Thank you for being open minded. In terms of factory farming and capitalism, can I ask you if you don’t think that factory farming came as a result of capitalism? And wether countries with less developed capitalist systems (if you even can call them capitalists) have less animal suffering?
I can certainly see a story where capitalism was the genesis and remains the driver of factory farming. But the more fundamental problem is that most people don’t see animals as morally important, and that applies across nearly all economic systems.
There’s a complicating factor here, which is that capitalism makes countries rich, and rich people want to eat more meat, so it’s possible that that is most of the driver here. One could respond to that that in that case making countries rich is bad on net, but I think any path to a good world is going to involve making everyone in the world a lot richer, so if factory farming is near-inevitable in rich countries (in the absence of good technological alternatives) then I’m reluctant to blame capitalism, as opposed to humans in general.
I would be interested in seeing data on factory farming in less capitalist countries (e.g. the Soviet Union), compared to more free-market countries of similar wealth (if one can find any).
I might give you climate change – though I would note that e.g. communist states also have very bad environmental records (see e.g. the Aral Sea), so there is still some work to be done to strengthen that case.
I don’t agree with global poverty – I currently think capitalism has historically been, and will continue to be, one of the most important forces bringing people out of poverty.
People say a lot of silly things regarding the connection between capitalism and poverty. There might be a more sensible case for a link between the two, but I haven’t heard it yet.