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.
> But demand fluctuates constantly! Maybe 500 people stopped buying today, but tomorrow demand rises by 200. The firm doesn’t respond to each individual sale, it responds to aggregate trends. If you stop buying a chicken, but 999 other people do not, nothing happens. Mathematically, the probability that you specifically were the pivotal consumer who pushed demand below the threshold is not 1/1,000.
This isn't true. Generate a random number between 1 and 10,000 representing the current level of chicken inventory at some level. Then add another random number representing demand fluctuations, weather impacts, etc. The chance that the resulting number is divisible by 1000 is 1/1000 both before and after you add the random number.
Sticky prices and friction work both ways. It may mean that not buying chicken is less likely to impact the number of chickens produced, but the impact if it does is greater because it will take more demand to restore that level of production.
To exemplify: if you woke up realizing your life had been a dream, you were in fact a member of a different type of organim called Cambion. Cambions buy human meat daily instead of animal meat, their civilization raises and kills humans involuntarily à la "Tender Is the Flesh" or "Soylent Green". With humans being treated like we treat pigs and cows.
Would the Causal Impotence Objection then still hold morally, assuming that it's empirically true? So that a Cambion is morally allowed to buy and eat human meat everyday, assuming that it probably doesn't increase the number of humans killed. Or would this moral defence fail for the same reason you can't defend taking part in a mass lynching or buying snuff films by saying "my choice to take part wouldn't have made a difference"? That complicity makes the action immoral, even if the causal effect from your contribution isn't there.
Would Cambions lack the moral obligation to eat vegan instead of human meat?
If not, what trait separates humans from other animals enough to justify this difference? And can said trait survive trait adjustment as part of the "Name the Trait" dialogue tree?
The 1/500000 probability is in you making a big change, theres no way you can directly cause (not in expectation) that one more chicken be produced, it's either going to have 0 effect 99.9% of the time, or a very big effect that 0.1% of the time
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.
> But demand fluctuates constantly! Maybe 500 people stopped buying today, but tomorrow demand rises by 200. The firm doesn’t respond to each individual sale, it responds to aggregate trends. If you stop buying a chicken, but 999 other people do not, nothing happens. Mathematically, the probability that you specifically were the pivotal consumer who pushed demand below the threshold is not 1/1,000.
This isn't true. Generate a random number between 1 and 10,000 representing the current level of chicken inventory at some level. Then add another random number representing demand fluctuations, weather impacts, etc. The chance that the resulting number is divisible by 1000 is 1/1000 both before and after you add the random number.
Sticky prices and friction work both ways. It may mean that not buying chicken is less likely to impact the number of chickens produced, but the impact if it does is greater because it will take more demand to restore that level of production.
This was interesting, thanks for taking the time to write it. How does it hold up against "Name the Trait"? I.e., this:
https://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/index.php/NameTheTrait
To exemplify: if you woke up realizing your life had been a dream, you were in fact a member of a different type of organim called Cambion. Cambions buy human meat daily instead of animal meat, their civilization raises and kills humans involuntarily à la "Tender Is the Flesh" or "Soylent Green". With humans being treated like we treat pigs and cows.
Would the Causal Impotence Objection then still hold morally, assuming that it's empirically true? So that a Cambion is morally allowed to buy and eat human meat everyday, assuming that it probably doesn't increase the number of humans killed. Or would this moral defence fail for the same reason you can't defend taking part in a mass lynching or buying snuff films by saying "my choice to take part wouldn't have made a difference"? That complicity makes the action immoral, even if the causal effect from your contribution isn't there.
Would Cambions lack the moral obligation to eat vegan instead of human meat?
If not, what trait separates humans from other animals enough to justify this difference? And can said trait survive trait adjustment as part of the "Name the Trait" dialogue tree?
The 1/500000 probability is in you making a big change, theres no way you can directly cause (not in expectation) that one more chicken be produced, it's either going to have 0 effect 99.9% of the time, or a very big effect that 0.1% of the time