Atlas City Project

This topic not only is geared towards a problem which needs to be solved in Atlas City, but is also important for developing and to practice a decision arriving method for problems which are very opinion oriented.

My personal opinion is that the caging of other creatures is inhumane and a very bad practice. This is something which I personally dont want to see continued on into a new society.

But where do we draw the line on this? I am sure an equal number of people agree with me as disagree.

How do we arrive at a solution for this?

What kind of a city will we create if we tell pet lovers they are not welcome with their pets? What kind of world will we live in if we allow all dogs to go extinct after spending thousands of years manipulating their genetics to be 'mans best friend; only to walk away and allow them to go extinct (since they cannot survive without us).

If you take away dogs and pets, as dictating these choices that bring pleasure to so many, how will you handle others who want to take away jewelry, designer clothes, coffee and so many other things that really do no harm but others do not value.

It is a proven fact that dogs and cats lower blood pressure and aid in healing (as is why they are used in hospitals). Take away the pets, hand out the drugs.

The city can create a pet friendly living area, doggy doors and tile or special flooring will be used to eliminate pet damage. Pet doors will allow pets to go in an auto pooper scooper area for pet friendly areas and pet owners will share one spot on the city so they can liove with any noise pets create. The solutions are simple and it allows people the freedom the city requires to the max extent possible.

I think the discussion should be, how many pet friendly areas do we need to provide, how can reduce pet food expenses, how can we best serve pet owners to reduce clean up requirements.

where are you going to draw the line?

mice?
gerbils?
birds?
reptiles?

what about people who want exotic pets such as flamingos, tigers, crocodiles.. etc??

This discussion involves more than just cats and dogs, and yet that logic to justify cats and dogs can be used to justify any of these creatures. Who decides which of these shall be enslaved and locked up for their entire lives?

Whenever I envision the perfect place to live I am surrounded by nature, as much nature as possible, as little technology as possible, so perhaps me even being on this forum is a bit of a contradiction... I for one would not even consider living in an "idealized place" that restricts access to nature because that happens to be the opposite of my ideal. I am intensely oriented toward living closer to and in harmony with nature. If I were to design Atlas City my question would not be, "What nature do we allow in this City, it would be what technology do we allow in this Paradise?" I am environmentalist and I would like to see the world keep some of its beneficial techonologies, especially medical ones, but to mainly consciously backtrack their modern lifestyle to one of "voluntary simplicity" (you can actually wiki this), in order to embrace nature again. I don't want to breathe manufactured air, I want the air from the trees around me, and pets for me would be a very important part of my ideal place to live.

Without humans, many pets that humans genetically created, would cease to exist as a species. It is inhumane to create a creature only to allow it to go extinct, especially one as beautiful as a toy rat terrier (as only one example).

caging animals is wrong no matter how you look at it

I would agree. Domestic cats and dogs are well suited to a home environment but I really do have issues with animals in cages, especially large wild ones. I say zoos are out - with the possible exception of sanctuaries that are for the purpose of protecting extremely endangered animals - and open space must be provided for these - no cages unless the circumstances require them of medical reasons, etc.

As a keeper of assorted creatures for many many years including birds, reptiles, cats, dogs, fish - I have concluded that even animals like reptiles just should not be kept in captivity - the opportunity for neglect is too great. Not that all keepers are bad, but people can do without these animals just fine. Birds need to be free, fish need to be swimming in their native waters.

Again, domestic dogs and cats are different, but measure need to be taken to ensure they can always be kept humanely as we all know of too many cases in which they are not.

Small, caged critters like mice? I just don't know - I'm personally against it, but can/should it be banned???

Lets face the reality here, as someone mentioned earlier this is more than about just cats and dogs. This isn't even about their extinction (most evolutionary biologists predict that dogs and cats will fare well in the absence of humans). What this is about is RESOURCES.

In this city/society, everything is practically free. That said, when someone has a pet they are asking the entire society to feed that pet. Why should we allow people to use resources that should be committed to humans to be consumed for animals? Meat, fish, poultry, etc. are all valuable and limited resources. We will have a hard enough time making sure OUR CHILDREN don't go hungry, let alone the neighbors pet.

Furthermore, animals breed far more quickly than people do and its possible that their population could run wild--pun intended.

Lastly, for all the beneficial aspects of pet ownership it is well known they carry disease and pests in their fur. The extra resources it will take to (1) treat the animals, (2) treat the people they infect, and (3) cleanse the areas they infect, is just more waste that need not be spent simply by not allowing pet ownership in our society.

***
We are going to be working on a very hard budget of resources, we have no room for waste and we don't have "dollars" to vote the value of certain uses of those resources over others. We need to--as intelligently as possible--make use of every little thing we have. And spending those resources, UNNECESSARILY, on animals is just something we'll have to cut.

Couldn't disagree more. I do not think the impact would be as great as you think it would be. If a system is so hard-pressed to self-sustain that you can't feed a cat, then you have already failed. Don't even begin the project. The benefits of certain pets far outweigh the minimal impact they will have on foodstuffs. To take it further - humans are obviously the problem on this dust ball, so perhaps it would even be advantageous to foster a society with a greater number of animals (stripping resources for humans) thereby forcing us to control our numbers. Humans are far more taxing on any system than animals (in fact, without humans, mother nature takes care of everything via natural equilibrium). Seriously, certain animals and humans will do just fine together, it won't disrupt things that much.

You obviously need to regulate them - insist on spay/neuter, etc. in the case of dogs and cats. Disease impat from domestic animals is relatively minimal, this isn't the third world. People are far more disgusting and likely to cause disease issues than are domesticated animals. I fear humans far more than I fear kittens. The critters that are likely to be found on cats or dogs are not difficult to control at all.

A society without cats or dogs? You can count me out - stop with the control, people will do it anyway (I would). Approach from an education standpoint, insist on a few key things, don't try to OVER-regulate it. Just a bit.

The issue will be focused on the education of the population and there will extremely little if any control imposed on people at all. They will likely have pets but through education we can show people how to properly take care of them and how to prevent illness. We can also show people how to live their lives in such a way that they feel no need for a pet. There are many approaches to this, all of which are more suitable than creating laws and forcing people to do something.

First, lets make it clear that I do not hate pets. I have owned a pet ever year of my life up until when I got married. I love dogs, I've had everything from 'Spaniels to Chow-Chows to a 100+ lb. Golden Retriever. Even now, I love visiting my mom and her new puppy.

But lets run some quick math:

Lets take a small city (not what we're building, but if we expect this to catch on lets really think about this)...


STATS FIRST:

Americans own more than 77.5 Million dogs and more than 93.6 million cats. Of a population of 300 Million Americans that means 1 in 4 houses owns a dog (on average) and 1 in 3 own a cat. The average cat weighs at least 8 lbs, and will eat 28 times their own weight / yr. That means 224 lbs of food per year, per cat. The most popular dog in America is the Labrador Retriever which has an average weight of 67.5 lbs. Information on exactly how much Labs eat is difficult to find but lets say its running lean, eating 20 lbs of food per month. That means, our dog is eating 240 lbs of food per years.

So lets say we have a city of 100,000 people... That means we could expect somewhere around 20-30,000 dogs, and 30-40,000 cats.

So 25,000 dogs X 240 lbs = 6,000,000 lbs / yr

And 35,000 cats X 224 = 7,840,000 lbs / yr

That means altogether we are providing 13,840,000 lbs / yr worth of food in a SMALL city of 100,000 people.

This does not take into consideration the special processing needs of the animals, for example, dogs require bone meal in their diet. Nor does this take into account well-care (what if the animal gets sick, the resources required to produce, maintain, and administer treatment) for the animals, nor does it take into account vaccinations, nor does it take into account their toys, what WE have to spend to keep our homes clean in their presence, or keeping US healthy in their presence.

In terms of pests, its well known that these animals can-and-do carry hard to exterminate pests like BED BUGS which have exploded in population in America.

So, 7.54 MILLION pounds of food for animals per 100,000 people. And thats not counting the above concerns. This isn't counting the pet gerbils, birds, lizards/reptiles. That is a SIGNIFICANT amount of resources.


Even to scale it down, lets say our city only has 5,000 people, we could be looking at 1.5 MILLION POUNDS of food for animals.



Here is the beauty of it. This isn't about me or you or even about right or wrong. Its above MONEY. I'm not saying we shouldn't have a food surplus, we should absolutely shoot for a food surplus every year, but that doesn't mean we'll actually reach it. Like I said, the REALITY of the situation is that there are lots of things that will surprise us along the way, stretching our precious-few assets thin to support some animals (as much as I love them) is not really an option.

Of course, it could be voted on, but I urge those who would cast a vote to consider whether they would sooner give food to an animal, or a hungry child.


Sources:
www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat
www.arcamax.com/trivia/s-300490-280883
www.akc.org/reg/dogreg_stats.cfm
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090330220241AAkdPWU
www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter1.htm

This is almost irrelevant! You are approaching it as though we are an isolated colony totally dependent on ourselves, cut off from the outside! O.K., yeah, if that's the case - I might agree with you.

But that simply isn't the reality. One of the biggest problems in the U.S. as far as animal control goes is simply a person's inability to afford the proper care - which leads to overpopulation and neglect. But in a resource-based economy, none of this will be an issue provided there is education and the most MINOR of regulations imposed. Nothing will be perfect, but there is room for dramatic improvement, and a RBE situation will lend itself well to this. Sure, transitionally you'll have issues, but again, we're not cut off from the outside world.

I really wouldn't worry too much about the pest thing either, and domestic pets certainly aren't the only source of bed-bugs. Wild animals, people, inanimate objects - all sorts of things can contribute to infestations. I'd be far more concerned about other serious diseases than bed0bugs from a kitty cat!

And nobody is accusing you of being an animal hater.