Hi Everyone,
This video is Part 2 of my two part video series that I have put together explaining my journey to becoming vegan as well as my motivation to write about what I call ‘Vegan Economics’. This video series complements a previous series where I explain my vegan journey in a blog. I provide links to Part 1 and Part 2 of the blog at the end of this video description.
Quick Recap of Part 1
In Part 1, I explained where I believe my vegan journey began. I investigated some of the literature that influenced and informed me when I was back high school and university. I also explained my growing passion for economics as well. I felt there was a lot I could do with my knowledge of economics. I still felt disconnected with the world and I wanted to do so something but I did not know where to start.
Now onto Part 2 of the video series
Working for Transport and Main Roads Queensland
After I completed my Master’s Degree in Economics. I got a job with Transport and Main Roads (TMR) as an economist. My work mostly involved conducted economic analysis (cost benefit analysis) on road and transport projects. The work was interesting but mostly meaningless as the results from my analysis was rarely used as part of any decision-making process. After 8 ½ years of working at TMR, I decided it was time to move on. Even though I enjoyed my work, I wanted to make a difference.
Working for Building Queensland
In February 2016, I got a job (Social Benefits Manager) at Building Queensland, newly established statutory body to advice government on investment decisions. Building Queensland had a better more energetic atmosphere than TMR. Unfortunately, it was not long before similar problems arose. All the work that was being produced was just for show. Almost all decisions were being made beforehand. The atmosphere and the energy noticeably started to drop as most people realised it was just more of the same.
Discovering Veganism
A few months before I started working at Building Queensland, I watched a documentary ‘Cowspiracy’. The documentary moved me in a big way, I have not eaten beef since. I watched other documentaries relating to veganism such as ‘earthlings’, ‘forks over knives’, and ‘lucent’. I became vegetarian in April 2016 and became vegan in June 2016, I have not looked back since. I feel healthier both physically and mentally. Becoming vegan for me was my first step to really doing something that can change the world. Thousands of animal’s lives could be spared by me switching to a plant-based diet.
Becoming vegan also made me realise that I was wasting my time working for Building Queensland or any Government agency for that matter. I decided I wanted to do more with my life. I wanted the freedom to have a better life as well as genuinely contribute to the world.
Doing my own thing
I left Building Queensland in March 2017 and started my own business, Spectrum Economics. I still wanted to work with people in government but provide advice as an independent consultant. I also started my own YouTube channel ‘Spectrum Economics’. This channel covers a range of economic issues, concepts, real life application of economics as well as how economics is being used to exploit people. I also opened my Steemit account in June 2017, Steemit gave me the opportunity to share my knowledge in videos, writing, and photographs.
Vegan economics
This brings me now to what I call ‘Vegan Economics’ it is a concept as well as the working title for a book I am working on. I want to bring together my years of knowledge of economics with my new found knowledge of about veganism as well as my increasing knowledge of how the world actually operates.
There is a cost to how we treat animals and that cost is only partially recognised. Economics is purely focused on the world from the human perspective with very little acknowledgment of the cost to other animals in this world.
What is the cost to animals of being treated cruelly for our entertainment?
What is the cost to animals being abused for our food and clothing?
What is the cost to animals for being experimented on to develop drugs or even test make up?
What is the cost to animals of being prematurely killed to satisfy our taste buds?
Conclusion
This brings me to the end of the video version of my Vegan Story. I hope you enjoyed the videos and I hope you are able to take away something useful from these videos. I will continue on my ‘Vegan Economics’ journey with more blogs and videos. I look forward to sharing them, thank you for watching.
For more information on my Vegan Journey
Here is the link to my Part 1 of my Vegan Story:
I provide a more detailed explanation of my Vegan Journey in previous posts/blogs. Here are the links to these posts.
Here is the link to Part 1
Here is the link to Part 2
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I have several other videos relating to veganism which you can access using the following links.
What is Vegan Economics?
World Vegan Day Melbourne
Vegan Cost of a Big Mac (Includes Cruelty and Loss of Life)
Understanding the Cost of Animal Abuse
Vegan Economics Talk at Sea Shepherd Stand Fast Festival Brisbane 2017
Vegan Economics - Vegoutt Launch Slide Presentation
Vegan Economics - Vegoutt Launch Presentation
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
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Ok, that's great news. Thanks @bitgeek.
I've been vegan since January of 2011 after watching Earthlings and I feel great. I just got bloodwork back on Friday and I have excellent, low cholesterol levels and normal iron and B12 (I supplement B12). My blood pressure was 114/74. But what makes me feel best is the thought that I'm no longer directly contributing to animal cruelty. Merry Christmas!
That is great news to here. I found not causing animal cruelty to be my strongest motivation for becoming and staying vegan. Merry Christmas @mike00632.
Hey Man I hear you.
I worked at a chicken factory in Okla.
I did cleaning up and used chemicals and bleachy stuff.
I can still smell all that when I walk past the (yuk) dept.
Have been vegan, fruitarian, vegitarian in some kind of cycle for 21 years.
I wish I knew better when I was young. I could have ran faster and focused better in my life. but we are here now and doing great.
That is great that you have been vegan/fruitarian/vegetarian for so many years. I have only been vegan a very short time by comparison. I also wish I had known what I know now and made the change a very long time ago. We cannot change the past but we can certainly make the future better.
Slowly cutting meat from my diet. It does make a difference--much healthier and loosing weight, more energetic, poop don't smell as bad, lowering cancer risk... I don't really want myself or my children living in a world that people have to fight over resources because we can't stop the urge and greed over food right now.
It is good you are motivated to cut meat out of your diet. There are certainly many health benefits from eating less meat. I wish you luck on your journey.
I got a little lesson from this post
Thanks @spectrumecons
Hey no problem. I'm glad I could teach you something.
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Yes it is.
I have only watch the "big mac video", but i honestly feel that is quite enough. I find it is a super strange mix of ideology and "economics", designed to tell a specific story. Trying mathematically prove your morality like this is nonsense Several things jump out.
Using Encephalization quotient as a measure of life value seems very arbitrary.
The 0.5 factor also seems very arbitrary. Surely any accidental death is already included in the life expectancy. It is a good way to inflate your numbers though...
Calculating the "value of cruelty" is also pretty ridiculous. Especially by multiplying EQ and age. Surely other factors are more important (and super subjective)?
lots of stuff like this...
In the end you get some ridiculous number and reason that no one would ever pay that, as if that number actually means something. What is even the purpose of this number. Should i calculate it for a big mac and a chicken nugget and compare in order to decide what is more humane to eat? It is not informative in any way
By all means, be vegan. It has loads of benefits. There are many compelling economic arguments for veganism, but your "cruelty calculation" is not one of them.
Hi @taus thanks for your comments. The methodology is still a work in progress. I made a start by looking at how human life has been valued. These values are reasonably subjective with quite a range of values. For this video I used the environmental protection agency values. Then I needed to find a way to calculate the value of the life of an animal. I could not assume the same value as that of a human so I investigated adjusting for intelligence and life expectancy. Valuing a life based on intelligence certainly does not sound perfect but the potential of a higher intelligence cannot be dismissed, so for now I will run with that. Life expectancy was simple to obtain and work with, intelligence not so. I experimented with the encephalization quotient. It can be argued that it is not that accurate and a perfect example are pigs. They have a small brain weight to body weight ratio. At this point in time I cannot find a better approach of determining intelligence. Overall, I think value of life of each animal is somewhere close in relation to human life. I think based on my calculations a human life is worth almost 50 times that of a cow's.
Valuing cruelty is even more difficult. Is to live and suffer worse than dying? I have assumed dying as the ultimate worse case scenario. Think of it like comparing a life prison sentence with a death sentence. Many activists would argue differently. For the sake of this first experiment I have assumed a life in captivity to be worth half a life of freedom. I agree this number is rather arbitrary but I did not want to appear to be padding the numbers at this stage. As I progress further with my research I will be able to provide evidence to support a final number. The next part of multiplying by the life expectancy in captivity was reasonable intuitive. The longer an animal is alive in captivity the longer the suffering.
At the moment I am leaning away from linking suffering to the value of life of each animal as I might be understating the cost of cruelty. There are many more factors influencing pain and suffering tolerance than intelligence. This is something I plan to revisit.
Anyway, the general gist of the video was to point out that not all costs are factored into the price of meat and if they were, the costs would be ridiculous. People are blinded and do not see the costs from all angles, especially from the perspective of the animals that are killed for the meal.
I'm sorry but i think you are missing the point. I am not arguing about the specific numbers you put into your model, but the entire premise.
You are mixing highly subjective values with quantifiable values into a mathematical formula and are expecting a meaningful output. This does not make any sense. The VSL is it self very subjective. It is a tool designed to estimate what we are willing to pay to save a life. Mixing in the EQ and slaughter age is nonsensical and does not yield any sort of meaningful number.
As for the cruelty calculation this is nonsense as well. The original number from the study sounds like it was based on what people where actually paying in dollars in order to reduce cruelty. I don't know how it was calculated so i can't comment on that. However, it is clearly different from what you are doing, by multiplying brainsize with age. This doesn't yield any sort of meaningful result. your might as well multiply the height by the eye color. What is it that you expect that number will tell you?
If you wan't to create a tool for people to use based on VSL, just have people estimate how they value a human life in relation with a cow life. I.e. how many cows should you save in order to justify the loss of a human life. This is essentially what your doing with EQ/slaughter age calculation. This way people can evaluate for them selves what the "morality" cost is for them.
E.g. someone who doesn't value a cows life at all will get zero dollars in "value of life" and someone who values it at 1/50 like you mention will get a similar number to you. This approach is not flawless, but it is every bit as accurate as yours, actually makes a bit of sense and might actually be useful for people to calculate their own moral in dollars like what seems to be your aim.
I would agree with you that I am dealing with several highly subjective values. Like I said before, this is just a start. Since I made that video, I have been looking at a possible range of values for valuing life. This of course would start with the use of existing VSL for humans. I will also need to investigate other ways of determining intelligence of animals. It would be good if I could establish a degree of sensitivity to pain for each species. I think investigating a relationship between intelligence and, physical and mental suffering might be a better path to take; this would still be tricky as there are many other factors that are likely to effect pain tolerance which are unique to each species. So to cut a long story short, I would expect a range of values for the value of an animal's life. I might even be able to come up with a distribution of results, wouldn't that be cool.
The original study looked at just the costs of improving conditions on farms to reduce animal suffering and discomfort from existing practices. This approach only captures a very small amount of the costs of cruelty.
What you propose regarding people estimating how they value a human life in relation to a cow's life could produce absolutely any value based on opinion. I think this is very dangerous. What if, like you said, people valued a cow's life at zero. It is better to keep human opinion out of this. Even willingness-to-pay data is based on people's response to various questions and scenarios rather than a direct question on how they value another person's life or their own life for that matter. Brain weight and body weight is not influenced by human opinion and neither is life expectancy. This way we can mostly (there is still my own bias in regards to the selection of criteria to determine the adjusted value of an animal's life, providing a distribution of results should greatly reduce this) remove human bias.
Thank you for the interesting discussion.
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Great post there, keep up good work !
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Congrats on your vegan journey! I have a vegan channel too, I've been vegan for almost a year now. If you ever need any help feel free to reach out! just subbed!
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But all those small things can certainly add up over time. Merry Christmas @ainal.