Dog Breeds and the ASPCA

I was just looking through the most recent ASPCA newsletter, and it referenced puppy mills.

Well, I'm sorry to say, puppy mills are a fact of life. There is nothing we can do to stop them. Jackass yuppies and people who want to be yuppies buy pure-bred dogs as status symbols. This drives desire and thus value up. With high value comes ersatz examples, such as Chinese knock-offs of Prada bags, because most people can't afford true pure-breds.

Illegalizing puppy mills is ridiculous. We can't stop it any more than we can stop drugs or knock-off bags. There is a demand in the market and it will be met. What we can do is eliminate the demand.

We should not only legalize pure-bred puppy mills, but subsidize them. Make them MASSIVE and federally regulated. Churn out doggies in mind-boggling numbers. The result? You drive the value of the dogs way down because suddenly everyone has one and it's not a status symbol. This forces those sefl-centered pieces of shit to seek out new status symbols in the form of new, designer dogs, like Labradoodles. This results in greater genetic diversity, fewer problems, and better dogs.

Because right now, lots of good dogs are born broken. If we can eliminate the system which generates those genetic instabilities, we can make the world a better place. We can do this with economics.