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Americans across the class spectrum consume way more meat than the average country does. It's less about poverty and more about food infrastructure design, which is unsustainably beef-centric in the US. There's nothing inherently cheaper about meat, it's the opposite.

But also I came up with a fucking wall of text and the only way I can get you to engage and hopefully retort with your own arguments is if you read it in good faith and I’m all for that shit.

I am discussing in good faith, but this particular discussion is shitty because you don't seem to be engaging with any ideas that are relevant to the ethics of animal exploitation. You don't seem to have any real knowledge of the ethical critiques vegans make and instead just assume you have enough knowledge to argue authoritatively on the subject and it's aggravating to say the least. The entire point that I've been discussing is about having a consistent ethical justification for animal exploitation, and you seem to be dead set on talking about literally anything else.

I really dislike the argument that meat is a “luxury product” nor any argument that asks the reader to subscribe to some form of stoichal deprivation.

Ok, you're just starting off by assuming that vegans are trying to make people into ascetics and deprive them of enjoying luxuries, for some reason. It's things like this that make having a good faith discussion incredibly difficult, because I have to spend my time correcting your assumptions about veganism instead of just discussing it directly. To put it simply, meat isn't a luxury because people enjoy eating it, it's a luxury because it is both unnecessary and expensive to produce. Luxuries aren't inherently bad, but killing a sentient being purely for luxury consumption is surely wrong.

But more crucially, I think people could all be painfully aware of where meat comes from, and they would still eat meat.

Sure, but this has nothing to do with whether it's morally acceptable to kill animals for pleasure. Most people are ok with consuming products they know are made by slave labor, exploitation, and imperialism, but that doesn't mean that any of those things are somehow moral or acceptable. Should we tolerate slavery because most people are ok with purchasing the products the slaves create?

Look at it like this, people know meat directly causes cancer and people still eat meat.

The vast majority of people who eat meat do not consider it to be a significant cause of cancer. Seriously, try telling people to stop eating meat because it is a carcinogen and see how many people come out of nowhere to tell you that can't be true because eating meat is natural and can't be harmful because evolution. And this is also not relevant to whether slaughtering animals for pleasure is ethical.

Look at it like this, people know meat directly causes cancer and people still eat meat. Like they could die painful deaths because of their meat eating habits and they still fucking do it, in the face of this, why would a moralizing argument about cows nobody has ever met work? Like it’s their own well-being they’re directly threatening. Practically self-harm and they still eat meat.

Yeah, we can't ever talk about ethics because some people will just be unethical anyways. Why say murder is wrong when people will still murder others? Or why say slavery is immoral because there are always people who will purchase products made from slave labor? Maybe we should just stop moralizing about murder and slavery and accept that people will just do what benefits them even if it causes mass suffering and death.

And this is also not relevant to whether slaughtering animals for pleasure is ethical.

So a more interesting question is why people eat meat despite all of it, despite it coming from dead animals and despite it being directly and provably harmful to oneself. And I think that it’s the way meat is presented as an inert product, with all its background and origin erased. And the immediate reaction is that we need to make everyone painfully aware of what meat is made of and by God, PETA has tried, because they understand this very well and it doesn’t work. And it never will because the consumption impulse doesn’t even happen entirely at the conscious level, because performance displays about dead people labeled as meat is fighting against the sea of meat products represented with logos of happy cows in sterile refrigerators.

So we can't say killing animals for pleasure is bad because people are just helplessly manipulated by all-powerful marketing campaigns? Why should we even bother being leftists if capitalist marketing can just always mid control people into being mindless consumers?

And this is also not relevant to whether slaughtering animals for pleasure is ethical.

And I like to think that lefties, of all people, should be immediately aware of commodity fetishism within the context of the meat industry because it could be easily reversed. Capitalism can commodify your own guilt and put a price tag on it. Capitalism can transform your guilt into a premium and sell it back to you as guilt-free meat. Capitalism can simply resort to selling meat alternatives as a premium alternative to meat, because that’s where the profit motive is, and never aim to replace meat at all, which is what I presume the end game of any vegetarian.

Vegetarians are vegans are completely different. It's like saying liberals and communists are the same thing. This basic lack of knowledge of the subject is why having a discussion with you is so frustrating and difficult.

And yet again, this still has no bearing on whether slaughtering animals for pleasure is ethical.

And I mean, I do see an alternative, maybe we should really run with how whitewashed meat is as a commodity, a meat that is only as valuable as it’s own texture and flavor is, that is, the inmediate sensorial experience it provides, and just replace it with a “non-meat” alternative at the same price point. And it’d be a win-win, it’s cheaper, it’s healthier, environmentally friendlier and nobody would be none-the-wiser because nobody really eats meat because they like to see animals suffer, actually. Nobody would really think that much about it, if there was an alternative with no animal sacrifice involved that is experientially the same at the same price. Everybody would take it.

Things like the Impossible Burger and Beyond Beef exist and have existed for a while now and somehow meat eaters still hate them. It turns out the vast majority of meat eaters don't give a shit about animal suffering, unless it's a cute animal they happen to like.

Really, this is just infuriating at this point. You blatantly have no idea about anything related to veganism and animal exploitation and that doesn't stop you from just claiming to know all the answers.

That’s because people who purchase mink coats are really really concerned with them being made of mink. They simply cannot take any alternative because the entire value of a mink coat comes from the fact that it comes from a dead mink. Unlike meat, synthetic fibers that are made to resemble mink fur in just about every way already exist, and the sole reason why rich people still spend significantly more in authentic mink fur is because they really want to know it comes from a dead animal. The origin of a mink coat is not made invisible, it’s ingrained into the commodity itself. It is flaunted for everyone to see. Ersatz mink simply would not do, it needs a written guarantee that several minks died while doing it and possibly even an appellation of origin.

None of this is unique to mink, people do the exact same shit with leather vs synthetic leather, turkey vs tofurkey, beef vs beyond beef, and on and on. Please learn more about the subject before trying to argue it, I'm begging you.

I don’t want to be mean to anyone who chooses to not eat meat though. If they feel like they’re living lives more authentic to their values, more power to them. And I myself am trying to eat less meat (it IS harmful lol), but like I’m also still aware that this is happening under capitalism, that my grocery preferences are a big whoop of nothing, and I’m not going to refuse a nice chicken soup from my grandma any time soon.

Yeah, I'm sure the animals that were tortured and slaughtered really appreciate how chill you are with all of it. I'm sure the chickens feel their lifelong imprisonment and early death is worth it so long as you don't make Grandma feel awkward. I mean, if my Grandma offers me some nice dog soup, I can't refuse that and hurt her feelings, can I?

I don’t think that’s really a difference of intent, but of action. The real difference between a vet putting down a dog and dog being literally beaten to death is absolutely not the intent of the killer, it’s the suffering of the dogs. Even if both people had nothing but good intent for the dog (for example, my uncle beat his pet rabbit to death with a bat to “put it out of its misery” because he wrongly thought it would be instantaneous), the vet would still be the better one for not causing unnecessary suffering.

Whether an animal is slaughtered to make a luxury product or an affordable product is also not a difference of intent, but of action based on profit-seeking. And that still seems like such strange moral reasoning to me. Do people really just think: “Killing minks for fur coats is morally wrong because I can’t afford fur, but killing cows for leather jackets is fine because I can afford leather”? Like, that the suffering of the animals is only morally important if you don’t stand to personally benefit from it? And people are just ok with that, despite generally believing that “what personally benefits me” is absolutely not an acceptable way to assign moral worth? It’s just baffling to me.

selective empathy for animals takes place all the time

Of course it does, as does selective empathy for other humans and even for inanimate objects. I’m not confused by the existence of selective empathy, just that so many people accept it uncritically for the fundamental basis of their ethics. I know it’s super common, I just can’t really wrap my mind around it. Maybe it’s just because I’m neurodivergent? Or something?

living things die, and those living things that survive are sustained by that death and re-circulation of energy/nutrients… it’s not an ethical position to say that animals & plants & fungi all depend in varying degrees on the deaths of one another

Isn’t this basically “the circle of life exists, therefore the exploitation and slaughter of any and all animals is ok because that’s just how the universe be”? It’s just a strange thing to bring up because it’s not actually what people believe, or else they wouldn’t be bothered by minks or dogs being killed. Sure, some people will claim to believe it to justify why it’s ok to eat burgers or make leather jackets but obviously it isn’t a standard they universally apply to animals, let alone to other humans. I’m just confused because it seems so obvious to me that people are applying openly contradictory moral standards and yet it doesn’t seem to bother them and I can’t relate to that.

And of course it’s an inherently ethical decision to say that slaughtering one species of mammal for personal pleasure is wrong but doing it to a different species of mammal is justified. Just because death and consumption exist doesn’t mean they are somehow entirely outside of the scope of ethics.

that doesn’t mean animals can’t feel pain or don’t have personality, but selective empathy is literally the name of the game

But we generally don’t accept selective empathy as a basis for morality for other humans because at it’s core it’s just an arbitrary mental response to certain stimuli, not a reasonable way of recognizing the moral worth of human and non-human animals. I understand that many people do effectively base their morality around their selective empathy, I just don’t understand how they don’t realize it or how it doesn’t deeply bother them on a fundamental level. I just really care about understanding other people and why they think the way they do, but a lot of the time it feels like we’re so fundamentally different that I can’t really get them.

these are inconsistent metrics & emotionally wrought positions, not well-established doctrines

Exactly! This is what I really don’t get. Is this something billions of people are just ok with? Like, they don’t spend their time doing everything they can to continually develop a consistent moral framework because they feel like they must do the Right Thing? Do people just not think about ethics all that much? It’s just incomprehensible to me, I can’t imagine how people can constantly talk about morality and claim to be moral people and then just... not think about it all that much. What’s that like? I just don’t get it.