This annoys me about the stance some vegans take, and I’m glad you’ve quantified it. I’d always figured the impact of being vegan was relatively low compared to donating to effective animal organisations, but am a little shocked it’s THAT low.
I’ve argued that vegans could do a lot more good by eating modestly and donating the difference to say the Humane League than being vegan and eating at fancy restaurants all the time. Of course, the ideal case is to do both (be vegan and donate). The same applies for people who think they are doing a lot of good by rescuing say a cat and looking after them. This may be true, but cats need to be fed meat, and the running costs of having a cat could save many animals through effective donations.
This is a very hard sell for deontologists, and in my experience most vegans who aren’t also effective altruists are deontologists, but morality doesn’t begin and end with not eating meat.
As for whether being vegan is worth it, I can’t say I spend any more now than I did when I was an omnivore. In fact I think I spend significantly less, considering how much good quality meat costs, both at shops and at restaurants.
I think this concept leaves open the possibility of people ‘offsetting their meat consumption’ with donations in a similar way people offset their carbon credits when flying in a plane. I don’t have the figures but in many cases it is more effective to fly somewhere and offset your carbon credits than to catch a train, which takes far longer and costs far more. Most people I’ve pitched ‘offsetting meat consumption’ to are horrified by the implications to society. Perhaps not something we want prevalent long term, but it might take off faster than mass veganism would otherwise? Thoughts?
Overall I’d be cautious. This is the sort of thing that, if it went mainstream, would be taken by the non-vegan part of society as an excuse to not eat meat, but I don’t think that would correlate with an increase in donations to effective animal charities.
The end goal is obviously to have everyone go vegan to eliminate animal suffering associated with consumption.
Let’s do a thought experiment and say that the whole world decides to eat meat and offset their meat consumption with donations. The effectiveness of such donations would plummet, as it’s becoming harder to convince people to go vegan. I’d see this as reason enough to be cautious.
That would increase the price of offsets, until you reached a level at which the cheapest offsets were things like in vitro meat research, or the new chicken-sexing technology that allows sexing of chicken eggs to avert the killing of billions of male layer chicks. Although those might be cheaper offsets than veganism promotion today already.
Fourth, and I think most important, the economics check out. Instead of universalizing the principle “become vegetarian”, suppose we tried to universalize the principle “find some way to be animal-neutral,” that is, live your life in such a way that on net you are not killing animals. And suppose everyone knew there were two strategies for doing this: either become vegetarian yourself, or offset your lifestyle by donating to advocacy organizations that convert other people to do so.
And suppose that, upon hearing that it only takes a $60 donation to offset their lifestyles, 90% of people choose the donation rather than the personal conversion. This makes the cost of outreach go up. That is, when I donate my $60, the advocacy organization uses it to convert Alice, who decides to donate $60 herself, which the advocacy organization uses to convert Bob, who decides to donate $60 himself, which the organization uses to convert Carol…and so on to the tenth person, who finally decides to become vegetarian themselves. If this happened, our premise that it takes the charity $60 to convert one new vegetarian would be false. In fact it takes them 10 donations of $60, or $600.
As long as people know that they have the option of offsetting via donation, the possibility that people would rather donate than become vegetarian themselves is priced into the cost of the offset. That means that if the cost of an offset is currently $60, it’s because we’re hitting people for whom $60 is genuinely their reserve price; they prefer becoming vegetarian to paying a $60 offset (probably for moral/symbolic reasons). These people are low-hanging fruit; once they’re exhausted, the offset price will rise, and people for whom vegetarianism is only a mild inconvenience will find themselves preferring to become vegetarian themselves rather than paying. Once even the middle-hanging fruit is exhausted, the price of the offset will be prohibitive and only the people for whom vegetarianism is an extraordinary inconvenience will continue to take that route. Once there are no more potential vegetarians left to convert, the offset cost will become the cost of saving animals via political action, improved technology (eg cultured meat), or changes to farming conditions.
This dynamic becomes even more interesting if you add the (unjustifiable but interesting) assumption that anyone not becoming vegetarian themselves is required to offset their choice by converting two other people to vegetarianism. Then you get a sort of virtuous Ponzi scheme which ends with a lot of vegetarians (albeit not necessarily in a reasonable amount of time).
I try to donate some money to an effective animal charity each year, above and beyond what I’ve pledged to donate for other reasons, in order to compensate for the remaining meat I refuse to cut out of my diet.
“once they’re exhausted, the offset price will rise, and people for whom vegetarianism is only a mild inconvenience will find themselves preferring to become vegetarian themselves rather than paying.”
Or they’ll just give up on the whole concept entirely, not wanting to pay $X OR give up meat.
This annoys me about the stance some vegans take, and I’m glad you’ve quantified it. I’d always figured the impact of being vegan was relatively low compared to donating to effective animal organisations, but am a little shocked it’s THAT low.
I’ve argued that vegans could do a lot more good by eating modestly and donating the difference to say the Humane League than being vegan and eating at fancy restaurants all the time. Of course, the ideal case is to do both (be vegan and donate). The same applies for people who think they are doing a lot of good by rescuing say a cat and looking after them. This may be true, but cats need to be fed meat, and the running costs of having a cat could save many animals through effective donations.
This is a very hard sell for deontologists, and in my experience most vegans who aren’t also effective altruists are deontologists, but morality doesn’t begin and end with not eating meat.
As for whether being vegan is worth it, I can’t say I spend any more now than I did when I was an omnivore. In fact I think I spend significantly less, considering how much good quality meat costs, both at shops and at restaurants.
I think this concept leaves open the possibility of people ‘offsetting their meat consumption’ with donations in a similar way people offset their carbon credits when flying in a plane. I don’t have the figures but in many cases it is more effective to fly somewhere and offset your carbon credits than to catch a train, which takes far longer and costs far more. Most people I’ve pitched ‘offsetting meat consumption’ to are horrified by the implications to society. Perhaps not something we want prevalent long term, but it might take off faster than mass veganism would otherwise? Thoughts?
Overall I’d be cautious. This is the sort of thing that, if it went mainstream, would be taken by the non-vegan part of society as an excuse to not eat meat, but I don’t think that would correlate with an increase in donations to effective animal charities.
The end goal is obviously to have everyone go vegan to eliminate animal suffering associated with consumption.
Let’s do a thought experiment and say that the whole world decides to eat meat and offset their meat consumption with donations. The effectiveness of such donations would plummet, as it’s becoming harder to convince people to go vegan. I’d see this as reason enough to be cautious.
That would increase the price of offsets, until you reached a level at which the cheapest offsets were things like in vitro meat research, or the new chicken-sexing technology that allows sexing of chicken eggs to avert the killing of billions of male layer chicks. Although those might be cheaper offsets than veganism promotion today already.
Scott Alexander:
“once they’re exhausted, the offset price will rise, and people for whom vegetarianism is only a mild inconvenience will find themselves preferring to become vegetarian themselves rather than paying.”
Or they’ll just give up on the whole concept entirely, not wanting to pay $X OR give up meat.