your analogy is disanalagous to how people decide whether to buy meat entirely. even in the first case, though, of course their not responsible. the others, it's not clear to me whether there is any other actual conspiracy. regardless, no such conspiracy exists in the grocery store.
The point of the the thought experiment is to allow you to view the situations without the biases you already have, as most people have been in a butcher shop which is the first situation I described, and most people have had food delivered to them from far away which is the second situation I described. Since those are normal things, your initial thought would likely be that they are normal and not murder.
If you replace it with humans, I would argue that both situations would be murder for person C because there is no way they could reasonably assume they could get human meat without a person being killed and it taken from them.
In other words there is no eating a cooked dead chicken carcass without killing a chicken.
If you replace it with humans, I would argue that both situations would be murder for person C because there is no way they could reasonably assume they could get human meat without a person being killed and it taken from them.
there was some ambiguity in how you phrased it whether the person buying even knew it was human meat. regardless, they are not responsible for the actions of other people in the past.
I really wish you could expand on that last bit "not responsible for actions of those in the past".
To me it sounds like you are saying it goes like this:
Person kills animal and sends meat to store.
Another person goes to store and buys it.
And so since its in the past and a different person, person 2 shouldnt feel like they caused what person 1 did.
The reason it doesnt make sense to me is I see it like this:
Producer kills animal and sends meat to store.
Purchaser goes to store and buys it.
Producer reviews how many sold and sets that as their quota, proceeds to kill that many animals for sale, plus some extra in case of growth or supply chain issues, sends out to store.
Purchaser goes to store and buys it
Repeat steps 3 and 4.
Since the purchaser has an effect on the seller due to the unique relationship they have, if the purchaser feels there is a moral imperative to protect animals then they should come to the conclusion that if they stop buying meat then that will remove the incentive to kill animals that they are adding into the relationship.
It won't stop all animals being killed, but it will result in less animals being killed had I chosen to continue eating meat.
the producer can choose based on any criteria they want. they choose the criteria as well as the action. all the responsibility for the actions of the producer lie with the producer.
If you walk onto a farm and point out a pig and say, kill that one I want to eat it, and then the farmer kills it and gives it to you for money, you still have 0 responsibility for what happened? If noone bought that pig it wouldnt have died, no?
What if you own the farm and have a farmhand kill it for you, and your chef cook it for you, and your maid serve it to you? Is that 0 responsibility?
f you walk onto a farm and point out a pig and say, kill that one I want to eat it, and then the farmer kills it and gives it to you for money, you still have 0 responsibility for what happened
this is a conspiracy and completely disanalogous with how most people buy meat most of the time
Yes but step 2 can cause step 3 can't it? If it were a single transaction that would work but its not. Companies dont open up a limited run and then shutdown immediately. They continue on until you break your relationship with them.
You have your statistics and I have mine. I prefer percentages as I'm mostly concerned with whether its more or less likely the average person is vegan. Since that number goes up still, I'm fine with it. Progress is progress regardless of speed.