In conclusion, what exactly am I expected to boycott to be considered an effective altruist, and what freedoms am still mine to enjoy?
It’s worth noting that in a recent survey of EAs, respondents were “generally evenly split across dietary categories, with vegans at 25.5%, omnivores at 25.4%, reducetarians/flexitarians at 24.1%, and vegetarians at 20.3%.” So I don’t think that suggests one is quite expected to be vegan (or even non-omnivore) to be considered an EA.
In general, you’ve identified three reasons someone might want to boycott a company or industry:
They may feel the company doesn’t align with their values: e.g., “purchasing Coca-Cola products feels like indirectly supporting policies they find unjust.” That’s fine, but this specific motivation is not about creating change in the world per se (although it can be mixed with other reasons). It’s closer to sustaining what one perceives as a personal ethical obligation. That’s really outside the scope of what EA focuses onand can safely be left for individual action as appropriate.
They may be trying to pressure the company to change its actions. Now, we are talking about action that may be potentially effective. But how good is the evidence that these particular boycotts are effective in changing corporate behavior? And how much more likely would participation by a few thousand EAs be in these boycotts succeeding or failing?
On the other side of the ledger, there are some real costs to engaging in this sort of boycott. It would be necessary to expend community resources to decide which corporations were behaving badly enough to potentially warrant a boycott, and which boycotts would be potentially effective for EAs to engage in. That would pull attention away from other things to some extent. Community members whose preferred causes were not selected for community action might feel miffed. Some of this stuff (e.g., the BDS movement) are extremely controversial and would risk fracturing the community.
In the end, there are other communities who work on these issues, and EAs who think boycotting is potentially worthwhile can certainly refer to those communities’ work.
Finally, they may be trying to reduce the harm caused by the activity. I think you’re right to say that some boycotts employ this theory of action. However, the connection between the consumer activity and the harm in question is stronger with consumption of animal products than with some of your examples. In other cases, community members would probably say that the harms caused by each individual consumer’s actions are different in magnitude.
That being said, there are probably some historical and/or idiosyncratic reasons behind the attention paid to individual dietary change, which people who were EAs earlier in the movement could address better than I.
There could also be some strategic justification for paying attention to individual dietary issues, given that animal welfare is a major cause area based on the usual criteria. Out of the universe of possible consumer-related actions, it’s reasonable for advocates to focus on the ones that best supplement their day jobs. A bunch of omnivores may find it difficult to work effectively with the broader animal-welfare movement, or to get the public to take them seriously on animal-welfare issues. Moreover, eating animals could plausibly result in cognitive dissonance that inhibits one’s ability to think optimally about animal-related issues.
When I referred to boycotting Nestlé and Coca-Cola, my primary focus was on the basic dynamics of supply and demand. If consumers continue to purchase chocolate produced with slave labor, increased demand will logically require more exploited laborers and more total labor to meet that demand. The underlying principle seems similar to the reasoning behind veganism: purchasing animal products contributes, at least marginally, to the continued production of those products. Please correct me if I am mistaken in drawing this parallel. Likewise, it is often stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola’s operations reduce water availability in communities that already struggle with access, it seems reasonable to ask whether consumers bear some indirect responsibility—e.g., if a person buys a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, does that effectively correspond to four liters of water extracted from a community that may have needed it for agriculture or drinking?
However, I am interested in your view on which kinds of actions should be considered morally permissible and which should be regarded as morally obligatory. I do not believe we should, as some critiques phrase it, adopt “the life goals of dead people” and simply attempt to avoid all entanglement with harm, yet I also find it notable that issues such as widespread contempt for Nestlé or the extensive discussions about ethical and fair-trade chocolate seem largely overlooked in this forum. This is surprising given how readily veganism is embraced. I am not attempting to diminish the moral weight of animal suffering, but I do sometimes worry that it is invoked in a way that unintentionally marginalizes concerns about human suffering.
I also find it striking that, according to the statistics shared, a substantial portion of the EA community is neither vegetarian nor vegan. This raises questions about the criteria by which individuals consider themselves part of the effective altruism movement, although I recognize there are no strict requirements or definitive rules—ultimately, many of these norms function more like Schelling points, such as the commonly referenced 10% donation pledge.
The underlying principle seems similar to the reasoning behind veganism: purchasing animal products contributes, at least marginally, to the continued production of those products. Please correct me if I am mistaken in drawing this parallel.
There is likely similarity in at least some cases, but it may be attenuated.
Given that Nestle presumably has significant fixed costs, it is unclear what the effect of a small group of consumers boycotting would be. You presumably have Nestle and non-Nestle chocolate. Most consumers are indifferent between the two, while some consumers refuse to buy the Nestle product. If some consumers start refusing the Nestle product, it has two choices. One, it can cut back production. Two, it can sell its “excess” production to consumers who don’t care where their chocolate comes from (or to other companies which then sell cocoa-based products to consumers). I don’t have a good sense of what the actual reduction in Nestle’s production of a consumer boycotting Nestle is, but I suspect it is far from a 1:1 reduction.
My understanding is that soda is produced locally, so I’d be looking for evidence that my Coca-Cola consumption counterfactually affected water availability outside my community (which does not, to my knowledge, experience water shortages). I’d also have to consider the adverse effects of what I drank instead—maybe drinking Pepsi has less negative environmental effect, but it’s not plausible that it has no effect. And switching to quality apple juice (not from concentrate) might be worse, due to the distances the juice would travel.
Figuring out the actual impact of these boycotts would require a lot of modeling (and perhaps some data that would be difficult to obtain). But I suspect the actual impact is significantly less than many people participating in the boycott assume.
However, I am interested in your view on which kinds of actions should be considered morally permissible and which should be regarded as morally obligatory.
I don’t know. Philosophers have spilled much ink on that question, and I’ve never found an answer I find satisfying.
I also find it notable that issues such as widespread contempt for Nestlé or the extensive discussions about ethical and fair-trade chocolate seem largely overlooked in this forum.
That they are in widespread circulation is arguably a good reason to not focus on them here! I knew fair-trade chocolate is a thing, and I suspect most readers here did too. We know where to go for information on the subject if we want to change our consumption patterns. But information about shrimp welfare, there aren’t too many other places to hear about that.
Attention is a limited resource, and there is much evil and suffering in the world. All altruistically-minded communities pick and choose what their focus issues and methods are. They would collapse from incoherence otherwise. Individuals are likewise constrained lest they experience burnout.
Moreover, giving focus to things that aren’t very effective would be mildly corrosive to the spirit of EA. In part, the movement grew out of a belief that traditional charities and donors can put far too much stock in what makes the charity/donor feel righteous/ethical (irrespective of actual magnitude of results), or what gives the charity/donor higher status in society. I do think it is important to maintain strong boundaries against those impulses.
In the end, my own lightly-held assumption is that most boycotts of the sort you describe are not effective enough in producing significant enough changes in production to be worth diverting community attention from more effective actions. The lack of attention to them here suggests most of the user base would agree. But the beauty of the Forum is that you can run the numbers and present a model explaining why that tentative view is incorrect.
It’s worth noting that in a recent survey of EAs, respondents were “generally evenly split across dietary categories, with vegans at 25.5%, omnivores at 25.4%, reducetarians/flexitarians at 24.1%, and vegetarians at 20.3%.” So I don’t think that suggests one is quite expected to be vegan (or even non-omnivore) to be considered an EA.
In general, you’ve identified three reasons someone might want to boycott a company or industry:
They may feel the company doesn’t align with their values: e.g., “purchasing Coca-Cola products feels like indirectly supporting policies they find unjust.” That’s fine, but this specific motivation is not about creating change in the world per se (although it can be mixed with other reasons). It’s closer to sustaining what one perceives as a personal ethical obligation. That’s really outside the scope of what EA focuses onand can safely be left for individual action as appropriate.
They may be trying to pressure the company to change its actions. Now, we are talking about action that may be potentially effective. But how good is the evidence that these particular boycotts are effective in changing corporate behavior? And how much more likely would participation by a few thousand EAs be in these boycotts succeeding or failing?
On the other side of the ledger, there are some real costs to engaging in this sort of boycott. It would be necessary to expend community resources to decide which corporations were behaving badly enough to potentially warrant a boycott, and which boycotts would be potentially effective for EAs to engage in. That would pull attention away from other things to some extent. Community members whose preferred causes were not selected for community action might feel miffed. Some of this stuff (e.g., the BDS movement) are extremely controversial and would risk fracturing the community.
In the end, there are other communities who work on these issues, and EAs who think boycotting is potentially worthwhile can certainly refer to those communities’ work.
Finally, they may be trying to reduce the harm caused by the activity. I think you’re right to say that some boycotts employ this theory of action. However, the connection between the consumer activity and the harm in question is stronger with consumption of animal products than with some of your examples. In other cases, community members would probably say that the harms caused by each individual consumer’s actions are different in magnitude.
That being said, there are probably some historical and/or idiosyncratic reasons behind the attention paid to individual dietary change, which people who were EAs earlier in the movement could address better than I.
There could also be some strategic justification for paying attention to individual dietary issues, given that animal welfare is a major cause area based on the usual criteria. Out of the universe of possible consumer-related actions, it’s reasonable for advocates to focus on the ones that best supplement their day jobs. A bunch of omnivores may find it difficult to work effectively with the broader animal-welfare movement, or to get the public to take them seriously on animal-welfare issues. Moreover, eating animals could plausibly result in cognitive dissonance that inhibits one’s ability to think optimally about animal-related issues.
When I referred to boycotting Nestlé and Coca-Cola, my primary focus was on the basic dynamics of supply and demand. If consumers continue to purchase chocolate produced with slave labor, increased demand will logically require more exploited laborers and more total labor to meet that demand. The underlying principle seems similar to the reasoning behind veganism: purchasing animal products contributes, at least marginally, to the continued production of those products. Please correct me if I am mistaken in drawing this parallel. Likewise, it is often stated that producing one liter of Coca-Cola requires approximately two liters of water. If Coca-Cola’s operations reduce water availability in communities that already struggle with access, it seems reasonable to ask whether consumers bear some indirect responsibility—e.g., if a person buys a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, does that effectively correspond to four liters of water extracted from a community that may have needed it for agriculture or drinking?
However, I am interested in your view on which kinds of actions should be considered morally permissible and which should be regarded as morally obligatory. I do not believe we should, as some critiques phrase it, adopt “the life goals of dead people” and simply attempt to avoid all entanglement with harm, yet I also find it notable that issues such as widespread contempt for Nestlé or the extensive discussions about ethical and fair-trade chocolate seem largely overlooked in this forum. This is surprising given how readily veganism is embraced. I am not attempting to diminish the moral weight of animal suffering, but I do sometimes worry that it is invoked in a way that unintentionally marginalizes concerns about human suffering.
I also find it striking that, according to the statistics shared, a substantial portion of the EA community is neither vegetarian nor vegan. This raises questions about the criteria by which individuals consider themselves part of the effective altruism movement, although I recognize there are no strict requirements or definitive rules—ultimately, many of these norms function more like Schelling points, such as the commonly referenced 10% donation pledge.
There is likely similarity in at least some cases, but it may be attenuated.
Given that Nestle presumably has significant fixed costs, it is unclear what the effect of a small group of consumers boycotting would be. You presumably have Nestle and non-Nestle chocolate. Most consumers are indifferent between the two, while some consumers refuse to buy the Nestle product. If some consumers start refusing the Nestle product, it has two choices. One, it can cut back production. Two, it can sell its “excess” production to consumers who don’t care where their chocolate comes from (or to other companies which then sell cocoa-based products to consumers). I don’t have a good sense of what the actual reduction in Nestle’s production of a consumer boycotting Nestle is, but I suspect it is far from a 1:1 reduction.
(If you’re wondering whether this logic also applies to vegan consumption decisions—yes, it does to some extent even though the consumer is reducing industry-wide demand. For instance, reducing one’s consumption of chicken by 1 pound is expected to reduce chicken production by about 0.76 pounds.)
My understanding is that soda is produced locally, so I’d be looking for evidence that my Coca-Cola consumption counterfactually affected water availability outside my community (which does not, to my knowledge, experience water shortages). I’d also have to consider the adverse effects of what I drank instead—maybe drinking Pepsi has less negative environmental effect, but it’s not plausible that it has no effect. And switching to quality apple juice (not from concentrate) might be worse, due to the distances the juice would travel.
Figuring out the actual impact of these boycotts would require a lot of modeling (and perhaps some data that would be difficult to obtain). But I suspect the actual impact is significantly less than many people participating in the boycott assume.
I don’t know. Philosophers have spilled much ink on that question, and I’ve never found an answer I find satisfying.
That they are in widespread circulation is arguably a good reason to not focus on them here! I knew fair-trade chocolate is a thing, and I suspect most readers here did too. We know where to go for information on the subject if we want to change our consumption patterns. But information about shrimp welfare, there aren’t too many other places to hear about that.
Attention is a limited resource, and there is much evil and suffering in the world. All altruistically-minded communities pick and choose what their focus issues and methods are. They would collapse from incoherence otherwise. Individuals are likewise constrained lest they experience burnout.
Moreover, giving focus to things that aren’t very effective would be mildly corrosive to the spirit of EA. In part, the movement grew out of a belief that traditional charities and donors can put far too much stock in what makes the charity/donor feel righteous/ethical (irrespective of actual magnitude of results), or what gives the charity/donor higher status in society. I do think it is important to maintain strong boundaries against those impulses.
In the end, my own lightly-held assumption is that most boycotts of the sort you describe are not effective enough in producing significant enough changes in production to be worth diverting community attention from more effective actions. The lack of attention to them here suggests most of the user base would agree. But the beauty of the Forum is that you can run the numbers and present a model explaining why that tentative view is incorrect.