Bad news from California.

AB 1634 has passed the Assembly:

SACRAMENTO, CA (June 6, 2007) - "Unbelievable" was the reaction from PetPAC today after Members of the California State Assembly voted 41-38 to outlaw the existence of mixed-breed dogs and cats in the Golden State.

Assembly Bill 1634, authored by Los Angeles Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, will allow only select purebred dogs and cats to breed. Pet owners who don't sterilize their mixed breed pets by four months of age will face a $500 fine and possible criminal penalties.

"This crazy measure will end up costing families heartache and taxpayers billions," said Bill Hemby, Chairman of PetPAC, an organization dedicated to the rights of pets and owners. "California will be the poster child for an invasive and overreaching government mandate that is impossible to fund, administer or enforce."

AB 1634 will blanket all 58 counties in California with an expensive forced spay/neuter law that not all shelters want - or need. According to the State of California, dog impounds have fallen 86% over last 30 years. Puppies and kittens are already being transferred between counties to alleviate a shortage of adoptable pets: San Francisco and Marin Counties need to bring pets in from other areas to be adopted locally. In San Diego County - which has no mandatory spay/neuter law - only one adoptable animal was euthanized in 2004-05.

I will never be able to reconcile my libertarian/individualist thinking with communitarian/collectivist thinking, and IMO this bill is a classic example of the latter.

So I'll just admit to being a selfish pig, and disclose once again my selfish personal motivation:

Few things are more personal to me than my relationship with my dog, Coco. The idea that the government can make me a criminal for not cutting out her ovaries (something which is entirely my business and no one else's) fills me with horror.

What happened to all the people who used to scream "KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR BEDROOMS?"

What about the idea that a man's home is his castle?

A dog is personal. And it's property. But it's different than ordinary property, because there is a personal bond, an emotional investment between a dog and his owner that cannot be measured in economic value. Because of this emotional component, a dog may be the most valuable property that a person can have. I can't speak for other dog owners, but if my house was on fire, my very first thought would be to save Coco! I think many dog owners would feel the same way. That is the real test of value.

So, people who care about property rights ought to care very about this special form of property which, to the people who have it, is the most valuable property of all.

The idea of the government entering into my relationship with my dog is thus more than an ordinary violation of property rights. It's highly personal.

Good intentions are said to be behind the people who want to do this. The theory is that Coco is not my property, but is now the property of others, who lay claim to her under a theory that they, not I, should have power over her. In the name of her "rights." (No really.) Yet, some of the same people and organizations who would make it a crime for me not to cut out Coco's ovaries also want to kill Coco. Why? Because they don't like her breed.

I don't know if there is any way to put this more simply, but Coco is my dog, and that's all there is to it. I am loyal to her, and in being loyal to her, I am being loyal to myself. The people who want to make me cut out her ovaries and the people who want to kill her I must oppose resolutely, lest I cease to be a free citizen.

I wish every dog owner would descend on the state legislature, but unfortunately, the reason the committee activist types win is because ordinary people do not like to attend their blasted hearings. I say this as someone who detests hearings, meetings, committees, and long-winded activists. But in the world of those things, communitarians tend to win, and individualists tend to lose.

Libertarians and communitarians are like tar and water. The difference seems to lie in how they interpret the word "harm." To a communitarian who favors AB 1634, if I don't cut out my dog's ovaries, I have committed harm against society. Why? Because Coco has produced unwanted puppies? No. Because she might get loose or I might decide to irresponsibly breed her? No. It doesn't matter what I do, because to a communitarian this is not about me or my dog. It's about the greater good of society.

Huh? But this doesn't make logical, rational sense! And I could say "this doesn't make sense" over and over again (which is what I do in so many of these posts), but that will get me nowhere, because of the different ways of seeing the word "harm." As I see it, I do no harm because I see harm as related to what I do, not what a group of other similarly situated people might do. But to people who see the overall harm done to society from ovaries, ovaries are harmful as a group, and therefore the possession of ovaries must be criminalized. And screw Eric Scheie and his stupid selfish insistence on an "individual right" to not cut out his dog's ovaries! (Yeah, OK, I'm realizing I left out balls. Puff died, but no force on this earth could have made me cut off that wonderful dog's balls.)

So, I've learned that asking "where's the harm?" does not settle this inquiry at all. That I have done no harm and plan to do no harm is largely irrelevant to a communitarian, for the harm to society results from what others in the collective of ovary/testicle/gun owners do with the liberty I claim as mine. Because my liberty is someone else's license, we must all be forced to give it up. In the name of an ever-more-regulated, better world.

I prefer the worse world we once had.