this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2025
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Chapotraphouse
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Hotter take: nobody should have pets. We can never truly provide enough care to warrant their unquestioning trust and love.
I don't think this is the take. You're essentially saying that we should undo eugenics by doing more eugenics.
My take is that humanity, through its past actions, now has a responsibility to care for the species that it curated to live alongside itself. Cats dogs cows chickens pigs all that shit. We can and should move towards a society that doesn't eat or abuse these animals, but they are fully evolved for living within and alongside humans in their day to day lives and we shouldn't just let them go extinct any more than we should just let any other species go extinct, and the best way to provide for them an environment for them to flourish in is to continue letting them live alongside us in our day to day lives.
keeping species from going extinct is important because humanity destroying biodiversity and doing irreparable damage to the biosphere is bad. what is the point to keeping purpose-bred subspecies from going extinct? they can't be released into the wild, because that will cause more damage (see what rats, dogs and pigs have done when introduced by humans to new environments for example). why should we keep breeding dairy cows and chickens after their respective industries have been abolished? infinite animal sanctuaries for eternity? chickens that mature in an unhealthily short time and destroy their own bodies to produce eggs must be bred forever?
That's pretty much my idea. Let them back into the cycle of natural selection, they'll breed out unhealthy genes they are currently saddled with naturally and find a new equilibrium with the environment they are in.
by animal sanctuaries i didn't mean wildlife refuges, but farm animal sanctuaries as they exist now: big farmland type spaces where animals rescued from the animal industries can live their lives freely with help from humans.
by the way, most animals that are exploited for food still exist in their wild species form: jungle fowl (chickens), ibex (goat), wild boar (pig), mouflon (sheep) and they are suited for the environments they live in. (the big exception is aurochs (cattle) which is extinct) i prefer protecting these, instead of trying to rewild the subspecies that have been bred to produce as much food for humans as possible
Well what I have in mind is more along the lines of a wildlife refuge. Perhaps a middle industry would need to be created, something to "rehabilitate" livestock animals back into living in the wild, but we're describing the challenges of such an endeavor, not the reason why it shouldn't be undertaken.
I said it in my other answer but it's because I view them as equally valid forms of life as any other. Also paraphrasing my other answer: what you're describing are challenges to be overcome, not reasons why the task shouldn't be undertaken. Perhaps some problems must be bred out intentionally before an animal can be released, perhaps the animal sanctuaries for feral populations would have to be protected from predators in some way, I'm not advocating for dumping the mass of them in the woods and seeing what happens, I'm advocating for taking responsibility, and I view killing them all off as soon as they've outgrown their usefulness as an abandonment of that responsibility. As for resources - you opened this thread by describing an entirely vegan world, so I don't exactly feel burdened in this hypothetical by what is feasible from where I'm standing within the society I currently inhabit.
and the responsible thing to do is to sterilize and stop breeding
And I view that as abandoning that responsibility.
There's no responsibility to the unborn who will never be born. This is basically the stupid christian argument against abortion.
I'm disengaging.
I'm not sure what's confusing about it. A species represents a line of genetics, and you clearly see yourself as a moral authority on what genetics do and don't get to continue to reproduce themselves. For the record, I don't necessarily disagree with this on principle - negative genetic traits that cause pain in animals can and should be bred out of them - I just believe that the type of eugenics you are invoking is a morally unjustifiable type.
There is no "material" reason. It should be done because it is the right thing to do. If you want a moral justification, I would say that life is valuable in all of its forms, and that domesticated animals represent just as valid of a form of life as wild ones. Their existence makes the world a better place and extinguishing them would be morally reprehensible no matter how nice you are about it or how slowly you do it, so establishing a new paradigm where they continue to exist in a way that balances environmental costs and ethical concerns is better than the alternative of sterilizing them and letting them all die out.
I believe that you have succumbed to a kind of "animal ownership realism", where you can only imagine animals living alongside humans through the lens of exploitation that they are currently subject to. What I would advocate is an advancement of humanity's relationship with its domesticated animals to a kind of non-exploitative symbiosis. Dogs cannot live in the wild, and that's okay. Cats are specialized to live in human domiciles, and that's okay. There is no reason to assume that we cannot still share companionship with dogs or live alongside cats or any of the hundreds of other human-pet relationships in a future that has abolished all forms of exploitation, human or otherwise.
Wait this is a rerun of outdoor cats, like it has the same points
Much like 2016, some things never end
Please read my full comment before replying. I specifically said:
by which I was referring to applying eugenics to animals. I simply draw a distinction between getting rid of genetic diseases and committing genocide.
And what does "fazed out" entail? I can see that you care for individual animal lives, but I view letting the species die out as morally equivalent to killing them, while it seems that you attach no moral weight to the existence of the species itself at all. Which is fine, but if you're going to argue that species in themselves don't have a right to exist then argue that point, don't dance around it like you're currently doing.
This is a shift of the goalposts. Earlier you specifically mentioned mass sterilization to prevent feral animals from continuing to breed, justifying it by the bad conditions they live in rather than advocating for an improvement of those conditions.
This is what I mean when I said you have succumbed to "animal ownership realism." It's a deliberate invocation of the phrase "capitalist realism", which refers to the tendency of people under capitalism to have difficulty imagining non-capitalist systems. You are having difficulty imagining a paradigm where animals simultaneously have autonomy and are cared for by the people they live around/with. I want to imagine it is possible to have a world where animals live with humans not as property.
the befriending crows people kinda do this
So animals cannot consent to being in a safe environment where they literally live longer, receive healthy diets and medical care, and form loving bonds with people, but sterilizing them is fine?
I’m gonna be honest there are about 3,000,000 steps towards leftism that need to be taken before this can even remotely be considered a hill to die on which I am sure you would be more than glad to filter and purge leftists by
I am vegan. I have been a vegan for over a quarter of a century now. I also have a cat. There was of course breeding of his ancestors for exploitational purposes, but there was also co-evolution that benefited both species. Regardless, my relationship with him is not one based on exploitation but on genuine mutual companionship. Our relationship is mutually beneficial on a number of levels. I am confident in saying that I not only allow him to live an enjoyable, self-actualized cat life, but that I also at times bring him joy. And he certainly brings me joy. I respect him as an individual being with his own wants and desires and do my best to fulfill them. I know of plenty of other humans who have similarly mutually beneficial relationships with their nonhuman companions. This is not welfarism and it is no more exploitational than many human relationships where a power imbalance exists by necessity but is still one based on mutual caring. I think the welfarism argument also completely ignores the reality of co-evolution (as seen between many other species that don't involve humans at all). Humans and nonhuman domesticated companions can and frequently do exist in non exploitational harmony. There is no reason this should be at odds with veganism and no reason we need to move towards phasing out the domestic cat (or dogs, etc.) as a species in order to be morally, ethically, or ideologically consistent as vegans.
And for the record, I am not against phasing out certain species (allowing them to go extinct by not giving them the opportunity to breed while providing and caring for the individuals during the time they're still around) for those species that exist wholly for human exploitation. I am not opposed to the extinction of, for example, cattle on some anti-extinction principle. I just fundamentally disagree with the position that domesticated animals can't coexist with humans in a mutually loving and compassionate symbiosis, since clearly they can.
cats might have domesticated themselves
the cat can't consent to going outside either.
No don't cross the streams
I actually have not read much vegan theory on pets. Any recommendations?