Are you suggesting that this particular disanalogy substantially weakens any of the specific claims or recommendations I make here?
Maybe not substantially, since I think I agree overall with these two recommendations, but it might weaken concerns about negative consequences from incremental tactics and the case for diversifying beyond corporate campaigns (as long as we keep supporting animal product substitutes, which should of course go beyond corporate campaigns, as long as doing so actually makes much difference).
(Less important, but with respect to this particular point, I think there’s a similar effect from Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers and other incremental anti-abortion legislation, which makes abortion more difficult or expensive. Restrictions on lethal injection and other methods of capital punishment similarly raise the price of capital punishment relative to other options, albeit only by a small amount, and capital punishment is already more expensive. And more tentatively, there’s an analogy with the welfare reforms implemented by some slaveowners. So I don’t actually think that this disanalogy is as strong as many of the others we could point to.)
These are good points. Still, I think that if substitutes are approaching parity, the argument is that many people won’t see any good reason to stick with conventional animal products, and there are risks that substitutes won’t reach parity without increasing the costs of conventional animal products, and that getting to price parity without increasing the costs of conventional animal products will take much longer (although corporate campaigns are not the only way and maybe not the best way to raise their prices). I would guess that support and opposition to capital punishment and abortion are not very sensitive to cost, being instead driven primarily by ethical views (or political identity), but a large percentage of the population would switch to substitutes as they approach parity, since that’s the main or only thing holding them back now, not some separate preference for conventional animal products or for animals to be farmed (although that’s the case in many people, too).
Slavery could be a good analogy, since we’re talking about the public’s consumption habits and many people making their livings off of it (with animal agriculture, I’d guess there are proportionally far fewer animal farmers, but the industry has significant political influence anyway, and there’s a lot of support for animal farmers from non-farmers).
I would guess that support and opposition to capital punishment and abortion are not very sensitive to cost
I’m inclined to agree with this, and discussed it a bit in the anti-abortion case study. (See the bullet point beginning “One paper finds that “the fundamental law” and the corresponding footnotes, 371-3)
A price elasticity of demand of −0.81 may be “inelastic” according to the comparison to −1, but it’s actually surprisingly elastic to me. It’s more elastic than demand for almost all animal products according to the estimates Faunalytics compiled.
It would be good to briefly define the “cumulative elasticity factor”, e.g. as the ratio of the percentage change in quantity over the percentage change in a demand shock/shift.
There are at least two kinds of support to consider: the number of people getting abortions, and the percentage of people (or politicians) in favour of more liberal or restrictive abortion laws/policies, and the latter probably has little or even the opposite dependence on price, i.e. as abortion policy becomes more restrictive and prices increase, support for more liberal policies increases, so the these restrictions may not be stable, especially where the left wing is close to having or has majority power.
Maybe this could be the case with animal products, too, but we have alternatives to animal products that are looking increasingly attractive (and people can switch to other animal products), whereas the alternatives to abortion for someone who wants an abortion are not very good, so it seems less likely to be the case for animal products.
Maybe not substantially, since I think I agree overall with these two recommendations, but it might weaken concerns about negative consequences from incremental tactics and the case for diversifying beyond corporate campaigns (as long as we keep supporting animal product substitutes, which should of course go beyond corporate campaigns, as long as doing so actually makes much difference).
These are good points. Still, I think that if substitutes are approaching parity, the argument is that many people won’t see any good reason to stick with conventional animal products, and there are risks that substitutes won’t reach parity without increasing the costs of conventional animal products, and that getting to price parity without increasing the costs of conventional animal products will take much longer (although corporate campaigns are not the only way and maybe not the best way to raise their prices). I would guess that support and opposition to capital punishment and abortion are not very sensitive to cost, being instead driven primarily by ethical views (or political identity), but a large percentage of the population would switch to substitutes as they approach parity, since that’s the main or only thing holding them back now, not some separate preference for conventional animal products or for animals to be farmed (although that’s the case in many people, too).
Slavery could be a good analogy, since we’re talking about the public’s consumption habits and many people making their livings off of it (with animal agriculture, I’d guess there are proportionally far fewer animal farmers, but the industry has significant political influence anyway, and there’s a lot of support for animal farmers from non-farmers).
Thanks for the clarifications and comments!
I’m inclined to agree with this, and discussed it a bit in the anti-abortion case study. (See the bullet point beginning “One paper finds that “the fundamental law” and the corresponding footnotes, 371-3)
Interesting. A few comments on this:
I think ACE updated their page since you cited it, so the cumulative elasticity estimates are gone. Faunalytics has estimates: https://faunalytics.org/animal-product-impact-scales/ (EA Forum post). See the Elasticities tab here.
A price elasticity of demand of −0.81 may be “inelastic” according to the comparison to −1, but it’s actually surprisingly elastic to me. It’s more elastic than demand for almost all animal products according to the estimates Faunalytics compiled.
It would be good to briefly define the “cumulative elasticity factor”, e.g. as the ratio of the percentage change in quantity over the percentage change in a demand shock/shift.
There are at least two kinds of support to consider: the number of people getting abortions, and the percentage of people (or politicians) in favour of more liberal or restrictive abortion laws/policies, and the latter probably has little or even the opposite dependence on price, i.e. as abortion policy becomes more restrictive and prices increase, support for more liberal policies increases, so the these restrictions may not be stable, especially where the left wing is close to having or has majority power.
Maybe this could be the case with animal products, too, but we have alternatives to animal products that are looking increasingly attractive (and people can switch to other animal products), whereas the alternatives to abortion for someone who wants an abortion are not very good, so it seems less likely to be the case for animal products.