Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I feel these kind of articles are, if not "dumb", then just pointless. You know what else is a big driver of carbon emissions: humans. We would certainly have a lot lower carbon emissions if half of us voluntarily committed suicide, but that doesn't seem like a realistic proposal.

Also, the lack of analysis in this article doesn't help. There is nothing in this article, for example, that says how much of the meat protein that goes into pet food would essentially be waste from meat production intended for humans.

View on HN

I love my pet and would do anything for them. At times my pet has kept me alive.

If I’m poor does this mean I shouldn’t be able to get help from a pet because people want it to be taxed?

I’m getting pretty tired of all these empty and worthless sensationalist articles.

Pets have real costs associated with them (as this article highlights) and to my knowledge they're not considered basic needs by any stretch. So why should you be exempt from paying those costs, externalties included?

Because it's quite enough to pay real costs... And now you want to add imaginary ones? No thank you.

Where do you want to live? Soviet Russia? Pets provide companionship to millions of people - I'd bet you many of them consider that to be a basic need.

Basic needs as defined by most western governments, e.g. for the purpose of calculating welfare, does not cover expenses for pets. They do not enjoy tax benefits like dependents do either.

Of course people who enjoy something are more likely to define whatever they enjoy as basic need, that doesn't mean we let everyone use the definition that suits them.

<kids> have real costs associated with them (as this article highlights) and to my knowledge they're not considered basic needs by any stretch. So why should you be exempt from paying those costs, externalties included?

I'll assume that's supposed to be a question how pets are different from kids when it comes to government-set incentives about having more or fewer of them (if it is it would have been more direct to just ask that).

First of all, arguments that we ought to have fewer kids are being made when it comes to environmental footprint. But even ignoring that the the birth rate is already below replacement rate. So unlike pets the government does not exactly have to go out of its way to incentivize people to have fewer of them. Then there's the issue that for society to continue to work we have to keep up the inter-generational contract, so at a larger scale having children is a basic need for society while pets are not.

And last but not least this conversation is not about forbidding pets or children but factoring in externalties so people can make better resource tradeoffs, perhaps they could still have a kid or a pet but decide it's too costly to have both or abstain from some other luxuries to afford either. In that regard children and pets are similar.

If that protein is waste it could be fed to fish farms or something, thus upcycled to human food.

As for suicide, that probably has a lower utilitarian balance than producing fewer pets.

Of course, because suicide means one less person spending money.

If everyone could just leave this shitshow on their own terms, whenever they wanted to, how would the people who want to tax pets get their money?

And the majority of pets worldwide are not “produced”, they’re adopted from the pool of animals who already exist.

The only thing they could say is that pet food should only contain non-choice cuts of meat and not require people raise animals for them. That people should not impose their own insecurities and brand-image consciousness on their pets.

The hacks have to make a living not talking seriously about corporate corruption, grotesque inequality, real drivers of and solutions to net negative GHGs, the criminal injustice system, or the classist, celebrity-obsessed, inverted totalitarian apartheid.

Meanwhile, the economy is "better than ever" and "everything's fine," if you're rich and self-interested to defend the status quo.

Having babies is THE BIGGEST sin one can commit against the planet.

Yea everytime I see these articles I question why there are not more people voluntarily committing suicide or giving up procreation

So, do you think a policy like the OCP in the PRC is the way countries should go? How would you run it to ensure it's not an unforgiving cruel singly numbers oriented goal which will run roughshod over actual people?

You swallowed that propaganda hook line and sinker. Shame.

I also think that human population is too much (the other species isn't so quite), and do not have any children myself, and would suggest to others. But, it is to be voluntary. I am not try to force anyone please! This is like VHEMT, however, I am not suggesting that human should be extinct; merely, less population by voluntary. I also think that, since not everyone is going to listen/agree anyways, it isn't going to be extinction especially since currently human population is a lot. Therefore, the method to do is good but not their intended end goal which is human extinction, and also will not be the result of their method anyways, due to what I explained, so it works. Extinction of non-human species is a bad thing to do, but also human because human is also one of the species.

Please don't post flamebait to HN. It's not what this site is for, and reproduction and parenting are some of the more inflammatory flamewar topics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com