensitive” should never be brought up against the existence of a work of fiction.
I’m not sure if “most” people would disagree with that, but there are too many that believe that fiction should be ruled by (subjective) morale and laws, while I believe it should be the place where anything goes.
This does not mean that attacking/defaming people is ok, just that “I don’t like this” or “this is insensitive” should never be brought up against the existence of a work of fiction.
Should any critiques be levelled at fictional works, then? If a work has a character that’s an insensitive racial stereotype, am I allowed to criticize the character, not for being an offensive stereotype, but for being one-dimensional and poorly written? If so, why, exactly?
You’re allowed to criticize anything. The point is that some people are actively looking to forbid the existence of this or that on their personal whim.
The same way you’re free to ignore a piece of work you don’t care about, any author is free to ignore criticism of it. I’m just advocating not forbidding imaginary things, which is unfortunately a thing.
The problem I see is in popular works of fiction, the scenarios seem too specific. Racism, rape, torture, whatever… they all start to come off as weird sorts of validation, wish fulfillment, or cheap shock content. Instead of satisfying a role in the plot, it subtracts from the immersion because you’re wondering if the author is into vore or whatever.
I think it’s good to have an outlet for these sorts of things. I just think it’s less about freedom of expression and more and audience reach, i.e., they didn’t get dark because it limits the demographic.
There are people outright advocating that some topic (of their choosing) should not even exist in fiction form. I’m referring to these.
One is free to like or dislike any work of fiction, no matter how (subjectively) good or bad it is. One is also free to ignore it, as it will have exactly zero impact on you in that case. Once one starts to forbid the existence of something that have no bearing on them, on the principle of “they don’t like it”, that’s a problem.
I think there’s a huge chasm between “I don’t like this” and “This should not exist”. The former is perfectly reasonable.
Exactly my point. It’s a good thing that we can make stuff that some people dislike freely. The only other option is to never, ever, do anything, as you’ll always find people that are against anything;
One for the world:
I think dog / cat ownership is immoral. There are huge energy and material costs to supporting those animals.
Cats when allowed outside will decimate ecosystems and are literal invasive species. As for dogs, I can’t help but feel that they’ve have been weaponized into a deniable tool for harassing other people.
One for Lemmy:
I think capitalism can be good. I think in an ideal world where everyone’s needs are met, there will still be a market and people getting ludicrously wealthy. And I think in that ideal world those ludicrously wealthy people can translate that wealth into political power.
This seems insane for those of us trapped in this present, but I think it is good for there to be a mechanism where understanding some reality that is tied to physical phenomena gives people power.
I think large organizations can get by for a very long time inculcating in their members strange philosophies. If the only path to power is by acquiescing to your superiors and parroting dogma, I think that would be bad.
Of course, conditions in the real world look nothing like those in that ideal world.
Edited away: I think dog / cat ownership makes you a bad person.
I thought it was unnecessarily inflammatory and regret choosing that inflammatory language
Capitalism is frankly completely incompatible with everyone’s needs being met. By definition capitalism relies on exploitation.
And I think in that ideal world those ludicrously wealthy people can translate that wealth into political power.
Well boy howdy, do I have some good news for you about the world you currently live in.
This seems insane for those of us trapped in this present,
That’s because we’re seeing the results of the hyper wealthy being able to turn their wealth into political power.
I think dog / cat ownership makes you a bad person. There are huge energy and material costs to supporting those animals.
Well this one definitely qualifies as potentially unpopular. As an added bonus, it’s also wrong, but that may explain why it’s so “flat earth” un-popular.
Cats when allowed outside will decimate ecosystems and are literal invasive species.
True. No one should let a cat outside; not ever. It’s cruel to the cat and cruel to the ecosystem and never required.
As for dogs, I can’t help but feel that they’ve have been weaponized into a deniable tool for harassing other people
I’m sorry you can’t help that. Maybe that’s something to work on?
I’m not a fan of dogs, especially as we responsibly move to density housing and save space for shared green space and agri needs. But a badly behaved dog is 20% juvenile trauma and 80% parenting.
We don’t have a test or an enforceable license to ensure people who know how to care for an animal are the only ones who get to; but if you advocated for such a thing I’d be marching there with ya.
But, do learn.
I think rescuing animals is good, but continuing to breed them is absolutely morally wrong
As for dogs, I can’t help but feel that they’ve have been weaponized into a deniable tool for harassing other people.
Are you thinking of the fake “service dog” thing?
I think capitalism can be good.
I feel the need to point out there’s multiple definitions of it in use, even, and people slide fluidly between them.
I’m not touching the first one, but the second I agree there’s a nieve understanding where it could be good. As soon as they start using their power to prevent others from gaining power (which always happens instantly) then there’s an issue. The more money you have, the easier it becomes to make money and keep others from making money, creating a situation where they’re subservient to you because they need resources you control to survive. There’s no freedom there. The only way it can work and be good is with ruthless government oversight protecting the people and redistributing accumulated wealth.
I’m not touching the first one
I see Big Pet has gotten to you 😔
There’s a danger of power accumulating in any system. But there are mitigations. The greatest threat to this fantasy system are barriers to entry. If everyone has their needs met, then there can be a minimum wage of 0. With the minimum wage at 0, I think barriers to entry will drop dramatically and it’ll be that much harder to protect “your” market share.
If we get rid of “intellectual property”, barriers to entry drop even further. Switching costs can be minimized by open standards. But then we run into the harder questions of the physical barriers to entry (rent, commodities, factories) and regulatory barriers to entry.
With a reasonably low barrier of entry, I hope that there will be enough centers of power that are intrinsically opposed to one another so that they cannot combine and oppress us all.
And for any government, what’s to stop them from oppressing us instead? The people always will have some mechanisms of control but every system will have its own difficulties and weaknesses. And the relationship isn’t just companies becoming governments, but there are also governments becoming companies. In fact, I’d argue it is more common for governments to become companies than vice versa. Cuba’s GAESA is in hotels, while Myanmar’s Junta and the IRGC are pretty well diversified.
Do you differentiate between people who purchased their pets vs rescue, or do you see all pet owners as the same?
I think owning pets in our modern urban lives doesn’t make sense like it used to, but I have always had pets and do enjoy them. Every single one has been a rescue though. I could not personally justify supporting breeders and pets as an industry.
Honestly, I just dislike other people’s dogs. They’re off leash, aggressive, and slowly bleeding into every space. Having a neighbor that encouraged anxiety and barking was an exceedingly unpleasant experience.
That being said, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of animals being created for and existing for humans. The situation is definitely better than the livestock industry and there’s also the complication that the pets seem to be happy and humans seem to be happier with pets. It would also be exceedingly cruel to take away service dogs from those that have them.
But, pet ownership is rising world wide. Given the demand, they’ll be bred. Pet QoL is going up. Now that they’re family, their environmental impact is going to grow.
Yes, rescues are better than the alternative. Spaying and neutering reduce harm. I wish that the default pets would instead be cold-blooded terrestrial animals and rodents. I wish pets were unable survive outside of captivity.
I think it’s generally immoral to own pets and that if one does, one should strive to maximize the human happiness:externality ratio. It’s a minor immorality, but the OP asked for controversial moral opinions.
All drugs should be legal, but bodily autonomy is to high a purity test for everyone on planet earth.
Admit it everyone, capitalists will not let us live in peace. At least let me get high to numb the pain of existence.
A universal right to self. Get the trans / gay community, the raw milkers, the anti vaccers, the druggies and the prochoice crowd all on the same page.
The government should make no law demanding or preventing the alteration of any and all, organs protrusions or growths of organic matter attached to and constituting the body of a sentient person not under the court directed care of another.
With antivaxx though - I think that’s a “your rights end where mine begin” kind of issue. Some moron shitting themselves to death because they think milk tastes better without the poop germs boiled out can take themselves out, but I have a sibling who can’t get certain vaccines/some vaccines are less effective. I think he has the right to not be exposed to easily preventable diseases.
You could cover this pretty accurately by making being in public without vaccinations count as reckless endangerment. In theory, an antivaxx person in isolation is not the issue. The issue is them exposing other people.
Exactomundo. Philosophically fine, if you can find a way to make your choice not impact others.
Another big problem is they don’t tend to vaccinate their kids either. IMHO, kids deserve a higher standard of care/protection than “whatever their birth giver thinks is appropriate.” (Medical neglect fucking sucks - try pulling off your braces with pliers lol)
Good point! The amount of crackpot “here’s how we can fix society” ideas I’ve come up with that are completely ruined by the existence of children is honestly crazy. I know “protect the kids!!” has been co-opted for some rather unsavory agendas, but it really is important, moreso even than we often consider.
you could probably reduce the vaccination of kids problem (a small amount anyway) by applying bodily autonomy to a child’s right to get some medical treatments (without parents knowledge /consent).
Difficult without finances. This would probably also require some sort of universal insurance program, or ways of children using insurance without their parents authorization.
Parents can also just move you out to the middle of bumfuck nowhere - good luck finding a bus!
At that point the disease is not composed of your own body and DNA and shedding it would be made illegal to do in public.
Finally, I can sell my body to a cannibal after i die. This is legit what I want done with my dead body.
If they’re all on the same page, how do you feel about excluding any single component of this group from private property? Is it ok for businesses to exclude the unvaccinated? How about the others? If not, is that infringing on the business owner’s right to self?
I think a lot of people would say it’s ok to do that to some and not others, which means these groups can’t be on the same page.
This is to prevent the government from making laws, i believe people should be allowed to choose who they interact with and serve provided their business is not funded by any taxpayer funds (ie subsidies, grants, etc.
No no healthcare or schooling discrimination, sorry if u cant eat at jims ruff n tuff diner.
People who drink cow milk are exploiting another sentient being
I think that once it’s viable it would be ok to release a virus which genetically modifies all humans to be more empathetic and to think more critically.
It would be a violation of bodily autonomy, which I generally do believe in, but I think it’s necessary for the productive and positive future of humanity on the single planet which we currently inhabit.
(Yes definitions of intelligence vary, and epigenetics and nurture play a role, but we’re talking statistics and a statistical improvement is still an improvement)
If you haven’t already, check out Upgrade, by Blake Crouch. Good book, similar premise.
if it has no downsides, is it even against bodily autonomy?
This is like arguing you shouldn’t sell farmed food in grocery stores, because it violates the bodily autonomy to starve and die in famine.
I mean releasing said virus into the public; let’s say it’s airborne. That would violate bodily autonomy as we are modifying people without their consent. But yeah I agree it doesn’t really have too many downsides beyond potential for unintended consequences.
yeah but like, by that argument, burning wood is a violation of the bodily autonomy of other people.
Farting in a public space would be an equally problematic activity.
The biggest argument here is that it’s “artificial” and “alters human comprehension” but i’m not really sure it would even matter, because ethically, you would have a hard time arguing against it.
Murder being illegal, is technically a violation of bodily autonomy, but we collectively agree as a society, that this should be the case, because the net effect of murder being illegal, is beneficial to society.
the worst possible case, is that it has a mortality rate, of like 0.001% or something, which would kill a lot of people, but would that even negatively impact the world? It’s hard to say.
“You’re not MAGA? You must not be thinking critically. Here are some genetic modifications to make you love trump forever.”
considering that viruses mutate, this would be the most horrible thing to ever befall humanity….
Want to know something fun about US parents??
Patents don’t really protect new inventions. They give people a right to sue for financial damages and there is no criminal force of law (this is a generalization and I am not a lawyer). So courts don’t really go “hey, stop using invention ABC, someone else has a patent on it.” They just say “hey, that other guy invented it first, give him some money.”
Patents (not other forms of IP) are made to be wildly public so people can invent things on top of previous inventions.
Does it always work like that? No. But it’s one facet of US federal law that I find interesting, and a little bit hopeful.
i think that institutions should be respected.
It’s the number one problem in american politics right now, everything we are currently experiencing, is from people treating politics like a toy. Rather than an institution.
It’s so incredibly hard to state how critically important it is for the functioning of society, that the structures running our society, are respected.
Bro, your institutions are captured. Yes they run society still, but they run it against the people who are supposedly to be protected by them. This is why fascist takeovers start with the institutions and then the institutions keep running, giving formal “legitimacy” to the crimes of the fascists. Nazi Germany did everything legal in Nazi Germany. Opposing Nazi Germany was criminal in Nazi Germany and against the institutions of Nazi Germany. But it was the right fucking thing to do.
And the simplest solution to prevent this, is to simply not vote people who are a threat to your own country, into your own fucking government, nobody seems to understand this.
Literally all we had to do, was not ask for this. But unfortunately the entire US voting populous has the collective intelligence of a bag of rocks for some reason.
While you are explicitly correct, the implication is that institutions deserve respect by virtue of being institutions. Respect should be earned, or rather, given until proven unworthy. I refuse to respect an institution that fails to acknowledge the sanctity of life, much less fulfills the needs of the people it governs.
you can say this all you want, but this line of thinking is the exact reason why we’re where we are today. People like you check out, and start voting for memes, or shitpost value, rather than actually fixing issues, and putting the government in a more respectable position, which leads to people like Lauren Boebert, and MTG being actual real people in the US congress.
I refuse to respect an institution that fails to acknowledge the sanctity of life, much less fulfills the needs of the people it governs.
and likewise, that government will fail to respect your wishes for a functional government that does anything at all. It’s a tripping point, once you trip, you fall down the mountain, and it’s really, and i mean really hard to get back up.
Yeah, the ATF for instance. Anyone knowledgeable about the ATF does not trust it, after Waco and Ruby Ridge
there was a time that the government was highly respected. then the government betrayed us. Intuitions don’t betray their people, they edify. Once an institution betrays its people, it becomes a ruin in history. or should.
the government does not simply “betray us” we betrayed the government, by electing unqualified idiots to the electorate, who then fucked us over, unsurprisingly, because they’re stupid.
That’s. … a take
