Comment by Ericson2314
3 days ago
This is a bigger deal than it might sound. Despite lots of consensus that the horse carriages are bad, it has taken years to get this done. It infamously stalled during De Blasio's mayoralty too, for example.
This is also an L for the TWU, and I suspect there will be more of those to come in the following months.
Why can't they pass legislation to get the horses treated better instead of banning them?
It seems kind of strange that the entire meat industry exists and is tolerated, yet a few horses in Central Park are making people so angry. Surely these horses have far better lives than the cows did that everyone's tucking into over lunch?
They're in proximity to people that run on a progressive threadmill. When it became socially opportune to so i've seen city folk elsewhere shift their animal rights stance to defend halal slaughter laws deeming it to be progressive because it's tied to a group lower on the proverbial ladder.
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There's nothing strange about this. You're just failing to recognize the obvious.
Would you seriously have the heart to, say, kick, injure, and torture a calf or lamb that you know was heading for slaughter and was going to end up on your plate?
Do you also fail to see why people ban torture despite still permitting killing in circumstances like capital punishment or war or self-defense or whatever? Would you be okay with getting tortured during your life if you were sentenced to death?
Just because society blessed your excuse to kill a living being, that doesn't make it strange or illogical to oppose your cruelty or their torture during their life. I'm not even taking a position here; this is so obviously not hard to comprehend. If you're looking to point out hypocrisy, this is not an example of it.
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You think the animal rights activists who are opposing the carriages are tolerable of the meat industry? This is just low hanging fruit.
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The meat industry at least has a useful output. Horse drawn carriages have no meaningful benefit and a long list of drawbacks.
I do not know. I have not looked into this issue on the merits. I have just observed the gridlock and status-quo bias around it.
I suspect though that mandating better conditions would have the same effect --- the horse tourism business probably stops penciling out if they have to make the required changes. And given that, TWU would fight it just as hard --- a de jure or de facto ban has the same effect as far as they are concerned.
They've tried but the owners continuously don't.
Fascinating, thanks. Sounds to like they must not have tried hard enough if that's the case. Surely they could enforce it through audits/inspections/fines/etc. if they really wanted to?
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Not that I disagree but what has that consensus centered around?
Egregious & consistent mistreatment of the horses.
The past four mayors have all tried to end the practice but the jockeys (drivers?) are part of a powerful transportation union.
If that's the reason, then the solution sounds like a typical bad bureaucratic government - instead of fixing the problem (improved treatment for horses), ban the whole thing.
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