Promoting vegetarianism or veganism is a lousy way to reduce animal cruelty

[Stoid]

@Carmady

Animals should not exist in this world. They only live to feel pain. They are bad for the environment. Cows, for example. We shouldn’t kill cows for food, we should wipe them all out for being polluters. We can make exceptions for some animals like bees, but for the most part the world would be better off without them.

FTR, I’m assuming this is facetious.

[Stoid]

And so my point is proved, I am very happy to say!
This is excellent news!!

[gamerunknown]

@Stoid

First, you will never, ever, ever, ever EVER succeed in persuading everyone to give up eating animal products. So your quest is hopeless to begin with.

Begging the question. You’ve also conflated promoting vegetarianism with convincing everyone to be a vegetarian.

@Stoid

Second, even if you did, in some fantasy universe, acheive that goal, the only thing you would stop is the existence of the animals that people used to eat, since no one would be breeding them for food. We would not have a planet full of happy cows and chickens leading free lives.

Disingenuous. The purpose of rearing animals in current farms is not to find the most efficient method of inducing pleasure for as many animals as possible. In fact, such a scenario would only be possible in a vegan fantasy universe.

@Stoid

What they DO care very much about is pleasing their actual consumers.

Wrong. They respond to market forces only in order to make money for their shareholders. If that involves defrauding the consumers of their product, that’s what they’ll do. You were under the misapprehension that “free range beef” was a concept, which indicates that they’re successful.

@Stoid

I find it inhumane because most human beings have an advanced cognitive ability to actively desire self-determination and when they are deprived of it it is psychologically painful.

Not necessarily, there were happy slaves. The arguments from happy slaves and happy slave-owners gave rise to excellent philosophical rebuttals from the Romantics. One of the arguments was the ontological argument for slavery: that the slaves were in America for the purpose of being raised. If left to their own devices or in Africa, they’d no doubt have a worse quality of life. They sacrificed their liberty for security.

Also, you seem to acknowledge the future pleasure principle. If fewer animals are bred, then fewer animals will have the pleasure of living. However, executing an animal (cattle are usually killed at age two) also deprives them of future pleasure. If vegetarianism ever caught on (being slightly facetious here), then we could have a discussion at how best to create the maximum future pleasure for all potential animals on Earth. Featuring heavily would be reducing human suffering: it seems silly to talk about there being ten million fewer pigs in factory farms next year when there are six million people starving to death each year.