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By the utilitarian argument, wouldn't the answer just be to stop eating meat and eat whatever we're feeding to livestock (or some other food grown in its place)
by jlamberts 9y ago
By the utilitarian argument, wouldn't the answer just be to stop eating meat and eat whatever we're feeding to livestock (or some other food grown in its place)? Meat is a pretty inefficient source of food compared to large scale agriculture.
- drak0n1c 9y agoTrue, and it helps that India has a large religiously vegetarian population. But that's not everyone. Government policy can only do so much - it can enforce a ban on large farms using antibiotics with some effort and resources, but it's nearly impossible to prevent people from eating meat entirely. Total prohibition of consumer goods doesn't have a good track record.
- sevenfive 9y agoSo what is the trolley problem? People who are starving don't buy meat.
- drak0n1c 9y agoIf there is a supply glut of a staple food, the prices of food in general, even not of that type tends to driven downward - because to some extent foods are interchangeable. Similar to how an overabundance of residential skyscrapers has a downward effect on the price of less attractive homes. There's a lot of history on food shortages and prices that can be found with a cursory level of searching. Each person can only eat so much in a day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
- sevenfive 9y agoThanks for linking me to an article about Supply and Demand. I hadn't thought about that. You are still wrong. The problem is that factory farmed animals usually eat grain which could be used to feed humans. Even if only 10% of their feed is suitable for human consumption, it's still a net loss of food, because meat is an extremely inefficient source of calories.