Philosophical Vegan Forum

I've noticed that many vegan communities on the web tend to be hostile to market-oriented solutions to end animal exploitation. This is not surprising, considering the political leanings of many vegans. However, I think the current approaches are not effective enough. In a way, what we are doing resembles religious proselytism, and appealing to people's sense of morality to end their deeply ingrained habits is a very difficult task.

Instead, by making vegan alternatives cheaper and easier, I think we can both reduce animal exploitation and ultimately change more minds by making the leap to veganism easier. The reason I feel optimistic about this is that animal exploitation for creating food and consumer products is often a very wasteful and an expensive process; animals are fed and raised for months or years just to make a few meals and a part of clothing. With technical innovation, it will be possible to create cheaper products of equal or better quality, and with marketing, consumers will change their purchase patterns accordingly.

I am interested in talking to others who are excited about current innovations on this front. I created a subreddit with some links to articles and reports that I find interesting (feel free to share more). I'd be happy to talk about this on https://reddit.com/r/VeganCapitalism or here in this thread.

I totally agree that some vegans take it too far by denouncing vegan food brands like Gardein and Boca because they're owned by a meat company (or in Daiya's case, it's owned by "Big Pharma"); I loathe it when political extremists attempt to shoehorn in their politics into veganism in order to claim it for their own; They also may go as far as saying that whoever claims to be vegan but violates a political principle of theirs ISN'T vegan.

People who are vegan because they think it's a stance against capitalism have completely lost the plot in my view; They're often completely ignorant of economics and how market forces work and are engaging in counterproductive behaviour by redefining veganism to suit their ideology.

See this discussion here, where I tackle some guy who claimed to be against 'Plant-based Capitalism.'
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6665&p=48330

Luckily I don't think this makes up the majority of vegans, who are otherwise sane and understand how the market works (even Yourofsky, known for his radical views), but the bad thing is these people are very vocal and visible, giving the impression that vegans are communist and/or anarchist ideologues with certain covenants that must be agreed upon.

I'm not sure which is worse; The complacent, hypocritical "No ethical consumption under capitalism" types who basically give themselves a get out of jail free card because they think consumer behaviour doesn't matter, or these "Plant-Based Capitalism" tools who give Vegans a bad name by making us look dogmatic, and inhibit the promotion of plant-based alternatives in order to spread veganism.

There may not be a problem if someone is vegan because of their views if they're advocating within the Overton window (but context matters), but I do have a problem if it's the other way around (like, you're an anarchist because you're vegan). In fact, if you know you're audience has certain political views, you can use that in your favour in promoting veganism. Like for example, if you're talking about veganism to a libertarian-leaning audience, you can argue that in a society where we agree not to violate each other via aggression, there's no reason not to extend that to animals.

I agree that buying mock meats, outside of activism, is one of the most effective ways of promoting veganism by shifting market forces and displacing real meat. We recently had a short discussion on this:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7377

I generally avoid Reddit debates, since they're often not very productive, and you can't continue them after 6 months, so I think it'd be better to do them here.

Red, thanks for the comment. The first thread you linked to is how I found this forum. Regarding that vegan community on reddit you mentioned, I was told that there was an admin "coup" a few years back, resulting in its current awful state (and with what you correctly call a redefinition of veganism). Unfortunately, having met many vegans offline and online from other communities, I'm not so sure if the dogmatic views there really exist in a vacuum.

Here is an article that mirrors some of my views (sticked it on vegan capitalism subreddit): https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/su ... lism-might

I added a few things to my post, if you haven't seem them.

vegandata wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:52 pm Red, thanks for the comment. The first thread you linked to is how I found this forum. Regarding that vegan community on reddit you mentioned, I was told that there was an admin "coup" a few years back, resulting in its current awful state (and with what you correctly call a redefinition of veganism).

Yeah, r/vegancirclejerk's admin aph0t1c seems to have developed a cult of personality around himself, I've creeped the Discord echo-chamber and most of the members have quite obsequious attitudes towards him to say the least.

It was alarming to see they have 77k members, but luckily I don't think that most of them are subbed to it because it's an anti-capitalist sub, rather they probably think it's just another Vegan Reddit, as evidenced by the fact that I've seen a lot of posts and memes praising Gardein as the best thing ever (and it basically is!).

vegandata wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:52 pmUnfortunately, having met many vegans offline and online from other communities, I'm not so sure if the dogmatic views there really exist in a vacuum.

That's why sane and more rational vegans have to make the sane part of veganism heard, and we just have to be louder and more vocal than them to drown them out. It's unfortunate that we have to do this, but we don't have a choice.

I should add that, once Veganism becomes more mainstream (like maybe 10% of population), people might start to understand that vegans come from all sort of political views and backgrounds, meaning that these people can be of use (maybe) to persuading anti-capitalist types, but since it's still viewed as a tiny niche, we have to prevent that, and criticize them when we can.

A lot of these people are probably very young, and will likely grow out of this extremist anti-capitalist garbage as they age.

vegandata wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 7:52 pm Here is an article that mirrors some of my views (sticked it on vegan capitalism subreddit): https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/su ... lism-might

That seems like an interesting article, I'll be sure to check it out later!