So you pay the guy who pays the guy who kills the animals and that makes it fine? That's the rule? There needs to be 2 degrees of separation? The animal is being killed because you created the demand. The guy wouldn't have paid the guy if you weren't going to pay him.
Edit: oh you're a troll. And a reasonably funny troll to tbh.
Edit Edit: I'm not correcting "to tbh" because it's really funny
you pay the guy who pays the guy who kills the animals
most people don't do that, either. meat packers will get it from the abattoirs, who will then sell it to suppliers, and there might be two or three suppliers before anyone sells it to a grocer or restaurant.
the animal isn't killed because i create demand, except for meanings of "cause" that don't require a causal relationship.
I don't mean it as an ad hominem. I just thought that argument was so silly you must be joking. Your argument makes hiring hitmen permissible so long as there's at least one middle man. Unless I've misinterpreted you.
they can't know that. knowledge is a justified true belief. since the future has not happened, it has no truth value, and, as such, future knowledge is impossible. they do not know whether i will purchase meat in the future. qed
So hypothetically - if everyone in the world stopped buying and eating meat tomorrow you are of the opinion that the animal ag industry will continue killing animals well into the future without any income or incentive to do so?
An event in the present (purchasing animal products) will financially support and incentivise people to kill animals in the future.
if everyone in the world stopped buying and eating meat tomorrow you are of the opinion that the animal ag industry will continue killing animals well into the future without any income or incentive to do so
that's a strawman. it is not what i said at all. i'm talking about causation and linear time.
But people wanting to consume animal products is what causes people to kill them. It doesn't matter if your present want didn't cause the death of whatever animal you're eating, it will cause the death of the next one.
But people wanting to consume animal products is what causes people to kill them.
no, it's not. the only thing that can be said to cause the actions of a free agent is their own will. you are denying the free will of the people in the industry, but insisting that i be responsible for their actions. if they don't have free will, then what makes you think i do?
Things are more complex than that, though. Imagine if I need some wood and I come across someone who has an axe. The man has no incentive to cut a tree down. I say to him I will give him three ponies to cut the tree down for me and he agrees. Who has caused the tree to be cut down? Everyone has free will in this situation and I would argue both parties are responsible and share the blame. If either party were removed from the equation the tree would stay standing.
this just isn't analogous to how the system works, anyway. the financiers are operating with (calculated) risk, and willing to pay for meat from suppliers without a contract in place to sell it. to make this fit your analogy, the woodsman would need to just chop up trees and hope you come buy some wood.
my understanding of linear time, causation, and human behavior has led me to my current position. if you think you know something i don't, i'd love to hear it.
That's not how hypotheticals work. It's just meant to expose the flaw in your logic. In this case you're arguing that demand for a product is not related to supply. That when dvds came out and nobody wanted a vhs player anymore everyone kept making vhs players anyway because 'that's not causal'.
i also explained that free agent's actions can only be said to be caused by their own will. that means that "demand" can never cause "supply" (nor, truly, the other way around), since both those terms actually reflect the willful actions of free agents.