Hey Nick, thanks for the thoughtful comment! I’m going to answer your question, but I’ll start with a bunch of caveats :)
On first-order effects on human wellbeing, I think economic growth is obviously incredibly good.
Even when including knock-on effects on farmed animals, wild animals, and the far future, I’d still bet on economic growth being good, with far higher uncertainty. I am very pro economic growth, but like you, I just think the marginal $100m from the debate question would be better spent on animal welfare.
$100m represents 0.02% of the US’s annual philanthropic budget. If we were debating allocating trillions of dollars, I would categorically not go all-in on animal welfare, and would consider it a given that we should use much of that to alleviate global poverty and encourage economic growth.
It seems to me that there are two places where you find the argument alienating. I’ll address them one by one, and then I’ll answer your question.
Fairness
I agree that it’s unfair that people from less fortunate countries have been left behind. But I feel like the argument that “it’s not fair to those in poverty if we donate to alleviating factory farming, which those in developed countries primarily cause”, is similar to saying “it’s not fair to those in poverty if we donate to alleviating climate change, which those in developed countries primarily cause”. We don’t have to go all-in on one cause and not support any other! These are all important problems which deserve some of our resources.
Making Tradeoffs
There was a time when I too thought it would be absurd to allocate money to animals when we could be helping the economically worst-off humans. But for a thought experiment, imagine that for every dollar of world GDP, there’s a person being tortured right now. I think that would in and of itself be sufficient to make economic growth a bad thing—surely adding a dollar to world GDP can’t be worth causing an additional person to be tortured.
So there is some amount of suffering which, if we knew economic growth caused it, would be enough for economic growth to be a bad thing. If we agree on that, then the debate reduces to whether these animal effects could plausibly be enough for that. At first, my gut instinct was a “hell no”. But then I watched Dominion, a documentary I recommend to you, Nick, if you’d like to learn more about the horrors of factory farming.
When I think about the fact that there are trillions of animals, perhaps thousands for each one of us humans, who are suffering horribly in factory farms right now because of us, I feel an enormous moral weight. And our economic growth has indeed contributed to that suffering. It’s contributed to many incredibly good things too, such that I’m not sure about its overall sign. But I now think the burden of this suffering is sufficiently weighty to potentially play a pivotal role in the net effect of economic growth.
So to answer your question, we don’t yet know enough, and it depends on the specifics. But I am willing to say that there’s some amount of animal suffering for which I would be willing to stall economic growth, if we knew all of the relevant details. And I don’t think it’s obvious that current levels of animal suffering today are below that threshold.
I get the idea here, but I still think this is a dangerous and disturbing line of argument. I think there are so many ways that we can reduce animal suffering while still encouraging economic growth which lifts people out of poverty.
I just don’t buy that “economic growth” in particular causes animal suffering—so I don’t agree on that. Its not written in the stars that factory farming has to accompany growth. There are worlds where things could be different. Enlightened High income countries could make aid dependent on no factory farming. Local movements could rise up, passonate about the issue and stopping the factory farming transition. Sure these things are unlikely but far from implausible.
I also think if people really, to maintain integrity here they could consider putting a lot of their money (and perhaps their entire life direction) where their mouth through donating a lot of money towards preventing the transition to factory farming in developing countries, or even moving there and fighting for it themselves.
I’m of the (probably unpopular) school of thought that if any human is willing to basically hurt other worse off humans in order to gain any particular goal (in this case reducing animal suffering), they should be willing to sacrifice a lot themselves in order to achieve that.
Hey Nick, thanks for the thoughtful comment! I’m going to answer your question, but I’ll start with a bunch of caveats :)
On first-order effects on human wellbeing, I think economic growth is obviously incredibly good.
Even when including knock-on effects on farmed animals, wild animals, and the far future, I’d still bet on economic growth being good, with far higher uncertainty. I am very pro economic growth, but like you, I just think the marginal $100m from the debate question would be better spent on animal welfare.
$100m represents 0.02% of the US’s annual philanthropic budget. If we were debating allocating trillions of dollars, I would categorically not go all-in on animal welfare, and would consider it a given that we should use much of that to alleviate global poverty and encourage economic growth.
It seems to me that there are two places where you find the argument alienating. I’ll address them one by one, and then I’ll answer your question.
Fairness
I agree that it’s unfair that people from less fortunate countries have been left behind. But I feel like the argument that “it’s not fair to those in poverty if we donate to alleviating factory farming, which those in developed countries primarily cause”, is similar to saying “it’s not fair to those in poverty if we donate to alleviating climate change, which those in developed countries primarily cause”. We don’t have to go all-in on one cause and not support any other! These are all important problems which deserve some of our resources.
Making Tradeoffs
There was a time when I too thought it would be absurd to allocate money to animals when we could be helping the economically worst-off humans. But for a thought experiment, imagine that for every dollar of world GDP, there’s a person being tortured right now. I think that would in and of itself be sufficient to make economic growth a bad thing—surely adding a dollar to world GDP can’t be worth causing an additional person to be tortured.
So there is some amount of suffering which, if we knew economic growth caused it, would be enough for economic growth to be a bad thing. If we agree on that, then the debate reduces to whether these animal effects could plausibly be enough for that. At first, my gut instinct was a “hell no”. But then I watched Dominion, a documentary I recommend to you, Nick, if you’d like to learn more about the horrors of factory farming.
When I think about the fact that there are trillions of animals, perhaps thousands for each one of us humans, who are suffering horribly in factory farms right now because of us, I feel an enormous moral weight. And our economic growth has indeed contributed to that suffering. It’s contributed to many incredibly good things too, such that I’m not sure about its overall sign. But I now think the burden of this suffering is sufficiently weighty to potentially play a pivotal role in the net effect of economic growth.
So to answer your question, we don’t yet know enough, and it depends on the specifics. But I am willing to say that there’s some amount of animal suffering for which I would be willing to stall economic growth, if we knew all of the relevant details. And I don’t think it’s obvious that current levels of animal suffering today are below that threshold.
I get the idea here, but I still think this is a dangerous and disturbing line of argument. I think there are so many ways that we can reduce animal suffering while still encouraging economic growth which lifts people out of poverty.
I just don’t buy that “economic growth” in particular causes animal suffering—so I don’t agree on that. Its not written in the stars that factory farming has to accompany growth. There are worlds where things could be different. Enlightened High income countries could make aid dependent on no factory farming. Local movements could rise up, passonate about the issue and stopping the factory farming transition. Sure these things are unlikely but far from implausible.
I also think if people really, to maintain integrity here they could consider putting a lot of their money (and perhaps their entire life direction) where their mouth through donating a lot of money towards preventing the transition to factory farming in developing countries, or even moving there and fighting for it themselves.
I’m of the (probably unpopular) school of thought that if any human is willing to basically hurt other worse off humans in order to gain any particular goal (in this case reducing animal suffering), they should be willing to sacrifice a lot themselves in order to achieve that.