I’ve had a certain debate a few times where you might say we argue over the “semantics” of the meat industry.
I am what you would call a vegetarian. While vegetarians won’t eat things that caused harm to produce, a vegan won’t eat anything having to do with an animal. A lot of those who would fall under the latter category hate us because they say anything that remotely resembles someone enjoying an animal product is supporting the meat industry which then kills animals, which means merely eating an animal product makes someone a murderer.
Meanwhile, there’s this concept many call piracy. It’s the idea that, as the meme proverbially puts it, “you can download a car”. The idea here, which I say in the way I do because there’s still an ongoing debate about it, is that it affects nobody. But then there’s the whole industry thing I mentioned. People on the other side of the debate often say “well what about the industry”. I’m not sure where on the scale in this topic you might put me, but I feel like there’s a glaring contradiction here. When it comes to animals, people think of the industry, but otherwise that’s not a factor.
My question is… why?
While vegetarians won’t eat things that caused harm to produce
This is nonsense, since there is a lot of animal harm involved in the production of eggs and milk.
And I don’t see the contradiction you are seeing. Your piracy argument is pro music/movie industry and the vegan argument is against the meat industry. Doesn’t make much sense to equate those arguments.
It’s a Lemmy-centric question, maybe that’s why this was brought up. It’s not about supporting/opposing anything, it’s simply a question about why an action is traced back to its relevant industry sometimes but not in all cases (in which case it’s seen as mutually independent).
One reason why things are sometimes traced back to industry is social marketing. For example, in the fight to ban smoking in indoor public spaces, focus groups indicated that young adults were not put off by threats of death and disease, but were responsive to information about how the tobacco industry engaged in mass manipulation.
A lot of people are sensitive to animal cruelty, so videos of cruel treatment by the meat industry are useful to groups wishing to promote vegetarianism.
The entertainment industry has tried similar tactics, but it’s a hard sell. When Tom Cruise makes $50 million per film and Taylor Swift personally makes $10 milliion per night while on tour, it’s just hard to sell the idea that there is a lack of money in the entertainment industry.
Vegans are all about telling you what you can’t do.
Pirates are all about telling you what you can do.
People like having stuff for free. People don’t like being told what is or isn’t wrong and what they should or shouldn’t do.
I think you asked a decent question in a convoluted way. You see vegetarianism and veganism as potentially anticapitalist. And you see Lemmy and other places being very anti capitalist, anti consumption. So why isn’t your avenue of anti capitalism favored in these places?
Well I mean one obvious way is that piracy is a way to have your cake and eat it to. If I could be vegan, deny corporate interests of their money, and also eat “meat too”, wouldn’t that be more appealing than the traditional method of veganism where one must sacrifice some food options in order to have an affect?
Meat eating is deeply ingrained in our culture. It’s highly subsidized and therefore relatively affordable. Toxic masculinity and other default mindsets make it omnipresent…
Short answer? Idk.
Producing eggs and milk DOES cause harm though. Vegans are not crazy paranoid extremist people, that’s just what the meat industry wants people to think. Vegans are just more aware of the damage we are doing to animals. Btw being vegetarian is definitely better than nothing
I don’t really understand why you’re comparing these two things? One is a group of people refraining from consumption of certain goods for personal reasons - health, ethics, climate impact, whatever. The other is a group of people consuming arguably more goods than they (we tbh) deserve since we’re not willing or able to pay for it for one reason or another.
A better analogy would be comparing piracy to… I don’t know, a veg-eater of whatever type who still enjoys the taste of bacon and resorts to stealing it because it’s better to hurt the meat industry than to pay? It’s a product that person really doesn’t really need and absolutely would have never paid for, yet the person still wants it and obtains it in a way that hurts the industry.
(The analogy doesn’t hold up since stealing physical goods has a different impact than distributing digital copies, but it’s the best I’ve got off the cuff)
E: okay, after reading your other comments, I’m both confident this didn’t address the point you wanted and confident I don’t really understand your deal well enough to do so. Both of these groups have some members who have a problem with industry practices and others who are into their chosen lifestyle for other reasons. It seems like you’ve made some odd decisions about which groups are most prevalent among each and are framing your premise around that, and I don’t think we’re going to see eye-to-eye on it when the premise is Like This.
Or are you trying to say veganism should be more widely accepted because “DRM is wrong” is roughly equivalent to “animal suffering is wrong” re: “industry bad”?
The other is a group of people consuming arguably more goods than they (we tbh) deserve since we’re not willing or able to pay for it for one reason or another.
This is a loaded way to phrase this.
The other is a group of people consuming goods that they don’t pay for, for one reason or another.
Hey man, I’m willing to be honest about what I do. I’m not entitled to consume that media just because it exists, and I’m not going to beat around the bush about that.
You did leave out the lack of legal access being a motivator for piracy.
Deserving is also an odd differentiation because people need to eat, and they have needs about participating in society. Maybe a movie pirate doesn’t need to access that particular movie but when their access is hampered in general, their ability to engage in discourse with their peers is hampered.
Okay but seriously, what is this pedantry even? I wasn’t trying to put forth some all-encompassing thesis of every reason people might pirate, nor do I accept that “needs to be in on all the current memes” is some reason one is entitled to media. And neither point has anything to do with the discussion we’re having with OP.
Bizarre as heck tangent.
The way you phrased your sentence about piracy was biased against pirates. You were saying these moral choices aren’t similar, I’m trying to refute that, and I’m saying they are similar.
It’s not even current memes. If all my co-workers watched some obscure regional television decades ago, how am I supposed to understand the references they make without pirating the media? At what point do these creative products belong to society instead of a specific individual?
OP is talking about how there’s a different perception of the morality of these things, and the lesser harm(pirating) is being viewed on more harshly than (not being a vegetarian). This is the core of that discussion.
(The analogy doesn’t hold up since stealing physical goods has a different impact than distributing digital copies, but it’s the best I’ve got off the cuff)
Then it’s relevant to point out this isn’t about either industry being a victim of your run-of-the-mill theft. Both of the things I mentioned combined ask about direct impact on an industry versus indirect or arguably non-necessitated impact on an industry. Both things are strongly relevant in Lemmy culture in particular.
Your comparison is still really, really unclear. Are you comparing the consumption of “extra products” for vegans vs vegetarians to the consumption of “extra products” for piracy?
If so: Do you really not understand that limited physical demand differs from unlimited digital demand? If a vegetarian eats, idk, an egg a day… that’s an extra 365 eggs that had to be produced and were paid for, thus supporting the industry, when you could have hypothetically decreased demand and possibly caused a drop in production. Whereas the media consumed by pirates incur neither profit nor cost (in that if we assume they would never have paid for those goods in the first place, it isn’t a lost sale). There is no production cost for there to be 1 sold copy and 1 pirated copy vs 1 sold copy only.
Though tbh, I’m just devil’s advocating the vegan position here. I really think you had a handful of bad encounters with militant vegans and assume the majority of the threadiverse thinks like that. And, well… we don’t? What even is this “lemmy culture”? The amount of confusion and responses that aren’t addressing the point you meant to make should show you that most of us are not engaging with this on the line of thought you assumed we would.
Not so much “extra products” as “products which when acquired wrongfully have an impact on the business owner that some argue does exist and others argue doesn’t exist”.
I refer to Lemmy culture in part because it’s the two things Lemmings are the most talkative about, one even taking up the majority of the daily happenings on Lemmy. That in turn links to capitalism, or rather Lemmy’s aversion to it (an aversion which I hold too, just not in the exact same way as everyone else).
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So I’ll give you my take, and it’s by no means exhaustive, though maybe a bit lengthy, so TLDR; veganism is on a do or don’t spectrum; piracy is (to many) more nuanced. Here goes:
For one, you can download software, but you can’t download, say, a cow. There’s definitely a distinction to be made between tangibles and intangibles. In addition to that, they’re different types of commodities; food is a necessity, software is a luxury (IMHO).
In my experience, the reason consumption of meat (or not) is often such a contentious subject, has to do with how vegans position themselves on a moral high ground, based on their belief that no living creature deserves to be killed in order to satisfy our human need for food. If you consume, you implicitly kill, and so you have no escape from the morally condemnable bad action/inaction.
Since most of us aren’t farmers or involved in husbandry, we need those people (by extension the industry) to provide slaughtering, refining, etc. as services in order to enjoy the final product. While you could in theory keep your own animals, laws prevent you to do so practically, due to agricultural regulations and sanitation requirements (may vary depending on where you live, I dunno).
When it comes to software, there are basically two camps (AFAIK): those who believe tech companies/devs charge reasonable amounts for their products or recognize and advocate buying as a way of supporting good products; and those who believe tech products are overpriced, and/or that the companies/devs engage in anti consumer practices in one way or another and consequently pirate.
Pirates necessarily go against the industry, and due to the nature of many tech companies actually employing shady business tactics, the grounds for arguments are a lot greyer, and so there’s a lot more back and forth; trying to determine if something is acceptable and under which circumstances. Many times people conclude that not supporting the industry is the better move, often considering not a single producer/Dev but the market/industry as a whole (often because of megacorps), and sometimes that giving support is the better move (you’ll see this sentiment a lot more related to indie devs, open source and federated stuff).
For many people, rather than not consuming a product, consuming it in an unauthorized way is a better way to flip the finger, and so it sometimes comes down to a tooth for a tooth response. Many people don’t have the luxury of buying products they don’t know are right for them or have the featurs they’ll need, and turn to piracy as a form of demo/trial, buying only if the product meets their needs/standards.
In the end, most people I’ve come across (who are vegetarian or vegan) view their choice as a moral “should”, because they consider animals equal to humans in terms of rights to life. It’s a do or don’t scenario, and if you do, you are by extension morally worse because you feed the industry (necessarily). People tend to have a more nuanced view on piracy because you’re not directly affecting someone’s right to life, and sometimes piracy can be construed as a form of protest. As such, you could argue that piracy, although not technically good, is in some cases bad, and in some cases worse.
A vegan doesnt eat things causing harm to produce.
A vegetarian doesnt eat meat.
Lol hahaha, did you know how much chicken and cows suffer, or how extremely harmful for the climate butter is (as its extremely condensed milk, nearly 50 times afaik)
I think I kinda get your point? So you still embrace the product of for example Netflix, even though you dont give them a cent? So I would argument against:
- Movies are not a product of harm themselves. Only huge companies in the end have negative effects. But its not like the byproduct of murder, directly (most meat cows were formerly dairy cows, e.g.)
- Pirating movies is like stealing butter. If you did that, still 1. would apply, but you wouldnt support the industry (actually hurt it, as with physical products the resources are limited, even though you could argue that our industries dont give a damn about food waste = product loss.) Its funny how opposed supermarkets are to dumpsterdiving or even foodsharing. So stealing butter could be better than pirating movies haha.
So no, if you pirate movies you may embrace a product of capitalism (which is only bad for you if they like integrate Netflix ads, looking at you, “Streamberry”). But the product is not bad on its own.
At the same time, being vegetarian is only about 50% there. Some products like “vegetarian meat” made of egg protein (that are simply a trick by the animal exploiting companies to trick you) kill even more animals, as so many chicken die in the egg factories, compared to chicken meat.
Ita fucked up, people that like need to fish to survive can do that, the rest should just stop. N2O and Methane are so extremely bad for the climate, animal agriculture is huge. Its the area where planetary boundaries are already far surpassed.
Link to a way more accurate and recent study
This is the actually true image
I wasn’t asking about harm, simply the industry aspect.
Could you elaborate?
Suppose I go to a friend’s house. They’re thinking of having chicken or eggs for dinner. They ask if I would eat some if I stayed over. I don’t loom forward to eating meat, but in my mind, it’s not like the circumstance of having it for dinner didn’t fall in place in front of me, so I say sure.
Later, I talk about it in hindsight. A vegan would come and ask me why I did that. The ones I’ve spoken to have often said that eating eggs, despite them not harming the chicken, can be traced back to the store which can be traced back to the meat industry which they say kills animals absolutely and out of necessity, and that this is all direct and absolute enough that I’m a financer of the animal’s suffering. All because here I am eating eggs.
BUT… then there is the other issue. There are those on the “con” side of the piracy debate, who say “piracy can be traced back to X which can be traced back to Y which means you’re ruining someone’s livelihood”. But these people, using the above “logic”, are few and far between. And the same people who supported that then say here “I don’t see how it’s that directly traceable.”
So to the first paragraph. Thats called freegan and not vegetarian I would say. Its debatable because if you said “no I dont want to eat animal products out of ethical reasons” while still having a good contact with the people offering you that, you might move them to being more ethical. If you dont mind in this case, they dont even see that you would not really do that, so they think you do nothing big, your influence on them is not existent. At the same time you are actively socially strengthening their believes, as “even a vegetarian eats animal products sometimes” and thats “just human, we are not perfect” bla bla.
So even though its tempting, freegan is a difficult construct.
Then to the piracy. Do you really pirate movies or games made by 3 people in some garage? I would just buy those lol. And not giving people money, so exploiting their selfchosen work, is not comparable with killing living beings.
I know. Saying they were 100% analogous wasn’t my intention, not all analogies are going to be perfect, just good enough to ask a question.
Yeah and easy enough to prove out of scope :D
I also don’t understand the comparison to piracy but I think being a vegetarian is definitely more ethical than being an omnivore as long as you don’t overcompensate meat with other animal products. If you stop eating chicken and in exchange start to eat an additional 3 eggs a day, that’s probably worse for animals and nature.
If you just cut back on meat and replace it with vegan alternatives while eating the same amount of cheese, eggs etc. as before it DOES have a positive impact and we should appeciate one’s efforts.
Hell, even flexitarians have a positive impact. Right now, there’s around 90% omnivores worldwide. If all these omnivores reduced their consumption of animal products by let’s say 20%, it would have a far bigger impact than another 2% going full blown vegan.
Furthermore, it can be tough to go vegan all of a sudden. It takes time to change your diet, learn about healthy protein sources, essential nutrients and stuff. Going flexitarian first, then vegetarian and potentially vegan allows you to take one step at a time.
Also being vegan is not where it ends in terms of caring for the environment. You can keep reducing your personal footprint indefinitely. No more flights, no car, less electricity, less shopping. Everything helps. And everyone should try to contribute in the way that feels the most manageable for your personal circumstances.
Your last paragraph makes me want to ask… I am a frequent user of public transport, partially because I couldn’t get myself into driving. Would you say public transport is to actual transport and to the climate as eating harmless animal products is to eating harmful animal products and the well-being of animals?
I think it’s always about absolutes in the end. If a vegan drives by car 100000 miles and takes several flights a year that’s definitely worse than an omnivore staying at home all day. Ideally, you stay at or around home AND be a vegan AND only buy second hand AND avoid electronics etc.
If you are interested in how your personal lifestyle ranks against the average, just google for CO2 footprint calculator. If you want to do a good one, it will take at least 30 minutes as you have to answer quite some questions. This will give you not only an indication of where you are right now but also in which areas you have most room for improvement.
I think if everyone seriously tries their best and actually tried to improve their lifestyle it would have an immense impact. Unfortunately, most people seem to just blame “the industry” or “the politicians”. Of couse, they also play a role but we’ll never get a better world overall, if people aren’t willing to cut back on their lifestyle. And cutting back involves many many aspects. Veganism ist just one of them.
I’ve used one of those CO2 calculators before, twice actually. They were popular in Google Plus debates back when Google Plus was a thing and I got maybe a fraction of an actual number as my score, as the biggest damage I’ve ever caused to the atmosphere was air-conditioner-related (which I’m sure everyone has here).
Piracy is much more widespread than veganism. It’s also much more penalized, both legally and socially.
And third, while there are definitely vegan software pirates, there’s really not much overlap between critics of veganism and critics of software piracy. It’s two different groups complaining.
That’s exactly my point. There is no overlap. That’s what I was asking the reasoning of. There’s not a huge analogous overlap, no, but that industry aspect sticks out to me.
The Internet picked what it does and doesn’t like a while ago. You can’t really change that, and it isn’t really rooted in any logic. You’ll find people in real life are much more rational
Online piracy is about getting free stuff while not having to face any consequences or look any “victim” in the eye. Getting free stuff is pretty rational at an individual level, even if it requires a certain level of willful moral blindness.
Same with vegetarianism. Meat is delicious and satisfying, even though we know eating a high-meat diet is bad for the Earth. It is perfectly rational for an individual to want to eat meat, but most of us don’t want to kill the cow or think about the environmental costs, so we put that part aside so we can continue to eat succulent steaks.
Few things in life are 100% free of any potentially negative consequence. The ability to compartmentalize and hold disparate views is a necessary evolutionary adaptation to having a large brain. Otherwise, you would be paralyzed by indecision over the short- and long-term consequences of our actions.
If you pirate I Love Lucy, there’s no victim.
Probably true. And as soon as I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, and MASH become the most popular downloads, you’ll have a great point.
Also, to be clear, I’m not against piracy. I subscribe to Gaben’s view that piracy is largely caused by poor service. Its one of the few ways that average consumers can fight back against corporate greed.
Vegans tend to be vegans because they care about the well being of animals that are generally considered unwilling participants in their industry… the cow didn’t apply to be a slaughter cow straight out of high-school… so, the meat industry exploits animals for profit.
Contrast that with the music/movie/video game industry… the first two have a well known track record of exploiting their creatives (look at the stories about Orange is the New Black residuals… or Prince) the latter is well known for exploiting QA testers and developers with grueling overtime. In all three of these industries the majority of money goes to fucking assholes at the top but the creative talent still gets paid and joined into the industry voluntarily.
I also think, if you’re young, then your friends may have all lived through the past blissful fifteen years of these industries being beaten down from their exploitation… Netflix, Steam, Spotify/iTunes etc… all have allowed consumers reasonably priced access to their products but the needle is shifting back towards piracy being more reasonable than just paying for things. It’s likely the next five years will see a strong uptick in piracy.
So, I don’t think the industries are entirely dissimilar in how they exploit talent, but the meat industry is completely involuntary.
