Keeping the public on side is actually quite important for getting things done.
Backlash against the thing youâre trying to promote blows out costs, making the plan less cost-effective
50% of people are women so I think womenâs suffrage had a pretty strong support base before it was made law. Similar story for your other examples I think: build support, then laws. Abolition seems like an example of where a counter-movement blew out the cost of change a lot.
Seems to me that the effectiveness costs of public support are already baked into existing effectiveness estimates. It also seems to me that the fact that animal welfare is comparatively unpopular means that it is more neglected and therefore has more low-hanging fruit.
I donât think any of the popularity-based arguments really support the claim that there is going to be a large backlash that has not yet manifested. I agree that a world where we knew everyone would be 100 percent behind the idea of improving welfare but for some reason hadnât made it happen out of inertia would make animal welfare interventions even more cost effective. However, I donât think this means that we should favor global health and development over animal welfare any more than the possibility that people might resent helping the poor people in poor countries over poor people in our own countries means we should focus more on helping the domestic poor out of fear of backlash.
You canât bake-in something as unpredictable as how movements and counter-movements evolve and interact.
We need to be more open to uncertainty and consider unexpected ways in which our best laid plans may go astray. Animal Welfare is rife with these uncertainties.
Iâm not super knowledgeable about womenâs suffrage, but
It was not universally supported by women (See e.g. here; I couldnât quickly find stats but Iâd be interested).
Surely the relevant support base in this case is those who had political power, and the whole point is that women didnât. So â50% supportâ seems misleading in that sense.
I could similarly say â>99.999% of animals are nonhumans, so nonhuman animal welfare has an extremely large support base.â But thatâs not the relevant support base for the discussion at hand.
I didnât say universal or 50% support. Many women were against, many men were for. My point is that it had a stronger support base than shrimp welfare before we tried to regulate it.
The idea that you can go regulating without considering public support/âresistance is silly
Sorry youâre right, you didnât say thisâI misread that part of your comment.
I still think your framing misses something important: the logic â50% of people are women so I think womenâs suffrage had a pretty strong support baseâ applies at all points in time, so it doesnât explain why suffrage was so unpopular for so long. Or to put it another way, for some reason the popularity and political influence of the suffrage movement increased dramatically without the percentage of women increasing, so Iâm not sure the percentage of people who are women is relevant in the way youâre implying.
The idea that you can go regulating without considering public support/âresistance is silly
On the other hand I didnât say this! The degree of public support is certainly relevant. But Iâm not sure what your practical takeaway or recommendation is in the case of an unpopular movement.
For example you point out abolition as an example where resistance caused massive additional costs (including the Civil War in the US). I could see points 1, 3, 7, and possibly 8 all being part of a âWays I see the Quaker shift to abolitionism backfiringâ post. They could indeed be fair points that Quakers /â other abolitionists should have considered, in some wayâbut Iâm not sure what that post would have actually wanted abolitionists to do differently, and Iâm not sure what your post wants EAs to do differently.
Maybe you just intend to be pointing out possible problems, without concluding one way or another whether the GH â AW shift is overall good or bad. But I get a strong sense from reading it that you think itâs overall bad, and if thatâs the case I donât know what the practical upshots are.
Keeping the public on side is actually quite important for getting things done.
Backlash against the thing youâre trying to promote blows out costs, making the plan less cost-effective
50% of people are women so I think womenâs suffrage had a pretty strong support base before it was made law. Similar story for your other examples I think: build support, then laws. Abolition seems like an example of where a counter-movement blew out the cost of change a lot.
Seems to me that the effectiveness costs of public support are already baked into existing effectiveness estimates. It also seems to me that the fact that animal welfare is comparatively unpopular means that it is more neglected and therefore has more low-hanging fruit.
I donât think any of the popularity-based arguments really support the claim that there is going to be a large backlash that has not yet manifested. I agree that a world where we knew everyone would be 100 percent behind the idea of improving welfare but for some reason hadnât made it happen out of inertia would make animal welfare interventions even more cost effective. However, I donât think this means that we should favor global health and development over animal welfare any more than the possibility that people might resent helping the poor people in poor countries over poor people in our own countries means we should focus more on helping the domestic poor out of fear of backlash.
You canât bake-in something as unpredictable as how movements and counter-movements evolve and interact.
We need to be more open to uncertainty and consider unexpected ways in which our best laid plans may go astray. Animal Welfare is rife with these uncertainties.
Iâm not super knowledgeable about womenâs suffrage, but
It was not universally supported by women (See e.g. here; I couldnât quickly find stats but Iâd be interested).
Surely the relevant support base in this case is those who had political power, and the whole point is that women didnât. So â50% supportâ seems misleading in that sense.
I could similarly say â>99.999% of animals are nonhumans, so nonhuman animal welfare has an extremely large support base.â But thatâs not the relevant support base for the discussion at hand.
I didnât say universal or 50% support. Many women were against, many men were for. My point is that it had a stronger support base than shrimp welfare before we tried to regulate it.
The idea that you can go regulating without considering public support/âresistance is silly
Sorry youâre right, you didnât say thisâI misread that part of your comment.
I still think your framing misses something important: the logic â50% of people are women so I think womenâs suffrage had a pretty strong support baseâ applies at all points in time, so it doesnât explain why suffrage was so unpopular for so long. Or to put it another way, for some reason the popularity and political influence of the suffrage movement increased dramatically without the percentage of women increasing, so Iâm not sure the percentage of people who are women is relevant in the way youâre implying.
On the other hand I didnât say this! The degree of public support is certainly relevant. But Iâm not sure what your practical takeaway or recommendation is in the case of an unpopular movement.
For example you point out abolition as an example where resistance caused massive additional costs (including the Civil War in the US). I could see points 1, 3, 7, and possibly 8 all being part of a âWays I see the Quaker shift to abolitionism backfiringâ post. They could indeed be fair points that Quakers /â other abolitionists should have considered, in some wayâbut Iâm not sure what that post would have actually wanted abolitionists to do differently, and Iâm not sure what your post wants EAs to do differently.
Maybe you just intend to be pointing out possible problems, without concluding one way or another whether the GH â AW shift is overall good or bad. But I get a strong sense from reading it that you think itâs overall bad, and if thatâs the case I donât know what the practical upshots are.