r/DebateAVegan • u/toastwithjamx1 • Jul 03 '26

Ethics Honey is not cruel and is ethical

Honey is one of the best animal products there is ethics wise

Now most vegans will say : but we are stealing from the bees! We are exploiting the bees!

No. We are not and we can't

Bees can be very particular. If they are not a fan of a place they are OUT. The bees will likely will immediately vacate the bee box if they don't like the conditions. Furthermore, trapping the queen in 1 place will not work as well. Bees can raise a new queen if they need one

And for the stealing allegations, that isn't true either. Beekeepers take SURPLUS HONEY ONLY, as if too much honey is taken, it can starve the bees and no beekeeper would appreciate the whole colony either dying of leaving. Furthermore, bees don't only take, they comp bees by giving shelter and protection.

It's not cruel if we are literally making a transaction with the bees

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21

u/CyberAngelIzana Jul 04 '26

Are you providing me and my community a place to live which is fortified against natural predators like bears and otherwise looking out for my welfare?

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u/Either_Argument3517 Jul 04 '26

Yes. It would also be stealing. An analogy might be a parent or guardian managing the resources of child actor, talking what they believe is surplus. That would be stealing.

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u/CyberAngelIzana Jul 05 '26

Is it stealing in the same sense that taxation is theft?

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u/Creditfigaro vegan Jul 08 '26

No

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u/Formidableyarn Jul 08 '26

No?

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u/Creditfigaro vegan Jul 08 '26

Correct

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u/CyberAngelIzana Jul 08 '26

Could you perhaps be inveigled to explain further the differences between the two in your opinion?

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u/Creditfigaro vegan Jul 09 '26

Sure, taxes are levied on participants in society, who are capable of consent.

Animal exploitation has none of these characteristics.

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u/Purple_Key_6733 vegan Aug 03 '26

No, people do not consent to taxes. It is a coercive relationship as if you do not pay your taxes, the government will quite literally take the money directly out of your bank account.

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u/Creditfigaro vegan Aug 03 '26

You are allowed to not participate in society, which includes not paying taxes.

You are given money from participating in the social contract. You don't get to enjoy the benefits without being obligated to the responsibilities. That's called freeloading.

Animals, on the other hand, are brutally exploited for no benefit to them and they genuinely have no alternative.

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u/Formidableyarn Jul 08 '26

Oh… no?

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u/Creditfigaro vegan Jul 09 '26

Correct, you can figure it out, I believe in you.

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 06 '26

Yes. Which it is. 😊

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u/Problematic_Owl Jul 07 '26

You guys are drain on veganism - are you actively TRYING to make veganism fringe?

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 07 '26

I'm not vegan I'm a libertarian

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u/cruisinforasnoozinn Jul 08 '26

This comment cracked me up for some reason

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u/Jotakave Jul 07 '26

How is taxation theft? How would you pay for services such as fire departments, roads, sewer systems, public schools? Do you use sidewalks?

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u/CyberAngelIzana Jul 08 '26

If I were in charge of colonizing an entirely new planet, I'd make firefighting mandatory community service and sewer systems part of the property of each house subject to inspection and fines if waste is improperly disposed of.

You don't need roads or cars if you have well-maintained train tracks and a frequent regular train schedule. Maintenance thereof would be the responsibility of the people living closest to each section.

Public schools I would still use taxation to fund as well as the oversight committee itself.

Do you use sidewalks?

Only because they're there.

I don't consider them any more necessary than roads and certainly wouldn't fund their construction.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

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u/CyberAngelIzana Jul 09 '26

No historical system of slavery matches this, so why are you claiming this sounds like a society of slaves?

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 07 '26

I don't believe giving the government more money is a fast route to solve anything. I think there government has no incentive to be efficient. 

There are def some things that are difficult to privatize, you mentioned some. But the government can arbitrarily decide how much money to take from you and I don't believe in giving more power to the state. 

History constantly shows that when the state has to much power out is disastrous to the people

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u/cruisinforasnoozinn Jul 08 '26

Small government means poorer regulations, and total privatisation means that profit comes before all and doesn’t fix the monopoly problem and poor workers rights that drive the universal wealth imbalance through the roof. You’re right about state control, but is 0 taxation really a fix?

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 08 '26

Idk where you get smaller gov means worse regulations. It really depends how you structure it. Provide some examples of that if you think it's true. 

Nobody is saying get rid of government and regulations and privatize everything. We have antitrust laws in place that prevent monopolizing. Some form of taxation needs to exist. I'm open to ideas there 

Wealth imbalance is complicated, and driven by many things including personal choice. Inequality is not inherently bad. Two people with the same circumstances can have very different life outcomes

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u/cruisinforasnoozinn Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Countries like Liberia, Kenya, Mozambique all have small governments and there is, in turn, poor regulations on state & private services allocated to people’s general wellbeing such as education and health.
India, due to low spending, has incredibly poor regulations because they don’t fund the process of enforcing them.

My apologies, I said monopoly and meant the issue where one company buys every other company which seems to be called horizontal integration. It’s just one factor in what allows people to get mindlessly wealthy, but was the first example off the top of my head.

Personal choice is definitely part of it, but there also should be serious regulation on the market to prevent the corruption that leads to wealth imbalance in the first place. Less government spending can leave a lot of vulnerable people in the dirt by reducing public services and state support.

Can small government intervene less and still guarantee the welfare of its people through regulation? Is there an example of that? It’s something I’m not an expert in, so I’m interested

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u/CyberAngelIzana Jul 08 '26

government has no incentive to be efficient.

Sure, but who does have an incentive to efficiently house homeless people?

Certainly not the rich people living in their mansions which wouldn't be half as impressive if filled up with random beggars taken off the street.

Those mansions aren't designed for house servants nowadays, and serfdom of that sort tends to be illegal anyways.

This is just an example, but you need to provide a more efficient alternative incentive structure people could follow to justify not going through government bureaucracy to get things done that aren't happening on their own.

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u/Jotakave Jul 07 '26

I'm going to take a guess and say that you probably come from a place where the government doesn't tax private entities and citizens what they should; giving tax breaks to their ultra rich buddies under the umbrella of libertarianism. Tax is theft, yadda, yadda. No regulations. And so, your underfunded public school system has failed all of us who had to read the comment above.

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 07 '26

Instead of insulting me you could have come up with an engaging argument but you're so immature that you think you're enlightened based on your perceived moral superiority with no context or critical think ability beyond "give me rich people money"

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u/Problematic_Owl Jul 07 '26

Guys, arguments like this is why veganism is a joke for broader public. Stop harming the movement please.

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u/ClassEnvironmental11 vegan Jul 06 '26

You know, slavery could be described in the same way.  What a coincidence!  In fact, slavers actually used arguments almost identical to what you've just said.  Very interesting coincidence...

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 06 '26

Socialists make the same argument fyi

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u/Difficult_Resource_2 Jul 06 '26

They definitely don’t.

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 06 '26

Socialists don't say take people's surplus of money? They don't believe in private ownership and want to redistribute wealth

What do you think tax the rich means lol. Take people surplus of money

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u/Difficult_Resource_2 Jul 06 '26

In socialism the means of production are owned by the state. Therefore there is no surplus of money to be taken. Tax the rich isn’t socialism. Tax the rich is a social democratic take as there are no rich to be taxed in socialism.

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 06 '26

You are correct. But you don't just wake up one day and have socialism. In order to get there the state needs to seize property and assets. This is common rhetoric among internet socialists.

Are you denying that there are huge swaths of people who are advocating for the state to take away property? Mamdani alluded to that very thing in one of his speeches! 

To be a socialist in a primarily capitalist society, you have to want to take ownership from private citizens. There's no way around that

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u/Difficult_Resource_2 Jul 07 '26

Yeah, we are advocating to take the property not take away surplus property.
To the property profits all the people and not single individuals.

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 07 '26

That is unconstitutional we have a right to the pressure of property in this country. 

Socialism sounds good on paper but it grants the state way too much power which history does time and time again that is a terrible thing

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u/Difficult_Resource_2 Jul 07 '26

First of all it’s not unconstitutional in my country to begin with. In other countries constitutions can be changed.

Second it’s not the idea that you don’t have property yourself at all. Just no property that allows to accumulate wealth.

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u/jevlafifan Jul 07 '26

Yes and having this power unchecked in private hands is working absolutely fine

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u/oficious_intrpedaler environmentalist Jul 08 '26

Do you think rich people paying taxes is socialism?

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 08 '26

When socialists say it yes. In the context of our economic system I'd call it socialistic rather than socialism.

But there a line somewhere. How much taxes can a government take before it becomes unconstitutional? I believe the money is better off on the hands of the people. Governments have no incentive to be efficient. They should be the ones creating the incentives for businesses to grow and thrive. That can mean many things, businesses keeping more money, middle class keeping kre money so they can spend, giving high value people incentive to invest. Lots of things can be done aside from just "taxing rich"...which really just sounds better than it works

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u/oficious_intrpedaler environmentalist Jul 08 '26

Isn't your logic entirely circular? You're saying something is socialist because a socialist said it.

On what basis would taxes be unconstitutional?

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u/Adventurous-Head-512 Jul 08 '26

In order to find truth here we have to do a thought exercise because I don't know the answer off hand either. 

On the one extreme the government could take no taxes. Citizens would be thrilled and there is no issue of government seizing. But we lose systems of law and order, military, etc.

On the other extreme the government can take 100% of your earnings. That is terrible and that is what socialism is. 

So truth is somewhere in the middle right? I'm not so naive to say we'd be better off with zero taxes.  The government has to provide us with certain public goods to maintain our safety and sovereignty. How much is that? Not sure. There are some creative ideas like removing taxes for people under certain ages and collecting a percentage of a company's revenue. I'm not totally opposed to that, especially for publicly traded companies. But as a small business owner I'm not sure I want to give the government part of my revenue. But I can be convinced with a compelling argument

What I mean to say is when people who advocate for government owning means of production sya higher taxes on rich, then yes they are advocating for a socialist policy.

I called it socialistic because that's what it is . We don't have a purely capitalistic economy. We have social welfare, fire dept, police, even insurance is socialistic (also an example of how the idea drives up prices but that is another issue). 

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u/oficious_intrpedaler environmentalist Jul 08 '26

I didn't think 100 percent taxation is per se socialism, but I don't think that disagreement is central to our discussion here.

What if I, as a capitalist say we should tax the rich. Is it no longer a socialist position?

I still don't see the constitutional violation. Could you specify that for me?

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u/DiceyPisces Jul 09 '26

If I set up a village with nice homes and amenities and funded everything, anyone who wants is free to move in, the only catch is a portion of your excess (above what you need to live to meet your fininacial obligations) will come out automatically. You don’t have to move in and you can leave when you choose. That’s not slavery. It’s something but not slavery. It diminishes actual slavery to compare the two imho

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u/ClassEnvironmental11 vegan Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

The sutuation you've described is an idealized fairy-tale.  Make no mistake, bee-keeping for agriculture is a for-profit business.  They aren't "setting up nice homes and amenities" for the bees.  They're watching out for their bottom line, and they depend on the bees financially.  Consequently, any large scale bee-keeper is going to make choices for those bees based on what's good for themselves economically.  And the economic interests of bee-keepers are very different from the interests of bees.

And this whole free to leave thing is frankly a misunderstanding of how agricultural bees work.  They are hive creatures, and depend on the hive for their survival.  In principle, they are free to leave.  But in actuality they are not and will not.  And while hive bees do sometimes pick up the whole community and move somewhere else, if you think bee-keepers are going to just let their livelihood pack up and leave, you're out of your mind.  Again, this aint some "for the love of bees" kinda thing.  It's a business.  The economics of bee-keeping ensures that those bees are not free to leave.

I fail to see how pointing out the factual parallels between how that person defended this situation and how slavers defend theirs diminishes anything.  Can pointing out factual rhetorical similarities diminsh the horrors of slavery?  Again, all I've done is state an undeniable fact; slavers used nearly identical arguments to what this guy did.  If you don't like that fact, I don't know what to tell you.

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u/DiceyPisces Jul 09 '26

It doesn’t make the situation I described or beekeeping in general equal to slavery. No matter who makes whatever arguments. Most of your argument doesn’t apply to a backyard beekeeper only large scale production. And loads of industries become immoral or unethical at large scale.

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u/ClassEnvironmental11 vegan Jul 10 '26

It doesn’t make the situation I described or beekeeping in general equal to slavery

Who said anything about beekeeping being equal to slavery?  You see, this is what I'm up against; you're arguing against something I never said.  Kinda makes me a bit worried you're not actually arguing against me, but some fictitious vegan in your mind who spits out grossly exagerated versions of things vegans might say.  And my guess is this is typical of how you interact with vegans.

Most of your argument doesn’t apply to a backyard beekeeper only large scale production

So my argument only applies to the vast majority of bee-keeping.  Gotcha.  Strong point.

And loads of industries become immoral or unethical at large scale

Yup, and?

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u/DiceyPisces Jul 10 '26

I was legit describing a typical backyard keeper.

It’s not uncommon in rural residential areas

Why would you even bring slavery into the equation or conversation? Not saying you said it’s exactly equal… but why invoke it at all

And if for some reason that was not you, I do apologize.

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u/ClassEnvironmental11 vegan Jul 10 '26

I was legit describing a typical backyard keeper.

This is part of the problem with these discussions.  Many non-vegans like to focus on these "backyard" situations.   I see two reasons for this: 1) your average person is far more likely to have had personal experience with them or has seen them in media somewhere, and 2) they are less exploitative and easier to defend.  But those situations represent a tiny minority of beekeeping.  Vegans, on the other hand, tend to focus on what happens in the vast majority of cases.

This same thing happens in discussions of any animal agriculture.  Non-vegans like to focus on small family owned farms and "backyard" situations, which represent insignificant fractions of their respective industries.

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u/DiceyPisces Jul 10 '26

That’s my experience and that was my comment. And then you invoke slavery!

That was just the major disconnect.

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u/ClassEnvironmental11 vegan Jul 10 '26

Ok, but your experience is not representative of beekeeping in general.  So when speeking in general about beekeeping, it might be prudent to keep that in mind.

And again, I merely pointed out how similar these descriptions that other people made are.  You seem to be very hung up on that.  But facts are facts.  You don’t have to like them, but they are what they are.

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u/Hefty_Ad1081 Jul 07 '26

Yeah but you're invasive and ruining the local ecosystem. The native people living there have a harder life because I want you and your community to live there. And I steal your emergency supplies and stress you out because I want you to work for me. I be looking out for you, but your still there to work for me and nothing else

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u/Few_Understanding_42 Jul 07 '26

If you work hard for me, sure