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It's always surprising to me when people seem to be unaware that things like human rights or international laws only exist as long as every authority (i.e. everyone with the power to enforce it with violence if necessary) agrees with them.

The US literally passed a law allowing itself to invade The Hague if necessary to free any US service member brought before the International Court of Justice. Even the signatories of the UN human rights conventions could simply refuse to cooperate and experience no meaningful consequences. International laws are just treaties and treaties can be cancelled or revoked. Human rights are no more reliable than company mission statements.

Not to mention that even on a national level laws only exist as limitations the state imposes on itself (or to chisel away at limitations it imposed on itself before). This is why it took the civil rights protests and literal terrorism to arrive at universal suffrage and civil rights for women and Black people. Of course this only works if the government would rather change its laws than escalate protests to a civil war and which one your government chooses might surprise you.




Don't forget us gays, too.

And yep, everybody's just a monkey with or without a stick.


So what you're saying is to some extent everything's made up and the points don't matter, so maybe we can rope animals into this same messy web of loose promises too!


No, I'm saying unless those animals pick up guns and fight for their rights, they'll have to rely on how icky society at large feels about mistreating them and how willing we are to cause a ruckus about that to outweigh the influence of the moneyed interests that benefit from their lack of rights.

Of course if for some reason the domestic meat industry collapsed and people relied on imported meat there would be an incentive for praising lab-grown meat or veganism because it would benefit the domestic companies but that's more or less the inverse of what's happening in the US.




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