Yeah, this is the problem with this argument (even though I largely agree with it) - we shouldn’t be encouraging people to defect!
Now, where I think this argument has more value is in encouraging the sorts of vegans one finds in places like Reddit to stop being so mean to non-vegans. Their diets aren’t helpful enough to justify alienating 3 people casually interested in animal rights for the sake of pressuring 1 person into veganism.
It would be surprising if the consistent purchasing decisions of ~79 M vegans was swamped by the effects of *checks notes* the weather at one farm.
Also, we can even physically see an effect: grocery stores which have not grown larger have devoted some space that had once been occupied by dismembered corpses to plant-based simulations thereof.
Collective action problems as moral licenses 🫣
Yeah, this is the problem with this argument (even though I largely agree with it) - we shouldn’t be encouraging people to defect!
Now, where I think this argument has more value is in encouraging the sorts of vegans one finds in places like Reddit to stop being so mean to non-vegans. Their diets aren’t helpful enough to justify alienating 3 people casually interested in animal rights for the sake of pressuring 1 person into veganism.
It would be surprising if the consistent purchasing decisions of ~79 M vegans was swamped by the effects of *checks notes* the weather at one farm.
Also, we can even physically see an effect: grocery stores which have not grown larger have devoted some space that had once been occupied by dismembered corpses to plant-based simulations thereof.