I agree that the simple story of a producer reacting to changing demand directly is oversimplified. I think we differ in that I think that absent specific information, we should assume that any commonly consumed animal product’s supply response to changing demand should be similar to the ones from Compassion, by the Pound. In other words, we should have our prior on impact centered around some of the numbers from there, and update from there. I can explain why I think this in more detail if we disagree on this.
Leather example:
Sure, I chose this example to show how one’s impact can be diluted, but I also think that decreasing leather consumption is unusually low-impact. I don’t think the stories for other animal products are as convincing. To take your examples:
Eggs for human consumption are unfertilized, so I’m not sure how they are useful for hatching. Perhaps you are thinking that producers could fertilize the eggs, but that seems expensive and wouldn’t make sense if demand for eggs is decreasing.
Perhaps I am uncreative, but I’m not sure how one would redirect unused animal products in a way that would replace the demand from human consumption. Raising an animal seems pretty expensive, so I’m not sure in what scenario this would be so profitable.
If we are taking into account the sort of “meta” effects of consuming fewer animal products (such as your example of causing people to innovate new ways of using animal products), then I agree that these increase the variance of impact but I suspect that they strongly skew the distribution of impact towards greater rather than lesser impact. Some specific, and straightforward, examples: companies research more alternatives to meat; society has to accommodate more vegans and vegan food ends up more widespread and appealing, making more people interested in the transition; people are influenced by their reducetarian friends to eat less meat.
Voting:
I’ll need to think about it more, but as with two-candidate votes, I think that petitions can often have better than 1:1 impact.
I agree that the simple story of a producer reacting to changing demand directly is oversimplified. I think we differ in that I think that absent specific information, we should assume that any commonly consumed animal product’s supply response to changing demand should be similar to the ones from Compassion, by the Pound. In other words, we should have our prior on impact centered around some of the numbers from there, and update from there. I can explain why I think this in more detail if we disagree on this.
Leather example:
Sure, I chose this example to show how one’s impact can be diluted, but I also think that decreasing leather consumption is unusually low-impact. I don’t think the stories for other animal products are as convincing. To take your examples:
Eggs for human consumption are unfertilized, so I’m not sure how they are useful for hatching. Perhaps you are thinking that producers could fertilize the eggs, but that seems expensive and wouldn’t make sense if demand for eggs is decreasing.
Perhaps I am uncreative, but I’m not sure how one would redirect unused animal products in a way that would replace the demand from human consumption. Raising an animal seems pretty expensive, so I’m not sure in what scenario this would be so profitable.
If we are taking into account the sort of “meta” effects of consuming fewer animal products (such as your example of causing people to innovate new ways of using animal products), then I agree that these increase the variance of impact but I suspect that they strongly skew the distribution of impact towards greater rather than lesser impact. Some specific, and straightforward, examples: companies research more alternatives to meat; society has to accommodate more vegans and vegan food ends up more widespread and appealing, making more people interested in the transition; people are influenced by their reducetarian friends to eat less meat.
Voting:
I’ll need to think about it more, but as with two-candidate votes, I think that petitions can often have better than 1:1 impact.