I think the limiting resources is a false problem. We are standing in the middle of a vast universe. Why not concentrate our efforst towards that instead of spending money to enforce a policy like 1 child per family. 2000 years ago, 1000 years ago, 100 years ago there were pople saing that we are too many and our planet will not have enough resouces for us all. Feeding 7 billion people was unthinkable 1000 years ago and yet we can manage it pretty well and in abundance compared with the past. Of course we were forced to cut some corners but whenever you try to solve a problem others arise.

The funny story is that the people that choose not to have children will die out as a subspecies of homo sapience sapience.

Has anybody seen the documentary "Demographic Winter". Talking about solving problems that instead generate other problems. This is nice example. Why highly developed countrys choose to adopt lots of immigrants as a solution to the aging population. Why not just enjoy the fact.

quincy Wrote:Your first point is that farmers will have to kill off their remaining stock to start growing vegetables. If the farmers were not going change their business, then they still would have killed their stock, and many generations to follow. It's killing one generation of animals vs several generations.

They don't kill future generations because they've already killed all the previous generation and there are none left to kill. I'm failing to see how that's an improvement. Edit: This applies to what bizarrojosh said as well.

quincy Wrote:The other point is that us switching to vegetarianism would ***** up the food chain, but we don't generally eat wild plants or animals.

That's not quite what I was trying to say. My point is that if we eat animals we create a food chain that looks like:

Plants --> Animals --> Us

And if we eat only plants it looks like this:

Plants --> Us

We've cut the animals out of the food chain, which means rather than just being killed by us, they don't get to live at all.

That's ridiculous.

Just let the existing live stock live out their natural lives. We have no duty to keep them going as a species, if they can't survive on their own.

Splatted Wrote:Plants --> Animals --> Us

And if we eat only plants it looks like this:

Plants --> Us

We've cut the animals out of the food chain, which means rather than just being killed by us, they don't get to live at all.

right, they don't get to live at all. Is the object here to have as much life as possible?

Because a.) those animals only get to exist through our farming methods, and it doesn't have any impact on wild animals.
and
b.) where exactly should we draw the line? Should we pack as many animals as possible into the smallest space just so more of them get to live in the first place? What about all the animals that don't get a chance to live because the farm animals are taking up the land? Or do we only care about mammals?
No matter what you change about the environment, it's good for some species and bad for others. If you're going to start caring about all those animals that could have lived, then you can't really say that the human population shouldn't be maximised either, because it's all more lives that could be lived. Isn't 20 billion of us more life than 7?

btw, i don't think farm animals are ever going to go extinct anyway. We would always preserve quite a few, if only for their secondary products, like eggs, milk and wool.

what about the logical arguments related to health and environment? How about logical arguments against tax dollars being used for subsidies? increased government (taxes) healthcare spending to keep unhealthy meat eaters alive?

edit: this was a response to Tzadeck, but his post seems to have disappeared...

Yeah, sorry, I wrote a post but then thought it might not be fair since I only lightly skimmed the thread.

nadiatims Wrote:what about the logical arguments related to health and environment? How about logical arguments against tax dollars being used for subsidies? increased government (taxes) healthcare spending to keep unhealthy meat eaters alive?

The arguments related to health and the environment are difficult to settle since the good ones are extremely technical and intricate (e.g. which specific animal and plant proteins are unhealthy or whether there's enough arable land and crops fit for human consumption to make vegetarianism on a large scale possible).

Tax dollars for subsidies (I assume you're referring to the massive corn subsidies that basically pay for feeding livestock) doesn't have much to do with meat for consumption, but rather the political power of farmers (they want to easily grow crops unsuitable for human consumption and then get paid for it. Doing this to feed livestock is only a convenient afterthought).

Arguments relating to increased taxes for healthcare tread issues of personal freedom, with no clear resolution in sight.

Although not mentioned, arguments concerning animal suffering end up stalemated on the issue of whether animals can suffer and, if so, whether it's in a morally relevant way.

I hardly did justice to the arguments on either side of the debate, but hopefully I gave a good overview of their perspectives.

Anyway, I personally try to avoid meat as much as I can, but I find it too much of a hassle, practically and socially, to become vegetarian (forget about being vegan. Who the hell has enough time to read labels on everything and carefully plan their meals to ensure they receive sufficient nutrients?). Thankfully I can easily opt for fish here in Japan.

On a separate note: are there any vegetarians here living in Japan? If so, what's it like being a vegetarian in Japan?