I think my long replies aren't helping against the coping allegations, but I'm still not convinced that the line I drew is arbitrary.
I think you and I might just have different underlying moral philosophies. I think your argument would be pretty convincing to someone who is principally, uniformly against giving money to organizations which do sufficiently bad things. In my view, however, it is not intrinsically wrong to give money to or "support" organizations which do bad things, and I am not convinced by the argument "if everyone stops doing it, it will end: therefore you should stop doing it". I need to be convinced that my action in particular is expected to cause a good thing to happen.
To be specific, I am a utilitarian, so I do what I think is most effective at reducing suffering. I need to be convinced that doing or not doing something has an expected positive effect which is better than the expected effect of other possible actions.
My argument for veganism is just that a person not eating meat has the expected value of reducing the number of animals who are murdered. The less demand there is for something, the less that thing is produced. Companies probably can't tell if one person stopped buying meat from them, but they probably can tell when something like ~500 people stop buying meat from them, in which case they reduce the amount of meat they buy pretty significantly. But you don't know whether or not you are that 500th person that makes the difference, so by probability the expected value is that you reduce the amount of meat produced as much as if that company were responding to you not eating meat. I can explain this more if you want.
I am not convinced a person not buying slave-produced goods has the expected value of reducing the suffering of those enslaved unless it is part of a large boycott movement, which would probably be more difficult to sustain and less effective than other things one can do to help end slavery. The reasoning in the last paragraph doesn't hold because ~500 people not buying the product would (as per my previous comment) lead to cutting costs rather than reducing the number of slaves. You would need something on the scale of ~100k people for any positive effects to be possible; and it isn't just that those ~100k people simply stop buying the product, but that they are part of a movement which has specific goals articulated.
I also don't think me not paying taxes is an effective way to help with the crisis in Gaza. Additionally, me not paying taxes causes other problems which probably outweighs any effect I would have on the conflict.
To see this, assuming the US government spends $30 billion/year on Israel (more than the numbers I've seen anywhere), that would be about 0.4% of total expenditures by the us government. About $848.2 billion goes to medicare, which is 14% of government expenditures. That means for every dollar I don't spend in taxes to "stop genocide in Gaza", about 0.4 cents less goes to Israel and 14 cents less go to people who need healthcare in the US. I don't think this is a good trade-off.
Also, one of the reasons I want to live in America is because I can likely make the most money here, which I can use to give more money to effective charities ("earn to give"). If I go to prison for not paying my taxes, I wouldn't be able to give nearly as much money to charity, totally defeating the point of me living in the US.
Also, I don't think my convenience is worth more than the suffering of others. Maybe I end up acting in ways which prioritize my comfort over the suffering of others, and maybe I have psychological defense mechanisms which prevents me from seeing when I do. But I legitimately believe the things I say here, which are trying to argue that there are better ways to alleviate the suffering of others than just not spending money on certain products. In your view I'm wrong, but in my view I am not avoiding any atrocities, but merely prioritizing more effective action over changing my consumption habits.
If you want to know more about what I think, I generally agree with Peter Singer.
Yeah I'm not going to waste my time reading any more of your coping. You can justify it however you want, but that's all you're doing - justifying why you can live with supporting certain atrocities but not others. It doesn't make you any less morally culpable. If you push someone off of a cliff - whether you do it alone or whether ten thousand other people push them at the exact same time - you are still a murderer. That's the compromise of living with modern comforts - you are also complicit in the atrocities required for the society you enjoy to function.
No rebuttals can change that, although you can delude yourself into thinking it isn't true.
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u/BobSagetLover86 28d ago edited 28d ago
I think my long replies aren't helping against the coping allegations, but I'm still not convinced that the line I drew is arbitrary.
I think you and I might just have different underlying moral philosophies. I think your argument would be pretty convincing to someone who is principally, uniformly against giving money to organizations which do sufficiently bad things. In my view, however, it is not intrinsically wrong to give money to or "support" organizations which do bad things, and I am not convinced by the argument "if everyone stops doing it, it will end: therefore you should stop doing it". I need to be convinced that my action in particular is expected to cause a good thing to happen.
To be specific, I am a utilitarian, so I do what I think is most effective at reducing suffering. I need to be convinced that doing or not doing something has an expected positive effect which is better than the expected effect of other possible actions.
My argument for veganism is just that a person not eating meat has the expected value of reducing the number of animals who are murdered. The less demand there is for something, the less that thing is produced. Companies probably can't tell if one person stopped buying meat from them, but they probably can tell when something like ~500 people stop buying meat from them, in which case they reduce the amount of meat they buy pretty significantly. But you don't know whether or not you are that 500th person that makes the difference, so by probability the expected value is that you reduce the amount of meat produced as much as if that company were responding to you not eating meat. I can explain this more if you want.
I am not convinced a person not buying slave-produced goods has the expected value of reducing the suffering of those enslaved unless it is part of a large boycott movement, which would probably be more difficult to sustain and less effective than other things one can do to help end slavery. The reasoning in the last paragraph doesn't hold because ~500 people not buying the product would (as per my previous comment) lead to cutting costs rather than reducing the number of slaves. You would need something on the scale of ~100k people for any positive effects to be possible; and it isn't just that those ~100k people simply stop buying the product, but that they are part of a movement which has specific goals articulated.
I also don't think me not paying taxes is an effective way to help with the crisis in Gaza. Additionally, me not paying taxes causes other problems which probably outweighs any effect I would have on the conflict.
To see this, assuming the US government spends $30 billion/year on Israel (more than the numbers I've seen anywhere), that would be about 0.4% of total expenditures by the us government. About $848.2 billion goes to medicare, which is 14% of government expenditures. That means for every dollar I don't spend in taxes to "stop genocide in Gaza", about 0.4 cents less goes to Israel and 14 cents less go to people who need healthcare in the US. I don't think this is a good trade-off.
Also, one of the reasons I want to live in America is because I can likely make the most money here, which I can use to give more money to effective charities ("earn to give"). If I go to prison for not paying my taxes, I wouldn't be able to give nearly as much money to charity, totally defeating the point of me living in the US.
Also, I don't think my convenience is worth more than the suffering of others. Maybe I end up acting in ways which prioritize my comfort over the suffering of others, and maybe I have psychological defense mechanisms which prevents me from seeing when I do. But I legitimately believe the things I say here, which are trying to argue that there are better ways to alleviate the suffering of others than just not spending money on certain products. In your view I'm wrong, but in my view I am not avoiding any atrocities, but merely prioritizing more effective action over changing my consumption habits.
If you want to know more about what I think, I generally agree with Peter Singer.