Sorry, can’t defend it. It’s not a horrible argument, but it’s also not totally well grounded in facts.
For starters, it takes far more land and resources to produce 1 lb of beef than 1 lb of grain, since you have to grow all the grain to feed the cow, and cows don’t turn all of that energy into meat, so if you believe that undeveloped land or other forms of resource conservation have some intrinsic worth, then vegetarianism is preferable.
Secondly, I think the metaphor comparing a factory farm to a cubicle farm is disingenuous. It’s emotionally loaded, since I work in a cubicle and I don’t wish I were dead, and it’s not terribly accurate. I think you could make a different comparison, that is arguably more accurate and compare a factory farm to a concentration camp. In both instances the inhabitants are crowded together with minimal resources as they await their slaughter. (Obviously my example is also emotionally loaded). I think if one were to ask the question should we do things that will encourage the birth of children who will grow up in concentration camps, it’s a little more difficult to come down with the same definitive yes.
Additionally, the article wanders into conjecture in several place. It’s hard to see the statement “most farm animals prefer living to dying” as anything more than a specious claim. No one has any way of knowing a cow’s preference vis-a-vis life or death, probably including the cow. Suicide is a particularly egregious red herring. By what means does a cow in a pen commit suicide? Starving to death? Surely that not comparable to wishing it had never been born...
As for your Soylent Green example, it has even worse problems with trophic losses, because if your farm-raised humans were not strictly vegetarian, you’re losing an even higher percentage of your original energy. If the food babies are raised on an all meat diet you may be getting less than 1% of the energy you would have gotten out of just eating the plants you started the process with. Humans also have a ridiculously long gestation time etc. to function as an efficient food item, although the modest proposal you mention has certainly been suggested before.
Finally, the argument makes me nervous because I think that in general the morality of causing things to be born isn’t well settled. We regard saving the life of an child as definitely a moral good. It isn’t clear that giving birth to a child is also a moral good, or also a comparable moral good. If I had to pick between saving one child and having two babies, I would think that saving the kid’s life was the higher moral calling, even though it will result in less children over all.
Sorry, can’t defend it. It’s not a horrible argument, but it’s also not totally well grounded in facts.
For starters, it takes far more land and resources to produce 1 lb of beef than 1 lb of grain, since you have to grow all the grain to feed the cow, and cows don’t turn all of that energy into meat, so if you believe that undeveloped land or other forms of resource conservation have some intrinsic worth, then vegetarianism is preferable.
Secondly, I think the metaphor comparing a factory farm to a cubicle farm is disingenuous. It’s emotionally loaded, since I work in a cubicle and I don’t wish I were dead, and it’s not terribly accurate. I think you could make a different comparison, that is arguably more accurate and compare a factory farm to a concentration camp. In both instances the inhabitants are crowded together with minimal resources as they await their slaughter. (Obviously my example is also emotionally loaded). I think if one were to ask the question should we do things that will encourage the birth of children who will grow up in concentration camps, it’s a little more difficult to come down with the same definitive yes.
Additionally, the article wanders into conjecture in several place. It’s hard to see the statement “most farm animals prefer living to dying” as anything more than a specious claim. No one has any way of knowing a cow’s preference vis-a-vis life or death, probably including the cow. Suicide is a particularly egregious red herring. By what means does a cow in a pen commit suicide? Starving to death? Surely that not comparable to wishing it had never been born...
As for your Soylent Green example, it has even worse problems with trophic losses, because if your farm-raised humans were not strictly vegetarian, you’re losing an even higher percentage of your original energy. If the food babies are raised on an all meat diet you may be getting less than 1% of the energy you would have gotten out of just eating the plants you started the process with. Humans also have a ridiculously long gestation time etc. to function as an efficient food item, although the modest proposal you mention has certainly been suggested before.
Finally, the argument makes me nervous because I think that in general the morality of causing things to be born isn’t well settled. We regard saving the life of an child as definitely a moral good. It isn’t clear that giving birth to a child is also a moral good, or also a comparable moral good. If I had to pick between saving one child and having two babies, I would think that saving the kid’s life was the higher moral calling, even though it will result in less children over all.
I think you got these flipped around.
Fixed. Thank you.