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Comment by striking | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't necessarily directly starve the other dogs, they'll have less energy to attempt to reproduce with. It's not an attempt to increase the death rate as much as it is an attempt to decrease the birth rate.

My "also, wtf" stands.

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I think these things usually come down to perceptions of human intervention as basically bad. If you actually witnessed the death of every individual dog in your scenario as compared with euthanasia, it's not clear that it would be more pleasant at all. These dogs will die diseased and malnourished by the roadside. Again, I am not really at odds with your emotional position, I'm just interested in the moral foundations on which we sit, if that makes sense at all.

If I may make an attempt at the moral underpinning, it is something like "survival as intrinsic worth". There are flaws to this position, as with any.

Setting aside the fact that I'd be witness to less deaths because I've chosen a more effective protocol for population control, I think letting them live out their lives isn't a net negative. Why would I expend energy ending lives if they don't impact mine?

Granted, there are times when euthanasia would be necessary. For example, feral dog populations in areas where the vulture population has died off, where they carry disease and attack passersby and the supply of food is basically uncontrollable, I get it. But that's a case I personally would preemptively qualify if I were considering it.

In countries with well-managed stray dog populations, people actually feed them, and they get rid of carcasses and other leftovers on the street. Their life might be harsh, but not entirely unpleasant. In countries with unmanaged populations, people will be harsh towards them and mistreat them. And they will also be more aggressive towards humans in return.

If a government had a goal to prevent humans from reproducing and forcibly sterilized and cynically used the population they could reach to pressure and control the population they couldn't, it would be called genocide.

Plenty of people won't have or will delay having children because they can't find stable housing.

A lot of families around the world aren't able to have the number of children they'd prefer to have. There's a lot of reasons for it many of which come down to people not having enough money for a family. Lack of affordable housing and childcare are big ones. Uncertainty about the security of our future is another. If a government did want to prevent humans from reproducing, they've got a pretty good head start and plenty of examples of what to do more of.

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