Animal Rights Activism as Free Market Provision of Animal Protection

This is an essay I wrote last night, and I thought I'd share it here. Let me know what you think.

What is a market? A market is the interaction of people. Nothing more, nothing less. A market does not necessarily imply dollars and cents. However, the same laws of the market, the laws of supply and demand, still apply with all kinds of markets. If there is a significant demand for coffee, then a coffee industry will arise in order to meet that demand with supply. This principle also applies to much simpler human interactions. If there is a demand for conversation, then people will talk to each other as a method of supply.

If the demand for something is significant enough, then it will usually be supplied, and the laws set in place by the state usually make little to no difference. For example, there is a pretty high demand for cocaine, and it's supplied all the time, even though it's illegal. When the state makes a certain good or service illegal, that market usually does not disappear, it just becomes a part of the black market.

At present, neither the state nor the white market (the market which is monitored, controlled, taxed and for these reasons allowed by the state) is providing much protection for animals. Sure, the state has made some laws giving animals some protection, but animals are still imprisoned, tortured and murdered in mass numbers in factory farms. Many people see this as sickening and cruel, and so there is a market demand for animal protection. However, as previously stated, neither the state nor the white market are providing much animal protection, and so this goes to the black market.

The Animal Liberation Front, the Animal Rights Militia and other organizations meet this demand where the state and white market do not. These people are labeled as criminals, when in reality they are just the market response to the state's lack of action.

The state, through means such as barriers to entry, creates circumstances in which massive corporations, such as those that run factory farms, have great advantages over small businesses such as family farms, which are far less cruel. If the state did not exist, then small, local businesses would dominate the market and big corporations would be broken down drastically in size, or even collapse completely. Increased competition would put workers in high demand, thus increasing not only their salary but also their working conditions. What this would inevitably mean is increased living conditions for the animals that they work with.

Even if such conditions became a reality, I would still refrain from eating meat and animal products, for both health reasons and also because I think that, ultimately, there is no humane way to kill an animal. At that point, further means of improving the living conditions of animals will include continued boycotts, protests, leafleting and educating others about cruelty to animals. In addition to this, the development of in-vitro meat (made by cloning parts of animals, instead of the entire living, thinking organism) could eventually take cruelty out of the meat industry entirely.