4 ms·
Kind of an analogy: A number of years ago, my city banned smoking in bars. There was a lot of discussion about the economic impact. The city was betting on non
by analog31 4y ago
Kind of an analogy: A number of years ago, my city banned smoking in bars. There was a lot of discussion about the economic impact. The city was betting on non smokers coming out to replace the smokers, maybe even in greater numbers. As a musician who worked in those places, I was optimistic.
Instead, the bars just cleared out, and many went out of business. What had happened was that non-smokers had already adjusted their lifestyles as if bars didn't exist, and those lifestyles didn't change. Bar business eventually came back, but it took several years, and the bars themselves reconfigured in terms of things like food offerings and even location.
The same thing seems likely to happen with meat. The vegetarians have by and large adjusted their diets to not involve meat. Many of them (some of my family members) actually don't like the taste, and have no interest in trying a meat substitute.
My hunch is that market size is not just a function of counting numbers of people, but also, predicting the time scale of how long it will take for people to change ingrained food preferences, recipes, shopping habits, and so forth. And like non-smokers and bars, a lot of vegetarians have largely given up on restaurants.
- colordrops 4y agoThese meat substitutes have allowed my vegan family to eat at places like Denny's, which basically have nothing else on the menu that we can eat. Even with the tides supposedly rolling back, I expect many non-veg restaurants will continue to carry these burgers as an option, and that's still a huge market.
- josephcsible 4y agoI take issue with the word "can". I don't think there are any involuntary vegans, so it's not that there's nothing else on the menu that you can eat, but rather that there's nothing else on the menu that you want to eat.
- colordrops 4y agoOk, well, I didn't open this "can" of worms... But I can murder people. I can jump off a cliff without a chute. I can burn my life savings. "I can't go to the store right now. Why? Because I'll miss my appointment. Well technically you still could go to the store." By your standard, if it's not against the law of physics, then "can't" shouldn't be used. Obviously that's not how it's used idiomatically and colloquially, so there is clearly something other than physical impossibility that drives people to use the word, whether ethics, suffering, or other other frictions. I suspect you've got your own ethical stance and are trying to lay it on me.
- josephcsible 4y agoBut you won't go to jail, die, be destitute, or miss an appointment by eating meat. There are no consequences for not being a vegan anymore. When else is "can't" ever used for things that there'd be no consequences for doing?
- colordrops 4y agoOnce again, you are laying your own subjective ethical judgements on me. My ethical stance is that killing animals, whether for food or otherwise, is tantamount to murder and is completely unacceptable to me - on the level of going to jail or being destitute.
- hombre_fatal 4y agoSeems like an absurd objection. You could try to argue that someone could rape a woman when they say that they cannot, but they cannot because that is a gross violation of their ethics. I don’t see the issue with that language.
- edmundsauto 4y agoI'm just a voice of one, but every week I like to substitute 1-3 vegetarian meals for my current meat focused diet. However, I need the food to taste great and be healthier - so I prefer black bean burgers to Impossible. Meatless Monday inspired me - I'm not trying to go vegetarian, but for health and ethical reasons would like to reduce consumption. I try - but having more options has helped me in some very real if small ways.