From: Ian Goddard (Ian@Goddard.net)
Date: Mon Jan 11 1999 - 15:35:18 MST
At 01:14 PM 1/11/99 -0800, Robin Hanson wrote:
>So unless you do something else in switching from meat to veggies, like
>donating money to charities that raise cows which are never killed, the
>direct effect of switching is to reduce the number of cows who ever live.
>In order to eliminate that bad end-of-cow-life experience, you elimate
>the entire cow life experience. If that whole cow life is "worth living"
>in some sense, this wasn't necessarily a kind thing to do. (Unless you
>think those veggie lives are more worth living, even though they get
>killed in the end.)
IAN: Is a couple unkind to all the babies they
never conceived? Is the condom a cruel preventer
of life? No, since a being that never existed is
not harmed by nonexistence since they don't exist!
I do not think there'd be cow spirits upset that
vegetarianism reduced the number of cow births.
Would raising humans for food acquire any degree
of justification because it gives humans lives?
If so, then causing people to be born just to
kill them is more ethical than not doing it.
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