Please note, I made a few last minute edits you may have missed. I don’t think it matters because you do not appear to have addressed (or understood?) my arguments.
Agriculture in general creates net positive utility for humans
Sorry, I’m being strict in my terminology. I am using “Agriculture” to refer to the husbandry and harvesting of animals for human consumption. For the latter, I would use the term “horticulture”.
while it creates huge negatives for the animals involved
I have argued the opposite of this fairly comprehensively. It is bad form to open as if the opposite of my argument is axiomatic. If you are going to concede that my point was valid, then you cannot presume its opposite. If not, you are better off addressing my argument.
The equation of people consuming animal ag products to proof that it “creates utility” strikes me as the same fallacy as saying smoking cigarettes has “utility”
Cigarettes DO have some utility. They also have tremendous amounts of negative utility because they cause people to suffer horrific, multi-month-long deaths. My angles and my arguments applied to cigarettes would (correctly) conclude that cigarettes are a terrible thing while STILL defending that meat-eating is a good thing.
I’d argue it’s an irrational behavior (in terms of selfish benefit alone) that prioritizes very short-term enjoyment over long-term enjoyment.
There is value in both short- and long-term enjoyment. If you think there is no utility in short-term enjoyment at all, please provide the argument… but please open with a reason why that is even relevant to this discussion.
I don’t know where you’re getting the idea animals are living “better than humans”, this is divorced from reality.
Just look at relative average stress levels of farm animals compared to humans. And how much they suffer throughout their life. And what percent of their days are good. To quote Martin Luther King Jr. “It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.” Their lower consciousness has its advantages as well as disadvantages. But a cow on a farm will not suffer through 3 years of agony and self-awareness of death with metastatic lung cancer because they smoked as a kid.
Also, I’d like to point out that your incredulity is not an effective response.
Industrial animal agriculture is just that, an industrial process, animals in miserable conditions for their short lives to promote the bottom line of the company in question
I agree. Ditto with certain human societies (ever seen homeless tent cities, refugees? Ever heard of a little thing called the Holocaust?). And as with human societies, we should be responsible for improving things. But if THIS is your crux, I would be happy to move forward on the discussion of Industrial Animal Agriculture if you will concede that (for example) free range chicken farming is 100% ethically sound. Otherwise, let’s stick to the topic of agriculture as a whole. If you want to have a chance to argue the ethics of veganism, you need to steelman meat-eating. You’re creating weaknesses in your own arguments by using points that most cattle ranchers already argue.
Propagandized takes depict cows roaming around lush green hills and such, but essentially anything appearing in a supermarket had absolutely nothing to do with this.
Of course not. Having cows roam in lush green hills is stupid. They don’t care about the color of the hills. Free range cattle roam around on non-arable land and eat the grasses and weeds that will grow anywhere. I often get to see the cows and pigs I’ll someday eat living pretty damn good lives. I’ve got dairy industry in my family, so I’m not “making shit up”. I’ll re-offer my point above. Agree that some meat eating is ethical and I will happily focus on the topic of industrial farming and where to draw that line. At that point, I’m sure we’ll find some common ground, and some disagreements.
On top of that there’s the actual reality of the incredible resource (read: water, fossil fuels) usage associated with animal agriculture because it’s inherently wasteful at scale
That is its own topic, and short of a magic bullet that doesn’t exist that particular thread can’t put a dent in ethics arguments. I think you either need to decide whether to concede the ethics topic we’ve already started and we’ll pivot to ecology, or stick with the topic at hand.
See earlier point about short-term vs. long-term, except extended to the entire species. We would surely not enjoy an extinction event.
And this is where you sorta walked into your own magic bullet analysis. Care to provide that magic bullet that dairy and meat will destroy humanity and individuals cutting out dairy/meat will save humanity? The farming industry I consume has the same carbon/methane footprint it had prior to the industrial era. Yet again, let’s stick to the topic shall we?