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i will not give up meat for tofu, no matter how tasty the tofu is (and it is tasty). What i will do is eat both meat _and_ tofu. The idea that people would vo

• _fizz_buzz_ 2y ago
  Probably a more realistic approach would be to convince people to eat less meat. I significantly reduced my meat consumption, but when I eat it I am looking for really high quality meat, such as locally grass fed beef.
  • eru 2y ago
    Yes, if you look at actual impact instead of at moral judgement, then getting someone to reduce their consumption by x% gets you x% towards the same goal as complete abstinence. Similar, if you can get a population to reduce their consumption by x%, it doesn't matter if that's because x% went totally without (and the rest didn't change anything), or whether you could a more uniform, mild change. Convincing people to give up some meat is pretty straightforward: one proven way is for meat to become more expensive. People react to economic incentives on the margin after all. Other ways might be to make the alternatives more appealing. (About the margins: meat would have to get extremely expensive for many people to completely give up on it. But if sometimes you are deciding between going to a steak place and a pasta place, and then price can sway your decision fairly easily. The meal at the pasta place can still have meat in it for this example to work, just less of it.)
    • theultdev 2y ago
      If it's over a steak place or pasta place it will be steak every time, no matter the price. I feel like shit after eating pasta, so I never eat it. I feel great after eating meat, so I always eat it. But we don't eat out, that's more wasteful and expensive than anything else. fires up the grill
      • eru 2y ago
        Well, I'm sure you can see that other people might eat pasta (as evidenced by pasta still being produced by profit-oriented companies), and I'm sure you also have some other opportunities in your life where you are deciding between different amounts of meat you could eat? > But we don't eat out, that's more wasteful and expensive than anything else. fires up the grill That might be true for you. But there are also people who eg want to eat stuff from the grill perhaps once a year, and storing their own idle grill the other 364 days would be wasteful.
        • theultdev 2y ago
          That's totally fine, people can eat whatever they want, however they want. And yes, I'm constantly deciding between different amounts of meat I can eat, it usually depends on how hungry I am. I decide the amounts, what meat protein, then pick veggies that go with it, and add a small amount of carbs.
          • eru 2y ago
            Btw, if you want to keep your habits, but for some reason feel guilty about your resource consumption, you could just pay two other people to go vegan (or four other people to cut back their meat consumption by half), and you would achieve twice as much as by changing your own diet. In terms of overall utilitarian impact, I mean. Not in terms of some moral systems.
            • theultdev 2y ago
              Is there an app for that? I think people around here would charge too much to go vegan. It might be cheaper use people on the West Coast.
              • eru 2y ago
                It seems like you envision paying Americans to eat less meat? In the grand scheme of things, Americans are very expensive people. For example, Argentinians both eat a lot of meat, and are currently in dire need for some hard currency. I don't know if there's an app for this. However, you could do the next best thing and find a charity that works on promoting eating-less-meat in Argentina. (Argentina is just an example, I have no clue whether it's the best value for money for this very specific. I'm just fairly sure that they are better value for money than spending money in the US.) https://blog.givewell.org/2010/12/27/animal-welfare-charities/ https://blog.givewell.org/2010/12/27/animal-welfare-charitie... might be an interesting read.
• normie3000 2y ago
  > The idea that people would voluntarily stop eating meat and switch to a vegitarian diet is just wishful thinking. Is it? I know many people who have done this.
  • chii 2y ago
    > I know many people who have done this. and how many people do you know, out of all of the people in the world? And how many of those won't do it? What you have as evidence of it happening is merely sampling bias.
    • OccamsMirror 2y ago
      Are you trying to say that Silicon Valley is not representative of the rest of the world? Outrageous.
    • eigenket 2y ago
      The fact that vegetarians and vegans exist isn't a "sampling bias".
      • chii 2y ago
        i am not denying their existence. I am denying that there's a way forward for combatting climate change in having people unvoluntarily forced to be vegetarians.
        • eigenket 2y ago
          This is exactly the sort of "argument" which makes talking with Americans (I'm assuming here, but you sound like an American to me) such an unenjoyable pastime. This is the level of strawman we show to small children as examples of terrible strawman arguments. I haven't seen anyone in this thread asking for involuntarily forcing people to give up meat. There isn't a single significant politician in the USA or Europe who is talking about forcing people to give up meat. I can only hope you were deliberately trying to make a shitty argument for some reason, otherwise it seems likely that the BGH, HFC and antibiotics in your diet have addled your brain. The most radically environmentalist thing people are arguing for is for you to take a modicum of responsibility for the negative impacts of your choices. If you love beef for some reason then just plant a couple of trees when you eat it or do some other actions that offset the carbon.
• fulafel 2y ago
  We've switched away from unethical but convenient/enjoyable practices before. When you look at the diets by age group it's also pretty telling: https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1313072/vegan-by-age-group-united-states https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1313072/vegan-by-age-grou...
• b800h 2y ago
  I've switched to eating meat on four festivals during the year. The rest of the time I'm pescatarian with dairy. I've not done it for any ethical reasons besides my own health, but I do feel healthier for it. Without the fish it'd be bloody depressing, quite frankly.
• blackjack_ 2y ago
  Maybe but in the early 1800s there was a guy similarly saying “The idea that people would voluntarily stop enslaving people and switch to paying wages is just wishful thinking” and yet we seemed to have changed that one.
  • theultdev 2y ago
    uhm no, they just switched to outsourcing the work to poorer countries and bringing in "migrant workers" so they don't have to pay them min. wage. and I wouldn't compare slavery to meat consumption.
    • sociorealist 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • wyre 2y ago
      Even though you wouldn't make the comparison doesn't make it any less so. Marjorie Spiegal wrote about it in length in her book "The Dreaded Comparison" https://archive.org/details/dreadedcompariso0000spie_o7y4/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dreadedcompariso0000spie_o7y4/pa...
      • theultdev 2y ago
        I'm saying I disagree with the comparison, and thus wouldn't make it. You can attempt to argue for the merits of the comparison, in your own words, if you'd like.
  • Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
    I hate to bring the cynical take, but it has often been argued that slavery ended to a great extent due to economic factors (slavery simply not being so profitable anymore due to the rise of industrial capitalism, need of more skilled labor, decline of the profitability of plantations, cost of maintaining the system and stopping revolts, etc.). Not saying that it was 100% economic and moral/ethical awakening didn't play an important role, but the economic changes definitely helped. And this kind of favorable factors aren't apparent in the case of convincing everyone to go vegetarian.