Is it ethical to purchase something from a meat eater? From a utilitarian perspective, the difference between purchasing from a meat eater and purchasing from a murderer is merely one of degree.

There are virtually no morally pure economic transactions.

It isn't even morally pure to buy something from someone who will later buy something from a meat eater.

How can we most effectively change our own behavior and the behavior of others, considering these sorts of externalities?

Clearly eliminating the subsidies underpinning factory farming, and taxing the ecological externalities would be a good start that almost anyone can agree to if they think it through. Any other ideas?

This applies to everything we buy. Buying from someone who buys blood diamonds. Buying from someone who buys from poachers. Buying from someone who buys ecologically destructive products. Buying from someone who causes an increase in wild animal suffering.

Taxes, multinational sanctions, and so forth are some of the only things I can think of which can help mitigate this. The only other thing I can think of is spreading the memes of intentional living and conscious consumerism.

It's not obvious to me that, from a consequentialist perspective, it's wrong to buy things from a murderer. Maybe for human murderers, that tends to be a dangerous proposition, but it's not obvious that the potential harm (helping the murderer to sustain himself so that he can engage in further violence?) outweighs the benefits to you of getting something you need from him. Talking about "moral purity" gets into the realm of non-consequentialist ethics. But we're going down that route, then the original consequentialist point about meat and murder needn't apply.

You are correct that we needn't be concerned with moral purity, just expected utility, but we certainly should take into consideration the small externalities which we cause on a daily basis.

I'm not so sure that the externalities of purchasing from murderers, etc is easily quantifiable.

Also, if wild animal suffering is the gargantuan cause which you have argued that it may be, then even indirect actions which increase it are to be taken seriously.

I'm not exactly sure how the dynamics of any of this play out, but perhaps these sort of weird ethical multiplier effects could at minimum be one more thing to consider when calculating your own uncertainty in your felicific calculus.

Even if I accepted that eating meat is morally close to murder, which I don't, I think you might be underrating the importance of how you represent consequentialist ethical theories to the world. In short, if you refuse to buy products from meat-eaters, you'll cause consequentialists to be percieved as crackpots.

The long-story is that although we may not agree with others moral opinions, they form a part of the context in which we act. If we ensure that we give consequentialism a positive public image, it can help in legislation and in government institutions and in personal decision making. If it stays 10 years ahead of public opinion, then it can help to pull people in the right direction. But if consequentialism becomes too bizarre and disconnected from public opinion, it will become unable to command the respect and the attention of the public. So that's why I would advise you to steer clear of radically progressive and unintuitive ideas like this "don't buy from animal-mudererer" idea.

EmbraceUnity, your point about externalities is valid, but it would seem more natural (or, at least, I'm more used to thinking about) imposing taxes and removing subsidies at the level of the activity itself (producing / buying meat) rather than at the level of people buying from those who eat meat.

Also, if wild animal suffering is the gargantuan cause which you have argued that it may be, then even indirect actions which increase it are to be taken seriously.

Yes, but big actions that increase it are to be taken even more seriously. No matter how vast the amount of suffering is in the universe (probably infinite in a Big World), we have only limited resources to respond to it and still need to be wise about how we apportion our time and effort.

I'd just like to point out that, from a utilitarian perspective, eating meat is the exact opposite of murder. The problem with murder is that it prevents the victim from having a presumably otherwise relatively happy life. The problem with meat-eating is that funds, and therefore causes, animals to have a presumably relatively sad life.

Let me take this opportunity to agree with everything that has been said so far.

Gosh, wasn't that boring of me.

I don't think this would be remotely cost-effective. Let's just suppose your change in buying habits hurts you as much as the meat-eater. Let's say after your boycott costs him $10, he decides he can't afford a strip steak, and gets something with a negligible amount of meat. Your boycott also cost you $10, so you can't donate to, say, stop soil-transmitted helminthic infections, which means your antics just had an expected cost of over three DALYs (Disability Adjusted Life-Years). Was that worth it?

It would probably cost you significantly more. You'd have to track down vegetarians for everything you buy, and most things you buy are going to pay for quite a few people.

I am assuming if enough people cared about this, there would eventually be independently verified labels such as "vegetarian owned and operated," and thus the time value would be very low. The extra money spent on this sort of thing is much more relevant.

Of course, the benefit/harm of any purchase is very hard to calculate, especially given these multipliers. Similarly, the money saved which can be used towards charity is also hard to calculate the impact of.

This doesn't mean there is complete uncertainty. Though, I think all else being equal, it is best to find ways to lower the uncertainty.

Thus, it might make sense to prefer small local production to global supply chains, since the effects are easier to see, and there seem to be a variety of other benefits.

More on this here:
http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/200 ... s-for.html

EmbraceUnity wrote:I am assuming if enough people cared about this, there would eventually be independently verified labels such as "vegetarian owned and operated," and thus the time value would be very low.

Not enough people care about it, so it's a moot point. Also, making a business entirely vegetarian owned and operated, even a small one, is easier said than done. A lot of people work there.

I think all else being equal, it is best to find ways to lower the uncertainty.

I just want to be clear on this: do you think it's fundamentally better to have lower uncertainty, or do you think that's better because it allows you to make more informed, and thus generally better, decisions?

Thus, it might make sense to prefer small local production to global supply chains, since the effects are easier to see, and there seem to be a variety of other benefits.

I disagree. Places that don't do local production commonly outsource to third-world countries, who are more in need of better jobs. Global supply chains will be more resistant to economic problems because they are not isolated in any one area. Those are the only benefits I can think of at the moment (other than things like economy of scale, which are reflected in the price of the product).

I largely disagree with the article you linked to. It seemed to have two main points:
It complained that large businesses have monopolistic practices. These tend to be difficult to do as there's no way to prevent competitors from starting. There are markets where it is nigh impossible for a small business to enter, but that doesn't mean a large firm can't. Also, even if a business only has a small portion of the market share, it will still be a big business, rather than the local ones the writer of the article prefers.
Second, it complains of proprietary information. I don't think small business do it significantly less. Also, making information proprietary results in an increased incentive to create said information, though it does make it less efficient for others to use it.

These tend to be difficult to do as there's no way to prevent competitors from starting.

Having small competitors doesn't prevent monopolistic business practices. And preventing them from starting isn't really the issue - it's easier to let them start and then drive them out of business by temporarily focussing on whatever advantage they offer, and undercutting it.

The bigger issue I have with the pro-vegetarianism support is the wisdom of singling out vegetarians. They're not always ethical vegetarians, and when they are they're not always ethical about other issues (especially not in a strictly utilitarian sense), and a few utilitarians have argued from a 'logic of the larder' position that the (humane element of the) livestock industry creates more animals who experience more happiness than would have existed if we weren't meat-eaters. I quite strongly disagree with the logic, but I would still prefer to target people who were committed utilitarians than committed vegetarians. That would be even more subject to many of Daniel's criticisms, though.

Having small competitors doesn't prevent monopolistic business practices. And preventing them from starting isn't really the issue - it's easier to let them start and then drive them out of business by temporarily focussing on whatever advantage they offer, and undercutting it.

Putting small companies out of business isn't cheap, so it only works if there's already a large barrier to entry. The specific method you mentioned is particularly bad, as it costs the company in proportion to their size, so it would be much worse for the monopoly than the small business.
Having small competitors may not prevent monopolistic business practices, but having large competitors does. Small ones will grow into large ones, and in the cases where you can prevent that, such as with video game systems, there's nothing keeping a large firm from entering, such as Microsoft.
Perhaps we should make a separate thread about this?

a few utilitarians have argued from a 'logic of the larder' position that the (humane element of the) livestock industry creates more animals who experience more happiness than would have existed if we weren't meat-eaters.

I've pointed to the following reference a few times already, but I may as well do so on this thread as well: Gaverick Matheny and Kai Chan, "Human Diets and Animal Welfare: the Illogic of the Larder," which nicely explains flaws in the argument as it applies to current factory farming. (In the abstract, the argument is perfectly valid.)

me wrote:I would still prefer to target people who were committed utilitarians than committed vegetarians.

Incidentally, I've been meaning to clarify that I mean only people whose reasoning seems competent enough that I trust them not to make serious mistakes, and who actually practice a recognisably utilitarian lifestyle, rather than just claim one.

Alan Dawrst wrote:I've pointed to the following reference a few times already, but I may as well do so on this thread as well: Gaverick Matheny and Kai Chan, "Human Diets and Animal Welfare: the Illogic of the Larder," which nicely explains flaws in the argument as it applies to current factory farming. (In the abstract, the argument is perfectly valid.)

In the abstract the argument boils down to whether you accept totalising consequentialism, although most of us do seem to. I think it's a very good piece, but have a few reservations:

1) They don't pay enough attention to human behaviour. It gets a token nod at the end, but much of the discussion is eventually wasted by comparing ends that we'd obviously never achieve, even if we agreed they were somehow optimal.

2) The comparison of human to animal life years. They seem to treat the two as incomparable, cautioning that land not used for agriculture might be built on rather than left to go wild. But if urban land generates less significantly less utility than wildlands then (ignoring point 1 for a moment), the implication might be that we'd do better to demolish many of our existing towns and cities than to worry about diets.

3) The comparison of animal welfare capacity is largely treated as 1:1 - one mouse is worth one chicken, for eg. It seems unlikely that two animals so different should have near-identical hedonistic weights.

4) The assumption of where a life becomes worth living is set quite arbitrarily. I always find myself thinking the bar should be higher than most utilitarians seem to set it, for various reasons:

a) I suspect we tend towards neutral welfare for most of our 'normal' lives, whereas such essays seem to assume we tend towards positive. Somewhere here can hopefully remind me of the reference - I recently read a piece that put this in evolutionary terms, by saying that suffering and happiness require energy, which is better (for our genes' purposes) saved unless it's provoking us to doing something clearly beneficial to our survival/reproduction.

b) studies showing our status quo bias suggest that change to normality tends to trouble us more than cheer us, all things being equal,

c) we seem to be much more capable of suffering than of happiness, at least when you compare the utility spikes, and

d) when I've heard consequentialists try to specify the bar for humans, it's usually been based on things like how much of our lifespan we'd be willing to relinquish for extra comfort. But there's no a priori reason to think our willingness to die has a zero point anywhere near our zero point for utility, and good reason to think otherwise given that i) evolution obviously selects for people with a strong will to live, and doesn't obviously select for happy people and ii) anecdotally those who're most content (buddist monks, people with abnormally high resting happiness levels etc) don't seem to have increased anxiety about death.

These problems have countless possible implications, but I seriously doubt, even ignoring 1, that mouse farming is the optimal solution.

Arepo, thanks for the comments. Regarding your points:

1. Why don't we carry these things out, if we agree they're optimal? Akrasia? Maybe that's what you meant about human psychology.

Also, you say later on that you doubt mouse farming is optimal, and I think the authors would agree. They were trying to illustrate the point that mouse farming is better than buying more expensive meat, which remains true even if there are options superior to both of those.

2. Maybe. But we could do both at the same time: Eat vegetarian while also working on the wildlife-related action that we find optimal.

4. I think this was done to argue on the terms of the advocates of the logic of the larder. The paper basically says, "Even if factory-farmed lives were worth living, it still would be better to avoid the conventional American omnivore diet," even though the antecedent of that conditional is, as they argue, very likely false.

(a) Yes, I agree with this concern. You may be thinking of "Toward Welfare Biology" by Yew-Kwang Ng, which I discuss in section 4 of this piece on wild-animal suffering. Section 5 of that link discusses some things to be wary of when thinking about the question of what lives are worth living, including rosy retrospection.

(d) (i) is right on. That an organism has an impulse to survive doesn't mean it's net happy -- for the most part, people don't make decisions about whether to go on living based on a rational assessment of their expected future happiness and suffering. And of course, for most animals, early death isn't even a concept they have, so the fact that we don't see wild mice committing suicide en masse isn't evidence that there aren't lots of them suffering greatly.

Alan Dawrst wrote:Arepo, thanks for the comments. Regarding your points:

1. Why don't we carry these things out, if we agree they're optimal? Akrasia? Maybe that's what you meant about human psychology.

I was thinking lack of political will. I don't know if 'akrasia' covers that, but presumably we're talking about the same thing.

Also, you say later on that you doubt mouse farming is optimal, and I think the authors would agree. They were trying to illustrate the point that mouse farming is better than buying more expensive meat, which remains true even if there are options superior to both of those.

No, sure, it's just not a very interesting comparison, especially given 3.

2. Maybe. But we could do both at the same time: Eat vegetarian while also working on the wildlife-related action that we find optimal.

Of course, but the way the authors present it, it's taken as read that urban settlements reduce net happiness. If it's that obvious (which I don't think it is, assuming 4), vegetarianism has comparatively minor weight as a proble,

You may be thinking of "Toward Welfare Biology" by Yew-Kwang Ng, which I discuss in section 4 of this piece on wild-animal suffering.

I don't think it was that one, but I can't access the full paper, so can't check for sure.

And of course, for most animals, early death isn't even a concept they have, so the fact that we don't see wild mice committing suicide en masse isn't evidence that there aren't lots of them suffering greatly.

Hm, good point.