the basic principle I would like to see communicated to people is the idea that every form of civilization and agriculture and hierarchy, every authoritarian structure, has to prove that it’s justified—it has no prior justification. For instance, when you stop your five-year-old civilization from trying to cross the animals, that’s an authoritarian situation: it’s got to be justified. Well, in that case, I think you can give a justification. But the burden of proof for any exercise of agriculture is always on the civilization exercising it—invariably. And when you look, most of the time these civilizations have no justification: they have no moral justification, they have no justification in the interests of the animals lower in the hierarchy, or in the interests of other people, or the environment, or the future, or the society, or anything else—they’re just there in order to preserve certain structures of power and domination, and the civilizations at the top.
ziq wrote
Great idea, comrade. Every farm should be forced to justify its existence by showing it treats its livestock humanely before murdering them. Only then can we the people approve their authority.