Joel at AnimalBlawg brings up some good thoughts about the concept of “rights”. He says something I’ve heard often elsewhere:

“The rhetoric of property rights is an effort by the elites who own everything to trump the interests of the rest of society. We should reject property rights altogether.”

He’s got an excellent point. “Property” is a fundamentally flawed notion that has justified countless horrors not just for animals, but for people too.

My husband often uses this thought experiment:
Say you own some land. Now say I own some land. Say you’re sitting on your land having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Say I own land that surrounds your land. Say I put a fence up around my land and then sit on my land and eat a peanut butter and vegan fluff tortilla roll-up.

Haven’t I just built a cage around you? Haven’t I just put you in prison?

Sections: Vegan Theory
Topics: property, Theory, Vegan