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The 'it already happened' defense ignores basic supply and demand. When you buy a piece of meat at the store, you are casting a financial vote to restock that empty space on the shelf. Your money directly funds the breeding and slaughter of the next animal.
If I buy stolen goods, I am funding and incentivising theft, even though someone else already stole them in the past. If I pay a hitman after a job is done, I can't stand in court and say, "I can't be responsible for something somebody else did in the past".
no, i'm not.
Saying "no, I'm not" isn't an argument; it is just denial. You are arguing against the basic mechanics of retail inventory.
How exactly do you think grocery stores operate? Do you think store managers just randomly guess what to put on the shelves, completely ignoring what customers actually buy?
i think that there are an ungodly number of burgers and hotdogs stocked in every grocery store in america right now, and that's not reflective of how many were bought last week. they are all operating on speculation and guesses, interpreting past trends, but, ultimately, they will decide what to buy, and i don't make that decision for them.
Yes, supermarkets use speculative forecasting. They guess what you want, but they don't guess based on magic; they guess based on your past behavior and the behavior of millions of others like you. When you buy meat, you are not just a passive participant; you are the input data for their next forecast. You are the reason their 'speculation' becomes a reality.
and they could guess based on any other factor they chose (the level of the tide, the temperature of their coffee at the drive through, etc.). i'm no more responsible for their decisions than their barista.
a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. i wasn't arguing at all.
You were provided with the fundamental mechanics of supply chain logistics, and you chose to ignore them. There is a vast difference between "a claim made without evidence" and a claim you simply refuse to accept because it challenges your comfort.
only after i objected did you provide any sort of explanation, and that explanation was insufficient to support your claim.
i have never talked at all about my comfort. i'm objecting purely on form and logic.
supply and demand is a theory about price discovery. it is not an immutable law that drives production.
If you ran a bakery and nobody bought your blueberry muffins on Monday, you would bake fewer of them on Tuesday. The meat industry operates on the exact same principle, just on a massive scale. To claim that consumers refusing to buy meat has zero impact on how many animals the industry breeds and slaughters is to deny the foundational premise of how every business on earth operates.
i might. but if i knew national blueberry day was tuesday, i might bake more. or i might increase advertising. or i might lobby to mandate blueberry muffins in school, prison, and military foods. or i could choose a thousand other courses of action. and someone's choice to buy my muffins, or not, cannot be said to decide for me. i get to make my own decisions.
You are now arguing that because a business owner has agency, that consumer demand magically ceases to be the primary engine of production.
This is a category error. You are confusing the mechanism by which a business fights for survival with the source of its funding.
not magically, and not ceases. because a business owner has agency, no other agent can be said to cause them to act.
the people running the industry can make any rationalization they want for their actions: they still hold responsibility for them.
Again, you've moved the goalposts from 'I have no influence' to 'It’s their fault, not mine.'
You are now arguing that because the industry has the agency to choose to kill, you are absolved of the responsibility for paying them to do it, but that is not how moral agency works.
i didn't say i have no influence, so this is a strawman.
i've never paid for them to do it, so i can't possibly be responsible for that
no, it doesn't. it funds the grocer, who can decide what to do with it since it's now their money. it's not mine.
You are confusing a legal transfer of currency with the economic reality of market incentives.
Yes, technically the money belongs to the grocer once you hand it over. But the grocer is not a charity. They are a capitalist business that operates on data. You didn't just hand them money; you handed them money in exchange for a specific product.
By making that exchange, you sent a clear financial signal that procuring a dead animal was a profitable choice for them, so if they procure another one, their profit will likely increase.
i think you are confusing economic theory with ethical theory.
You cannot separate the two because economics is the mechanism through which your ethical choices manifest in the real world.
wrong.
they are responsible for their own decisions, regardless of what I do.
The slaughterhouse is responsible for their actions, but that does not absolve you in any moral or legal framework.
but nothing. i'm not responsible for their decisions.
this isn't analogous to how most people get meat. the person who did the killing is paid long before most people walk into a grocery store or restaurant. and so has everyone else along the supply chain.
You are describing a static transaction, but the food industry is a continuous cycle. You are pretending the grocery store is a one-time clearance sale, rather than a rolling inventory system.
they may want to stay in business, but sometimes, they don't. my purchase doesn't guarantee that they stay in business, nor that they maintain their current business practices. in short, i'm not responsible for what they may do in the future.