The Business of Seal Clubbing | Hacker News Reader

The Business of Seal Clubbing

priceonomics.com

27 pointsbpolania15 comments

> Renowned ecologist Jacques Cousteau

Cousteau wasn't an "ecologist": he started his career blowing up coral reefs with dynamite (on film! check it out!); he was also a jerk and an asshole of mammoth proportions (not to mention, racist and nazi sympathizer).

If your motto is "everything is bullshit", the very least you can do is double check those kinds of references.

Also, just because humans do horrible things to all kinds of animals (or to other humans; cruelty is our trade) doesn't make it right to club baby seals.

Its 2015, we have the ability to make these cool synthetic fibers that breath super easy, and look pretty dope. (we have had this tech for a while btw)

I mean I see how in the commercial process of killing the seals is messed up (natural rights to live...skinning then leaving the meat of the animal on the ice vs consuming whole animal)

But seriously theres no need to wear the animal if your not living like the Inuits.

Well, then how will everyone know I am crazy rich and they should be jealous?

Seriously, I wonder if there have been any studies to the "perception" of the material. For example, does a natural, scarce material "seem" to be better to people than a synthetic.

For example, it take high-end analysis to tell the difference between natural and man-made diamonds, but there is a perceived higher quality to the natural diamonds. Nature's mystique, if you will ...

But seriously theres no need to wear the animal if your not living like the Inuits.

I mostly agree with you, but there a few exceptions (clubbing baby seals not being one of them). If one rides a motorcycle and cares about keeping body parts in their original condition, there just isn't a good substitute for at least some leather use. I'm a vegetarian who is so in order to reduce the killing of animals, but there's no substitute for boots that have at least a bit of leather in them. I mean no substitute. Sidi makes some leather-free ones, but they don't work for me for other reasons. Gloves are one item that one might get away with synthetics. In the case of jacket and pants, I prefer my synthetics as their better in all weather.

And then there's goose/duck down. With that, it's more a case of synthetic being an adequate substitute, but an inferior one. If you're tight on space, down sleeping bags and jackets have superior insulation for their smooshed-down size. I've got a Patagonia down vest (cruelty-free! I'm off the hook, right?) that's loads warmer than any of the synthetic vests I've spent a fair bit of money on, and it packs to just a little rolled up ball.

But clubbing baby harp seals in the head? Yeah, not much of an excuse for that.

Yeah dude, but its almost like application , and is it done with excess? I'm all for motorcycle gear, as I agree textile is not that great for motorcycle gear(better than shorts) .... Kangaroo leather is best here?

Seals aren't alone; most hunting for fur has been cut back dramatically (mink, fox, coon, bear, beaver, otter, sea otter...) Seals may have been the champion for the anti-fur movements because they are cute, but to my knowledge fur in general declined because the goal (fashion) was seen as shallow, the rest of the animal was not used, and the consumers were mostly the very wealthy.

We still use leather, but in the case of cows the entire animal is used and while leather is sometimes a luxury good (BMW's, couches) it is also highly functional (gloves, saddles). Which is similar to the Inuit use of seals, and as the article discussed that use has been mostly OK'd.

I'd observe that the consumers were a very small subset of the very wealthy.

> On two occasions, I observed pups falling out of the female while being pelted on deck. The two pups I observed were alive and were thrown over the side. I seen these pups crawl up on the ice after we threw them over aboard.

Grim.

The final paragraphs are really the most important, in my opinion. Why stop seal hunting and not mass slaughters of cows?

This article - at least the last few paragraphs - understates what we're getting out of cows. Yes, the hides are important, but we also eat their flesh and use their bones for stuff. Cows are not typically skinned and then left in the field to be picked over. Also cow leather has a larger range of uses than I imagine seal skin/fur does: the latter is strictly a luxury item and I think that would be true even if there was unlimited sealing. In short, comparing seal hunting and cattle farming is maybe not as helpful as the article's author would like.

I do think the outcry over sealing is because they are cute. As the article points out, they are not endangered. This also affects the comparison with whaling. The whales everyone was most concerned about in the 80s definitely were (are?) endangered, and with whale birth rates being much lower than seals (and cattle, and poultry), killing an individual whale would have a larger overall impact on the species.

You are completely right, and I should have mentioned that in my comment. It is obvious that the situation is different. However, I was concerned with the act of killing itself. And it seems more acceptable to kill cows than seals because the latter are cute.

Almost all animals are mistreated orders of magnitude more than seals are. So the amount of value we extract from a lifeform dictates how badly we can treat it? What a very Roman moral aesthetic.

The first statement is false, and the second mischaracterizes what I said. To me at least, clubbing, skinning and leaving a carcass on the ice is worse than clubbing, bleeding and then using all of the carcass; dead is dead.

The personal attack doesn't help your cause unless you're just trying to aggravate people you disagree with.

The majority of animals (by weight) on the planet are livestock. Most are mistreated. Everything dies, how it gets there is what matters. The utility of the end state doesn't justify the path taken. The path needs it own justification.

All the seals I have seen clubbing have been a little naive and in grave danger of getting roofied.

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