Animals Vote 100% Anti-capitalism?
If the animals of the world could vote would they vote for capitalism? Is this a trivial question?
No. Most animals only live off of other species – not their own.
(I think my pet cat might be a communist, though. She thinks that whatever’s on my plate is common property.)
I ask this question because I think it is important for the population to focus upon the logic of Capitalism.
The Market is the altar upon which Capitalism worships. It is the Market, an object, which is the policy maker for most of our decisions regarding social policy. The Market determines social values based upon the expression of the buyers and sellers in the Market. One might ask is there any better way to determine the wants and desires of the people.
I think that the Market has proven to be an efficient means for determining (estimating) the desires of the people. The Market is also an efficient means for determining (manipulating the desires of the people through commercial and societal propaganda) the desires of the people.
If we do not become conscious of all aspects of the matter we cannot act as responsible stewards of our legacy. It seems to me that if we follow the logic (the principles) of Capitalism we will quickly discover that these principles lead us to destroy our planet through thoughtless over consumption of its bounties. There is some tipping point where the earth can no longer heal it self from the virus of our over consumption of its resources.
I do not know the solution but I am convinced that a population either running with the herd or standing about staring into the distance is a catalyst for the earth’s destruction.
Stop being so damn materialistic and reduce your wants to as little as possible. Could this be a solution? No you really don’t need that car and that house. I lived in the woods for 3 years and I am still alive …
…But you do need that internet connection. 
No, to be honest, I really don’t.
Well…there’s already ONE animal that can vote. Not to be argumentative at all (I know what you’re asking), but I believe that this simple oversight in semantics can cause people to continue to deify themselves.
The most used example: “The biggest difference between animals and humans is…”
It should be: “The biggest difference between humans and all OTHER animals is…”
To try and get back on topic - In response to your question, I think it is a valid question and really makes you question yet another distinction between humans and the rest of the animals. Are humans the only animal (at least now) capable of being driven by much more than necessities. Would other animals desire luxuries…do they now?
The point I am trying to make is that all non human animals if they had the power to reason and vote would throw humans overboard because humans are destroying the beautiful and wonderful planet with their selfish and undisciplined behavior.
but they don’t, so we kill and eat them…
and humans we just kill…
but, as you say, if the animals had the power they’d kill (throw overboard) us first…
-Imp
I would think most animals would vote for capitalism. Especially the ones that survive in, packs, herds, flocks or pods. Capitalism is about getting you and yours ahead. Those animals that are individualistic would too, they survive by being the best. Animals are competitive just as humans are. There is nothing wrong with that, it is the nature of beasts. Animals will overeat their territories if not culled by others. They destroy the areas they live in too, just not on our scale.
All creatures use earth’s resources. There are more animals then humans. We just have the propensity to be more destructive while we construct. As a growing civilization we are in our infancy still, we are learning and changing, perhaps too slowly but, considering the widespread human population, the vast multiculural differences and language barriers. I think in the past 100 years man has made incredible leaps towards conservation. Doomsayers are needed to prod the rest of the population into doing the right things.
Capitalism is being combined with conservation throughout the world. Its called recycling. More and more people and companies are turning towards better and cleaner ways to live and work. They are realizing; Why work so hard for a fortune if I am not going to be around to spend it or my kids won’t be.
Look toward any creature and study it you will be able to see human traits or aspects in the creature. We are all of a kind on this world.
It seems to me that the most obvious evidence as to the error in the Intelligent Design idea is that no entity capable of creating this beautiful earth would have added the one and only blemish, which is the human species.
but if the pack animals considered every other creature to be a member of their pack, they wouldnt kill them. the only reason they kill is because they consider their prey to be entirely different, a mindless, painless machine whose only purpose is to die and provide food. they wouldnt kill their brothers. arent we all brothers?
horses have a habit of “cribbing”, which is when they bite a fence and then lift their head up until they lose their grip, which causes whiplash and a head rush. they do it like drugs and get addicted. monkeys masturbate. peacock females love males with pointless, detrimental, visually pleasing tails. my grandmom’s dog whines when he smells people drinking coffee and nobody gives him any. they might not purchase luxuries, but they certainly pursue things other than food and sex.
a long time ago, giraffes and their favorite tree were approximately the same height. many trees were too tall for many of the giraffes, and many giraffes were tall enough to eat most of the trees. then one day, a mutant giraffe was born that had an extremely long neck and could eat all of the trees easily. his children also all had this extreme neck, as did theirs, and soon there were thousands of these evolved mutants.
they ate all the trees and it was an environmental catastrophe. some giraffes bitched about how the new mutants were too powerful and the resources were all being used up. some less bitchy giraffes thought up new ideas to eat different plants and start hunting lions.
the difference between human evolution and any other evolution? ours is a bigger step and the subsequent environmental destruction will be more severe. but we are also more capable of finding a way to save our own butts. why should we care about the other animals? i love whales too, but i love humans more. dont get me wrong, im all for prudence, but as long as extremely succesfull humans exist, animals will die. hopefully we will develop the technology to transport them to uninhabited worlds before they all die. im sure we will.
I suggest you look up some of the studies done with capuchin monkeys by Frans de Waal and company at Emory University in the last decade or so, and other researchers elsewhere.
Among other things, they’ve created token-based economies (where inherently useless items like a metal washer can be traded for valued items like grapes or less valued items like cucumbers at different rates), and studied various effects and interactions among the monkeys. Aside from trading the tokens among each other for food, and getting pissed off at unfair trades with others (i.e. monkey who gets a cucumber slice for a big washer gets pissed when it sees another monkey get a grape for the same size washer, and may refuse to trade until offered a fair trade), the monkeys also did some unexpected stuff, like trade these items (which have no immediate use to the monkeys except for trading, much like green paper ‘dollars’ can’t be eaten, just traded) for sexual favors from other monkeys. I.e. monkeys invented prostitution, selling sex for money. Also, payment for labor (i.e. “if you help me with this task that requires two of us, even though it only lets ME reach the food treat, I’ll share the food treat with you afterward”).
Obviously these creatures live in a different ecology than us, so we aren’t going to see non-human animals really participating in the same sort of complex economies we have. It’s silly to expect such. We can see analogues and the bases for our own behavior in other animals, but I’m not sure it makes sense to try to boil down baggage-laden concepts like ‘capitalism’ or ‘communism’ to the animal kingdom. They may do things that share some superficial similarities to one economic system or another, but that is stretching the interpretation of what they’re doing, because whether they share equally or steal ruthlessly or trade food at ‘fair’ rates on a sort of market, they aren’t really doing quite the same things as us. They don’t invest their behavior with the same assumptions and conceptions as we do. So it’s weak to connect human economy to animal ecology, I’d say, except perhaps to look at the evolutionary and phylogenetic bases for the development of our own behavior.
Nonsense, all animals would do exactly the same thing if they could, just look at Species introduced to foreign environments (e.g. rabbits and Australia). Other animals can be exactly as destructive as humans, they have no long-term view.
Did you know, for example, that the reason we have an oxygen atmosphere is because a preceding organism killed itself by excreting too much oxygen?
LOL. Truism. If ILP had a post of the week/month, this would have to be it, for certain.
P.S. My dog, Sasha, believes she’s human, and she is quite certain that capitalism blows. (she boxes, grabs things with her “hands” and eats off a fork or spoon. She must be communist as well, even my clothing is community property to her … LMAO)