this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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We've had this argument like twice already.
I never claimed that me being a vegan would end animal suffering.
If you would admit that the line on your graph would go up quicker if all vegetarians and vegans went back to eating meat, then you have to also admit it would go up slower if more people went vegan, vegetarian, or simply ate 25% less meat than they normally do.
You must be able to see the math there? Do I need to send you university debate level arguments? I can find them for you if you want.
and you still haven't seemed to grasp the lack of evidence for your claim.
as i can't prove a counterfactual, i wouldn't make any such claim. i have no reason to believe that production could increase any faster.
I mean I can't convince you that demand affects supply if you simply don't think they are related.
i think supply creates its own demand, but i don't believe there is any causal mechanism by which choosing to buy something causes more of it to be produced, nor that production causes others to purchase it.
How can supply create demand while saying production doesnt cause demand in the same paragraph?
Do you have some separate definition for supply and production I'm missing?
i'm saying it's not causal or, at least, it requires more than simply making a thing for it to be bought by someone. fidget spinners are a great example. lots were made with no real understanding of their potential market. some were sold just because it's a cheap toy but it could easily have been any other similarly priced toy. the production created its own demand there, but not enough to empty every fidget spinner from a warehouse. so some other mechanism must be at play besides production (advertising, for instance). regardless, it certainly can't be the case that demand actually caused all those fidget spinners to have been produced.
The way I see it, demand and supply are separate things that have a single relationship between them. Changing things on one side will likely affect the relationship but its not easy to tell how when both sides are complex.
Affecting supply or demand could work, and I would recommend people do both if possible. I would put more weight on being vegan than trying to affect regulation though.
I would however consider it a waste of energy to work towards more humane slaughter as thats only one brief part of the suffering the animals endure.
I think if you want to focus on animal activism with regards to factory farms then it would be better served on stuff like minimum life spans or ending forced impregnation and the removal of newborn animals from mothers.
But again, even if we improve those things greatly it would still be inhumane treatment and I would still be vegan. I would be more comfortable if regulations like those did reduce the line on your graph.
I do think if we had to permit the animals to leave at least half of their natural lives or maybe 75% before slaughter, it would bottle neck production and tank it.
I guess I just am more sold on the vegan idea than the regulation idea, but both are completely unproven and have very low odds of success in the near future.
i think artificial insemination is safer for cattle than being mounted by a bull. that's likely true across the barnyard. so i'm fine with artificial insemination. i could see some argument about regulating separation practices, but my dairy farming friend tells me some cattle are bad moms and don't want to suckle their calves. i don't know how you could regulate any particular cow's inclination to nurse. and... as for life spans, i don't think their natural lives, free from veterinary care, provided food, water, shelter, and protection from predators would be any longer than they live now. i don't know and i'd love to have some real evidence of the lifespan of, say, holsteins in the wild. or broiler chickens.
so all your specific reforms are something id need to be sold on anyway, and i think of myself as a pretty reasonable and sympathetic subject, so you might be right about the difficulty of passing those specific reforms anyway.
but like... good luck.
If we are bringing these animals into the world we are responsible for them. Thats why I bring up natural life, they aren't in the wild and we are talking about domesticated animals.
As long as they are in our care the rules are different, as far as I see it.
If regulation passed we wouldnt just kill all the remaining animals, we would have to do something for the remainder of their lives until their numbers dwindle.
Probably easier just to ask what reforms you do support, or at least you think would be effective?
clean living conditions. penalties for abuse. humane slaughter.
We could slaughter them in more pain free ways, but it doesnt't change that they don't consent to be killed. Thats sort of a non starter for vegans.
They already are supposed to have clean living conditions and there are penalties for animal abuse, they just are rarely reported and punished.
I think the problem I have with regulation is it rarely seems to work out when we do get regulations. They are written deceptively, and then aren't enforced.
I suppose that doesnt mean good regulation is impossible but its part of my reluctance.
you did say it would reduce it, but all the evidence is that is not true.
You think, that I think, me personally being vegan will be the tipping point that causes a down trend in your graph?
i'm saying if what you're claiming is true, then it would follow that the growth of the industry would stop and reverse.
There aren't enough people eating less meat yet? I don't think a problem of scale makes it futile. You are just assuming it would never grow big enough to affect the line.
i have made no such assumption. teh fact is that it has not, in fact, reduced suffering (if we regard all animal slaughter as suffering, and the most meaningful metric). to continue to claim that it will is just a hypothesis, and continues to be unsupported by the facts.
My problem is that it could be working now but since theres no proof yet you won't believe it. What if that line starts very slowly flattening out? Is that enough evidence?
you'd have to show the causal link between vegans existing and the production flattening. what if it's just that we run out of agricultural land, or a meteor strikes a major production region? we need to know what actually causes the change in the graph, not simply speculate that it could be buying beans.
If we ran out of new land to use wouldnt it plateau?
Isnt the line going up constantly evidence of constant addition of new land to hold more animals?
I suppose they could be getting more efficient but thats the opposite of regulation.
whatever you call it, we can't attribute it to vegans.
that's the assumption I'm using.
When we run out of land, won't we have to replace land used for meat production for land for plant production so we can continue feeding an expanding world?
I mean I don't know: these are some pretty wild hypotheticals we are concocting.
I didnt know you'd think it was so wild. I guess we have plenty of land left tk go around for a while?
I'm assuming it is this in combination with new efficiencies (like the swine hotels in China)
Ew, thanks for something new to look up, I hate it!
i'm not interested in debate. i'm interested in provable claims.
Should I use another commodity that saw reduced demand, which caused the supply to dwindle? Asbesthos? Does that work? Maybe cigarrettes?
What kind of proof do you want and I'll go find it for you how's that.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tobacco-production?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL
edit: i don't know how you can quantify the demand for tobacco, and i don't know what causal mechanism can explain this chart.
what you're presenting is a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc. both of those declined in production following the introduction of color television as well. we can't very well say that color caused a reduced production. in fact, you haven't actually presented any evidence that less asbethos or cigarettes are being produced.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5877076/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tobacco-production?tab=table&time=earliest..1997
it appears that the plan of creating government regulation is effective at stopping production, and no causal link to demand is outlined in your hastily-googled abstract.
And you think that regulation was pushed by people who sell or smoke cigarettes, and by those that mine or use asbesthos?
i have a high degree of certainty that there were cigarette smokers who want regulation, and industrial workers who wanted to stop asbestos. if we were to look at congressional testimony in the usa, it would probably show just that.
but the other user isn't saying we should only rely on meat-eaters. most meat-eaters do think that animals should be treated humanely (i recognize their definition is at odds with yours), and would likely back stricter humane slaughter regulations. you seem to be saying that's not good enough, and i find it understandable that the other user has become quite jaded about helping animals at all in the face of your purism.
There were smokers trying to ban cigarettes or regulate cigarettes?
What regulations were active smokers pushing for that would affect their ability to continue smoking?
I know there were victims of misinformation who didnt know there would be consequences, but they aren't smokers anymore by the time they are in front of congress talking through a voice box.
Maybe you can talk me through an example.
i would bet that if you lose your larynx, there isn't much reason to give up smoking. you already basically got the worst deal. this is all hypothetical and guesswork anyway. maybe you find it unbelievable, but i don't (of course this should feel familiar). it makes me uncomfortable to speculate this much, and i have even less interest in tracking down the specific facts about tobacco than i do in becoming vegan (take that how you will).
it's clear that regulation has been able to preceed a decline in use, even against powerful and profitable industries. it's not clear that a only partially-concerned (since veganism seeks to exclude all exploitation, not limited to diet) ideological boycott has any impact at all.
If popular opinion is what leads to regulation, then how is it best to go about changing public opinion so more and more people are for regulating the meat and dairy industries?
There are vegan activists who expose things about those industries that aren't public knowledge, and that seems to move public opinion to a degree, at least locally/regionally.
Right now regulating meat and dairy is a deeply unpopular opinion no matter which party you look at, at least in the US.
i'd like proof of a causal mechanism by which choosing to buy beans has caused meat production to decline. i don't think you can find any such causal mechanism.