> This is why we have animal welfare laws, because there are people like you

Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News.

We detached this subthread from https://hackertimes.com/item?id=11056350 and marked it off-topic.

Do what you will, but that was not a personal attack.

I think abusing animals is wrong. But human interests are always more important than any animal interests. The government must exist solely to protect human interests.

>The government must exist solely to protect human interests.

I mostly agree with you about the meat consumption thing, but this?

Are you saying govt. shouldn't be in the business of wildlife conservation, prevention of animal cruelty or abuse, or preservation of natural habitats (beyond considering their impact on humanity) ?

Those things only matter in terms of their value to humanity. There are most probably an uncountable number of planets like Earth out there. The only thing special about this one is that it is our home.

That doesn't mean that we should seek to disrupt the environment. On the contrary, it is very precious to us for many reasons and should be protected. A lot of those reasons are very utilitarian. But it's also because we appreciate its beauty, its complexity, and our kinship with all life. But those are still all things that we value.

When the inhabitants of those planets ask why your interests are worth their consideration, what will you say?

How we deal with lower life forms on our own planet is totally unrelated to how we would deal with intelligent life from another. Why would they be related? If you're worried that aliens would look down on us as inferior life forms and wipe us out, that's totally possible, though I'd say it's pretty unlikely that any aliens ever come to visit us anyway. If they do, and they're more powerful than us, our animal welfare laws are not going to do us any good.

Differences among humans are not analogous to the gap between us and animals. All human beings have equal moral worth. We clearly do not believe the same thing about animals. To make animals morally equal to human beings is completely incompatible with the reality of the world. It's fantastical thinking with potentially destructive consequences, if decisions are made that harm the interests of people in order to help animals.

> All human beings have equal moral worth

Perhaps most of us would like that to be true, but judging humanity by it's behaviour rather than by its stated ideals I'd say we're not there yet.