Philosophical Vegan Forum

Does this guy have a point?

He has a good point in his first post.

His second post is a bit weak though. In today's world. I hate how people somehow thing that they are living in dire times. I hear Trump and other politicians talk about bringing America back to what it used to be. When exactly are they referring to? 1956?

Is it common for people to know how to prepare wild fauna for eating? It might be cheaper, but it seems inefficient and only effective for a select group of people.

It probably isn't actually cheaper.

Time is money. A person who spends time cleaning the gun, hunting, preparing the meat, and preserving the meat has added a lot of value through personal work. The opportunity cost is that he or she could have done something else to make money; and possibly more money than was saved by the hunted meat.
This assumes that you have job opportunities available; if you don't, then you have to do whatever you can to save money instead and there is no opportunity cost.

A penny saved IS like a penny earned, but it goes the other way too, and you have to remember opportunity cost if there is one.

Also, it's not free to hunt or store the meat. There are hunting licenses, initial costs and depreciation for the gear, transportation costs, and storage costs including having a big freezer (which can be an energy hog).

It might be cheaper in some cases. But usually, probably not.

Also, consider the costs of health care increasing due to a diet high in animal products.

I find hunting in most societies quite asinine and the reasons given are really ridiculous. Many other societies consider it an anachronism. Bitesizes vegan had covered this issue well IMO:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w34zMpRs4jA

I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert, but I have heard it argued in the past that one major source of "dear abundance" is the lack of an apex predator. although bite sized vegan often go's out of her way to produce good quality videos, that she has clearly slaved over for a suspiciously short amount of time given the rate at which she produces these videos, I find she often leaves out key points of information, including so much as addressing an apex predator. This happens again in her video entitled "Was Hitler A Vegetarian?", she forgets to mention that Hitler converted to vegetarian towards the end of his life. If you want to avoid people calling you bias, and just for the sake of a more complete video, these often argued, rarely addressed points become an important key to arguing your point.

I have not seen many videos on YouTube that address the argument of animal hunting. if anyone else has them, please provide.

Yeah, not sure how I feel about Bitesize Vegan. This video kind of put me off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peb_Ad7gtgA

Also, in her horseback-riding video, she defines veganism in that rigid and dogmatic way that some vegans do.

She also refuses to criticize the crazy ideas of some vegans, under the branch of "the animals don't care about how we feel about Gary Yourofsky's misanthropy" blah blah blah, or something.

Of course, carnists care about what people representing veganism say when they contemplate veganism, and that will impact the animals.

And some of the stuff I've read on the forum about her doesn't make me think that her advocacy is the best form.

Gary Yourofsky in general puts me off. Although he seems to take a stance very similar to most vegans "suffering is the most important thing to avoid" he seems to take the dogmatic approach just as the often sighted Gary Francione. furthermore he is not willing to accept a highly critical view of nutrition especially in regards to things like B12. He is a perfect example of a vegan advocate that would be better off shunting up. These two are a great place to start looking for stupid vegan comments.

garrethdsouza wrote:I find hunting in most societies quite asinine and the reasons given are really ridiculous. Many other societies consider it an anachronism. Bitesizes vegan had covered this issue well IMO:

Although I'd have to fact-check her, the point about some states actually managing deer population to increase it is a pretty good one against some (but only some) of the "we need to hunt" arguments. I know these government organizations make a substantial part of their income from hunting licenses and it's in their interest to maximize the deer population so they can sell more licenses in these areas -- but that's only if demand for hunting exceeds their need to reduce local deer populations in the first place (I'll get into that shortly).

That's not really the argument that was being made here though; it's that hunting is a cheaper way to feed your family, not that's it's necessary to control wild deer populations.

It is of course not necessary, because deer can be fed or injected with birth control (experimental but ongoing -- currently effective but a little expensive), which is a subject that Bitesized wouldn't want to mention, I imagine, because it's "unnatural", and it also contradicts her government conspiracy suggestions by showing that governments are willing to spend money to reduce deer population other than by hunting (whereby they make money).
There are areas where hunting isn't common or allowed (particularly in densely populated human areas where it would be dangerous), and deer populations are actually high and cause automobile accidents (like near cities and busy roads), destroy landscaping, and even spread disease.
In these cases, government has stepped in to limit deer populations in other ways.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/nyreg ... .html?_r=0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_contraceptive

IIRC It's also not unheard of for government to PAY professional hunters to come in and thin wild populations when there aren't enough people who want to buy hunting licenses (or it would be unsafe for some reason).

bobo0100 wrote:I have heard it argued in the past that one major source of "dear abundance" is the lack of an apex predator.

These mostly just take out diseased or injured deer, unlike hunters who prefer healthy ones. I don't think they have an enormous influence on population control (not like human hunting does), since those deer wouldn't necessarily mate successfully anyway.

It's possible it's more than I suspect, and it might be just enough to stabilize populations, but I don't think it would be a good idea because it also wouldn't be safe to have large predators roaming around in human populated areas.

bobo0100 wrote:This happens again in her video entitled "Was Hitler A Vegetarian?", she forgets to mention that Hitler converted to vegetarian towards the end of his life.

Say what?
I've researched this issue substantially, and I have not heard that.

EquALLity wrote:Yeah, not sure how I feel about Bitesize Vegan.

I'm definitely not a fan. Her nutty rant on B-12, advocating pseudoscience, was enough.

Checking up on the evidence again I'm not so convinced that my statement was true. I try to avoid debate on the life of Hitler mainly because it seems to be a jumbled mess of contradictions I'm unable to unravel, his diet is not an exception to this. However I found a related wiki page suggesting that many members of the Nazi party where in favour of animal rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hit ... etarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_we ... zi_Germany