It is natural for humans to eat and desire to eat meat. You might as well criticize people for having sex drives (which clearly sometimes lead to negative outcomes), or needing to urinate, or criticizing dogs or lions for their eating of meat. I think we can and should develop alternatives and put our higher levels of intellect to use, but that isn't going to change our natures and it's not reasonable to expect large amounts of people to voluntarily choose to become monks and forsake the natural man. If you really want to fix things, developing more sustainable and healthy replacements is the way, not trying to shame them for their naturally-endowed characteristics.
At this point we're trafficking in tediously obvious truisms. This is Learned Sage Warns Powerball Not As Much After Taxes territory. I don't think anyone imploring us to change agricultural practices is unaware of these fundamentals about human nature. Presenting them in this context as if they represent a counterpoint implies that there's a fundamental futility to even trying, which I think takes the convo in the wrong direction.
> I don't think anyone imploring us to change agricultural practices is unaware of these fundamentals about human nature.
I don't disagree necessarily, but to be clear my comment was't directed at a wide audience, but rather directed at GP who did say something that to me would indicate heavily that they are either unaware of or choose not to acknowledge those fundamentals about human nature:
> You wanting the burger has all these negative consequences for humans, animals and nature.
I fully concede that I may be reading it too literally, but I don't think it's unreasonable to take what people say at face value. In fact I think that's the most reasonable thing to do as attempting to read minds over the internet quickly deteriorates conversation into talking past each other and people assuming you're lying/misrepresenting your true intentions (aka, reddit). I don't think I've interpreted their statement uncharitably either, though if I have that was inadvertent and was not my intention.
But also, my main point was more about the path to success than the tediously obvious truism. My main point is that shaming people for their nature isn't generally effective. I've seen this first-hand having grown up in a religious environment that heavily shamed sexual feelings/activity outside of marriage. The path to success (IMHO of course) is to develop palatable alternatives to meat.
>I don't think anyone imploring us to change agricultural practices
Before discovering agriculture, we were hunters gatherers.
Practicing agriculture allowed human population to expand tremendously.
If you forbid agriculture, how do you wish to proceed with eugenics and euthanasia? Because not practicing agriculture will probably only allow 2% of mankind to survive.
You can't just say something is bad and expect billions of people to change their wants in order to achieve your political and moral goals.
I'm fine with the cost of a burger pricing in all these externalities, but I also don't like the idea of turning something like meat into a luxury good where only well-off people can afford it.
What are the downsides of taking a relatively affordable good that people enjoy and making it a luxury good for the rich only?
Is there a word that’s the opposite of “tautology”? Because this question seems like an example. It maps to “what are the downsides of decreasing quality of life for most people”.
It is about choices. You gain a certain amount of money and you can do various things with them. You can choose to eat 100 burgers I can choose to eat 100 carrots and buy a TV.
Antibiotic resistance implies "killing most of people faster" which in my book is worse than "decreasing quality of life for meat eaters".
I do eat meat occasionally, but I generally I am not able to eat all that I like each day (think: different cuisines, deserts, etc.) so maybe people just did not try enough stuff to enjoy more than one/two dishes... which in itself sounds sad to me.
It only has been a "norm" for a few thousand years during the agricultural era for the poorest of the poor, who could neither obtain hunting privileges, afford to keep their own animals, had no access to food, work or communal programs, which provided them with some meat, or there were significant famines which made the culling of livestock necessary.
Beyond that I'd argue we should strive to minimize class-based access restrictions to food rather than artificaly enforce them.
What is the downside of the scenario where only the rich can afford to own houses or land? After all historically, the rich owned the land and just allowed the poor to live there.
I'm not seeing how that context makes your comment make more sense. I am not seeing that they were charged with any kind of unreasonable extrapolation along the lines of "wanting to end meat consumption," nor why that would create context that sets up your dichotomy.
Now it sounds like you're saying you know there was a middle ground but were saying it anyway to make some kind of rhetorical point, but I don't know what rhetorical point you are making.
I think part of whywhywhywhy's point was that many (though likely not all) of the negative externalities of meat consumption could be fixed by taxing them and raising the price of the burger, without outright banning it
Right, and if that's what they meant, I honestly don't think it's that bad of an idea. One of the objections here is that it shouldn't be a luxury for the rich which, well fine, channel it all through a redistributive system then.
Though I suspect cheap lab grown meat (absent some reactionary political backlash like we've seen in Florida) can make it cheap and accessible to everyone and possibly bypass the concerns about antibiotics.
When bears, badgers and raccoons start factory farming and training bacteria to have antibiotic resistance, we can talk about those.
And if and when they do, our response would be to consider interventions, not to treat it as a reason to disengage from the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Many people accept that swimming in polluted area is a bad idea and that they will have either to move to another pond or just not swim at all. So why can't we just accept that eating (way) too much meat is not good...
Since people’s behavior in these cases is different (as you say) perhaps “we” should instead accept that the situations are different enough to merit different behavior?
Trying to read them as charitably as I can, I think they are suggesting they're okay with moving away from destructive practices that make red meat so cheap and paying the higher cost that comes with it.
Do you know how many animals are killed farming a wheat field? We used to have to purge colonies of prairie dogs each spring in order to plant. Then there are the birds that get caught in the harvesters and the insects killed by the pesticides. It’s a horror show either way.
