Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by obviouslygreen 4246 days ago
Response to corollary on #7: "Anyone else" deserves about as much respect as your cat.

The idea that a creature that enjoys destroying your possessions, arbitrarily ignoring you for most of its life despite depending entirely upon you, expects total obedience despite no contribution or investment, has never earned a dollar in its life and has no concept of what a dollar is or why that might be important to it, intrinsically deserves anything so important as respect is ridiculous.

I'm not suggesting you leave your cat or your manager out to rot with the garbage (though I wouldn't argue, in most cases). But to suggest that either of these creatures, by default, deserves any measure of respect is hilarious to me.

4 comments

has never earned a dollar in its life and has no concept of what a dollar is or why that might be important to it

Huh? What has earning money got to do with respect? Many people I respect don't have money as any of their main goals. Surely, money is only a means to an end and not an end in itself.

"The idea that a creature that enjoys destroying your possessions, arbitrarily ignoring you for most of its life despite depending entirely upon you, expects total obedience despite no contribution or investment, has never earned a dollar in its life and has no concept of what a dollar is or why that might be important to it, intrinsically deserves anything so important as respect is ridiculous"

I bet you make a GREAT babysitter.

What if he substituted 'restraint' for 'respect'? His argument wouldn't change, but would yours?
your argument would've been somewhat palatable if you'd just left out

"has never earned a dollar in its life and has no concept of what a dollar is or why that might be important to it"