BigBallinStalin wrote:1. You failed again to address the fundamental problem with your ethical system (i.e. adjudication, inability to make interpersonal/inter"animal" comparisons of pleasure/pain, etc.). Without being able to do so, you still advocate for that approach. Obviously, it's not just logic guiding you.
I addressed that already in the other thread. We give rights to infants and the severely mentally disabled, even when these beings cannot consent to things or cannot express their opinion. Your response was quite literally confined to this:
Insert concepts of guardianship, ability to exchange, contract law, etc. Problem resolved.
Unless you're willing to do more than say "insert X, I win" to participate in an argument (infants cannot exchange things or engage in contracts, so it's hard to see how these things are relevant), I'm not really going to engage you.
2. One time Lootifer had a post about how this foreign group goes into a village and establishes a fish farm to feed them. Then BBS tells the foreigners that they forgot something important: they don't like fish. That's what's missing from your analysis ("pound-for-pound" and all that crap). It's not just a question of quantity, but of price and how people define profit and loss. You ignore individual tastes and preferences because obviously you just assume what's best for everyone. People in ivory towers do that, not me.
You are conflating two different groups of people here. People in developed nations may indeed have a preference for meat (more on this below, though). But these people already have plenty to eat. I am concerned with people living in absolute poverty in developed nations. Many hundreds of millions of these people are malnourished or simply go hungry. Instead of selling our food crops to developed nations, or even giving it away (we really ought to if there's no way to engage in markets with these people -- try living on $1.50 per day for even a week, and I hope you'll agree that the desire to have enough to eat every day is pretty universal), we waste most of it in raising of animals. More to the point, though, I'm not telling people they have to stop eating meat. What I am saying is that if they did stop eating meat, even at slight personal sacrifice*, there would be a lot more to go around. I want them to consider that when they decide how to construct their diet. If they believe that their personal tastes are more important than helping to address serious poverty, that is their choice in a free society. But they should at least be aware of the inefficiency of the system.
I am also cognizant of the fact that individual tastes and preferences are often constructed, not inherent. No one living in rural India grows up liking Big Macs or soda, because they don't have them. That "taste" developed in places like China not because these people grew up with a thirst for Coke, but because of an extensive marketing campaign by McDonald's, Coca-Cola, etc., and the desire to emulate the traditions of the more affluent Western cultures.
And go tell that "Westerner" living on less than $15,000 to pay higher prices for food, or tell him to shut up because people in a completely different environment have it worse. What a terrible argument. You may as well never complain about anything anyone does because "someone else has it worse." Ridiculous. You don't feel their pain, and you're hardly cognizant of it, which is why I say that such costs are externalized from you. If those costs were internalized, then you wouldn't be advocating such a ridiculous ethical system.
Actually, I am suggesting that Westerners should pay lower prices for food -- all other things being equal, eating a nutritious plant-based diet is significantly cheaper than eating a comparably nutritious omnivorous diet, just because of the lack of water and food waste.
I don't know why you're saying the costs are externalized. I may not be the actually hungry person, but it is painful to me to be aware that in 2013 there are hundreds of millions of people who just don't have enough food to eat and who live in absolute poverty. The cost of that is real to me in the money I donate to charity each year, to play my small part in addressing that problem. In large part, the way my adopted ethical system has changed me the most is in my understanding of how poor people live and what I want to do to help them.
*This is also not a serious problem anymore. Go to your local supermarket and you are bound to see all types of delicious meat substitutes. Look for products made by Gardein, Nasoya, Beyond Meat, etc. Try it, I promise it won't kill you
Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 5:19 am