Would regional factory farming bans (much lower stocking density limits, no intensive confinement like cages or crates; not bans of animal agriculture in general) count as incremental?
They would be incremental towards the goal of abolition, but not towards a large scale ban on factory farming?
This is just a definitional thing? I think most people would see that as incremental, but just a much larger / more radical step than most incremental tactics we usually refer to.
And for what its worth, along the lines of my argument above that we should diversify institutional tactics, and given that I don’t think there’s much reason to suspect that conservative institutional legislative tactics will necessarily be most cost-effective in the long-run, all-things-considered, I’d like to see more resources going towards these sorts of more radical institutional campaigns, and more experimentation with tactics that might help to advance such campaigns.
It helps to distinguish possible goals (ending factory farming vs ending animal agriculture), since a given intervention might be incremental towards one but a large step towards another, and you draw conclusions about incremental reforms vs achieving the goal. If factory farming is far worse than other animal agriculture, then local factory farming bans are probably far better to pursue than animal agriculture bans, since they get most of the value, and are much more feasible. Even if it turned out that local factory farming bans were counterproductive towards animal agriculture bans, they would be worth pursuing anyway.
From a longtermist perspective, maybe it’s not the case that factory farming is far worse, though. Plausibly it is if we’re expecting some attractor state/lock-in event soon, and we need to take what we can get now, but if we’re aiming for a wider moral circle later, maybe we should try to go straight for animal agriculture bans. We might shift away from welfare reforms to animal product substitutes, to get enough support for full animal agriculture bans in some regions. (Although the incremental welfare reforms might turn out to be valuable anyway, for momentum and reducing the gap for price parity.)
Would regional factory farming bans (much lower stocking density limits, no intensive confinement like cages or crates; not bans of animal agriculture in general) count as incremental?
They would be incremental towards the goal of abolition, but not towards a large scale ban on factory farming?
This is just a definitional thing? I think most people would see that as incremental, but just a much larger / more radical step than most incremental tactics we usually refer to.
And for what its worth, along the lines of my argument above that we should diversify institutional tactics, and given that I don’t think there’s much reason to suspect that conservative institutional legislative tactics will necessarily be most cost-effective in the long-run, all-things-considered, I’d like to see more resources going towards these sorts of more radical institutional campaigns, and more experimentation with tactics that might help to advance such campaigns.
It helps to distinguish possible goals (ending factory farming vs ending animal agriculture), since a given intervention might be incremental towards one but a large step towards another, and you draw conclusions about incremental reforms vs achieving the goal. If factory farming is far worse than other animal agriculture, then local factory farming bans are probably far better to pursue than animal agriculture bans, since they get most of the value, and are much more feasible. Even if it turned out that local factory farming bans were counterproductive towards animal agriculture bans, they would be worth pursuing anyway.
From a longtermist perspective, maybe it’s not the case that factory farming is far worse, though. Plausibly it is if we’re expecting some attractor state/lock-in event soon, and we need to take what we can get now, but if we’re aiming for a wider moral circle later, maybe we should try to go straight for animal agriculture bans. We might shift away from welfare reforms to animal product substitutes, to get enough support for full animal agriculture bans in some regions. (Although the incremental welfare reforms might turn out to be valuable anyway, for momentum and reducing the gap for price parity.)
Agreed with all, I think!