I’ve been turning this over in my head for a while now. (Currently eating mostly vegan fwiw, but I am not sure if this is the right decision.)
I think the main argument against veganism is that it actually incurs quite a large cost. Being vegan is a massive lifestyle change with ripple effects that extend into one’s social life. This argument falls under your “there are higher-impact uses of your (time/energy/money/etc.)”, but what you wrote doesn’t capture the reasons why this is important.
most of us do not have good reason to treat this as a zero-sum game in which each attempt to do good in the world must crowd out another. For one thing, we’re nowhere near putting all available resources into our efforts to do good, so we can simply choose to expand that budget.
I am reminded of Zvi’s Slack post (ctrl+f “afford”). Attention is a very scarce resource. If I am spending all my attention on important things, I cannot also spend attention on creating a whole new diet, finding friends who won’t mock me, learning how to cook all new things, etc. On the other hand, animal welfare offsets are probably quite cheap.
For another, our psychology is complicated, and making a moral effort can just as easily increase our capacity to make further such efforts as deplete it.
Indeed, and this is actually why I have become mostly vegan in recent months; but it is not going to be true for everyone. My current decision to eat mostly vegan except when inconvenient feels somehow indulgent.
I’ve been turning this over in my head for a while now. (Currently eating mostly vegan fwiw, but I am not sure if this is the right decision.)
I think the main argument against veganism is that it actually incurs quite a large cost. Being vegan is a massive lifestyle change with ripple effects that extend into one’s social life. This argument falls under your “there are higher-impact uses of your (time/energy/money/etc.)”, but what you wrote doesn’t capture the reasons why this is important.
I am reminded of Zvi’s Slack post (ctrl+f “afford”). Attention is a very scarce resource. If I am spending all my attention on important things, I cannot also spend attention on creating a whole new diet, finding friends who won’t mock me, learning how to cook all new things, etc. On the other hand, animal welfare offsets are probably quite cheap.
Indeed, and this is actually why I have become mostly vegan in recent months; but it is not going to be true for everyone. My current decision to eat mostly vegan except when inconvenient feels somehow indulgent.
I wrote more about how I am trying to be vegan: http://www.lincolnquirk.com/2022/02/15/vegan.html