I think the largest issue with the general concept of moral fungibility is the following:
Moral consequences cannot be reliably predicted—“what if that chicken solved cancer” is an obviously spurious but relevant example.
Moral consequences cannot be reversed—one cannot make chickens out of chicken nuggets, and new chickens are not the same as the old ones.
Morality does not necessarily sum—“two wrongs do not make a right”—I cannot necessarily justify the torture of billions through the ectasy of other billions.
Most people optimize for price, not morality—anyone with the financial capacity and moral freedom to not buy the cheapest or most available eggs is probably already doing so.
The “free-range chicken” scenario does place some nice constraints on this. The slaughter of a single chicken may never be the thing which prevents a medical miracle. Though, at the same time, I very much doubt that the original architects of the poultry market foresaw the long-term consequences of rapid growth, for instance in ecological damage.
But I think the final point is the most significant—you are substantially increasing (doubling!) the number of decisions I need to make when buying an egg. An average person’s default response to any new, non-impactful choice is going to be “no”. Anyone who has a moral system within which they do buy an offset would probably already be seeking to minimise their ecological impact. The issue is not people being unwilling to minimise their impact—it is that minimizing their impact is not the optimal solution. So, this system would likely just preach to the choir and not really substantially impact the amount of damage we’re doing to our world. Anyone who cares enough to alter their decision already is—so if you want to have more people care more, then you need to make those decisions easier, not harder.
I think the largest issue with the general concept of moral fungibility is the following:
Moral consequences cannot be reliably predicted—“what if that chicken solved cancer” is an obviously spurious but relevant example.
Moral consequences cannot be reversed—one cannot make chickens out of chicken nuggets, and new chickens are not the same as the old ones.
Morality does not necessarily sum—“two wrongs do not make a right”—I cannot necessarily justify the torture of billions through the ectasy of other billions.
Most people optimize for price, not morality—anyone with the financial capacity and moral freedom to not buy the cheapest or most available eggs is probably already doing so.
The “free-range chicken” scenario does place some nice constraints on this. The slaughter of a single chicken may never be the thing which prevents a medical miracle. Though, at the same time, I very much doubt that the original architects of the poultry market foresaw the long-term consequences of rapid growth, for instance in ecological damage.
But I think the final point is the most significant—you are substantially increasing (doubling!) the number of decisions I need to make when buying an egg. An average person’s default response to any new, non-impactful choice is going to be “no”. Anyone who has a moral system within which they do buy an offset would probably already be seeking to minimise their ecological impact. The issue is not people being unwilling to minimise their impact—it is that minimizing their impact is not the optimal solution. So, this system would likely just preach to the choir and not really substantially impact the amount of damage we’re doing to our world. Anyone who cares enough to alter their decision already is—so if you want to have more people care more, then you need to make those decisions easier, not harder.