this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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That is pretty irrelevant. You purchasing the product signals a certain demand for it, that demand will help determine how much product is requested in the future, there is a cascading effect all the way up the supply chain. Sure an additional chicken might not be bred just because you purchased a chicken, it's way more abstract than that. Maybe if a hundred more chickens are bought then a hundred more chickens will be bred as replacements plus extra to account for growth and failed product (dead or sick chickens). And if you were one of the hundred people who purchased a chicken you can be seen as one hundredth responsible for at least a hundred chickens which is the same as being responsible for the 1+ chicken. Do you think if nobody purchased chickens that they would just keep stocking the shelves?
do you have a plan to get no one to purchase chickens?
Yes increasing awareness amongst our social groups about the benefits of vegan diets and the detriments of meat based diets. Most people want to be healthy.
The meat industry has a large effect on pollution a well, and affects the environment in many ways in water and on land.
Everyone's not vegan until they decide to be, I was a meat eat for 30 years before I made the decision, I understand its not easy or quick.
Some people just need to live in proximity with a vegan so they can learn by watching. The general public still has a lot of animosity towards vegans and especially vegan activists (and environmental activists as well, when they bring up meat). Sort of similar to how proximity dispels racism in a lot of ways.
good luck.
That's not important. I was illustrating that clearly if nobody ate chicken nobody would harvest chickens for food. Unless you think that the same amount of chickens will be harvested until the very last human gives up chicken then you have to acknowledge that the individual consumer does make a difference.
no, i don't
this is not causal. someone decides whether or how much of a product to purchase. they have free will. i am not responsible for their decision.
If you don't eat chicken nobody is going to swoop in and eat all the chicken you don't eat. However if a farmer or farming corporation decides to stop harvesting chickens then it's almost certain some entity will swoop in to replace them in the market. So acting like the consumer here is not one of the if not the most important part in this causal chain is just naive.
there is no causal chain.
why do you tihnk both these sentences are true, and how would you go about trying to disprove either of them?
So while you are eating said chicken, you are thinking "I'm not responsible for what happened to this bird?"
Is it the same as roadkill to you? Like it just so happened to be dead and nearby?
How about this: if person A murders person B, and then sells the meat to person C to consume, are both persons A and C responsible for murder or just A? What if person C is in the room when person B is murdered and butchered, does that change the answer? What if person C lives in another country and the meat is shipped to them, any change then?
I'd ask you to honestly consider that instead of discounting it for replacing animals with humans.
that's pretty apt, yea.
Well thats consistent at least. Would you care much if companies stopped selling meat?
i doubt it. i have drunk a lot of soylent and huel in my time. i'm open to all kinds of food, i just buy what's at the corner of Cheap and Convenient
Well thats about as neutral as you can get on the issue, I can respect that, and I dont think your perspective actually does drive animal deaths.
Do you carry this perspective just for yourself mainly or do you think that it would be better if more people felt similarly as you?
Its an odd question but I ask because sometimes I struggle between an idea that works for me personally but would be mayhem if everyone else thought that way too.
i do think it would be better if everyone took responsibility for their own actions. i don't see how we can function if that isn't how we assign blame.
Its difficult because its not hard to find good examples of when people have done awful things, but nearly anyone would in that situation. Does it excuse them? Of course not, but its clear its not as simple as "everyone is the master of their own will".
I also find it incredibly difficult to reduce nearly any situation down to such simple variables that are so easily compared. Should I hold someone responsible simply because they are predisposed to being controlled by others? Theres plenty of adults who are old enough to be responsible for their own actions but that are mentally immature for whatever reason.
Its a nice idea and I like the simplicity of assigning blame in the way you do but I dont think it would hold up if scaled up societally, at least not without numerous caveats and exceptions.
your analogy is disanalagous to how people decide whether to buy meat entirely. even in the first case, though, of course their not responsible. the others, it's not clear to me whether there is any other actual conspiracy. regardless, no such conspiracy exists in the grocery store.
The point of the the thought experiment is to allow you to view the situations without the biases you already have, as most people have been in a butcher shop which is the first situation I described, and most people have had food delivered to them from far away which is the second situation I described. Since those are normal things, your initial thought would likely be that they are normal and not murder.
If you replace it with humans, I would argue that both situations would be murder for person C because there is no way they could reasonably assume they could get human meat without a person being killed and it taken from them.
In other words there is no eating a cooked dead chicken carcass without killing a chicken.
there was some ambiguity in how you phrased it whether the person buying even knew it was human meat. regardless, they are not responsible for the actions of other people in the past.
I really wish you could expand on that last bit "not responsible for actions of those in the past".
To me it sounds like you are saying it goes like this:
And so since its in the past and a different person, person 2 shouldnt feel like they caused what person 1 did.
The reason it doesnt make sense to me is I see it like this:
Since the purchaser has an effect on the seller due to the unique relationship they have, if the purchaser feels there is a moral imperative to protect animals then they should come to the conclusion that if they stop buying meat then that will remove the incentive to kill animals that they are adding into the relationship.
It won't stop all animals being killed, but it will result in less animals being killed had I chosen to continue eating meat.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL
you know that has not happened
You have your statistics and I have mine. I prefer percentages as I'm mostly concerned with whether its more or less likely the average person is vegan. Since that number goes up still, I'm fine with it. Progress is progress regardless of speed.
that's how linear time works. an event in the present or future cannot cause an event in the past
Yes but step 2 can cause step 3 can't it? If it were a single transaction that would work but its not. Companies dont open up a limited run and then shutdown immediately. They continue on until you break your relationship with them.
nope. the only thing that can be said to cause the actions of a free agent is their own will.
So you would even argue the reverse right?
Purchasing meat isnt causing someone to kill an animal, and killing an animal isnt causing someone to buy it.
right
the producer can choose based on any criteria they want. they choose the criteria as well as the action. all the responsibility for the actions of the producer lie with the producer.
I know what youll say but I'll ask anyways.
If you walk onto a farm and point out a pig and say, kill that one I want to eat it, and then the farmer kills it and gives it to you for money, you still have 0 responsibility for what happened? If noone bought that pig it wouldnt have died, no?
What if you own the farm and have a farmhand kill it for you, and your chef cook it for you, and your maid serve it to you? Is that 0 responsibility?
this is a conspiracy and completely disanalogous with how most people buy meat most of the time
You've never been to a butcher before?
Despite that what makes it different?
there is no such conspiracy between someone walking into a grocery store and the abattoir worker.
i'm not responsible for others decisions at all.