There is a big difference between veganism and most(?) other boycott campaigns. Every time you purchase an animal product then you are causing significant direct harm (in expectation, if you accept the vegan argument). This is because if demand for animal products increases by 1, then we should expect some fraction more of that product to be produced to meet that demand, on average (the particular fraction depending on price elasticity, since you also raise prices a bit which puts other consumers off).
A lot of other boycott campaigns aren’t like this. For example, take the boycott of products which have been tested on animals. Here you don’t do direct harm with each purchase in the same way (or at least if you do, it is probably orders of magnitude less). Instead, the motivation is that if enough people start acting like this, it will lead to policy change.
In the first case, it doesn’t matter if no one else in the world agrees with you, participating in the boycott can still do significant good. In the second case, a large number of people are required in order for it to have meaningful impact. It makes sense that impact minded EAs are more inclined to support a boycott of the first kind.
I think a lot of your examples probably fall under the second kind (though not all). And I think that’s a big part of the answer to your question. Also, for at least some of the ones in the first kind, I think most EAs probably just disagree with the fundamental argument. For example, the environmental impact of using LLMs isn’t actually that bad: https://​​andymasley.substack.com/​​p/​​a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about.
To clarify my position, I am fairly confident that the consumption of chocolate produced through slave labor follows a straightforward supply-and-demand pattern: increased consumer demand leads to increased production, which in turn requires additional exploited laborers. In the same way, it is commonly stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola sources this water from communities already facing scarcity, then purchasing a two-liter bottle could be understood as indirectly contributing to the extraction of four liters of water from a community that may urgently need it.
With that in mind, I am interested in whether there are other common, everyday behaviors—analogous to veganism or the examples above—where an individual’s consumption reliably results in a direct negative impact. If so, are these harms measurable in any meaningful way? And if they are not easily quantifiable, should we treat them as negligible or morally permissible in order to avoid the implication that one must adopt an ascetic lifestyle simply to remain ethically consistent?
There is a big difference between veganism and most(?) other boycott campaigns. Every time you purchase an animal product then you are causing significant direct harm (in expectation, if you accept the vegan argument). This is because if demand for animal products increases by 1, then we should expect some fraction more of that product to be produced to meet that demand, on average (the particular fraction depending on price elasticity, since you also raise prices a bit which puts other consumers off).
A lot of other boycott campaigns aren’t like this. For example, take the boycott of products which have been tested on animals. Here you don’t do direct harm with each purchase in the same way (or at least if you do, it is probably orders of magnitude less). Instead, the motivation is that if enough people start acting like this, it will lead to policy change.
In the first case, it doesn’t matter if no one else in the world agrees with you, participating in the boycott can still do significant good. In the second case, a large number of people are required in order for it to have meaningful impact. It makes sense that impact minded EAs are more inclined to support a boycott of the first kind.
I think a lot of your examples probably fall under the second kind (though not all). And I think that’s a big part of the answer to your question. Also, for at least some of the ones in the first kind, I think most EAs probably just disagree with the fundamental argument. For example, the environmental impact of using LLMs isn’t actually that bad: https://​​andymasley.substack.com/​​p/​​a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about.
To clarify my position, I am fairly confident that the consumption of chocolate produced through slave labor follows a straightforward supply-and-demand pattern: increased consumer demand leads to increased production, which in turn requires additional exploited laborers. In the same way, it is commonly stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola sources this water from communities already facing scarcity, then purchasing a two-liter bottle could be understood as indirectly contributing to the extraction of four liters of water from a community that may urgently need it.
With that in mind, I am interested in whether there are other common, everyday behaviors—analogous to veganism or the examples above—where an individual’s consumption reliably results in a direct negative impact. If so, are these harms measurable in any meaningful way? And if they are not easily quantifiable, should we treat them as negligible or morally permissible in order to avoid the implication that one must adopt an ascetic lifestyle simply to remain ethically consistent?