As a worker in community building for animal welfare, I concur with this observation:
Social conditions are not very favourable for animal advocacy at this point in time: Let’s leave the numerical estimates for a while and look at the state of the “movement”. It is rare to see continuous gatherings with waves of people advocating for animal welfare. Protests for farmed animals gather at best a hundred people or slightly more. Usually, there are only ten or so people—and some of them are the paid staff members of the organisations, and some of them are EA conference attendants
That said, I think a main question is whether this can be overcome (and at what cost). My perception is that we’ve barely tried to massify the movement and bring about a cultural change in society: for the moment, the bulk of funding has gone towards lobbying efforts targeting companies and politicians, but not so much towards the general public. I sometimes dream of seeing Open Phil publish a call for projects for efforts of this kind, with significant funding at stake: then perhaps we could start to see to what extent these social and cultural conditions are immutable or not.
I definitely agree that things could be wildly different if there was a massive cultural change. But as you point out the main question is whether it is doable. I think that the bulk of funding has not gone “only” towards lobbying efforts targeting companies and politicians. There is a lot of “society outreach” work done by existing EA organisations in order to effectively pressure these companies and politicians: like petitions, protests, media outreach etc. So I guess the contrast is not necessarily “corporations” vs. “culture” but rather it is “social change for an institutional short term goal” vs. “social change for an indeterminate long term goal”. I am more supportive of the former because it has better feedback loops and it is also a good test of figuring out what is really doable and choosing the right objectives proportional to our existing capabilities. I think it would be very unlikely that a qualified animal advocacy organisation would fail to generate enough social reaction to convince a retailer to adopt a better welfare standard but at the same time would succeed in generating enough social reaction to achieve transformative legislative progress.
I guess another problem is that “culture” is very complex and cannot be changed by a small number of actors. This can also explain relative scepticism of funders since they face a practical problem of finding individual giving opportunities—not just deciding the general approach like “culture” or “corporate work”. Their job would be much harder if they need to figure out and evaluate hundreds of different actors from different fields and backgrounds.
Thank you for these interesting insights!
As a worker in community building for animal welfare, I concur with this observation:
That said, I think a main question is whether this can be overcome (and at what cost). My perception is that we’ve barely tried to massify the movement and bring about a cultural change in society: for the moment, the bulk of funding has gone towards lobbying efforts targeting companies and politicians, but not so much towards the general public. I sometimes dream of seeing Open Phil publish a call for projects for efforts of this kind, with significant funding at stake: then perhaps we could start to see to what extent these social and cultural conditions are immutable or not.
Thanks for the comment!
I definitely agree that things could be wildly different if there was a massive cultural change. But as you point out the main question is whether it is doable. I think that the bulk of funding has not gone “only” towards lobbying efforts targeting companies and politicians. There is a lot of “society outreach” work done by existing EA organisations in order to effectively pressure these companies and politicians: like petitions, protests, media outreach etc. So I guess the contrast is not necessarily “corporations” vs. “culture” but rather it is “social change for an institutional short term goal” vs. “social change for an indeterminate long term goal”. I am more supportive of the former because it has better feedback loops and it is also a good test of figuring out what is really doable and choosing the right objectives proportional to our existing capabilities. I think it would be very unlikely that a qualified animal advocacy organisation would fail to generate enough social reaction to convince a retailer to adopt a better welfare standard but at the same time would succeed in generating enough social reaction to achieve transformative legislative progress.
I guess another problem is that “culture” is very complex and cannot be changed by a small number of actors. This can also explain relative scepticism of funders since they face a practical problem of finding individual giving opportunities—not just deciding the general approach like “culture” or “corporate work”. Their job would be much harder if they need to figure out and evaluate hundreds of different actors from different fields and backgrounds.