History

I'm sorry I think this is a really really poor analogy. A much better one imo would be not participating in a boycott for abstention

I disagree, there is nothing wrong with my analogy. Once conscious, a person has to actively choose to pay for the more violent option when they could simply not do so, even though it is very obvious which is which. Being consistent becomes a very straightforward abstention and change of habits + plans.

If it is just the 5 or so brands that the most popular BDS campaign says to avoid, I suppose it is pretty similat in practicality. You only have to remember 5 things.

But taking a principled stance against Israeli products in general via consumerism is challenging. I've done lots of local research trying to identify Israeli products for BDS campaigns and it is very challenging. The barcode thing barely even works because they just use other ones now. In contrast, it is very straightforward to identify a hot dog. And only slightly less straightforward to read an ingredients list or explain a vegan dietary requirement to someone you are buying food from.

In this case, I think the bigger problem is announcing you're not going to be doing it, because it will convince other people to not boycott.

I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?

yes but I also think refusing to engage in factory farming and then idk showing a documentary like dominion in schools would be a really powerful tool to turn the population vegan, especially alongside other education how much cheaper and better for the environment it is to be vegan.

This would still result in an internal conflict and would require the political class to be dedicated vegans. In countries run by commies, the political class is mostly built from people trained from ongoing relevant struggles. People from the general population. Veganism is not popular yet, so why would these people all be vegans? You would need to first convince a wider population via other means. Do the groundwork of raising consciousness.

Decreasing animal ag overall is also different from veganism. Many socialist countries do of course care about efficiency and productivity, but what this has so far translated to is industrialization and modernization of animal shared production, not an attempt to remove animal exploitation. Doing the latter would be a risk that requires a very clear idea of what a transition would look like and how your country will survive removing or massively overhauling several of its industries.

Think of the topics of homosexuality and gender identity. While these are issues whose immediate impacts are on a (relatively) small minority in most countries (keeping in mind that propensity to identify is impacted by social context), countries run by commies have repeatedly made strides on this, often far surpassing capitalist countries' policies and the realities of life on the ground. How did they do this? Who are they responding to and what were the social costs? They all emerged from bottom-up movements for liberation and the political class saying, "there is no downaide to this, let us advance in solidarity". There was struggle, but the material calculus was straightforward. With veganism this is not the case. While it would be if the whole world responded as one, veganism in one country would be a cost to take on, and all of these countries are fighting for their lives. Many have adopted aspects of capitalism that they would not have were this not the case, e.g. Vietnam is in a precarious position due to US Empire.

I expect that countries run by commies will tackle this as they advance, but I do understand why it is not something they impose from the top down. It is somewhat separate from the primary antagoniatic geopolitical threats.

yeah exactly, I hold way more hope for lab milk than Retvrn to Tradition with dairy farming, was more of a push to see where the line of exploiting animals is if that makes sense?

IMO it only matters for sharing a vision or for accurately understanding the status quo, as the more immediate challenges are severe. I would love to live in the vegan world where the main struggle is figuring out whether it is ethical to consume pets' milk (I would probably say, "why do you want to!?" at that point lol).

I don't really think animals should be raised to be killed ultimately, even in the dairy scenario the only meat I would say you should eat is when you're putting an old cow down (and it wouldn't taste that good anymore anyways).

If society were at a point where animal product consumption were so low that it was feasible for the only time to get dairy was during a natural lifecycle and the only time you would consume animal flesh is at the end of a natural life, I don't think the thought of "okay let's eat it" would appeal to most people. Maybe almost nobody. You would, by that point, have conditioned people to be used to not consuming animal products and it would be outrageous to theidea

Idon't really think I'm in disagreement here, I honestly thought the vegan position was no animal testing whatsoever.

I think there are way more vegans that are blanket against animal testing than are against pets, but I think it is... I dunno... 50:50 versus those who accept some cases when it comes to medical research. Part of my response was meant to speak to someone that might be thinking in terms of the latter - that even if you are for animal testing in some cases it is important to remember that the vast, vast majority of animal research is completely unnecessary. For every case you can think of where you might try to weigh animal research vs. medical advancement, there are 100 that are completely unnecessary garbage. Like... you'd know before the study that it is not necessary for the work itself or that not enough care was taken.

Another of those things where I would love to be in a world where the thing we are struggling over is how to think about the last 1% of medical research involving animals. When we can make real decisions about something like whether to test a very promising cancer research drug on X vs Y. And by the time we were at that point, we would have the luxury of trying to focus on alternatives and substitutes (e.g. simulatioms, cell lines, GMO'd subjects with no brain, etc), which would be a great problem to have.