To Be or Not to Be Vegan ?

[brimstoneSalad]

The idea was not to criticize child labor but rather to ask where does deontological Veganism stand as regards issues of human suffering and exploitation?

Deontologists aren't consistent. Some would say it's fine because it's freedom of contract, some would say it's wrong.

Consequentialists will want to look at the consequences and ask if they are good or bad, and that is something easier to assess.

why do i not have the same obligation towards a human starving in a far away land?

There is the distinction that vegans are not saving cows from some natural condition: they're abstaining from harming cows.

With respect to beings that need our help, there are people starving and dying in war, and there are even wild animals who suffer and need our help. The first thing is to focus on reducing our harm footprint, then once we have most people on board with that, we can start reaching out to stop harm from other causes (which are much more difficult -- starvation, for example, is often political).

[VGnizm]

Thank you very much and very good point.

So the basic mechanism is to function passively through abstinence rather than proactively through imposing change. That is probably what gives Veganism a more widespread appeal and makes it less confrontational while remaining very effective; Civil disobedience type of mechanism.

I guess there is hope it will change the world in as much as Ghandi changed the Indian sub-continent

[brimstoneSalad]

So the basic mechanism is to function passively through abstinence rather than proactively through imposing change.

Yes, and I think that's innate in human psychology (or at least socially) in our abhorrence of hypocrisy (or the appearance of it).
Imagine a prominent campaigner for finding a cure for lung cancer who his or herself smokes or even works for a cigarette company and so is part of the problem, causing lung cancer for others (through second hand smoke, or encouraging people to smoke through advertising).

Abstaining from or Prevention of harm from your own actions comes before curing or relieving harms you had no hand in.

[Sapphire Lightning]

Thanks for the excellent feedback and i would like to re-comment on the following

" Sweat shops are unpleasant, but they can be the best jobs available in many areas. "

The idea was not to criticize child labor but rather to ask where does deontological Veganism stand as regards issues of human suffering and exploitation?

If as a Vegan i am empathetic towards a cow that i will never know and i impose upon myself a code of conduct and a sacrifice to accommodate it's sentient interests why do i not have the same obligation towards a human starving in a far away land?

That is probably closer to the initial question.

This is a messy situation. What we are finding is if an area with a lot of sweatshops are pushed to improve working conditions too much, then the companies that run the sweatshops (or the ones that buy from them really) just move to areas where no such regulations exist, and the people who used to have stable jobs are now unemployed, en masse. It is like a game of whack a mole, and I do not think it will really change until resources run very thin and a consumerist market system is no longer viable (atleast not with low cost items being made on other continents) or we find a way to enforce a minimum worker quality of life regulation that is world wide, and isn't done nation by nation.

[brimstoneSalad]

It is like a game of whack a mole, and I do not think it will really change until resources run very thin and a consumerist market system is no longer viable

The sweat shops always move to the poorest and least developed countries, but there are a couple good consequences:

1. They promote government stability (because companies want to do business in countries with stable governments) and

2. They slowly funnel money into those countries and over many years improve the quality of life.

The problem with #2 is that, once quality of life improves, the wages increase, and the companies move on again to a poorer country. Look at how Japan's export economy crashed after WWII.

It is kind of like whack-a-mole, but each time the mole gets whacked, it doesn't pop up again quite as high. Japan turned into a modern country with very high wages, and now China is losing its ability to compete at those low wages, and soon India. The transition can be harsh when companies pull out all at once, but it's not a lost cause (China learned its lesson from watching Japan, and is using government regulation to push a service economy and domestic consumption).
Given a few decades of this, all the poorest countries start getting pulled out of poverty... as long as there's nothing to push them back into it like catastrophic climate change.

At least veganism can help slow climate change, and may soften that blow.

[VGnizm]

I find this optimistic analysis very realistic and i think that if we can find a way to have individual consumer preferences influence the profitability factor we can have a much improved result.

What if the consumer could be made aware of the materials and labor in his 'sweater' like he is aware of the ingredients in his food? In that case he would start making decisions about committing his coveted money or not to that 'sweater'. A human is a sentient being and exploiting him is just like exploiting a cow for it's milk, is it not?

Assuming that giving a person a sweat shop job is better than leaving them jobless is like saying that feeding a cow daily and milking her is better for her than leaving her out in nature where she might suffer drought and lack of pasture. But the issue to consider is not the state of the cow it is rather how i am relating to the state of that cow. So to my mind i can also be Vegan in my attitude towards human beings.

Does it make sense?

[brimstoneSalad]

A human is a sentient being and exploiting him is just like exploiting a cow for it's milk, is it not?

No, we are breeding more cows and putting them in these terrible positions. And the cause of all of that is the consumption of their products.

If we were breeding these workers and enslaving them in these sweat shops... and then killing them when they didn't work hard enough... then surely it would be. But these people already exist, and the terrible conditions they are in are made a little better by having work, and the products we buy do not cause them to increase their populations. To the contrary, gainful employment leads to higher standards of living and less procreation.

Assuming that giving a person a sweat shop job is better than leaving them jobless is like saying that feeding a cow daily and milking her is better for her than leaving her out in nature where she might suffer drought and lack of pasture.

The difference being that it was our fault the cow was there, and the cow has no choice. If we purchased milk, we paid the farmer to breed cows, and there it's true slavery.
We don't pay the factory to breed more poor people. They choose to work there. And in terms of consequence, the opposite happens: when you buy from such a factory, there are fewer poor people and they bring fewer children into the world who live better lives too.

Does that help?

[VGnizm]

Of course it helps

I am still trying to find a fundamental difference between the cow and the human being in this case.

The difference in the amount of suffering between the cow and the sweat shop worker seems to be relative to laws and norms only. We can read about slavery in history to see that humans were subjected to similar treatment in the past. So it would be like saying if we made sure that cows have music and certain comforts and are only pushed but not beaten it would be good for them to be in milk farms. Obviously that does not make sense.

The other difference seems to be that the cow has no choice whereas the worker does. Free choice seems more like a fundamental difference. So exploitation is legitimate as long as there is free choice and mutual consent? Is that why it is different?

Sorry for the too many questions but i like to get things organized in my mind

[brimstoneSalad]

The difference in the amount of suffering between the cow and the sweat shop worker seems to be relative to laws and norms only.

With any measurement of economics, including the economics of well being and suffering, you have to consider opportunity cost.

The cows do not have to be born into suffering at all. We pay to have them bred and brought into a life of suffering if we eat animal products.

While we can do our best to educate people and distribute condoms so they won't have more children than they can afford to take care of, people ultimately exist in a state of suffering without our actions.
The alternative is more suffering without a job, or more options so have slightly less suffering.

So it would be like saying if we made sure that cows have music and certain comforts and are only pushed but not beaten it would be good for them to be in milk farms. Obviously that does not make sense.
The other difference seems to be that the cow has no choice whereas the worker does. Free choice seems more like a fundamental difference. So exploitation is legitimate as long as there is free choice and mutual consent? Is that why it is different?

Choice is part of it, but that's more just to tell us that it's actually a preference.

If you set up a milk farm near a forest, and gave food to wild cows who chose to come in and you milked them, and then they went back to the forest and came back every day to get food in exchange for milk, then that would be a free exchange. You're letting the cow decide what is best for her, and the alternative is life in the forest, or coming into the factory by her own choice. Even if the factory is uncomfortable, she made the choice to come there because what you gave her was worth it and it improved her life over the wilderness.
But she must have that choice regularly, and not be trapped.

That would be more similar.

There aren't a lot of situations where we have these kinds of relationships with animals. I think Dogs being domesticated because their wolf ancestors came to our ancestors of their own free will is about as close as we come. But once we had them, we violated that trust and did some bad things to them (like inbreeding them to make mutant dogs), and now they are not free to return to the wild if they choose that instead.

It's difficult to know for certain when informed consent has been reached. The important thing is that somebody knows the risks and the consequences, and they choose it, and they can quit when they want. It's hard to communicate that to a non-human animal, or even a poorly educated human (like the idea you might have an accident and get hurt).

The biggest challenge to freedom of contract is making sure the other person can read the contract and is not tricked, and is free to leave the contract (and didn't sell his or herself into slavery).

[VGnizm]

Thanks and i find the analogies excellent and very to the point and especially about the wild cows.

I want to look at this from a different angle and try to draw a close analogy between my Vegan ethics towards food sources and towards human resources to remain in the same context.

I avoid animal source foods to reduce the cruelty that the source of the raw material ( the sentient being ) has to suffer for me to have that food.

I do not avoid rice for example even if I know that it was cultivated and harvested by sentient beings under great hardship and unfairness and suffering.

The reason I don’t is supposedly because the human had a choice to work or not. I think it is more that he had the need to accept excessive duress and suffering to survive. In that case my consumption habit is maintaining his unfair job description (contract) valid.

But what if I did like I do for meat and i refuse to consume food that is processed by cruel and unfair conditions? In doing so it is possible to gradually impose production methods that are more life loving or humane.

Provided there is a labeling that can quantify and qualify the human resource ingredient then this would prompt producers to improve worker conditions in return for customers and even if at a higher price. Something like the ‘FairTrade’ label ( https://www.fairtrade.net/ ) is doing for food resources. Obviously this would increase the cost of all sorts of products but it would help correct the skew in the global distribution of wealth on the one hand and also correct the skew in labor sourcing as well since certain labor intensive items can be competitively produced locally in developed economies.

Does such a scenario seem workable?