If anyone wants to actually make this argument, I’m willing to hear it. But let’s be clear: the pretend-argument in the post is very disconnected from the reality of how welfare improvements actually happen (which is fine, given that it’s a parody!). To give just one example, it’s not the case that welfare studies happen ‘in the lab’ - they do happen on farms, but they are not typically conducted by the farmers. And if they were conducted by the farmers, people probably wouldn’t trust the studies.
If anyone wants to actually make this argument, I’m willing to hear it. But let’s be clear: the pretend-argument in the post is very disconnected from the reality of how welfare improvements actually happen (which is fine, given that it’s a parody!). To give just one example, it’s not the case that welfare studies happen ‘in the lab’ - they do happen on farms, but they are not typically conducted by the farmers. And if they were conducted by the farmers, people probably wouldn’t trust the studies.