Less animals suffering is a plus too but you could leave it out and still come to the conclusion that there is something behind plant based and partially plant based diets.
this is a nonsequitur. my guess is you have tried plant based diet, and the amount of animal slaughter has only increased:
chart
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.
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.
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.
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.
What kind of proof do you want and I’ll go find it for you how’s that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
this is a nonsequitur. my guess is you have tried plant based diet, and the amount of animal slaughter has only increased: chart
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.