Gae Bolga Wrote:There's no need to defend the morality of your food purchases with me, lol.  

You didn't respond to my argument. You said that rich people in Africa being free to export food to people in other countries is to be blamed for poorer people not being able to afford buying food, right? I said that, by that logic, the fact that Apple is free to export its computers to people in other countries is somehow to be blamed for poor people in America not being able to afford computers.
By importing food from poorer countries, we are giving money to rich people there, and hopefully some of that money will trickle down to the poor people there.

Gae Bolga Wrote:We've got guys trying goats and sheep though.

Well, that's obviously a bad idea, since goats and sheep take about 5 times as much food to grow as fast as cows do. That's the reason their milk is so expensive.

Gae Bolga Wrote:If their purchasing power is greater than some hungry persons, then it actually wouldn't matter whether or not a person could eat whatever they're feeding their livestock.  That's the free market for you.  

I didn't say the free market was perfect. Capitalism is full of flaws. But government restricting economic freedoms generally leads to even worse results.
Even so, I am not sure whether blaming the free market here is fair, since animal agriculture, especially the milk industry, tends to be heavily subsidized.

Gae Bolga Wrote:I can tell you with certainty that fish feel pain. Anesthetizing them reduces that..but, more importantly, it makes them just that much easier to handle.  That saves you time, and time is money.  

OK, let's see if we can agree on a few things:
1. If you don't care to study the issues, you shouldn't claim neuroscientists have been wrong for centuries that beheading is painless, you shouldn't claim that my biology textbook is wrong in saying that CO2 poisoning is exceptionally painful, and you shouldn't contradict most of the neuroscientists and ethologists who have studied this issue by claiming that fish feel pain.
2. If you are proposing some authoritarian plan that involves exploiting the animals, even if that's just increasing the subsidies, you need to consider the interests of both humans and those animals. If you don't, you are guilty of speciesism.
3. The quality of life matters more than the quantity of it.

Yes, if electronics manufacturers were making their products in the us but not selling them on the domestic market, in favor of a better market than the us, that would contribute to people in the us not having electronics. Moot point, since they're not, and everyone exports to the us. This isn't some moral condemnation you have to defend yourself or our current system from..and if it were, invoking trickle down garbage doesn't accomplish that.

Marketing an expensive product is precisely the idea they have.

All food safety and ethics laws are restrictions of economic freedom. It hardly seems to be the case that getting rid of them would produce worse results. Moot point, again, though, since people with no purchasing power have no economic freedom. You're stuck in all of these pages defending your irrelevant political commitments. It's not blame that I'm describing to you. I don't have a problem with the free market or export production. That much should be obvious, what with me being an american operating a business. It's simply a fact that this particular aspect of the free market is a main contributor to global hunger. Like I said, no one is going to convince us to stop eating, or to stop buying food. Similarly, no one is going to convince those exporters to stop making more money. So, we either have to turn a larger percentage of those hungry people into exporters, and help them to market a product with better margins...or we have to help them ramp up production for domestic consumption. These things would grant them purchasing power...aka..."economic freedom".

On to issues of agreement.

1. Not worth it. You'll insist to the end of days that what you have wrong is true..true...true..then bitch about some inane political fantasy as though it established that non-point. All I can tell you is that making food is not politics, and that there are realities of production that are true under any system of government or market organization, and regardless of whatever ideological commitments about any given thing that you may hold. It's impressive to me that your argument for the ethical treatment of livestock depends on arguing against humane practices and against the idea that the animal feels pain.

2. I'm not, so....guess that ones handled. I promote free market solutions tailored to low income people who are interested in ag. This has crossover for people in developing countries..and, some of our projects are directly taken from successful models in developing countries.

3. I suppose that would probably depend on whether or not your life was the quantity about to be reduced in favor of someone else's quality. Ironically, livestock find themselves in this position..so it's probably for the best that they don't have the ability to contemplate the issues that face them, lol.

Gae Bolga Wrote:Moot point, since they're not, and everyone exports to the us.

The US is one of the biggest experter of electronic products in general. Most of the CPUs these days are produced by ARM in the US.
I don't really understand what you mean by this.
Do you think that it's wrong for Croatians to buy ZTE or Huawei phones, because they are buying it from a country where many people don't have mobile phones?

Gae Bolga Wrote:invoking trickle down garbage doesn't accomplish that.

Why would it be garbage? From what I know, it appears that trickle down economics is great in theory, it's just never been implemented properly.

Gae Bolga Wrote:It hardly seems to be the case that getting rid of them would produce worse results.

And what do you think about what Milton Friedman said that safety regulations don't make sense because, in order for them to make sense, you need to put a price to human life? What expense of regulation is acceptable? Is it ethical for a government to impose a safety regulation that would cost a business 50$? If so, is it ethical for a government to impose a safety regulation that would cost a business 1'000'000$? And if your answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second is no, then what you are implying is that human life is worth something between 50$ and 1'000'000$.

Gae Bolga Wrote:Moot point, again, though, since people with no purchasing power have no economic freedom.

That's not what "economic freedom" means. It means that the government isn't intervening in the economy. "Freedom to travel" doesn't mean somebody should give you a car.

Gae Bolga Wrote:You're stuck in all of these pages defending your irrelevant political commitments.

If you believe that the government has the right to take away our freedoms because it thinks the consequences would be positive, chances are, you also believe that we have the right to exploit the animals without their consent if we think the consequences would be positive.
But you are right, nobody here tried to address the points made in the Opening Post, other than doing nonsense ad-hominem attacks on one of the most respected nutritionists these days. I mean, like, linking Michael Greger to anti-GMO movement when he literally said "The bottom-line is that there is no direct human data suggesting harm from eating GMOs.". What could be more ridiculous than that?

Gae Bolga Wrote:I don't have a problem with the free market or export production. That much should be obvious, what with me being an american operating a business. It's simply a fact that this particular aspect of the free market is a main contributor to global hunger.

Then make up your mind! Is the free market to be blamed for global hunger, or is it a good thing that has brought countless people out of poverty? What you are basically saying is "The suffering of the farmed animals doesn't matter because it's a result of the free market.", but you are also saying that free market is to blame for global hunger, which is, of course, a bad thing which matters. Sorry, but that's just incoherent, and built on dubious or demonstrably false premises.

Gae Bolga Wrote:I promote free market solutions tailored to low income people who are interested in ag.

Then you are not speaking clearly here.

Gae Bolga Wrote:I suppose that would probably depend on whether or not your life was the quantity about to be reduced in favor of someone else's quality. Ironically, livestock find themselves in this position..so it's probably for the best that they don't have the ability to contemplate the issues that face them, lol.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean here. What I meant is that, for example, abortion isn't wrong if the child is found to have an illness that would prevent him or her from leading a happy life. Similarly, we should not breed more farmed animals into existence, if we have good reasons to think they will lead a miserable life.

I keep telling you that these statements of fact about what contributes to global hunger aren't a moral condemnation you have to defend yourself or a political or economic system from, and you keep trying to have that argument.

Now I see that we're on to abortion. Tighten up nutter, I'm only discussing the realities of food production and how they create a circumstance where people starve. What I do, is test alternatives to the conventional model that could allow more people to plug in to a system that was not built for them, or with them in mind, a system that..for all of it's benefits, does not benefit them.

Moving the goalposts, claiming meat eaters are immoral, making up facts about animal cruel slaying...

It almost look like veganism is the newest religion. Kids these days don't know what to do with their own lives.:grumpy:

Meanwhile, someone had to feed them.

(November 6, 2019 at 1:37 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Meanwhile, someone had to feed them.

I have some 400 square meters of land that I don't have time to put some produce growing, sadly. I thought of buying a goat to clean the long grass that I have to cut down from time to time.

Mabe I can offer it to vegans. "Free food" seems good.

Well...straight up...if you want to do something different....your daughters and my daughters will be friends. 400 sq m, though, isn't enough to pull me out of my entrenchment. Maybe I have better ideas for that long grass...but...you're on your own.

I focus on issues here.

(November 6, 2019 at 9:31 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: Sorry, I don't understand what you mean here. What I meant is that, for example, abortion isn't wrong if the child is found to have an illness that would prevent him or her from leading a happy life. Similarly, we should not breed more farmed animals into existence, if we have good reasons to think they will lead a miserable life.

How in the name of any hell you care to mention did you manage to fold abortion into this? Can you justify that nutty non-sequitur?

(November 6, 2019 at 9:46 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: I keep telling you that these statements of fact about what contributes to global hunger aren't a moral condemnation you have to defend yourself or a political or economic system from, and you keep trying to have that argument.

Now I see that we're on to abortion. Tighten up nutter, I'm only discussing the realities of food production and how they create a circumstance where people starve. What I do, is test alternatives to the conventional model that could allow more people to plug in to a system that was not built for them, or with them in mind, a system that..for all of it's benefits, does not benefit them.

You are speaking very unclearly here, and are making it hard to argue with you by that.
And I am not really interested in the idea that moving the animal agriculture a step backwards can somehow solve the global poverty.

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(November 6, 2019 at 1:34 pm)LastPoet Wrote: Moving the goalposts, claiming meat eaters are immoral, making up facts about animal cruel slaying...

It almost look like veganism is the newest religion. Kids these days don't know what to do with their own lives.:grumpy:

Who is really switching the goalposts here? You guys here haven't provided any response to the points made in the Opening Post... other than making nonsensible ad-hominem attacks on one of the most respected nutritionists these days.
And I don't think the authors of my biology textbook were vegans when they wrote that naked mole rats don't have functioning nociceptors because they live in an environment where their blood always has a lot of CO2 in it and their nociceptors would fire constantly and be useless, because CO2 in blood causes nociceptors to fire. All what you've done in response to that is make scientifically absolutely ridiculous claims that "nociceptors aren't a thing" and that CO2 in blood doesn't kill.

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(November 6, 2019 at 6:22 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote:

(November 6, 2019 at 9:31 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: Sorry, I don't understand what you mean here. What I meant is that, for example, abortion isn't wrong if the child is found to have an illness that would prevent him or her from leading a happy life. Similarly, we should not breed more farmed animals into existence, if we have good reasons to think they will lead a miserable life.

How in the name of any hell you care to mention did you manage to fold abortion into this? Can you justify that nutty non-sequitur?

If you read it carefully, I believe it's clear what I meant. Saying "Well, farmed animals today can't survive on their own, so, if we don't eat meat, they won't live at all, and it's better to have a miserable life than not to live at all." is the same logic as the anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia nonsense is.