slothtrop

Man, I'd like to do this. My suburb doesn't have much foot-traffic though. I do my best to greet the neighbors, and sometimes chat up people at the coffee shop. Time constraints are a factor when it comes to socializing, as a parent to toddlers.

I think that's it. They've found a balance in "family" entertainment that is sophisticated enough to please adults, much the way Pixar and 90s Disney films had. The Simpsons at outset was also sort of like this for older kids. There was moral panic at the time, but it didn't prevent the show from being an incredible phenomenon, heavily merchandised the way Bluey is now. I must have been obsessed with the Simpsons since 7-8 years old.

Emissions are projected to fall through innovation (and methane does not persist in the atmosphere very long, compared to CO2). Water use in itself is not a problem. We waste plenty on inessential things and that's no deterrent either.

Notwithstanding that since global population growth is going to stall anyway, demand for meat will stagnate as well. It could only be "unsustainable" on the conceit that it would skyrocket into perpetuity.

Plenty of things you enjoy and "don't need" necessitate emissions, water, and land encroachment. Increases in efficiency mitigate that. Recently, China's fossil fuel use has plateaued. That is quite an accomplishment because demand for energy had been growing fast.

We have moral duties to the extent we collectively share values, which are arrived at subjectively and change with time.

In the secular world in the West, even human life in itself isn't considered sacred, as exemplified by sentiment on abortion. The moment we pop out into the world though, we assume personhood and are protected by the social contract.

It's the lack of personhood, and low demonstrated consciousness, in spite of sentience. We have a social contract with each other, not animals.

Still not much methane compared to cows. Also, methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere nearly as long as CO2 does.

> unsustainable demand

Scales with population growth, and immigrants don't come to the U.S. just so they can eschew meat. I don't see what's unsustainable about it. Land-use has barely budged. At any rate if the population didn't grow, the demand wouldn't either. As it happens, global population growth is projected to stall in less than 100 years.

Growth in the 1st world means more emissions and land encroachment, until innovation catches up. Electricity is being abated with renewables, but not concrete, ammonia, plastics, etc. There's no free lunch, if we want the juicy GDP growth, that's the price.

> again - the percentage of meat that comes from these conditions is so small as to be virtually irrelevant in the context of the animal agriculture industry

There's the consideration of our own personal choices and options having a place in the conversation, and the other consideration of prescription for improving conditions and/or emissions.

> conditions will still be a living hell

I've seen what better farms look like and I disagree. It most closely matches what consumers want and expect. Suffering is non-zero because it necessitate slaughter, but not as egregious as in commercial agriculture.

In other words, there is a threshold of suffering consumers are ok with.

It's not that the price increase itself leads to better conditions, it's that better conditions necessitate price increases.

There are ways to assess whether a product meets one's standards. They may not be your standards, but it would meet the median for consumers.

I can purchase poultry from a local farm that has an on-site health inspector, where chickens are free-range. In ovo sexing is coming later for eggs. On the poultry side, life in battery cages by far leads to the most suffering. Absent that, given the right conditions, I find the poultry inoffensive and most consumers would too.

I agree there should be legislation, and that has been happening at the state-level.

Leaving aside that older people aren't as enthused about FT work they've known for 30 years, many of them keep jobs or get bored and lonely without them. Not everyone wants to sit around crafting useless projects, or consuming. Creating value for others and connecting (and status signaling) can provide meaning, and granted in retirement there are other vectors for that made available such as volunteering.

It's not a good argument against UBI, but there are better arguments against UBI.

> The main difference between China and India is China makes it's urban centers de facto independent of rural hinterlands within the same prefecture, while in India, urban and rural are both under the same state government.

I don't see the significance of this.

> Most politicans in India are from the lowest castes - "Other Backward Caste" and "Scheduled Castes" [0].

Now, but the argument concerns development over the 20th century, not the current makeup.

That's right, it scales most closely with housing cost. That tracks with homelessness generally being temporary, being priced out. California is also infamous for rent control policies in NIMBY cities that have been an abject failure. The supply of rental units was low because they are artificially risky and promise too little in return.

Zoning and regulatory reform spurs more building including smaller, dense units, which lowers prices. There's a fantasy among leftists that developers are snubbing mixed-density and dense mid-rises because condos pay more. No one leaves money on the table. Everything is built on credit, and banks deem these builds riskier in large part owing to the impact of zoning and regs. Condos have a lot of overhead, which checks a lot of boxes, while this would be unaffordable for other units. They also ignore that there are small developers in cities that try to compete, but can't get loans, because of these regulations.