Abstract:
How should we value animals? Many philosophers treat moral and economic value as incompatible ways of valuing: As Kant put it, some things have prices, and others have ‘inner value’ and are ‘beyond price.’ Since most contemporary philosophers believe animals have intrinsic value, many believe we ought to de-commodify animals. They defend veganism and animal liberation. In this talk, I examine and reject this dichotomy. We must value animals in both moral and economic terms. In a market society, where everything has a monetary value, including human lives, priceless often means worthless, not dignified. However, an animal’s economic value should not be dictated by consumers but the moral worth of an animal’s life in monetary terms. I examine the merits of recent advances in economics and policy analysis that have been or can be used to capture animal value, including a novel proposal I call “Tax on animal suffering.”