Whole Foods is overpriced anyway

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
Last week, Whole Foods announced it was stopping the sale of live lobsters and live soft-shell crabs in its 184 stores nationwide because the upscale grocer could not guarantee the crustaceans are treated humanely on their journey from ship to supermarket aisle. But critics wonder whether the decision was as much about economics as morality.


[/ QUOTE ]

As far as I'm concerned, treat the ugly suckers as inhumanely as you like. None of us are going to hell for it anyway. What a joke...their decision has nothing to do with their concern over human treatment, or they wouldnt carry any animal foods. They arent making a profit on them, so drop them, but dont disguise it in PC nonsense.

[hmkpoker]

You're taking an animal into captivity to be killed and eaten. How does one make that humane?

[atrifix]

[ QUOTE ]
None of us are going to hell for it anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

Au contraire.

"These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you." Leviticus 11:9-12

[luckyme]

At what level of consciousness/awareness does it stop being a thermostatic type reaction to 'pain' and the entity actually experiences 'suffering'. Can you suffer and not be self-aware? An open area of study still.

[evolvedForm]

I think by the argument that even a lobster seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, you have a justification for treating them humanely. The premise is evident by it's behavior; it seeks food, shelter, and the like, and it seeks to avoid getting eaten. It has been naturally equipped through evolution to be pain-adverse, which means it probably doesn't like pain.

Also, even though it hasn't been proven that lobsters feel pain, the humane thing to do would be to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[luckyme]

"The Mind's I" contained a short story -
"The Soul of the Mark III Beast." by Terrell Miedaner that deals with the difference between exhibiting traits and having them.

There is also some neuroscience reporting the "I still feel the pain, but it doesn't hurt" experience.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, even though it hasn't been proven that lobsters feel pain, the humane thing to do would be to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[/ QUOTE ]

The discussions I run into revolve around "even if they feel pain, do they suffer?" It would take quite some convincing to claim bacteria suffer even though they avoid 'painful' situations. Or sunflowers. At what stage up the consciousness/awareness chain does pain give way to suffering? that's the question.

[luckyme]

Found The Soul of the Mark III Beast (http://junkerhq.net/MGS2/MarkIII.html) on line. I still enjoy it.

[Riddick]

Interesting story about the Whole Foods CEO

-------------

http://www.mises.org/images4/JohnMackey.jpg

I've been there, so the things that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, says in the June 2006 issue of Liberty magazine essentially ring true.

Whole Foods is big now, one of the nation's fastest growing mass retailers, with sales last year exceeding $5 billion and a gross profit of more than $1.6 billion — not a bad return in the grocery business.

It didn't start that way. Coming out of the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Mackey, a vegetarian, a former long-haired and bearded commune resident, a student of ecology, yoga and eastern philosophy, writes that he idealistically opened a small, food store in 1978 with his girlfriend, with a total capital outlay of $45,000. The store lost $23,000 in its first year.

His philosophy at the time, he explains, wasn't exactly pro-profit or pro-capitalist: "Politically, I drifted to the Left and embraced the ideology that business and corporations were essentially 'evil' because they sought profits. I believed that government was 'good' (if the 'right' people had control of it) because it altruistically worked for the public interest."

He'd been taught, Mackey explains, that "business and capitalism were based on exploitation: exploitation of consumers, workers, society and the environment." After a year in business, he saw a reality that didn't mesh with his decades of anti-business indoctrination.

"I believed that 'profit' was a necessary evil at best and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole," he writes. "However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be wrong."

Rather than seeing a milieu of "exploitation" and coercion in his store, Mackey saw a system of freedom and "voluntary cooperation" at work and a new realism: "No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have competitive alternatives in the marketplace; employees have competitive alternatives for their labor; investors have different alternatives and places to invest their capital. Investors, labor, management, suppliers — they all need to cooperate to create value for their customers."

In short, an entrepreneur like Harvard dropout and Microsoft founder Bill Gates (or John Mackey) got his money first and foremost by creating a new pie, by launching an innovative enterprise with new products that created new wealth and income that spread to investors, labor, management, suppliers — and spread to the public at large by way of increased tax revenues.

"In other words, business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and a loser," says Mackey. "It is a win, win, win, win game."

That's not the way Mackey's customers and employees saw it. Despite losing half his initial investment in the first year of business, Mackey was nevertheless accused of greed and exploitation. "Our customers thought our prices were too high, our employees thought they were underpaid, the vendors would not give us large discounts, the community was forever clamoring for donations, and the government was slapping us with endless fees, licenses, fines and taxes."

Mackey has voted straight Libertarian since those early days in 1980. Still, he says he's had little success in converting people to the concept of economic freedom or to an understanding of how the world really works, to the concept of how freedom, prosperity, human progress, spontaneous order and overall well-being are inherently channeled through a system of voluntary cooperation, private property, business competition and individual incentives.

"The freedom movement remains a small, relatively unimportant movement in the United States today," he writes. "As a businessman who knows something about marketing and branding, I can tell you the freedom movement is branding itself very poorly."

By incorrect branding, Mackey means that too much emphasis about individual freedom has been focused on side issues, such as the legalization of drugs, and not enough on the big picture. Instead, he maintains, if it's to have any chance of having a mass appeal, the freedom movement will have to consciously create a broad and inspiring vision, an idealism that addresses the direct correlation between economic freedom and societal progress.

The freedom movement, libertarians, and free market economists, he writes, have done a poor job of defending the social legitimacy of business, economic freedom, capitalism, individualism and free markets. The message should be that business, working through free markets, has arguably been the world's greatest force for human progress and our collective well-being, delivering increased prosperity, less poverty, extended longevity and democratic freedoms.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ralph R. Reiland, the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.

[evolvedForm]

Neat story, but I find one flaw:

[ QUOTE ]
Dirksen pressed her lips together tightly, raised the hammer for a final blow. But as she started to bring it down there came from within the beast a sound, a soft crying wail the rose up and fell like a baby whimpering. Dirksen dropped the hammer and stepped back, her eyes on the blood-red pool of lubricating fluid forming on the table beneath the creature. She looked at hunt horrified. "It's... it's-"
"Just a machine," Hunt said, seriously now. "Like these, its evolutionary predecessors." His gesturing hands took in the array of machinery in the workshop around them, mute and menacing watchers. "But unlike them it can sense its own doom and cry out for succor."



[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it makes sense that animals would develop the trait of "crying out for succor," when their primary predators are other animals, who wouldn't give a damn about their crying.

A far more plausible explanation to me is that they are genuinely feeling pain that reminds them of the undesirability of death. Mark III Beast was simply programmed wrong.

[Lestat]

You might be right about their motives, but why are you ok with the inhumane treatment of other living creatures?

[revots33]

You should read David Foster Wallace's excellent essay "consider the lobster". A lot of it's actually pretty funny, but he goes into quite a bit of detail on the research concerning whether lobsters feel pain when they are boiled alive.

I realize that humans are carnivores, and that all the meat I eat is killed by someone. But I certainly don't need to have a sentient being desperately clanging against the top of a pot in my kitchen as it is tortured to death.

[morphball]

[ QUOTE ]
I think by the argument that even a lobster seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, you have a justification for treating them humanely. The premise is evident by it's behavior; it seeks food, shelter, and the like, and it seeks to avoid getting eaten. It has been naturally equipped through evolution to be pain-adverse, which means it probably doesn't like pain.

Also, even though it hasn't been proven that lobsters feel pain, the humane thing to do would be to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lobsters have the brains of an insect. You animal rights people make me laugh. What's next, feeding lions in the savannah so Zebra's don't have to be mauled?

<u>Edit</u>-my father is always talking about how in the future, they will look back at us as barbarians for killing animals, when I read about people worrying about a crab's feelings, I become afraid that he will be proven right.

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
You might be right about their motives, but why are you ok with the inhumane treatment of other living creatures?

[/ QUOTE ]

Its called the food chain. You are just another animal in it, and for the most part arent likely to run into predators more powerful than you. They sure as hell wont treat you humanely if you do.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
I realize that humans are carnivores

[/ QUOTE ]

Not even close to being true. Humans are omnivores, and traditionally most food came from plant matter and insects and mollusks and smaller game. Only relatively recently did hunting large game become common in humans, and we've been omnivores since standing on two legs, at least.

Edit - by humans I mean hominids, not humans. But humans are definitely omnivores. Many physiological traits are clear indicators of that.

[Lestat]

[ QUOTE ]
Its called the food chain. You are just another animal in it, and for the most part arent likely to run into predators more powerful than you. They sure as hell wont treat you humanely if you do.

[/ QUOTE ]

And the reason why we're on top of the food chain, is because most of us have far superior intelligence and are able to feel something called empathy.

So being at the top of the food chain is no excuse to cause unecessary suffering and torment of other animals. In fact, we should expect to be less barbaric than any other animal. Most of us, that is...

[FlFishOn]

"Its called the food chain. You are just another animal in it, and for the most part arent likely to run into predators more powerful than you. They sure as hell wont treat you humanely if you do. "

This is why I go no deeper than my knees when wade fishing at Boca Grande Pass, home of the world record hammerheads. I watched one huge shark kill a tarpon yesterday. I'm reasonably sure the shark was not concerned about his (humane?) treatment of the tarpon.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue"> I'm reasonably sure the shark was not concerned about his (humane?) treatment of the tarpon.
</font>
You guys are killing me -LOL... Surely you possess more intelligence than a bullhead shark!

So what's your point?

[SamIAm]

[ QUOTE ]
You're taking an animal into captivity to be killed and eaten. How does one make that humane?

[/ QUOTE ]Easy. You take an animal from painful freedom into plush captivity, give them a good life, and then knock 'em out before they know what hit 'em. (And then eat them.)

They're not self aware; it's really easy to give them a good life.
-Sam

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
Easy. You take an animal from painful freedom into plush captivity, give them a good life, and then knock 'em out before they know what hit 'em. (And then eat them.)

[/ QUOTE ]

That's... not quite how it works.

[morphball]

Any one who thinks shipping lobsters to supermarkets and cooking them constitutes cruelity but who also steps on or swats bugs is a hypocrite. Prove me wrong.

[morphball]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You're taking an animal into captivity to be killed and eaten. How does one make that humane?

[/ QUOTE ]Easy. You take an animal from painful freedom into plush captivity, give them a good life, and then knock 'em out before they know what hit 'em. (And then eat them.)

They're not self aware; it's really easy to give them a good life.
-Sam

[/ QUOTE ]

Supposedly the Soviets used to do this with some of their condemned. The day of the execution, the condemned would be told that this execution had been commuted and then would walk into his happy as a clam only to be shot in the back of the head.

[evolvedForm]

Not a bad way of doing it if you ask me.

Of course, the Soviets also did the exact opposite. Dostoyevski and others were lined up at the firing squad and shot at with blanks. Then they got sent to Serbia. (Which isn't much better).

[evolvedForm]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Easy. You take an animal from painful freedom into plush captivity, give them a good life, and then knock 'em out before they know what hit 'em. (And then eat them.)

[/ QUOTE ]

That's... not quite how it works.

[/ QUOTE ]


Actually, I heard they get conjugal visits (but sometimes they get crabs).