General philosophy message board for Discussion and debate on other philosophical issues not directly related to veganism. Metaphysics, religion, theist vs. atheist debates, politics, general science discussion, etc.
brimstoneSalad wrote:It's fungible, and it's produced in the same way from the same kind of land resources, which are limited. It doesn't reduce demand. It's completely useless.
I'm a little amazed that the journalists and regulators dealing with the issue don't seem to understand that concept.
If you don't understand, you might want to start a thread about this, because it will take a long time to explain.
Wait, so if it is labeled sustainable, it is still produced in a bad way, even if it's not in Indonesia? It's just not as bad, because there is no peat soil involved?
And why does regular palm oil demand increase when people buy sustainable?
Let me generalize it a step further, and it may help you.
There is X amount of tropical land currently available for cultivation.
X amount of land can grow X amount of tropical product.
If demand for tropical products is X, there's no problem.
If demand for all tropical products is greater than X, let's say Y, then rainforest gets burnt down in order to fill the difference between X and Y.
If that doesn't help, then more specifically:
So, let's say you're using "sustainable" Palm oil. You use 1,000 tons of it a year.
That tonnage is grown within the confines of X, the land currently available.
But other people still want palm oil, and are willing to use palm oil from the land produced by burning the rainforest.
They have no particular desire for the rainforest to be burnt to produce it, but they don't really care either way. To them it's 100% fungible, same thing.
The only reason they're burning down the rainforest to produce it, is because YOU, the person using 1,000 tons of palm oil grown on existing land, are already using up all of the other palm oil.
If YOU didn't use that palm oil, it's not like they'd throw it away. They'd sell it to somebody else. Now somebody else has more oil, and doesn't need to go through the trouble of burning down the rainforest to get it.
These people claiming to use "sustainable" palm oil are using palm oil, which is a fungible resource (particularly for the vast majority of people who don't care where it comes from), and contributing to total demand for palm oil.
Just because the palm oil they're using happened to be grown on land that was already cleared, doesn't make a jot of difference. Palm oil is palm oil.
If they didn't use that palm oil, total demand would be lower, and somebody else would use that "sustainable" palm oil and not burn the rain forest to get more.
Here's another case that might bring things closer to home:
Are you familiar with freeganism?
Let's say a true freegan, and a carnist who just happens to like dumpster diving to save on groceries are going dumpstering together.
They happen upon a case of just expired lunch meat.
Now, the carnist has lunch meat on his shopping list, if he doesn't find it here, he'll go buy some in the supermarket (which will contribute to animal cruelty by feeding the economic machine that grinds it out).
The true freegan, on the other hand, would never buy meat.
For the carnist, this lunch meat is fungible with the stuff in the store. Both fill his demand perfectly fine.
For the freegan, they are not fungible; to the freegan, the store meat is unacceptable because the freegan won't accept her actions causing more animal suffering.
brimstoneSalad wrote:
Who should take the meat? And why?
If the carnist takes it, the freegan will still just buy vegan things, and there won't be any further suffering.
If the freegan takes it, however, the carnist will buy it at the supermarket and cause animal suffering and death.
brimstoneSalad wrote:
Who should take the meat? And why?
If the carnist takes it, the freegan will still just buy vegan things, and there won't be any further suffering.
If the freegan takes it, however, the carnist will buy it at the supermarket and cause animal suffering and death.
So, the carnist, obviously.
Thanks, I get it now!
Right, which makes that meat not actually freegan*, because the alternative would not be it going to waste, since somebody else wants it and it the alternative is it displacing a harmful process.
And, it makes "sustainable" palm oil a complete sham, that isn't really sustainable at all -- as long as there are people who still want to buy palm oil grown on current rainforest land.
Did you see the episode of VICE?
Here's a sneak peek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6pDW3HWYs4
The whole episode will probably be available eventually, VICE seems to upload a lot of their old episodes to youtube. It would be nice if they'd do it sooner rather than later though.
Although they kind of failed to get the point that sustainable palm oil is useless in principle, they at least did get the point that the system is corrupt and there's no means of really tracking which palm oil is or isn't from these lands, like with diamonds (they just don't understand that it doesn't matter).
Is the same the case for free range vs. factory farmed meat? Why or why not?
*This is why most people should NOT be freegan, because people don't understand economics. Most people who call themselves freegans aren't practicing a genuinely freegan lifestyle due to their lack of the knowledge it takes to put it into practice.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Did you see the episode of VICE?
Yeah, it was on demand for free. I'm all caught up now, except for the episode that aired last night.
brimstoneSalad wrote:
Is the same the case for free range vs. factory farmed meat? Why or why not?
Well, buying any free range would increase demand for it, and leaving out the environmental concerns (since we're just talking about the suffering of farm animals), it's not like there's a limit to the free range farms.
So it seems to me that it's still the lesser of the two evils to buy free range meat over regular factory farmed meat.
EquALLity wrote:
So it seems to me that it's still the lesser of the two evils to buy free range meat over regular factory farmed meat.
Right!
Because at this time, factory farm output can be freely converted into free range; there's no immediate limit on our ability to produce, or on the supply of free ranged meat.
And there's no reason that one consumer buying free ranged would displace that resource and force other consumers who would have bought free ranged to buy factory farmed instead.
If another consumer wants to buy free ranged, farmers produce less factory farmed meat and more free ranged.
Now, if we ran out of land for free ranged meat, so we only had the ability to produce X free ranged meat in the world (which could be true in the future, but isn't true yet), with demand exceeding supply and the consumers demanding in excess of supply accepting factory farmed meat instead, then it would be the same case as palm oil and it wouldn't matter.
Of course, it's better to not eat any meat. But it [free ranged meat] remains the (slightly) lesser of two evils.
Unlike palm oil, where "sustainable" palm oil might even be MORE evil, because it increases perceived market price for palm oil, and the very word "sustainable" may increase demand where people would otherwise have cut back.
brimstoneSalad wrote:
Of course, it's better to not eat any meat. But it [free ranged meat] remains the (slightly) lesser of two evils.
In the documentary cowspiracy they had shown how free range pasture fed sourced meat had way more environmental damage in terms of the amount of land required and greenhouse gases so it isn't necessarily the lesser of the two evils at least environmentally.
EquALLity wrote:Anyone know if vending machine stuff is fungible or not?
What do you mean?
If you buy something from a vending machine, would it register as just a certain type of food or something, and not necessarily the specific vegan one that you bought?
Probably not, but I wanted to confirm that, because vending machine stuff seems to change often, and when you put in a number, the name of the product corresponding to it doesn't show up or anything.
Also, I remember looking at some nutrition information about products in a vending machine once (on the vending machine), but it was really outdated.
