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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

Either you believe the only moral thing would be to treat cows like cats or dogs, you believe that eradicating the species would be preferable to the current situation, or you must accept that we should compare the condition of cows with similar wild animals in order to decide whether our practices are uniquely cruel. Cows are not so unique among mammals that comparisons with other wild animals to get a feel for what their life could be like if we somehow let the free make no sense.

And if we compare industrial practices, then I would agree with the GP, the life of a cow in a factory farm is unusually cruel if we compare it to the potential life of a hypothetical 'wild cow'. But if we look at the life of a cow in a traditional farm, I think the opposite becomes true.

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> you believe that eradicating the species would be preferable to the current situation

Yup! Cows only exist so we may exploit them. Giving animals a "good life" while we exploit (or before we murder) them is not a preferential alternative to simple non-existence in the first place.

Perpetuating and expanding the species is such a basic goal of any living thing that it holds true for the entirety of the Philogenetic tree, with no exceptions, from prokaryotes to plants and vertebrates and humans. In the natural order, existence and proliferation are not just the most important value, but the only value for which an organism exists. Reproduction is often painful and scary, and many living things stop living as soon as they are certain they have successfuly reproduced.

So, by the only universal standard of value among living beings, cows are one of the most successful vertebrates in history - they have managed to breed to almost unprecedented numbers for vertebrates in general, nevermind for mammals.

Even if the only possible way of life for them was the physical suffering of cows in industrial farms, it would not outweighg this basic drive. To suggest that the imagined human concept of 'being exploited' would outweigh the value of existing and breeding is one of the most bizarre takes I've ever heard.

Even humans, who do feel the psychological damages of exploitation and being owned, in the worse conditions of slavery, have never chosen mass extinction over the simple drive of continued life.

Edit: I'd also add that if you value the abstract evil of 'being exploited' as worse than any concrete qualities of the life lead under exploitation, to the extent that non-existence is preferable to this, then you have no choice but to apply this same logic to all agricultural grown plants, especially those that cant even reproduce without our care like bananas or wheat, and to the many kinds of Bacteria we use to produce drugs. They are just as much the victims of exploitation as cows living on nice farms are.

Exploit: make full use of and derive benefit from a resource.

We breed cows so we can exploit them. There is no air quotes around exploit, that's exactly what cows are to us. Resources for our enrichment.

Of course reproduction is the quintessential drive of all life. But cows are not reproducing in the wild so that point isn't even relevant. They're artificially inseminated to keep them lactating (in the case of dairy cows).

As to your edit, we're not talking about bacteria or plants which lack the physical ability for suffering as we know it. We're talking about bovines, huge mammals w/ a brain and central nervous system.

> We breed cows so we can exploit them. There is no air quotes around exploit, that's exactly what cows are to us. Resources for our enrichment.

Agreed, but it does not follow that the cows 'feel exploited'.

> Of course reproduction is the quintessential drive of all life. But cows are not reproducing in the wild so that point isn't even relevant. They're artificially inseminated to keep them lactating (in the case of dairy cows).

The fact that they reproduce at all in any conditions is the only value that truly matters in nature. Cows are dependent on humans for reproduction, just as most wild plants are dependant on pollinators.

> As to your edit, we're not talking about bacteria or plants which lack the physical ability for suffering as we know it. We're talking about bovines, huge mammals w/ a brain and central nervous system.

But you claimed the living conditions are irrelevant, as long as the animal is used as a resource it is immoral to keep it alive. That would mean you don't care what the animal actually feels, so the fact that it feels things at all is irrelevant. Hence, the same argument should apply to living things that don't feel anything either, such as bacteria or plants (or, the argument should not be applied at all).

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