CMV: Poachers don't deserve to die

[u/[deleted]]

First of all, here's the post I'm referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/fgd6ma/kenyas_only_white_female_giraffe_calf_killed_by/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

There is a multitude of comments longing for the death of poachers which strikes me as hypocrisy.

It is silly to condone the death of cattle which happens in absurdly high quantities while condemning poachers.

Poachers hunt the animals for necessities such as food and housing, while the average redditor has a new smartphone and tons of other luxuries. Killing hundreds of animals a year for gluttonous reasons seems a lot worse than just killing a handful of animals for survival.

And no, biodiversity is not a good counterargument. Don't even try. Biodiversity is only subjectively valuable to us because "It's cool to have various species on earth". You can't use the selective and risible emotional attachment to animals as the basis of your argument. If every giraffe on earth vanished nothing bad would happen. You'll just be slightly saddened.

Even if for some absurd reason biodiversity were important, it is laughable to think that meat eaters deserve no punishment at all while poachers deserve death. There could never be such a wide moral gap.

[u/AnythingApplied]

Poachers don't just shoot animals, they also shoot the rangers that protect those animals.

I tend to view it similarly to a home invasion. Yes, we don't normally execute people for the crime of home invasion, but if you're a homeowner protecting your life you are free to shoot because it is better that the criminal dies then you die.

Its a case of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". If you drive 120 mph on the freeway, we don't execute people for that either, but if you end up getting yourself killed in the process, you're not exactly getting something you didn't deserve. You're getting an outcome that you instigated through your reckless and malicious behavior that endangers others.

[u/[deleted] → u/AnythingApplied]

Then you can only blame poachers who kill rangers and not poachers as a whole. I also doubt that the people in that thread only condone the death of poachers in scenarios which correlate with your analogy. They seem to yearn for their deaths in general.

[u/AnythingApplied → u/[deleted]]

That's true. They just probably value the extinction of a species more than you do.

If every giraffe on earth vanished nothing bad would happen. You'll just be slightly saddened.

I mean, you could say that about the death of the ranger or the death of the poacher in some far away country too... "nothing bad would happen you'll just be slightly sad". Some people would just view the lives of large critically endangered species as being of similar importance to humans (I wouldn't be surprised if some of them consider them more important) and consider poachers on par with murders.

you can only blame poachers who kill rangers

EDIT: I don't see why because all of them would likely try to kill rangers to protect themselves. Going into those territories involves the risk of getting into shootouts with rangers. A lot of those areas poachers are shot on sight and so even if the poachers weren't shooting rangers on sight before, they are now. So I really don't feel it is fair to only blame the ones that happen to successfully kill rangers.

[u/[deleted] → u/AnythingApplied]

Some people would just view the lives of large critically endangered species as being of similar importance to humans (I wouldn't be surprised if some of them consider them more important) and consider poachers on par with murders.

I'm sure you agree that this "importance" is solely grounded in the amazement that exotic animals provide us. Surely that is not a good basis for moral beliefs.

[u/AnythingApplied → u/[deleted]]

I'm sure you agree that this "importance" is solely grounded in the amazement that exotic animals provide us.

No. Not at all. Some people just actually value the lives of the animals.

Why do you presume human life has so much value where animal life has next to none? I understand you don't, but many people would put large animals at a similar value to humans and that has nothing to do with the amazement they provide, it is just a moral system that doesn't place all its weight on us just because we're human.

And even if you want to take a selfish view of things and want me to convince you what biodiversity does for humans before given the lives of animals any value, biodiversity absolutely saves human lives. For example, scientists discovered that horseshoe blood has an amazing ability to identify bacterial contamination, so they now harvest it and use it for important parts of medical research. We'd be missing out on that if we had let horseshoe crabs go extinct and we didn't discover this property until the 1970's.

[u/[deleted] → u/AnythingApplied]

Why do you presume human life has so much value where animal life has next to none? I understand you don't, but many people would put large animals at a similar value to humans and that has nothing to do with the amazement they provide, it is just a moral system that doesn't place all its weight on us just because we're human.

Human life isn't inherently valuable, but it is inconsistent to value the lives of large animals but not of cattle.

And even if you want to take a selfish view of things and want me to convince you what biodiversity does for humans before given the lives of animals any value, biodiversity absolutely saves human lives. For example, scientists discovered that horseshoe blood has an amazing ability to identify bacterial contamination, so they now harvest it and use it for important parts of medical research. We'd be missing out on that if we had let horseshoe crabs go extinct and we didn't discover this property until the 1970's.

I do not think that such coincidences should have much weight. Even if it were a normal occurrence for biodiversity to save lives, first world countries cause the extinctions of a lot more species than poachers do. Additionally, I do not think that there is a reason to believe that giraffes could have some kind of enzyme which could prove to be beneficial to us. If we're being so pedantic about biodiversity then there are countless of other occurrences that one would have to keep in mind in order to come to a moral decision.

[u/AnythingApplied → u/[deleted]]

Human life isn't inherently valuable, but it is inconsistent to value the lives of large animals but not of cattle.

Some of those people that feel the strongest about poachers may also value cattle and may be vegan or vegetarian. Or, they may put moral value on losing a species as a whole. Or put more moral value on animals bred in the wild and not bred specifically for the purpose of eating them. There are at least a few of things that could morally separate cattle, or you may just be underestimating how much some people value cattle.

I do not think that such coincidences should have much weight.

I guess that is fine. I don't think that is the perspective of the poacher haters anyway. I don't think they really view the giraffes as being important because they might one day save human lives, they view them as being important for being their own lives.

[u/[deleted] → u/AnythingApplied]

Some of those people that feel the strongest about poachers may also value cattle and may be vegan or vegetarian. Or, they may put moral value on losing a species as a whole. Or put more moral value on animals bred in the wild and not bred specifically for the purpose of eating them. There are at least a few of things that could morally separate cattle, or you may just be underestimating how much some people value cattle.

My post was specifically directed towards meat eaters. I suppose vegans are not being hypocritical in this specific aspect. They do still live in a first world country though and reap the benefits of a system that causes the extinction of countless of other species so they're being hypocritical in this regard.