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.
It's not irrelevant because it has nothing to do with food systems. You said that if you were responsible for a dead animal then an abattoir worker has no free will. I was exclusively explaining the concept of shared responsibility, wherein two parties can be responsible for something while maintaining free will.
but because of how disanalogous your explanation is to the facts on the ground, your explanation is moot. you might as well have explained the housing market. one has nothing to do with the other.
What are you even on about? You tried to deny shared responsibility, I explained the concept. Shared responsibility applies to this discussion. It's a metaphor, if I used the housing market to explain the concept it would have been just as valid and applicable.
o yeah, I forgot, the animal ag industry would still inexplicably exist even if no one bought its products. I guess you can just continue consuming them guilt free since it was gonna happen anyway.