Of the total area that is used by humans (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),
- urban and built-up land is 1m km²,
- agriculture is 48m km²,
so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that’s 98%. The remaining 2% are all streets and housing and other infrastructure together.
No I know what you meant - but this just seems like a “have cake / eat cake” issue. For example: you may have noticed that there are far more poor people than there are rich people. If the goal is to minimize animal suffering and reduce the impact on the climate, banning poor people from eating meat would be a great way to do it.
I just don’t think there’s a feasible way to rapidly reduce meat consumption without creating an incidental luxury market, and being concerned about that is (to my mind) almost a parody of equality. Yes, the rich suck. But being forced to tailor a good solution to the incredibly pressing problem just to make sure the rich don’t get to exercise the incredibly vast, nearly all-encompassing privilege they already luxuriate in is an unreasonably large burden to attach to an already almost insurmountable task.
There are far more poor people than there are rich people, which is why food prices are common precursors to riots and coups. The idea isn’t feasible because the poor will notice when they are forced to eat beans and rice, while their masters get to have steak. Unfairness breeds resentment. If you want to destabilize society a good way to do it is to make food access even more unequal.
This is ignoring what they actually said, which is a great deal more nuanced than the perhaps overly reductive way you’re presenting it here. They very explicitly address setting these rates to reduce meat consumption in low income brackets, not prevent it entirely, presumably with the intention of adjusting those rates to see a steady reduction of meat’s share of the average diet without causing undue hardship as people transition to a plant based diet.
Again I do understand what you’re saying, I just think it’s a bit of an absurd thing to earnestly argue. Every solution does not need to address every issue in society - inequality can be addressed independently and the more pressing concern is reducing the harm done to both animals and the climate. Theirs is a good solution - it is not perhaps ideal, but it is more feasible than any other proposal I’ve yet seen.
(aside from all that, the argument that their plan might be the inciting incident that sparks a broad proletarian upheaval of society is a really poor argument if you’re trying to convince me we shouldn’t do this…)
When meat becomes unaffordable, it’s banned for the poor. A partial ban is still a ban, if they’re forced to only have meat once or twice a week that will still create resentment - but it wouldn’t be a proletarian revolution. It’d be a reactionary counterrevolution, with Nazis (backed by ranchers and meat industry money) screaming “LOOK AT WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU!!!1” as they march vegans like me into gas chambers.
Okay, I think this has gone beyond the point of where it needs to be treated with any degree of seriousness. I’ve never encountered a vegan that was more concerned with the social inequality of the poor not being allowed to eat meat than they were with people eating meat at all before, so congrats this has been a unique experience.
I’m slightly exaggerating, but it would absolutely empower reactionary conspiracy theories and give them ammunition to draw disaffected poor whites into their echo chambers. There’s already a persistent conspiracy theory that the (((global elites))) are conspiring to stop white people from eating meat (to make them weaker and less masculine) and this would just empower them.
Food prices are the #1 way governments collapse. You can’t just price poor people out of eating meat and expect it to work. They’ll hate you for it. They’ll want revenge. It would be a coup lead by the military, or a counterrevolution lead by businesses/ranchers.
I fail to see how your counterproposal to outright ban meat would not lead to this same scenario (probably faster).
Also, you’re ignoring the option to provide a divedend (monthly, if you like) to citizens from the tax revenue to offset increased meat prices. With the dividend, the poor would be largely unaffected, and mostly the result would be the middle class reducing their meat consumption from excessive to moderate.
Also also, you keep talking about how this scheme bans poor people from eating meat. But I have to say, this reminds me of the criticism that gas taxes hurt poor people since now they have to pay more for gas - ignoring the fact that many poor people simply don’t drive cars, because they are too poor to afford them. And so a gas tax spent on improving transit ends up helping the poorest, because what people need is transportation, not cheap gas.
Also also also, if this sort of scheme were ever implemented, I highly doubt it would result in widespread food riots like you see in a developing nation when they are literally starving in the streets. Worst case, it would result in the people who implemented it being voted out of office and having the policy rolled back. And with a dividend program and a gradual pricing rollout, this would be even less likely.
Meatless Mondays happened. It’s definitely possible to ration meat.
Now, see my other reply to you for why I think rebates are workable, but complicated.
Confused. I remember this being a volutary phenomenon with individual participation. Maybe a few university cafeterias participated. Not a government mandate for no meat sales on Mondays.
So we can’t do vegan social policies because the… white supremacists might use that as evidence of a secret jewish conspiracy to stop them eating meat in order to make them less manly.
And that’s your real concern.
We can’t make it illegal for poor people specifically to eat meat because they’ll be recruited by fascists to overthrow the government. A ban has to be all or nothing, or it will create resentment.
okay, nobody has proposed that as a solution. Also that’s… insane.