dan.pandori
Posts 3
Comments79
"Conservatively, each vegan might plausibly create/preserve 5-10 other vegans over the course of a lifetime"
The word 'might' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If veganism actually had this kind of multiplier, we would expect the number of vegans to grow by 5X each generation. Vegetarianism hasn't experienced this kind of generational growth. I think claiming veganism will have this growth rate is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence.
[I say this as a lacto-veg who doesn't personally do offsetting, but tbh that is more from a moral purity vs harm minimization standpoint]
That site says that this post of Eliezer's from 2006 is 72% AI: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YshRbqZHYFoEMqFAu/why-truth
I do not trust the site, and would recommend criticism of the post focus on specific flaws, rather than whether or not it was AI assisted.
Fully agreed that praise is an incredibly weak tool. Its all the weaker if its viewed as done with ulterior motives, like here.
RE: governments' relationship with high tax payers. I think this is highly variable. My hometown in Iowa had a very positive relationship with the largest taxpayers/businesses/business owners. I think the Midwest has an understanding that there are many options for business owners, and so actively try to woo them.
In contrast, a large tech hub like San Francisco is much less replaceable, and so can afford to squeeze businesses much harder.
Great post. I started reading and expected to find the explanation totally divorced from why I (a lacto-veg EA) am uninvolved in animal activism. But the high level explanation 'it is unpleasant & often unrewarding moment-to-moment' really resonated with me.
Making a community is really hard. Godspeed & good luck :)
Verifiability remains very difficult even with PFG, where the 'verifiability' is that companies donate all of their profits.
Companies that make money on marginal sales have a large amount of discretion on what they classify as net profit. For example, as the CEO & founder you could increase your own salary. This decreases the net profit, as salaries are part of operating expenses. It doesn't change gross profit (under most definitions), but by the time you're discussing gross vs net profit consumers have already stopped listening. It isn't just binary based on ownership or truthfulness of donating all profits.
Companies also have discretion about what charities to donate to, and it is hard to evaluate how effective a given charity is.
I'm also genuinely confused about whether Humanitix is profitable. This site [1] suggests that in 2021 it had ~3M in revenue, of which ~1.6M was from grants (so 1.4M left for its core services). Its total expenses were listed at 2.1 million, with a little less than 300K in grants, so 1.8M in expenses ignoring grants. 1.4M - 1.8M is a 400K yearly deficit. Businesses are totally allowed to lose money, but I think it weakens the case of Humanitix as a success story. Their more recent yearly reports have all figures redacted [2,3], and so I can't really verify anything about what they donated vs how much they received. I'd be curious if folks could find some unredacted statements that I missed.
[1] https://www.acnc.gov.au/charity/charities/0db4989a-3aaf-e811-a961-000d3ad24182/documents/341f993f-e644-eb11-bb23-000d3ad1f9f4
[2] https://www.acnc.gov.au/charity/charities/0db4989a-3aaf-e811-a961-000d3ad24182/documents/
[3] https://acncpubfilesprodstorage.blob.core.windows.net/public/0db4989a-3aaf-e811-a961-000d3ad24182-e4b9f279-5504-4905-952f-ef0ba115c816-Financial%20Report-b67689aa-6b37-f011-8c4c-00224894978f-Humanitix_Limited_2024_Financial_Redacted.pdf
Fair point. I got confused because the examples highlighted are much more expensive than their natural competitors, and I incorrectly thought that meant the author believed them to match their description.
EX. a 'thankyou.' pack of 2 microfiber cloths (plus a glass cloth) is 17.95$ [1] vs Amazon sells a 12-pack for 7.99$ [2]. Similarly, 'Good.store' sells a coffee kit with 12 ounces of coffee and a mug for 50$ [3].
As far as I can tell no one meets the author's bar of selling identical products at identical prices while solving real problems.
[1] https://thankyou.co/collections/cleaning-tools/products/microfibre-cloths-3pk
[2]https://www.amazon.com/Microfiber-Cleaning-Towels-Assorted-Yellow/dp/B098D79MQB/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Uuyh4_VJcHdo5GS9oyjYoqhkQV4bx8B9ubn7bn49wZ0PPkZqCdSf-lei8XMFfMlEgSntrqK6MxGT_M8mTfLkws9OACyFY1vgAXfjP6ouTzRUNGk9FV_JABD40PxK9ZJ4osLmjbwf3vd9et5VHJeLXcJ0Lu1D0Lv4CCFavjDCHuc5-SwC1Cid7WJvQHVW9HjSJSbR67z4iR0wNkYu2pL9Q2sxho8kHKHCOyXYRlRywOwpaer86jQavMWNnMNXEamdU5V7GevNQlpwtqoTHRN9rzjfqTvNAQoT0HtgQxUJdpY.9ou4bL3nGy_-oU2u-zBFYHCxwYFXQIb0UC2R_kArVeA&dib_tag=se&hvadid=570596319494&hvdev=c&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9031923&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=11735289936918653588--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11735289936918653588&hvtargid=aud-2443232233122%3Akwd-357431965329&hydadcr=8100_13493226&keywords=microfiber%2Bcloths%2Bamazon&mcid=9515a202da2d3465a66d8470c3bdd6b9&qid=1762833283&sr=8-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1)
[3]https://good.store/products/coffee-bundle
I think you're assuming that those converts stay veg*n, which seems moderately unlikely. I don't doubt that you are accurately reflecting your experience, but I do think you haven't seen the long-term effects.
This article claims around 82% of veg*ns eventually lapse, which means a 5X conversion rate is actually only enough to keep the movement steady. https://faunalytics.org/a-summary-of-faunalytics-study-of-current-and-former-vegetarians-and-vegans/
Given that Gallup polls have consistently shown 4-6% of US folks were vegetarian over the last 30 years, I think that approximate maintenance is more plausible than strong exponential growth.
Funny diversion, if you really think that a vegan will make 5 converts over their lifetime (who will do the same etc), then we are only 3 generations away from complete veganism (1% -> 5% -> 25% -> 100%). So the value of a marginal vegan matters less for their multiplier effect, since we'll be fully saturated in 3 generations anyways. The direct impact still matters, of course.