The vision of the Cato Institute is a free and open society in which liberty allows every individual to pursue a life of prosperity and meaning in peace.
There is no way to be free without this public and universal truth and repair process of communicating, and our taking only the equity we all deserve so we can self-determine and make our own choices, rather than determine and choose for others. It is physically impossible to be obligated as a political equal without doing this because there is no more basic system of valuation. Where else would self-determining or constitutive relations come from?
The nature of our environment, and of human reproduction, makes freedom a very specific praxis.
Not supporting preemptive children’s right to a measurably fair start in life pushes one outside of a legitimate, or inclusive, system of social obligation, which means each of us owe those outside of it as much protection as they extend to children entering the world. Is that harsh to say? What sort of person would let millions die in an ecological crisis they did not cause because we did not take the measures needed to move the wealth those millions need to live?
Photo by Wavebreak Media Ltd/BigStock
Take Action. Urge Cato’s lead to answer these questions:
How does Cato account for children entering on the values they claim to further? If they did not account, does that mean they spent more on events and travel than furthering their mission? Instead of accounting, could they be free riding on generational, racial, national, and other positionalities and privileges? Do they assume the legitimacy of enabling the powerful over the vulnerable?
If These Organizations Do Not Account for Children Entering the World on Their Claimed Impacts They Are Part of a System Doing More Harm to Their Cause Than They Do Good. Regardless, They Remain Key to Changing It – Moving from the Most Falsifiable Claims Towards the Highest Ideals of Social Justice.
Not backing the reform raises serious questions about whether entities were trying to create value, or free ride at deadly cost to others on their generational, racial, national and other positionality. Fair Start is not asking those we engage to not do their downstream work. We are asking that they orient from a base upstream that does not undo the work they claim, one contradictory not only to their values but a host of inseparables as well.
Take action: Contact you state attorney general to ask what standard they are using for climate damage assessment and reparations, for example, in greenwash / impact fraud, environmental justice and other cases. Are they making the fundamental mistake that caused the crisis of not deriving back and making conditional any obligation to follow the law to the measurable empowerment of each child entering the world (and thereby our own empowerment)?
Family defense collectives can link, virtually, between polluter nations to those nations most harmed to ensure the primacy of value (which is not intersectionality,). Without this reform, many organizations will have spent more money on lavish travel and events than on legitimate policies that actually derive back to the creation of actual relations – between humans and nonhumans, for example.
Fact: It would be impossible to live in legitimate nations without accurate statements and inclusive communications relative to the full picture of costs, benefits and obligations we are all subject to. Such a constitutive discourse situates us and our influence on others, moving from a world where some influence many without consent, towards measurable and true self-determination. Why give to an organization that starts its work with zero protections for the most vulnerable, infants and animals? The most just and effective solution, exponentially more effective than other social justice interventions, is for each of us to admit the fundamental mistakes that created the climate and other crises and move to fulfill our reparations obligations as the first human right. The need for this is just hidden by omission, but if fixed will save countless lives and avoid trillions in costs to businesses.
Ignoring minimum thresholds for children as they enter the world goes beyond inaccurate claims. The wealth we see in the world today was made, firstly, by illegally avoiding paying the costs needed to protect children, animals, the environment – and measurable freedom for all of us. Concentrations of wealth and power in the mid-Twentieth Century fraudulently assumed the authority and entitlements they had at the time, and used poor family planning to create their own audiences and artificial demand by ensuring illegal standards for child development and education that violated children’s rights regimes. This treated people as economic inputs rather than citizens while benefiting from the appearance of inclusive and functional democracies.
Those rejecting fair starts in life as the first obligation on all of us – who we might call noncons – continue simply elevate their unearned positionality in a fundamentally illegal system rather than legitimating it and liberating others. It is impossible to choose who has influence over you, to be truly free, without this reform in how we communicate, and act. Without fair starts in life those entering the world are either not empowered, or we all have no choice but to be subjected to their power and influence – including the degradation of the environment around us. We should instead empower the governed, not government and the wealthy.
Thus not supporting preemptive children’s right to a measurably fair start in life pushes one outside of a legitimate, or inclusive, system of social obligation, which means each of us owe them as much protection as they extend to children entering the world.
The most just and effective solution to the crises we face today, exponentially more effective than other interventions, is to engage in the public and constitutive discourse of admitting the mistakes above, the ones that mean we were all benefitting at deadly cost to others. And, to then fulfil our reparations obligations to future children as their first human right.
Years of unrefuted research shows that as early as 1948 any form of authoritative governance would have had to be investing enough in each child to offset their influence equally, relative to a neutral position like Dasgupta’s / Tucker’s biodiverse optimality.
Of course that would have required children’s share equity in democracy be treated as the first human right. To use the concept of a “we” or impliedly invoke any collective authority would require that. Otherwise you would be engaged in third party fraud – identity and capacity theft – because you can’t use the invocation without the equity.
Define power as the violence of the state and conflate bodily autonomy with the capacity to harm (bring beneath a threshold of some value) others, and freedom becomes the resistance of wealth and other existing entitlements to that power of the state, entitlements that can benefit from growth and evade equity.
This created a fraudulent anthropocentric (versus ecocentric) standard for words like “green” “democratic” “sustainable” etc., and the birth inequity and growth we have seen for decades.
Of course that’s not what power is. It’s any form of human influence, from abusive parenting to emitting pollutants. The border of human power is not represented by lines on a globe; it’s the threshold beneath which no child should be born.
To account for that form of influence, we would probably have to assure all family planning occurs in a collective. Mwesigye and Esther developed and are pioneering that model, an Afrocentric model of women’s circle democracy that well predates John Locke.
Moreover, because constituting as free and equal persons is the prerequisite for legitimate (inclusive and empowering) governance, there is a preemptive right to the resources, obtainable by all means effective. This work of overriding allocation would be limited to the most polluting nations, especially the United States.
One way to implement the fix is to ask anyone making any claim of doing good to reassess it, relative to children’s equity needs as they enter the world on the day the claim is made.
For example, we think philosopher Peter Singer consistently omits children entering the world as a factor when he makes claims, and thus uses the anthropocentric standard.
As early as 2003, activists now involved with Fair Start were urged by the nonprofits in which they worked to promote Singer’s food reforms as a means to benefit animals, reforms they and their employers knew were being undone by growth and inequity which enriched only a few.
The discourse of dividing all into the fair, and unfair, will identify those who will insist on using the fraudulent standard, and those who will not. The Defiance anti-apartheid movement rose by resisting the most influential drivers of the lie, and that could occur here as well.
If we want to be free, we owe others as much as they give children entering the world. We owe them that level of protection.
In years of doing this, we never found an effective counterargument, but have seen lots of moves to sabotage our work.
Humans are animals. Seeing us as such moves us away from anthrocentric thinking that ensured the climate crisis, and will kill millions.
So, what we refer to as animal rights and law focus on nonhumans not because of their species, but because of their unique vulnerability. Animal law is not merely law that refers to animals. Animal law would have to start with a capacity to actually protect nonhumans, especially in the creation of their relations with future humans who will determine much about their lives. Animal law in the best sense starts with inclusive birth and child welfare policies that create empathetic relations capable of benefitting animals. Nonhuman and human liberation are tied because the creation of our mutual relations is the biggest driver of outcomes.
So animal rights, law and policy, if we want to protect nonhumans, can be seen just a system of obligation oriented around the most vulnerable, the most demanding form of law and justice. That system has to have the capacity to actually benefit the beneficiaries, not just pretend to. What does pretending to benefit animals look like? Look at most of the micro victories for animal rights and personhood claimed by organizations over the last few decades, and contrast those with the impacts of growth on animals, and the reality, at a macro level, of nonhuman propertyhood in our archaic reproductive rights regimes.
Why then not focus on infants and animals, and – at a macro level of inclusive animal personhood – the creation of fundamental power relations between the two? Those like animal rights theorist Peter Singer, and others, do not do so because that level of comprehensive vision involves equity, race, democracy, and other factors that require true tradeoffs against one’s positionality.
The wealthy families funding animal rights, law and policy, for decades, refused to deal with this issue because they wanted to benefit from a profitable system based on growth that quietly harmed animals, while seeming to be their saviors. Doing so while the world has been in ecological overshoot did more than undo the claims of many funders and the organizations they funded – it exacerbated a crisis killing millions.
Animal rights and law, in this sense, starts with the actual creation of power relations as children enter the world, represented by the collective pronouns implied or expressed in all statements, including purportedly “constitutive” statements like “We the People.” It is the most demanding standard, eco or animal centric, rather than anthropocentric, or punching down on the most vulnerable. But for Singer it was more important to raise his position as savior in an illegitimate system rather than focus on the “we” to legitimate it, and that did much more harm to animals than he did good.
Singer’s version of animal rights and law, the abstraction away from the creation of actual relations, is just charade version of animal liberation they need. Value animals in the abstract with one hand, make money on growth and privilege at cost to them with the other.
Effective animal rights in this sense is personally expensive, not profitable. It’s easier to ignore all of that and let the macro undo good for animals at the micro level. True animal rights and law focuses on the creation of power relations, and limiting capacity to harm others – the capacity that is the core of the Anthropocene and the antithesis of animal rights. True animal rights mean preemptive standards in things like assessing damages to animals (and children). If captivity harms elephants, it’s because it deviates from a biodiverse and less crowded world where they are free of most human influence, not deviation from a dismal life at a sanctuary.
Animal law starts with moving away from anthrocentric systems, towards seeing humans as the animals that they are, and situating them in equity before there is any sense that they can be free.
Concentrations of wealth and power, especially philanthropic funders, in those nations most responsible for the climate crisis often use institutions and individuals – media, nonprofits, governments, universities, agencies, think tanks, celebrities, etc. – to continue the entitlement scam, hiding behind a fantasy world of social justice impact that hides liability. The fantasy world ensures wealthy whites benefit at deadly cost to mostly persons of color.
To the extent animal law centers on the idea of nonhuman personhood, there has been progress at a meta-level recently. Most entities claiming to protect animals through the legal system only conceptualized of animal personhood in the abstract sense that it would take governmental entities recognizing it for such a thing to exist legally.
Direct Action Everywhere and others before them pushed back on this, treating the right to rescue animals as fundamental, and higher than government’s authority to treat animals as property merely subject to theft. However, most entities claiming to protect animals through the legal system do not recognize any form of macro animal personhood, which would have to start by inverting our current reproductive rights regimes, by requiring future generations of humans be born and raised consistent with species coexistence and total animal liberation.
That blind spot harms nonhumans, humans who suffer in the failed environmentalism of the anthrocentric standards that animal rights should have prevented, and undercuts legality itself by ignoring the need to empower future democratic constituents rather than use low child welfare standards to exploit them as economic inputs for growth.
Funders have actually moved to block macro animal personhood because they make money on growth, and cannot resist seeming to benefit animals while being able to lord their wealth over others.
The fantasy world of animal rights and law as it exists today, without that inversion, was created mostly by entities that were operating without accountability or genuine constituents, have cost businesses trillions of dollars long run. A lot of environmental and other social justice agenda-setting over the last several decades came from institutions driven by philanthropy and familial wealth, entities – rife with nepotism – that are unaccountable to market and electorate forces. The climate/inequity crisis is going to cost business and government more than any other factor in the years to come.
Many businesses and governments now have claims against philanthropy and their low impact corporate campaigns that magically enriched some foundations and families at deadly cost to millions. Violence is one of the costs. Much of the violence we see in the world today derives from this failure, with disempowered persons acting out in systems of government incapable of truly representing them. Instead of those who benefit from this process carrying the risk of violence, innocents are usually targeted.
As early as 2003, activists now involved with Fair Start were urged by the nonprofits in which they worked to promote food reforms as a means to benefit animals, reforms they and their employers knew were being undone by growth and inequity which enriched only a few and create the chaos we all see in the world today. The climate crisis has created a convergence of interest between humans and nonhumans in moving towards equity-based reforms. But not all humans share that interest equally, and as the crisis unfolded a handful of wealthy funders misdirected the animal rights movement towards food sales and away from family/equity reforms, and in a way that benefitted them at deadly cost to humans (most children of color) and nonhumans.
Not addressing birth inequity allows some to treat inherited wealth and other privileges as somehow magically outside of the democratic process, and to use it, their positionality, and growth to slowly disenfranchise the average voter. We are now at a place where these families and their concentrations of wealth and power can use the wealth they made through the sustainability scam to attack the democratic process itself.
How is it not racist to refuse children of color a fair start in life? How should we handle those that refuse such fairness, even when it will kill millions as they are born without resources and in the path of danger? Why would anyone have to follow the rules in a system where they are not measurably empowered?
Most claiming to do good work in the world should be eager to ensure the fertility delay and readiness reparations discussed below because they compensate for the absence of the values of self-determination in current human reproductive rights regimes and evade harm to those values in the future. This avoids public interest work that is essentially performative, addressed to audiences that then undo the impact.
Fair Start reforms and debt/savings birth accounts mean no child’s life will be made worth more than the life of another. This reform targets the fraud wealthy white families and fake charities in polluting nations have been using for decades to hide liability for the climate crisis.
The concentrations of wealth and power you see in the world today have not created value. Instead they first illegally used their wealth to create their own audiences and artificial demand by ensuring dismal standards for child development and education, treating people as economic inputs rather than citizens whose influence offsets one another. In other words, to properly assess costs and benefits we have to first become groups of people capable of doing so in a way that is actually inclusive and reflective of the group constituents.
We can identify – on a binary spectrum – those who believe in linking children to debt/savings accounting to move towards self-determination, and those who do not. The rights of those who stand in the way are contingent on their supporting the rights of others, and their children will inherit their death debt if they do not pay it. Knowing the truth – that the default for what is fundamentally permissible depends on how we include and empower others – lets us overcome the most influential barriers to justice, and ensure a better future for all.
Children are the world’s most precious resource. There is no greater cause than championing their rights and wellbeing. I am committed to this cause with all my heart, and I am proud to join the UNICEF family.
Ask Russell – here – how UNICEF accounts for children entering the world without parental delay and readiness entitlements, and how that impacts what UNICEF claims to value, and claims to do? Would she admit children entering the world without the resources they need reverses much of the work UNICEF has claimed do to?
If she can’t say that children have an overriding right to a fair start in life that creates an authoritative demand to the wealth they and their mothers need, she’s hardly being legitimate or inclusive and empowering.
These questions can divide the world into the fair and unfair – create a true border of human freedom and obligation that can reset national borders from the inside out – and allow us to overcome influential and unfair barriers to self-determination.
A body of growing peer-reviewed research showed it was physically impossible to be free, or self-determining, without this reform because there is no system of values, including representative government, outside of relative positioning to the social and ecological state-of affairs that determine infant health, equitable positioning, and opportunity, without this accounting. Those entering the world are either not empowered, or we all have no choice but to be subjected to their power and influence – including the degradation of the environment around us. We should instead empower the governed, not government and the wealthy.
Concentrations of wealth and power, including philanthropic funders, in those nations most responsible for the climate crisis often use decoy institutions and individuals – media, nonprofits, universities, agencies, think tanks, celebrities, etc. – to create a fantasy world of micro-level social justice impact that hides liability for the macro-level forces undoing the impact.
Wealthy families in polluter nations use these low child welfare standards to undo upstream what they are pretending to do downstream – selling vegan products in growth markets that do more harm to animals than our sales do good, suing over immediate threats to endangered species that will go extinct long-run, centering children’s needs well after they arrive in the world and most of the damage is done, focusing on political candidates when their ability to represent is being slowly eroded.
One of those costs is violence. Nations using illegal violence to defend entitlements without being positioned to actually represent their constituents begets violence, like mass shootings, which usually target innocents rather than the wealthy families benefiting for the representative system.
We are now at a place where these families and their concentrations of wealth and power can use the wealth they made through the sustainability scam to attack the democratic process itself. The solution to this problem is to recognize that governments have no inherent authority, but only what is derived from and conditional upon them empowering their constituents, and that includes any authority to entitle wealth made at deadly cost to others that is partially owed in climate debt/reparations accounting. Inequity in one’s share in democracy is ineffective.
If you want a better future, find the most influential institutions and individuals engaged in entitlement and impact fraud – those who can be made prominent example of – and ensure they tell the truth and back accounting that legitimates their authority.
In Winners Take All, The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Anand Giridharadas explores corruption in nonprofits. But he and the New York Times missed the biggest charade of all, the one most driving the suffering and death unfolding as the climate degrades and temperatures increase.
Not addressing birth inequity allows some to treat inherited wealth and other privileges as somehow magically outside of the democratic process, and to use it, their positionality, and growth to slowly disenfranchise the average voter. We are now at a place where these families and their concentrations of wealth and power can use the wealth they made through the sustainability scam to attack the democratic process itself. The solution to this problem is to recognize that governments have no inherent authority, but only what is derived from and conditional upon them empowering their constituents, and that includes any authority to entitle wealth made at deadly cost to others that is partially owed in climate reparations.
In this sustainability scam there are always at least two standards for values like sustainable, green, humane, democratic, eco-friendly, etc. There is one standard for the rich investors and their kids, who are often funding the organizations promoting the terms and any impact their work is having in furthering them.
These standards are artificial, arbitrary, and designed to allow a particular form of economic growth that benefits some – mostly whites – at deadly cost to others. This first standard – anthropocentric and adopted circa 1968 by UN agencies bowing to wealthy families – does not require birth equity. It uses an unsustainable form of welfare as the basic currency or value.
The wealthy in polluter nations use this standard to undo upstream, what we are pretending to do downstream – selling vegan products in growth markets that do more harm to animals than our sales do good, suing over immediate threats to endangered species that will go extinct long-run, centering children’s needs well after they arrive in the world and most of the damage is done, focusing on political candidates when their ability to represent is being slowly eroded.
This first standard allows significant deviation from the ecosocial baselines, the ecocentric standards, that would have actually prevented the climate crisis. These latter are the real standards – which can be measured along at least eight metrics like restorative levels of greenhouse gas emissions and inclusive-level representative ratios that ensure actual representative democracy. Deviation from these standards – which are based on self-determination or freedom, and the equitable shares in democracy that comes with it – covers the full experience of the climate crisis that is killing millions.
Funders in the polluter nations facing significant climate liability fund institutions – media, nonprofits, universities, agencies, think tanks, celebrities, etc. – to create a fantasy world of impact to support the first standard, and the birthright of wealthy whites to benefit and deadly cost to mostly persons of color.
This allows wealthy families to treat inherited wealth and other privileges as somehow magically outside of the democratic process, while they use it, their positionality, and growth to slowly disenfranchise the average voter. We are now at a place where they – the Trump family, for example – can use the wealth they made through the scam to attack the democratic process itself and try to step outside of it.
There is an effort underway at the United Nations to require assessments of climate damages be 1) set around the ecocentric standards in order to account for the actual harm, and to avoid using the same standards that created the crisis to enrich a few at deadly cost to many. And 2), to treat that standard and the recovery of climate reparations as the first and overriding human rights, a right that preempts government’s authority to assign wealth contrary to it, and allows citizens to engage in preemptive acts of self-defense to protect themselves and their children.
The concentrations of wealth in the polluter nations face a challenge – having created vulnerable classes in their own countries who have common interest with those in the vulnerable countries most suffering from the crisis. To identify which standard any person or organization supports, they can simply be asked to account for how we should protect children entering the world, and whether they deserve to be protected, ensured equity and enabled to be self-determining, as their birthright. Those who refuse that higher standard, or cannot explain how they are helping to ensure it and offset their benefitting at deadly cost to others, are choosing to exacerbate the crisis and undermines the freedom of all.
We can identify – on a binary spectrum – those who believe in linking children to debt/savings accounting to move towards self-determination, and those who do not. The rights of those who stand in the way are contingent on their supporting the rights of others, and their children will inherit their death debt if they do not pay it. Knowing the truth – that the default for what is fundamentally permissible depends on how we include and empower others – lets us overcome the most influential barriers to justice, and ensure a better future for all.
“As we mark World Cities Day, let us celebrate the power of youth to build green, resilient and inclusive cities that meet the needs and aspirations of future generations.”
Fact: Neither the United Nations nor Guterres is ensuring such power. The statement is false.
How does Guterres actually account for children entering the world on what he claims to value and the good work he claims to do? How he is delaying children entering the world to create great conditions for them? Is he taking any action to constitute just nations, and ensure the good he claims to do is not being undone as children enter the world without what their rights promise them – things like equity, and health with reparations and debt/savings accounting for children as they enter the world?
No he is not.
And it is impossible to choose who has influence over you, to be truly free, without this reform. Those entering the world are either not empowered, or we all have no choice but to be subjected to their power and influence – including the degradation of the environment around us. We should instead empower the governed, not government and the wealthy.
What do we really owe to those who exploit children for economic growth rather than legitimately protecting and including infants as they enter the world?
By asking these questions you are looking for something called entitlement and impact fraud, originating in the formation of human rights regimes in the middle of the Twentieth Century. The fraud entailed assuming entitlements in violation of the constitutive self-determination of peoples through birth, developmental and emancipatory share equity in democracy, and – for decades – hiding those entitlements in a way that ensure the crisis.
Humans are animals. What we refer to as animal rights and law focus on nonhumans not because of their species. but because of their unique vulnerability. Why then not focus on infants and animals, and – at a macro level of inclusive animal personhood – the creation of fundamental power relations between the two? Those like animal rights theorist Peter Singer, and others, do not do so because that level of comprehensive vision involves equity, race, democracy, and other factors that require true tradeoffs against one’s positionality. Effective animal rights in this sense is personally expensive, not profitable.
It’s easier to ignore all of that and let the macro undo good for animals at the micro level.
True animal rights and law focuses on the creation of power relations, and limiting capacity to harm others – the capacity that is the core of the Anthropocene and the antithesis of animal rights. Guterres and the United Nations will have to eventually move away from anthrocentric systems, towards seeing humans as the animals that they are, and situating them in equity before there is any sense that they can be free.
Concentrations of wealth and power, especially philanthropic funders, in those nations most responsible for the climate crisis often use institutions and individuals – media, nonprofits, governments, universities, agencies, think tanks, celebrities, etc. – to continue the entitlement scam, hiding behind a fantasy world of social justice impact that hides liability. The fantasy world ensures wealthy whites benefit at deadly cost to mostly persons of color.
This fantasy world, created mostly by entities that were operating without accountability or genuine constituents, have cost businesses trillions of dollars long run. A lot of environmental and other social justice agenda-setting over the last several decades came from institutions driven by philanthropy and familial wealth, entities – rife with nepotism – that are unaccountable to market and electorate forces. The climate/inequity crisis is going to cost business and government more than any other factor in the years to come.
Many businesses and governments now have claims against philanthropy and their low impact corporate campaigns that magically enriched some foundations and families at deadly cost to millions. Violence is one of the costs. Much of the violence we see in the world today derives from this failure, with disempowered persons acting out in systems of government incapable of truly representing them. Instead of those who benefit from this process carrying the risk of violence, innocents are usually targeted.
As early as 2003, activists now involved with Fair Start were urged by the nonprofits in which they worked to promote food reforms as a means to benefit animals, reforms they and their employers knew were being undone by growth and inequity which enriched only a few and create the chaos we all see in the world today.
Not addressing birth inequity allows some to treat inherited wealth and other privileges as somehow magically outside of the democratic process, and to use it, their positionality, and growth to slowly disenfranchise the average voter. We are now at a place where these families and their concentrations of wealth and power can use the wealth they made through the sustainability scam to attack the democratic process itself.
How is it not racist to refuse children of color a fair start in life? How should we handle those that refuse such fairness, even when it will kill millions as they are born without resources and in the path of danger? Why would anyone have to follow the rules in a system where they are not measurably empowered?
Most claiming to do good work in the world should be eager to ensure the fertility delay and readiness reparations discussed below because they compensate for the absence of the values of self-determination in current human reproductive rights regimes and evade harm to those values in the future. This avoids public interest work that is essentially performative, addressed to audiences that then undo the impact.
Fair Start reforms and debt/savings birth accounts mean no child’s life will be made worth more than the life of another. This reform targets the fraud wealthy white families and fake charities in polluting nations have been using for decades to hide liability for the climate crisis.
The concentrations of wealth and power you see in the world today have not created value. Instead they first illegally used their wealth to create their own audiences and artificial demand by ensuring dismal standards for child development and education, treating people as economic inputs rather than citizens whose influence offsets one another. In other words, to properly assess costs and benefits we have to first become groups of people capable of doing so in a way that is actually inclusive and reflective of the group constituents.
We can identify – on a binary spectrum – those who believe in linking children to debt/savings accounting to move towards self-determination, and those who do not. The rights of those who stand in the way are contingent on their supporting the rights of others, and their children will inherit their death debt if they do not pay it. Knowing the truth – that the default for what is fundamentally permissible depends on how we include and empower others – lets us overcome the most influential barriers to justice, and ensure a better future for all.
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The full title of his famed 1975 book, Animal Liberation, is Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. His failure to promote an “our” consistent with animal liberation – ensuring entitlements first drive smaller and more equitable and empathetic human communities – vastly undid his work and masked the key drivers of the climate and inequity crises killing millions today.
Humans are animals, so inclusive animal personhood just means functional human rights – something Singer undercuts.
Fact: Not ensuring all children a fair start in life, as the first and overriding human right, does more harm to animals than Singer’s work on food reform does good – by far. The inequity and growth he ignores causes more suffering and death to animals, and humans, than vegan food reforms save.
And it’s only getting worse as the climate crisis sets in. Don’t get scammed. Ensuring children a fair start is the most effective way to free children, animals and the rest of us. Instead of backing justice, Singer benefits at deadly cost to others by hiding how his positionality harms humans and nonhumans – allowing him to appear as an altruistic savior when in fact the wealth he guides in the effective altruism movement was made at deadly cost to the animals he claims to value, and in contravention of the utility he uses as a base metric.
What are real animal rights?
Again, humans are animals. Animal rights and law focuses on nonhumans because of their unique vulnerability. Why then not focus on infants and animals, and the creation of fundamental power relations? Those like Singer and others do not because that level of comprehensive vision involves equity, race, democracy, and other factors that require true tradeoffs against one’s positionality. Effective animal rights is expensive.
It’s easier to ignore all of that.
True animal rights and law focuses on the creation of power relations, and limiting capacity to harm others – the capacity that is the core of the Anthropocene and the antithesis of animal rights.
How is that animal liberation? How is it not racist to refuse children of color a fair start in life? Would Singer not be eager to ensure the fertility delay and readiness reparations discussed below because (among serving other values), they compensate for the absence of animal rights in human reproductive rights regimes, and evade harm to animals in the future?
He (and others, like Heather Gerken, who oversees animal law programming at Yale Law School) should admit they were wrong to not have done this before, and aid in moving the deadly wealth their work mis-entitled – much of it sitting with effective altruism funders – to now save human and nonhuman lives via fertility delay and readiness reparations. We can also make legitimate claims against the privileges of his children, whom he benefited through a performative form of animal liberation at horrific cost to other children.
The animal rights movements has been like a garden club celebrating nature on a micro level, while refusing to intervene in the clear cutting of the forests around the club, often because they benefited from their own silence. That happens enough and ecological catastrophe sets in, while effective altruism and other offshoots now use wealth made at cost to the professed values to drown out black and other more vulnerable voices demanding effective reforms, like treating black birth equity as the overriding human right. Animal rights advocates and lawyers often choose to continue the charade because their illusory audience and impacts seem better than not talking about these things, even if the underlying system undoes them. A better approach would be to choose a system that does not undo the work.
Who is responsible for the climate crisis?
Concentrations of wealth and power, including philanthropic funders, in those nations most responsible for the climate crisis often use institutions and individuals – media, nonprofits, universities, agencies, think tanks, celebrities, etc. – to create a fantasy world of social justice impact that hides liability. The fantasy world ensures wealthy whites benefit at deadly cost to mostly persons of color. As early as 2003, activists now involved with Fair Start were urged by the nonprofits in which they worked to promote food reforms as a means to benefit animals, reforms they and their employers knew were being undone by growth and inequity which enriched only a few.
Not addressing birth inequity allows some to treat inherited wealth and other privileges as somehow magically outside of the democratic process, and to use it, their positionality, and growth to slowly disenfranchise the average voter. We are now at a place where these families and their concentrations of wealth and power can use the wealth they made through the sustainability scam to attack the democratic process itself.
Singer’s beneficial impact is being undone as children enter the world without the resources their rights require, resources that would empower children to constitute – to be included – in legitimate political systems of self-determining peoples. Singer instead starts his proposed reforms by ensuring the capacity of the powerful to punch down and exploit the vulnerable, and in a way that benefits a few at cost to many. This burdens the children of wealthy families with increasing death debt – a debt which must be paid at some point, and saddles businesses with billions of dollars in increased climate costs.
Singer’s life, and the life of his kids – these are worth no more than other lives.
Fair Start reforms and debt/savings birth accounts mean no child’s life will be made worth more than the life of another. This reform targets the fraud wealthy white families and fake charities in polluting nations have been using for decades to hide liability for the climate crisis.
These families and their concentrations of wealth and power have not created value. Instead they first used poor family planning to create their own audiences and artificial demand by ensuring dismal standards for child development and education, treating people as economic inputs rather than citizens while benefitting from the appearance of inclusive and functional democracies.
Ask them: How do you account for children entering the world on what you value, and claim to do? How do you ensure self-determination for all? You are looking for sustainability, or impact, fraud.
In the core sustainability scam that drove the crises, many charities focused on sensational, micro-level campaigns while quietly undoing beneficial impacts with macro-level and inequitable family policies that enriched management as well as those funding the entities. You can urge your attorney generals to correctly account for the harms, and ensure preemptive justice for the most harmed.
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Ask anyone claiming to good work in the world on any given day to account for #children being born that day without what the Children’s Rights Convention promises those kids in resources and rights. Then ask the person claiming to do good to reassess their claims. You will see a lot of good that many claimed to do actually fall away, by metrics we all believe in, with harm escalating as temperatures rise.
Fair Start Movement intends to prove in court that the practice of excluding key context from public benefit claims – for decades – exacerbated the climate crisis in the worst ways possible, skewing how we perceived the problem. We will also show that taking back and using the wealth some accumulated from these deadly omissions, to now compensate #mothers and children is the most just and effective way to better the world for all.
A lot of those who made #wealth on false claims are betting the average person is too distracted, uncaring or uneducated to understand what I just wrote. We hope, in grassroots action, to prove that wrong too.
