I have a question for you, and I think the answer might help make the story clearer.
Under what context is your narrator giving this explanation? Why is he saying all this? What’s the framing device for it? Because if he’s trying to explain quick history to someone who doesn’t know it (why doesn’t the person know it? A small child? A foreigner? Just someone technologically ignorant?), he has no reason to bring up the analogue-vegetarians at all. Just “this is how cars work.” If the listener then asks (possibly offpage) if this is wrong, he can explain “it’s not like chickens actually matter” (and I wouldn’t even say ‘some people have a delusion chickens are people’, we can just appeal to the perceived-as-true-to-most-of-humanity-belief that chickens have no moral value and leave it at that) “and anyway it’s better than the alternatives which are all super-expensive.”
But if, instead, he’s bringing it up in the context of trying to argue someone out of analogue-vegetarianism, then he needs numbers. Then he would want the ability to say, “if everyone did that, that would dectuple the cost-per-mile of cars, the economy would collapse. Nobody would be able to afford to drive to work from their houses, we’d have to go back to coal power plants polluting the air, factories would close across the country, we’d be in a desperate battle for survival.” It’s not that these things would necessarily be true; in our world, which doesn’t have the Phobic Reactor, our economy is fine. But if he’s pitching his side’s case, he isn’t just going to say, “this side is delusional,” he’s going to say “and their delusions would have horrible consequences if people believed them.” Otherwise he’s leaving good arguments on the table.
Does this make sense? I’m not saying these are the only two possibilities, obviously; there’s lots of other contexts in which he might be explaining. (An ad for the newest, super-efficient phobic-reactor-fueled-car, say—someone might explain history there, just to clarify how awesome the new product was.) But I think that thinking about the question would help with troubleshooting the story.
Suggestions for making the story clearer are welcome!
I have a question for you, and I think the answer might help make the story clearer.
Under what context is your narrator giving this explanation? Why is he saying all this? What’s the framing device for it? Because if he’s trying to explain quick history to someone who doesn’t know it (why doesn’t the person know it? A small child? A foreigner? Just someone technologically ignorant?), he has no reason to bring up the analogue-vegetarians at all. Just “this is how cars work.” If the listener then asks (possibly offpage) if this is wrong, he can explain “it’s not like chickens actually matter” (and I wouldn’t even say ‘some people have a delusion chickens are people’, we can just appeal to the perceived-as-true-to-most-of-humanity-belief that chickens have no moral value and leave it at that) “and anyway it’s better than the alternatives which are all super-expensive.”
But if, instead, he’s bringing it up in the context of trying to argue someone out of analogue-vegetarianism, then he needs numbers. Then he would want the ability to say, “if everyone did that, that would dectuple the cost-per-mile of cars, the economy would collapse. Nobody would be able to afford to drive to work from their houses, we’d have to go back to coal power plants polluting the air, factories would close across the country, we’d be in a desperate battle for survival.” It’s not that these things would necessarily be true; in our world, which doesn’t have the Phobic Reactor, our economy is fine. But if he’s pitching his side’s case, he isn’t just going to say, “this side is delusional,” he’s going to say “and their delusions would have horrible consequences if people believed them.” Otherwise he’s leaving good arguments on the table.
Does this make sense? I’m not saying these are the only two possibilities, obviously; there’s lots of other contexts in which he might be explaining. (An ad for the newest, super-efficient phobic-reactor-fueled-car, say—someone might explain history there, just to clarify how awesome the new product was.) But I think that thinking about the question would help with troubleshooting the story.