III. Technologies, including AI, will make factory farming more efficient
However, I think this will also make the resources going to food production as a fraction of the world gross product go down over time, in which case changing the welfare per capita of factory-farmed animals will become increasingly cheap. Changing the number of animals would also become easier, but, if we stay on the Solar System, which I think is the plausible scenario for factory-farming continuing to matter, I guess human population and activities will eventually stabilise, and so would the population animals.
I have not thought much about this, but I guess interventions which make the lives of farmed/wild animals net positive longterm, like ones leading to expanding our moral circle[1], are more robustly beneficial than ones which aim to reduce the number of animals. Although this could be instrumentally good to mitigate economies of scale, I do not think cost is going to be a major determinant longterm.
However, I think this will also make the resources going to food production as a fraction of the world gross product go down over time, in which case changing the welfare per capita of factory-farmed animals will become increasingly cheap.
This is a very good point that I didn’t think about. It should be considered.
However, arguing that the badness of factory farming will stay is not the main task of this post. It’s mainly arguing that the number farmed animals in the long-term future might be high.
Also, on the welfare effect problem. I am not entirely sure it works the way you think it does. It might, but not certainly. Here are some counterarguments:
A short case study suggests that this didn’t happen, now. Eggs costs roughly 0.1% of humanity’s GDP. Cage-free (not free range) eggs costs roughly 20-40% to produce, which means roughly 0.02-0.04% of humanity’s GDP. But the world is not yet going 100% cage-free after two decades (or more) of campaigning, not even the developed countries who spend even lower % of their GDP on eggs. In fact, the developed countries have higher % of caged vs cage-free eggs. China is raising their % cage vs cage-free rapidly (and made it a national policy) as they rapidly decrease the % of GDP they spend on eggs.
I personally struggle to imagine how we can make farmed animals live net positive lives, I struggle even more to imagine how humanity would be willing to spend the cost make it happen to farmed animals (investing to do the research might happen as there will be people interested in making other animals happy, but I can’t imagine why factory farms will be willing to apply it, or that animal advocates would be willing to promote it)
We also need to think about the value conveyed and reinforced by factory farming staying. Even if the total amount of suffering decreases significantly, if humanity still continues to endorse a practice the harming (decreased by still harming) and killing of nonhuman animals for our trivial interests in the long-term future, it tells a very pessimistic story (and Bayesian update) about our ability to improve our values.
Hello again Fai,
On the topic of efficiency, I can see that:
However, I think this will also make the resources going to food production as a fraction of the world gross product go down over time, in which case changing the welfare per capita of factory-farmed animals will become increasingly cheap. Changing the number of animals would also become easier, but, if we stay on the Solar System, which I think is the plausible scenario for factory-farming continuing to matter, I guess human population and activities will eventually stabilise, and so would the population animals.
I have not thought much about this, but I guess interventions which make the lives of farmed/wild animals net positive longterm, like ones leading to expanding our moral circle[1], are more robustly beneficial than ones which aim to reduce the number of animals. Although this could be instrumentally good to mitigate economies of scale, I do not think cost is going to be a major determinant longterm.
Linking for reference. You know about it better than I do!
This is a very good point that I didn’t think about. It should be considered.
However, arguing that the badness of factory farming will stay is not the main task of this post. It’s mainly arguing that the number farmed animals in the long-term future might be high.
Also, on the welfare effect problem. I am not entirely sure it works the way you think it does. It might, but not certainly. Here are some counterarguments:
A short case study suggests that this didn’t happen, now. Eggs costs roughly 0.1% of humanity’s GDP. Cage-free (not free range) eggs costs roughly 20-40% to produce, which means roughly 0.02-0.04% of humanity’s GDP. But the world is not yet going 100% cage-free after two decades (or more) of campaigning, not even the developed countries who spend even lower % of their GDP on eggs. In fact, the developed countries have higher % of caged vs cage-free eggs. China is raising their % cage vs cage-free rapidly (and made it a national policy) as they rapidly decrease the % of GDP they spend on eggs.
I personally struggle to imagine how we can make farmed animals live net positive lives, I struggle even more to imagine how humanity would be willing to spend the cost make it happen to farmed animals (investing to do the research might happen as there will be people interested in making other animals happy, but I can’t imagine why factory farms will be willing to apply it, or that animal advocates would be willing to promote it)
We also need to think about the value conveyed and reinforced by factory farming staying. Even if the total amount of suffering decreases significantly, if humanity still continues to endorse a practice the harming (decreased by still harming) and killing of nonhuman animals for our trivial interests in the long-term future, it tells a very pessimistic story (and Bayesian update) about our ability to improve our values.