Adrienne Martin & Factory Farmed Fatuity

Infosys' founder, Murthy's family has endowed a chair, or perhaps a hammock, in Philosophy at an American College. It's current recumbent wrote this-

Consumer Complicity in Factory Farming
Adrienne M. Martin

Many people who become vegetarians do so first out of a concern for the welfare of factory farmed animals. They believe it is wrong to treat animals and people as they are treated in factory farming, and that consuming the meat produced through factory farming makes one complicit in the wrongful means of production.

If factory farming is wrong, people should campaign to prohibit the thing. Becoming a vegetarian is not the proper response. On the contrary, one should spend a lot of money hosting banquets featuring non-factory farmed animals so as to convince people that such meat is tastier and more nutritious.

Suppose it is the current practice to butcher and eat orphan babies. We should campaign to make this illegal and to punish anybody involved in this despicable activity. Deciding not to eat baby pie is not good enough. It indicates nothing but cowardice coupled with a little squeamishness. Its justificatory rationale is that one is a contemptible poltroon.

Martin, lolling on her Murthy funded hammock, takes a different view-

I am interested in articulating a good justificatory rationale for this line of thought.

Why interest yourself in justifying cowardice and stupidity?

There are arguably two distinct forms of complicity in cases structured as this one is: first, consumers provide the means and incentive for the primary agents

Nonsense! The Law encodes the incentive mechanism  which coordinates the actions of consumers and producers, either through price or shadow price signals, in any and every legal market. There may be a consumer demand for baby pie. Yet, it is not supplied even at Fortnum & Masons.

In a Democracy, it is perfectly proper to campaign to change the Law and prohibit repugnancy markets- e.g. those which involve unconscionable cruelty. It is also possible to try to change preferences without changing the law- but this generally done for a purely mercenary or egotistical, not a moral or ethical reason.

No doubt, liars can speak of innocent people as actually being complicit in some crime of which they have no knowledge or some action which is not actually criminal at all.

But then one can also say that young children are actually begging to be raped and thus are complicit, if not the main culprit, in the crime constituted by their own hurt and violation.

In an advanced economy, consumers rely upon statutory bodies to ensure that repugnancy markets are suppressed.

Virtue signalling liars may say 'the fact that you have not bothered to acquaint yourself with the dire conditions suffered by Infosys employees- in particular their incessant anal rape by elderly Iyengars- makes you culpable of those crimes because when you turned on your computer or smartphone you probably used a piece of software on which those Infosys employees were working while shrieking with pain and humiliation as elderly Iyengars rammed their shitty little cocks up their bungholes for the umpteenth time.'

I may mention that many Infosys employees are Iyers and our tushies are very delicate. Every time you use a computer, chances are you using something Infosys employees worked on however tangentially. Thus everybody who uses a computer is complicit in the anal rape of Iyers. Ignorance is not excuse. You should first verify that no Infosys employee was anally raped by an elderly Iyengar before turning on your computer or smartphone.

This, at any rate, is Martin's criteria of one type of complicity- viz such as arises where there are wrongful means of production

so consumers are accomplices in the wrongs committed by factory farmers;

 or elderly Iyengars punitively sodomizing Infosys employees in the belief that this drives up productivity.

Martin, goes on to distinguish a second type of complicity- one which makes everybody, including a new born baby, guilty of the same crime.

and, second, the individual consumer participates in the creation of this means and incentive as part of a collective.

New born babies, by their mere existence, create the incentive to turn on your computer to look up information about baby care. Thus they 'participate in the creation of the means and incentive as part of a collection.'

The same is true of dead or imaginary people coz if I say 'such and such dead or imaginary person is your spitting image' chances are you will turn on your computer to verify your belief that the person I mention is good looking and has a hotbod.

I’ll focus here on this latter relation, which I’ll call “participant complicity.”

Call it what you like, Martin. You are complicit in the incessant sodomization of Iyers by elderly Iyengars. Why are you being so mean?

The consumer might resist the idea that she is complicit in the wrongful means of production, because of the collective nature of market support. “My purchase,” she might argue, “makes no difference whatsoever to the continuation of factory farming.”

This is a straw-man- i.e. the weakest possible riposte. The 'steel-man' argument Martin needs to defeat is the one I have given whereby we browbeat the stupid shithead droning on about factory farming by weeping piteous tears and saying 'why are you supporting the anal rape of Iyers? Every time you turn on your computer you show a callous disregard to the howls of pain and indignation raised by Iyers being sodomized by elderly Iyengars. Fuck is wrong with you, you disgusting little racist, pervert, piece of shit?'

If factory farming is wrong, it should be made illegal. Campaign for that by all means. Don't go around telling stupid lies and trying to bully people. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Lies can be told about you. You too can be bullied.

Shelley Kagan argues that the consumer at least takes the small risk of making a very large difference, in his recent article, “Do I make a difference?” (Philosophy & Public Affairs,Volume 39, Issue 2, pages 105–141, Spring 2011).

 Frank Jackson wrote a silly book called 'Group Morality' in which he spoke of 'the Difference Principle' as determining which actions can be morally judged.
The only value of his book is to show that Moral Philosophy can't itself be judged to be moral or to serve any morally sound purpose.
Jackson made two observations: 'First, if actions did not make adifference, it seems that there would be no point to the action and second, that a necessary condition of an action possessing moral value is that there is a point to the action. If these observations are accurate, the Difference Principle logically follows: Actions that do not make a difference cannot be morally judged.'
Moral Philosophy, even of Jackson's sort, has been around for long enough for us to say that it makes no difference to anything and is wholly pointless. Thus it has no moral value. Also it is utter shite and has no epistemic or aethetic value.

Consider Kagan's attempt to make a difference. His argument could only be valid in an Arrow Debreu world without Knightian Uncertainty and no hedging or income effects.

Even then, 'Collective Rationality' would not obtain because of focusing, or 'anchoring', effects leading to intransitivity.

 Kagan can only demonstrate his own ignorance and stupidity. But this makes no difference, the thing was and remains wholly pointless.

In ordinary life, some stupid people do say things like 'if we must order take-out prawn curry, let it be delivered by bike, not car, so as to reduce climate change'. By focusing on bike vs car we get an irrational outcome- indeed, the thing is farcical. Right and wrong are global concepts. Stupid shit said by stupid stupid shitheads- like, let's get a bike messenger to pick up the takeaway so as to save the planet- is just shit.

Why are psilosophers such blathershites? The answer is it is because they are complicit in the anal rape of Iyers which, by the operation of karmic aashrav, has caused their minds to become clouded by nescience.

And Elizabeth Harman argues that, even if one doesn’t take such a risk–or if the fact that one takes such a risk is not a moral reason to stop buying factory farmed meat–each consumer contributes to the market support for factory farming as a “joint cause” (article forthcoming in Philosophers Come to Dinner, ed. Chignell, Cuneo, and Halteman, forthcoming from Routledge).

So, make the thing illegal, on the grounds that it is repugnant, and then prosecute on the basis of 'joint enterprise'.

If you don't do so, there is no 'joint cause'. Why? Supererogatory duties have idiographic, not nomothetic, intensionality. There is no 'buck stopped' method of assigning them to a class.

Take the case of my dear old Mum. I was astonished to find, when she visited me in '82, that she demanded a 'Big Mac' burger. I was under the impression Mum was a vegetarian. Had living in Moscow turned her into a beef eater? I said, 'No, Mum we can't eat burgers at McDonalds. What if people see us there?' I should explain there were very few McDonald outlets in London back then. The one she was dragging me into was near India House. I didn't want to be seen eating beef- that too with my Mum- because it could hurt me politically. Still, Mum insisted and we did eat our burgers. Much later I discovered that she believed Big Macs to be a 'shuddh' vegetarian product. Her thinking was- 'meat is gross. Its smell turns your stomach. The Big Mac is sweet tasting and smells of plastic. Anyway, the Foreign Secretary's wife boasted of eating McDonald's in Washington so the thing must be chic.'

Under 'common cause', Mum is as guilty as a guy who who gets off on thinking of the horrible suffering of factory farmed chickens or cows or whatever. This is moral imbecility of a high order.

According to Harman, being a contributor without being a difference-maker is morally significant.

But only at the price of making morality meaningless. It can now have no primitive terms which in turn means it can have no intensional definitions. It is no longer a language with possible univocal foundations. It is meaningless babble.

No doubt, the pay off is you get to say- 'your eating a burger means you are a Nazi killer' but the reply comes back soon enough 'your using a computer means you anally rape trillions of Iyers'.

I want to explore the possibility that there is more to participant complicity than being a joint cause, while agreeing with Harman that one does not have to be a difference-maker (or risk it) to be complicit in a collective wrong.

I suppose, if there were no laws, perfect information, no market power or income effects, no holes in the decision space etc, etc, Harman's argument might have some force. However, it is irrelevant to this particular question. So far as we know, Factory farming only occurs where there is a well developed economy under the Rule of Law such that forward contracting and other types of hedging are reliable and relatively cheap.

Worth noting: Harman argues that, sometimes, it is morally wrong to participate as a joint cause of wrongful harm and, sometimes, there is moral reason not to participate, even if it is not morally wrong to do so.

Her argument is morally wrong because, if it exists as other than a sort of verbal fart, it is either, on some view, a joint cause of wrong or it is pointless because all that is, is good and right.

I myself am unclear as to whether it is always wrong to be complicit in a wrong, or prima facie wrong, or something there is decisive moral reason not to do, or something there is just some moral reason not to do.

Clarity on this point can't be secured till we find a way to 'carve up reality along its joints'. But, in that case, philosophy would disappear.

A joint cause of an outcome is precisely a causal contributor that is neither necessary nor sufficient for the outcome.

It is also need not exist or be compossible- thus your using a computer is a joint cause of the anal rape of quadrillions of Iyers by elderly Iyengar perverts.

Of course, if there really some way to 'carve up reality along its joints' and create a language such that every propositions truth value was algorithmically determinable then 'joint cause' would pick out disembodied vectors on a configuration space. But Econ already does this. We can always devise some mechanism such that Utilities are factorized and disembodied. Moral Philosophy can't because it is sophomorically anthropomorphic manner.

One of six pallbearers is a joint cause in the carrying of the coffin, when four would be able to carry it alone.

A couple of those pallbearers could cause, by their drunken stumbling, a farcical outcome.

It may be that, for some specific juristic process, 'joint cause' can have a protocol bound, buck stopped, acceptation.

Where this is not the case, only nonsense can be talked- vide

Here are some ways I can be a joint cause of factory farming but not, I believe, complicit: I can purchase the vegetarian option at a restaurant that also serves factory farmed meat–it is common for restaurants to make greater overhead on their vegetarian options.

Factory farming treats meat like vegetarian food. It aims to maximize output without considering the interests of the animal to be different or superior in any way to that of a plant. Complicity in vegetarianism can directly lead to factory farming. Consider how a cold storage chain initially developed for fresh fruits and vegetables could be adapted, first for free range and then factory farmed meat. More generally, if vegetarianism permits higher population growth then the precondition for factory farmed meat is a large mainly vegetarian population.

Speaking more narrowly of this particular Professor- it may be that she is popular with her students who revere her as a guide to ethical behavior. They may see her entering this fine restaurant and conclude that it would be meet for they themselves to dine there. However they can only afford the cheapest, factory farmed option. It turns out to be delicious. Word spreads. More and more young people develop a craving for this type of meat. They can't always afford to eat at the restaurant but discover ways to purchase and cook similar viands. Imbibing all the growth hormones injected into the meat, they soon grow ginormous breasts and get high paid jobs at Infosys giving titty-wanks to elderly Iyengars who, in consequence, give up their incessant anal rape of Iyers. But that will adversely affect productivity and profits. The Murthys will have to cut back on providing chairs or hammocks for all and sundry.

Martin thinks 'joint cause' occurs where   

I ... split the tab with meat-eating friends.

But, splitting tabs is just disaggregation. The retail industry supplies a certain quantity of vegetarian food along with meat to a particular neighborhood. This is disaggregated at the point of sale. How it is disaggregated is irrelevant. What matters is that aggregation exploited economies of scale and scope and then disaggregation more than recouped the costs.

I can buy meat substitutes made from the soy waste products of factory pig farming. (I’ve heard it rumoured that some pig farmers sell soy waste to companies that use it to make meat substitutes. This may be a conspiracy theory, but the possibility still makes a useful point, here.)

You may do so if you enjoy chowing down on the waste product of a pig farm.

What is the complicity difference between purchasing a factory farmed chicken for dinner and these other actions?

Anything you like. That's the advantage of talking nonsense.

I think we should attend to the different consumer groups one joins by making these purchases.

You think that because you are ignorant of economics.

In a capitalist market economy, a consumer group is recognizable as such because it has the function of signalling demand for a type of product.

Nonsense! Groups don't signal. Prices do. It is a different matter that under imperfect competition, a producer may do market research and create a focus group which reflects the diversity of the target market. There may be 'product differentiation' to appeal to diverse traits. Thus, the same washing power may be marketed to men in a different package and under a different brandname.

It is sometimes possible to first create a group and then find a product for that group. Gandhi's 'khaddar' is an example. But, it was disastrous for the people it was meant to help- viz. handloom weavers- though it soon became a symbol of corruption, criminality and utter incompetence.

Still, there will always be irrational cults and 'vertical marketing schemes' which pretend to be saving souls, or the purity of the race, or the planet or something of that sort.

There seems to be a sentence missing or mangled here-

institutions, with individual designers involved in their inception and ongoing maintenance and development. And such economic systems do have aims, even if what those aims are is a subject for critical debate about the justifiability of the systems (middle-class prosperity? wealth consolidation in the upper tiers? maximal growth regardless distribution?).

Stupid and ignorant people can only talk nonsense. Economic systems are about keeping people alive on a changing fitness landscape. There is no higher telos than the simple conatus of feeding and farting and taking delight in babies who feed and fart and who will have babies in their turn.

Capitalist markets rely on their constituent organizations’ pursuit of a subset of aims, and many constituent organizations are corporations that in turn rely on being able to roughly predict consumer demand for their product.

Corporations can defeat campaigns to change preferences by using even more persuasive marketing methods. Indeed, it is likely that there will be 'wasteful competition' (in a technical sense) if change is sought to be brought about solely through the market. That is why Corporations prefer statutory regulation of repugnancy markets. Activists may not want this. They may prefer to bang on about factory farming because what they really want is for meat to be banned. However, Corporations can see that statutory regulation means there can be higher value added at new points of the supply chain. The thing could be good for investors, good for the environment, and good for the consumer. Indeed, there could be a first mover advantage

Individual consumers don’t matter much for this purpose, except insofar as their buying patterns combine with others’–insofar, that is, as they are members of consumer groups.

Consumer groups don't matter much either. This is because 'derived demand' exists. If consumers won't eat factory farmed animals, this does not mean the thing will disappear. Another use may be found for it of an industrial sort. That is why if something is truly repugnant, it isn't enough to boycott it. There has to be statutory provision.

Pretending otherwise may appear to benefit some shitheads and virtue signallers in the short run. However, there is always some other nonsense they could be getting exercised about.

What is urgent, now more than ever, is that we turn off our computers and smartphones till elderly Iyengars stop anally raping Iyers so as to drive up the Infosys share price.

A person who splits the tab with meat-eating friends does not thereby join the consumer group that signals demand for factory farmed meat, even though she is a joint cause of incentivizing and supporting its production.

A person who buys vegetarian food in shops or restaurants which also supply meat is a 'joint cause', just as much as a person who splits a tab. Both represent disaggregation. That is why, where vegetarians have hegemony, no shop or restaurant which supplies non-veg products gets any patronage whatsoever. Someone occupying a Murthy chair or hammock should know this.

What needs spelling out, clearly, is what does constitute joining this group. A likely necessary condition is that the consumer knows–or is culpably negligent for failing to know–that her purchase jointly with others signals demand for meat at the prices made possible by high-density stocking.

Economists understand that any given price can be sustained by both low density and high density stocking. Ban factory farming and let poor people in the inner cities keep chickens and pigs and so forth. That's the only way people like me can fight back against gentrification. Merchant Bankers will run away from Fulham if they are woken up by Roosters and have to step through pig shit to get to the Tube. Also the meat will taste way better than anything you can get at Whole Foods.

It is also worth considering conditions setting a higher bar, such as requiring that the consumer is committed on pain of inconsistency to endorsing the means of production, or even that she identifies with her purchases in a certain way.

Wow! The way to get consumers of child porn to stop is by requiring them, on pain of inconsistency, to endorsing the means of its production. What world do these cretins live in?