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.)
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!