Hacker News Reader

Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

So, serious question: is the libertarian position that trade in endangered-animal products should be unregulated, or that anti-poaching efforts should be so? Or, perhaps, both? To me that seems awfully close to "might makes right" but I'm still curious to hear the rationale.

View on HN

I'm not a libertarian, but some have suggested large scale farming of endangered animals to meet demand for these products and put poachers out of business.

Honestly, I'm uncomfortable with the notion of a tiger farm or a rhino farm, but it's hard for me to say exactly why.

Why not have large scale farming of humans to meet demands for inexpensive labor and protect against the occasional genocide?

We already do.

Pretty sure that's called "urbanization".

Capitalism, various forms of fascism, and chattel slavery systems each are or include some variety of this, but more directed at the cheap labor issue than the genocide issue.

Because libertarianism takes as a fundamental tenant that each human owns his or her self.

Tiger farms already exist in China.

https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/tiger-farm-asia

Some rhinos have proven to be difficult to breed.

There are plenty of libertarians who value the well-being of animals. Those and most libertarians would be in favor of boycotting those who abuse animals.

But what libertarianism isn't about is using physical force (which includes the state) as primary means to solve every problem in the world.

The Libertarian literary criticism is simply, "What is the consequence of government force required to implement a law?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com