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Comment by GaryBluto | Hacker News Reader

If there were tax incentives for this instead of it being mandatory I'd support it wholeheartedly, but the idea of people being forced to directly attract and accommodate animals to/on their property under threat of punishment is unnerving to me. It's a completely different thing to being made to leave an existing den or nest alone.

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I think it would be fun for wildlife to have their own barrister to bring lawsuits against people like you for destroying what was otherwise their native grounds before us meat viruses spread wanton destruction everywhere. The fact is you can't leave 'existing' alone, there is none. In countries like the UK the place has been completely and totally terraformed by people.

Would prey be able to sue predators for assault as well? Or is this just a uniquely anti-human sentiment?

> us meat viruses

I wonder what brings about this sort of reverse-chauvinist viewpoint? Humans are "nature" too, and we have just as much of a right to planet we live on.

> The fact is you can't leave 'existing' alone, there is none.

What does this even mean?

It's a form of self-loathing, often among middle class people. It is possible to be pro-nature and pro-humans. But there is a misanthropic element in some of these types.

Yea, no. "hur de dur, you have to hate yourself and all other humans if you even attempt to recognize the absolute destruction we are causing around us"

>t is possible to be pro-nature and pro-humans.

No, really it's too late for that in most senses. We the humans fucked up and the vast majority of species are suffering because of it. Now, we the human species are really starting to get our comeuppance from climate change. With the average American around me saying "roll more coal" there is no nice happy ending here where we don't wipe out 99.5% of the species in the next 100 years.

Hey, a few billion years ago anerobic oxygen producing bacteria poisoned the planet, almost extincting themselves, yet they opened a new path for other multicellular animals to take over the planet.

Maybe after we kill ourselves off because we're too dumb not to suffocate ourselves some nice slime moulds will take over.

When I read phrases like "meat viruses" (see above) then I see self-loathing, because these people are referring to themselves, not just other people. Many people go through a phase of this in their teens, when they are trying to become individuals, but later mature to other viewpoints. There are some extreme environmentalists who advocate for human extinction to save nature. Maybe at some point in the future, there will be a plan to maintain off-Earth colonies while letting the world "rest". (An idea already explored in the spoof documentary "Alternative 3".)

By the way, humans are a product of the world's ecosystem, therefore it is in their own interest to strike a balance.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that the ruling class are small in number, and any moves to decrease the numbers of the rest of the human race benefits them in terms of ratios. Especially after automation when most of us are surplus to their requirements. They can easily dress this up as an environmental concern, just as today there are non-progressive taxes on the poor for fuel or food, which are greenwashed.

p.s. "Dumb" is ableist language.

You’re getting downvoted, but I agree. It’s never the carrot but always the stick with these kind of government initiatives and then people wonder why they’re so hated.

If they were smart they would make it a tax break, and the more you do to welcome animals on your property the bigger it is. Why just one swift brick? What about a bird house? How about a little shelter for cats? Animal lovers get rewarded and those who would rather not don’t get punished.

So instead imposing a tiny cost on the people building the home, your solution is to make everyone in the nation pay for it.

Sounds like HN: Make the public pay, while the private keeps the profit.

Yes, just like people receiving healthcare should pay for their procedures, instead of making everyone in the nation pay for it. Abolish the NHS amirite!!!

Hmm, probably not a very good argument for you to make unless you are a libertarian, in which case you wouldn’t be complaining about tax breaks anyhow.

That is how taxation works, people pay for services and things that other people receive.

People won't ever learn. If anything, all this "Swift brick" malarky makes me mentally associate swifts and swift bricks in general, regardless of the situation, with eco-authoritarianism (even though it isn't the swifts' faults that obnoxious upper class luvvies want to force people to attract them), which I imagine is counter to the attitude they want.

BS, there are endless tax incentives for different things and many of them are abused. Also making it incentive-based is often a way for people to say 'not my problem, someone else will take care of it' and have nothing change.

You say they're hated, but my echo chamber says they're a great idea.

If you're so opposed though, you could always vote them out in the next Scottish election.

Legislation like this is never really "hated", in fact people will look at you funny if you oppose it (or you get downvoted). But people hate how expensive housing is, they hate when they personally have to deal with the regulatory state, and they hate the outcomes of these types of regulations.

It's kind of like how a developer might be totally fine with an inefficient line of code and accuse you of prematurely optimising. But then the entire program is slow, because this mentality leaks to every line of code in the codebase. So they hate "slow software" but they see no problem with the individual inefficiencies.

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