The research I’ve read from EAs* on slavery(here, here) actually shifted me somewhat against personal dietary moral commitments as an important route to change.
Basically, it seems like the equivalent to veganism (fully abstaining from buying anything as a result of slave-produced labor) never really took off, despite substantial effort from activists, whereas technological shifts that made slavery less profitable(?) and systematic policy changes on the level of “the slave trade is immoral, let’s ban it” were much more influential in comparison.
*For better or worse, I’ve never prioritized enough time to read the primary sources
Skimming the article from Mauricio, I spotted another possible argument for exchanging as much meat products as possible for plant-based alternatives.
Perhaps wealthy Britons identified with slave owners more easily than with slave traders, and emancipation likely seemed more threatening to their business interests.
The more and sooner business interests are okay with stronger animal welfare protection because they already are heavily invested in plant-based alternatives, the less resistance systemic changes will face in the future.
Thanks for the pointers, I read the report from Mauricio and really liked it.
I was actually imagining people freeing their slaves instead of trying to avoid products whose production involved slave labour, thanks for spelling out the better analogy. The problem with this analogy is, though, that I imagine it to be much more difficult (less variety of products available, less information about production) and less visible/symbolic (it’s somewhat less direct than eating animals, and probably hard to tell for onlookers whether an agricultural ingredient came from a place with slaves).
It sounds wild, but AFAIK, the cotton gin and maybe some other forms of automation actually made slavery more profitable!
From Wikipedia: > Whitney’s gin made cotton farming more profitable, so plantation owners expanded their plantations and used more slaves to pick the cotton. Whitney never invented a machine to harvest cotton, it still had to be picked by hand. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War.
The research I’ve read from EAs* on slavery(here, here) actually shifted me somewhat against personal dietary moral commitments as an important route to change.
Basically, it seems like the equivalent to veganism (fully abstaining from buying anything as a result of slave-produced labor) never really took off, despite substantial effort from activists, whereas technological shifts that made slavery less profitable(?) and systematic policy changes on the level of “the slave trade is immoral, let’s ban it” were much more influential in comparison.
*For better or worse, I’ve never prioritized enough time to read the primary sources
Skimming the article from Mauricio, I spotted another possible argument for exchanging as much meat products as possible for plant-based alternatives.
The more and sooner business interests are okay with stronger animal welfare protection because they already are heavily invested in plant-based alternatives, the less resistance systemic changes will face in the future.
Thanks for the pointers, I read the report from Mauricio and really liked it.
I was actually imagining people freeing their slaves instead of trying to avoid products whose production involved slave labour, thanks for spelling out the better analogy. The problem with this analogy is, though, that I imagine it to be much more difficult (less variety of products available, less information about production) and less visible/symbolic (it’s somewhat less direct than eating animals, and probably hard to tell for onlookers whether an agricultural ingredient came from a place with slaves).
It sounds wild, but AFAIK, the cotton gin and maybe some other forms of automation actually made slavery more profitable!
From Wikipedia:
> Whitney’s gin made cotton farming more profitable, so plantation owners expanded their plantations and used more slaves to pick the cotton. Whitney never invented a machine to harvest cotton, it still had to be picked by hand. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War.