But if it is profitable, someone will do it for-profit anyway. If it is not profitable, these products will fail in the long run. Perhaps altruistic funding can speed this process up, but it won’t make a difference in whether or not these products will have a market in the long run.
Maybe an alternative is to lobby for higher animal welfare standards, lower subsidies of animal products, and undercover investigations to unveil cruelty and lawbreaking in the industry. All of these would work even if the substitute products don’t take off, but they also have the implicit effect of supporting the substitutes indirectly by making animal exploitation more expensive.
But if it is profitable, someone will do it for-profit anyway. If it is not profitable, these products will fail in the long run. Perhaps altruistic funding can speed this process up, but it won’t make a difference in whether or not these products will have a market in the long run.
This may be true, but doesn’t look like much of a dismissal to me. This kind of dynamic applies to pretty much everything we do—it would very often be achieved later anyway. Moving it forward in time gets benefits for that slice of time, and it may also change long term trajectory if sequencing of some changes matters.
This kind of dynamic applies to pretty much everything we do—it would very often be achieved later anyway.
I don’t think it applies nearly as strongly to most forms of social change, which is a significant benefit of that strategy. You might argue that moral progress is inevitable, but I’m quite skeptical of that hypothesis.
But I would agree that speeding things up can still be really valuable, especially given major uncertainty about affecting the far future.
I don’t mean to dismiss Muufri, just put the true counterfactual in perspective. If there is a potential market for these products, replaceability is a realistic expectation.
I don’t think this dynamic applies to everything equally. I would expect it to apply more for those actions that exist in a market equilibrium, like supplying a substitute for an existing good at a given price. Maybe the same is true for donations, selective consumption, undercover investigations or political activism, but that seems less obvious to me.
Why did it take so long for someone to start an animal-free milk company?
Is it because the state of the research and technology to enable Muufri’s business wasn’t sufficiently advanced until now? If so, that would support the replaceability hypothesis.
Or is it because there is a shortage of entrepreneurs who start organizations to do something no one else is working on? If so, that seems to support Auren Hoffman’s hypothesis.
Animal products without animals is a great idea.
But if it is profitable, someone will do it for-profit anyway. If it is not profitable, these products will fail in the long run. Perhaps altruistic funding can speed this process up, but it won’t make a difference in whether or not these products will have a market in the long run.
Maybe an alternative is to lobby for higher animal welfare standards, lower subsidies of animal products, and undercover investigations to unveil cruelty and lawbreaking in the industry. All of these would work even if the substitute products don’t take off, but they also have the implicit effect of supporting the substitutes indirectly by making animal exploitation more expensive.
This may be true, but doesn’t look like much of a dismissal to me. This kind of dynamic applies to pretty much everything we do—it would very often be achieved later anyway. Moving it forward in time gets benefits for that slice of time, and it may also change long term trajectory if sequencing of some changes matters.
I don’t think it applies nearly as strongly to most forms of social change, which is a significant benefit of that strategy. You might argue that moral progress is inevitable, but I’m quite skeptical of that hypothesis.
But I would agree that speeding things up can still be really valuable, especially given major uncertainty about affecting the far future.
I don’t mean to dismiss Muufri, just put the true counterfactual in perspective. If there is a potential market for these products, replaceability is a realistic expectation.
I don’t think this dynamic applies to everything equally. I would expect it to apply more for those actions that exist in a market equilibrium, like supplying a substitute for an existing good at a given price. Maybe the same is true for donations, selective consumption, undercover investigations or political activism, but that seems less obvious to me.
Why did it take so long for someone to start an animal-free milk company?
Is it because the state of the research and technology to enable Muufri’s business wasn’t sufficiently advanced until now? If so, that would support the replaceability hypothesis.
Or is it because there is a shortage of entrepreneurs who start organizations to do something no one else is working on? If so, that seems to support Auren Hoffman’s hypothesis.
I think Muufri is different from your typical for-profit company in that they are doing what no-one else is doing, so I do believe they could have an impact. Auren Hoffman, a serial entrepreneur, says that doing what no-one else is doing may have an outsized impact.
I’m not sure this is true in the long run, but perhaps it helps speed the innovation up.