If The Humane League can convert people to vegetarianism for anything like the amounts estimated, and people who find vegetarianism particularly difficult and unpleasant would rather pay to convert someone else than go vegetarianism themselves, then isn’t this the best option? It certainly seems to beat haranguing people who find vegetarianism too difficult, which only causes bad feelings on all sides. I’ve heard some prominent EAA group people advocate this sort of ‘vegetarian offsetting’.
I think one of the major problems with this proposal is that nobody actually does it. 0% of the people I’ve heard propose it (three, if I haven’t forgotten any) actually donate (or make any measurable changes to their behavior at all) based on their animal product consumption.
I’ve seen a few folks argue that by eating animal products they’re making gains in somewhat-hard-to-measure areas like mood or productivity, and by making those gains they’re either more effective in their EA jobs or end up earning more to give. I don’t know of anyone who has actually tested this at all. I wouldn’t be horribly surprised if some of them did notice some deleterious effects from switching to veganism. I would be very surprised if they actually became less effective as EAs by going the reducetarian route and purposefully cutting out one meat meal per day or 1-2 full days of meat meals per week.
To the extent that switches to lifestyle take attention and willpower, I think it’s often a question of whether those attention and willpower had opportunity costs. I agree that this is hard to test, so we should fall back on experience/theory/common sense. You seem to be asserting that there won’t be opportunity costs, which seems prima facie surprising.
(This is an argument against pushing people to switch to vegnism; it doesn’t provide an argument for pushing people to stop being vegn.)
I think one of the major problems with this proposal is that nobody actually does it.
I spent a few months doing this, so that if I spent X euros on animal products, I would donate X euros to animal welfare charities at the end of the month.
I plan to resume doing so once my monetary situation looks better (also making a bigger one-off donation to “pay off” the time during which I didn’t maintain that practice).
I don’t know of anyone who has actually tested this at all.
I downgraded from full vegetarianism (and an attempt at full veganism) due to the amount of willpower and occasional well-being it was costing me, especially when battling with depression at the same time.
If The Humane League can convert people to vegetarianism for anything like the amounts estimated, and people who find vegetarianism particularly difficult and unpleasant would rather pay to convert someone else than go vegetarianism themselves, then isn’t this the best option? It certainly seems to beat haranguing people who find vegetarianism too difficult, which only causes bad feelings on all sides. I’ve heard some prominent EAA group people advocate this sort of ‘vegetarian offsetting’.
I think one of the major problems with this proposal is that nobody actually does it. 0% of the people I’ve heard propose it (three, if I haven’t forgotten any) actually donate (or make any measurable changes to their behavior at all) based on their animal product consumption.
I’ve seen a few folks argue that by eating animal products they’re making gains in somewhat-hard-to-measure areas like mood or productivity, and by making those gains they’re either more effective in their EA jobs or end up earning more to give. I don’t know of anyone who has actually tested this at all. I wouldn’t be horribly surprised if some of them did notice some deleterious effects from switching to veganism. I would be very surprised if they actually became less effective as EAs by going the reducetarian route and purposefully cutting out one meat meal per day or 1-2 full days of meat meals per week.
To the extent that switches to lifestyle take attention and willpower, I think it’s often a question of whether those attention and willpower had opportunity costs. I agree that this is hard to test, so we should fall back on experience/theory/common sense. You seem to be asserting that there won’t be opportunity costs, which seems prima facie surprising.
(This is an argument against pushing people to switch to vegnism; it doesn’t provide an argument for pushing people to stop being vegn.)
I’ve met a couple of people who donate to effective animal welfare charities so that they can eat meat.
I spent a few months doing this, so that if I spent X euros on animal products, I would donate X euros to animal welfare charities at the end of the month.
I plan to resume doing so once my monetary situation looks better (also making a bigger one-off donation to “pay off” the time during which I didn’t maintain that practice).
I downgraded from full vegetarianism (and an attempt at full veganism) due to the amount of willpower and occasional well-being it was costing me, especially when battling with depression at the same time.
I know at least one person who does—or at least did when we discussed it.