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I'm gonna be that guy... given that people are starving, isn't immoral to ask that money be donated to keep shelter dogs alive? Surely they should just be put

I'm gonna be that guy... given that people are starving, isn't immoral to ask that money be donated to keep shelter dogs alive? Surely they should just be put to sleep, no?

3solarmasses 7y ago
It's only immoral to question the validity of a good cause on the pretense that there's something worse happening out there somewhere...
- edoceo 7y ago
  Hint: there is always something worse somewhere.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    There are as many "worst things" as there are people.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    There are many bad things happening everywhere. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and stack-rank them, in order to allocate funds effectively. There's diminishing returns to everything[0]. As you throw money at problem #1, it becomes more and more expensive to make a marginal improvement, so eventually, it swaps places with some other problem in the ranking. There are many criteria you could use for making such ranking of problems (a popular one is minimizing dollars per lives saved, or dollars per QALY added). Living in a free society means people are free to decide how much (if anything all) they want to spend on charitable causes, and on which ones. But in one's individual spending, it's worth to think about how to get maximum "bang for your buck", in terms of alleviating suffering. --- [0] - By coincidence, this is on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993486.
- markdown 7y ago
  You're being deliberately obtuse. There are millions of people out of jobs, and soon there'll be millions of people starving. Put moral relativism aside for a minute and think about the real pain that people are feeling right now. These poor dogs aren't going to find homes that can feed them for a long time. At some point you need to stop being selfish and putting your own feelings aside to think about the people around you.
  - kmonsen 7y ago
    You could make the exact same statement 6 months ago.
    - markdown 7y ago
      Six months ago the shelter didn't need money because people had money and donated it willingly. Now the people around there are starving and can't waste money keeping random strays alive when their own children are starving. And the people running this shelter, knowing that donor funds are limited, are asking for it to be spent on keeping unwanted dogs alive when there are people starving. It's more humane to put the dogs to sleep. They will feel no pain. But nobody is going to even begin to consider putting the children to sleep are they? Those kids are going to suffer badly, and you're here arguing that the dogs are more important? These are unprecedented times, and you can't just waste money.
- ppf 7y ago
  It's a question of scale, and balance. Yes, I think it is ridiculous to ask for donations to keep unwanted dogs alive when there are people on the same island who are suffering.
bananabreakfast 7y ago
You have extremely misguided logic. By extension of your statement: Given that there are always people starving somewhere on Earth at all other points in time too, isn't it immoral to feed pets at all? They should be put down and that food should go to people! Dog food in general is immoral, because it could instead be given to someone starving somewhere.
- ppf 7y ago
  That's not as ridiculous as you think.
xkqd 7y ago
It varies a little bit from culture to culture, but for the most part no, it isn’t moral to kill dogs just because human beings are struggling too.
101404 7y ago
That's just how rich people are. "Cute" gets help, "not cute" doesn't matter. And humans are, for these most part, "not cute".
- sdoering 7y ago
  No. It just isn't following the "whataboutism" logic. Following this we could say: As there are always young able people in need, why care for old or disabled people who doo not contribute to society and only cost society's money? Why "donate" taxes for care facilities and such unnecessary stuff?
  - markdown 7y ago
    You're taking this too far. Stop trying to do that. There is an island on which there are hungry people and hungry dogs. There is a limited pool of donor funds. The fact that there are people asking for money for the dogs before all the people on that little island have full bellies is just sad. The dogs will feel no pain from being put to sleep. Nobody can, will, or wants to even suggest that the children be put to sleep. We will let the children suffer horrible pain before we ever even consider suggesting such a thing. So every dollar spent on the starving dogs is a dollar that could have prevented some pain for the humans there. It would cost no money and no pain to put the dogs to sleep and ease the pain of some children. So stop trying to bring the rest of the world into this to win the argument. This is a localised problem on one island, and every dollar spent there should be spent on reducing harm.
    - michaelt 7y ago
      You might enjoy reading the utilitarian philosophy work of Peter Singer [1] A lot of charity donation is based on feelings rather than calculations about saved lives. Otherwise there would only be one charity, and it'd be distributing malaria nets and deworming tablets in Africa. In my experience, if someone donates $20 to animals in response to lowpro's post, that's not money subtracted from their fixed charity budget that would otherwise have gone to humans. That's money subtracted from their household budget, that otherwise would have been spent on hobbies and bills. People who have fixed charity budgets simply don't donate from them in response to social media posts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_You_Can_Save https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_You_Can_Save

I'm gonna be that guy... given that people are starving, isn't immoral to ask that money be donated to keep shelter dogs alive? Surely they should just be put to sleep, no?

3solarmasses 7y ago

It's only immoral to question the validity of a good cause on the pretense that there's something worse happening out there somewhere...

edoceo 7y ago
Hint: there is always something worse somewhere.
- imtringued 7y ago
  There are as many "worst things" as there are people.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  There are many bad things happening everywhere. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and stack-rank them, in order to allocate funds effectively. There's diminishing returns to everything[0]. As you throw money at problem #1, it becomes more and more expensive to make a marginal improvement, so eventually, it swaps places with some other problem in the ranking. There are many criteria you could use for making such ranking of problems (a popular one is minimizing dollars per lives saved, or dollars per QALY added). Living in a free society means people are free to decide how much (if anything all) they want to spend on charitable causes, and on which ones. But in one's individual spending, it's worth to think about how to get maximum "bang for your buck", in terms of alleviating suffering. --- [0] - By coincidence, this is on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993486.
markdown 7y ago
You're being deliberately obtuse. There are millions of people out of jobs, and soon there'll be millions of people starving. Put moral relativism aside for a minute and think about the real pain that people are feeling right now. These poor dogs aren't going to find homes that can feed them for a long time. At some point you need to stop being selfish and putting your own feelings aside to think about the people around you.
- kmonsen 7y ago
  You could make the exact same statement 6 months ago.
  - markdown 7y ago
    Six months ago the shelter didn't need money because people had money and donated it willingly. Now the people around there are starving and can't waste money keeping random strays alive when their own children are starving. And the people running this shelter, knowing that donor funds are limited, are asking for it to be spent on keeping unwanted dogs alive when there are people starving. It's more humane to put the dogs to sleep. They will feel no pain. But nobody is going to even begin to consider putting the children to sleep are they? Those kids are going to suffer badly, and you're here arguing that the dogs are more important? These are unprecedented times, and you can't just waste money.
ppf 7y ago
It's a question of scale, and balance. Yes, I think it is ridiculous to ask for donations to keep unwanted dogs alive when there are people on the same island who are suffering.

bananabreakfast 7y ago

You have extremely misguided logic. By extension of your statement: Given that there are always people starving somewhere on Earth at all other points in time too, isn't it immoral to feed pets at all? They should be put down and that food should go to people! Dog food in general is immoral, because it could instead be given to someone starving somewhere.

ppf 7y ago
That's not as ridiculous as you think.

xkqd 7y ago

It varies a little bit from culture to culture, but for the most part no, it isn’t moral to kill dogs just because human beings are struggling too.

101404 7y ago

That's just how rich people are. "Cute" gets help, "not cute" doesn't matter. And humans are, for these most part, "not cute".

sdoering 7y ago
No. It just isn't following the "whataboutism" logic. Following this we could say: As there are always young able people in need, why care for old or disabled people who doo not contribute to society and only cost society's money? Why "donate" taxes for care facilities and such unnecessary stuff?
- markdown 7y ago
  You're taking this too far. Stop trying to do that. There is an island on which there are hungry people and hungry dogs. There is a limited pool of donor funds. The fact that there are people asking for money for the dogs before all the people on that little island have full bellies is just sad. The dogs will feel no pain from being put to sleep. Nobody can, will, or wants to even suggest that the children be put to sleep. We will let the children suffer horrible pain before we ever even consider suggesting such a thing. So every dollar spent on the starving dogs is a dollar that could have prevented some pain for the humans there. It would cost no money and no pain to put the dogs to sleep and ease the pain of some children. So stop trying to bring the rest of the world into this to win the argument. This is a localised problem on one island, and every dollar spent there should be spent on reducing harm.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    You might enjoy reading the utilitarian philosophy work of Peter Singer [1] A lot of charity donation is based on feelings rather than calculations about saved lives. Otherwise there would only be one charity, and it'd be distributing malaria nets and deworming tablets in Africa. In my experience, if someone donates $20 to animals in response to lowpro's post, that's not money subtracted from their fixed charity budget that would otherwise have gone to humans. That's money subtracted from their household budget, that otherwise would have been spent on hobbies and bills. People who have fixed charity budgets simply don't donate from them in response to social media posts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_You_Can_Save https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_You_Can_Save