The material incentive to raise meat for slaughter is that people buy it. You remove that incentive by not buying it, fewer people will raise meat for slaughter.
Joseph Stalin himself described boycotts as a viable means of political activism.
The material incentive to raise meat for slaughter is that people buy it. You remove that incentive by not buying it, fewer people will raise meat for slaughter.
Joseph Stalin himself described boycotts as a viable means of political activism.
I think the only legit argument is consumer side activism works best on a small scale, where the impact is very clear and obvious. As it scales up the effect of your activism becomes obscured since the boycotters becomes a smaller % of the market.
Obviously veganism isn’t antimaterialist, but there has to be more than just consumer side activism when you are on the scale of nationwide/global distribution.
As a form of activism, sure, but if you have millions of people not eating meat, meat production is going to draw less investment and will have a material impact on producers, which will inevitably lower meat production. So just in terms of purely reducing animal suffering, it's going to have a big effect.
The number of people going vegan does not out number the growing markets in developing countries. Major production companies are still gaining customers on a global scale due to globalization.
Obviously go vegan, but expecting real change out of nothing but a dietary choice is unrealistic. Direct action through other means like legislation etc. will be more effective both in the short and long term
On the small scale though I think it is effective. If you get your entire friend group or community to boycott a family restaurant that supplies the meat from their farm you will be having a real effect on those animals.
Direct action like legislation?
The idea that millions of people in a sustained way over decades boycotting a product doesn't cause real change just doesn't make sense. That is the exact kind of anti materialist thinking I was talking about. It's like some kind of doomerist religious thinking.
“AN EFFECT” yes, a large effect on a growing market with billions of customers I don’t believe so. I’m not saying going vegan isn’t a good thing, I’m simply saying that it is not very impactful compared to other direct actions. The global markets are expanding to the billions in the global south, where veganism is not as prominent, therefore these global corporations will not really see an impact profits wise due to prominence of veganism in the global north. Therefore I think we need to focus on more drastic action than simply a diet change