material progress. That’s why political equality across race and
gender lines has thankfully endured, reaching far beyond the
realms inhabited by moral activists.
In contrast, to liberate livestock from agriculture would not
just impose a loss of human welfare—it would all but devastate
the populations of domesticated species, which rely on humans
for their survival and certainly cannot contribute to society on
their own. If factory farming is analogous to slavery, to advocate
for vegetarianism is to advocate for genocide.
OK, BUT SHOULDN’T people at least choose products that involve
less suffering? In fact, prices are remarkable conduits of infor-
mation. When producers utilize a certain method of bringing
goods to market, it is because they’ve concluded that, given
consumer preferences, there is no better use for the resources at
their disposal. Conscientious consumer movements proclaim
to know better, yet real people continue to show via their dollars
that they highly value access to meat.
Technological developments are great, but there’s no free
lunch. Lab-grown meat, like traditional meat, relies upon a
complex division of labor: Miners must still extract materials to
make the needed tools, truck drivers must still make the alterna-
tive deliveries, etc. And importantly, your decision to buy fake
meat, or none at all, does virtually nothing to reduce animal suf-
fering. When vegetarians act collectively as part of a consumer
movement, they shift demand for traditional meat inward (in
economist’s parlance) thus reducing the price for others. Poor
people probably appreciate this, as it affords them the opportu-
nity to buy more of it.
Even if animal welfare is less important than human welfare,
you might think, factory farming is really icky. My response is:
Compared to what? What’s literally inhumane (in the sense of
“not done by humans”) is eating animals alive—a practice most
other carnivorous animals engage in, and which nearly all spe-
cies of prey are subjected to in their natural habitats.
Factory farms aren’t designed to maximize suffering. They,
like all production chains, are emergent outcomes that look to
maximize productivity within the constraints of prices, techno-
logical capacities, and consumer wishes. Might some aspects of
the process be unpleasant to view from a privileged vantage? Of
course, but producers are better informed and better incentiv-
ized to know how the system can be improved upon than are
vegetarian activists.
Live free, eat meat.
MICHAEL HUEMER is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado
and the author of five books, including The P roble m of P olitical Authorit y
(Palgrave Macmillan).
DAN I EL J. D’AM ICO is associate direc tor of the Political Theor y Projec t and a
lecturer in economics at Brown University.
AFFIRMATIVE::
Libertarian Anarchists
Are Collectivists
AYN RAND
“ALL KINDS OF people today call themselves ‘libertarians,’ espe-
cially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of
hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but
anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that
requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capi-
talism and anarchism. That’s worse than anything the New
Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology.
They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons....I could
deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind
of understanding, and with much greater respect. Anarchists
are the scum of the intellectual world of the Left, which has
given them up. So the Right picks up another leftist discard.
That’s the libertarian movement.”AY N R AN D (1 9 05–1 982) was the originator of O bjec tivism and the author of
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. This passage is from the que stion-and-
answer session at a 1971 Ford Hall Forum event.32 OCTOBER 2018 Illustrator: Saratm/Fiverr
PROPOSITION:
Objectivists
Are Not
Libertarians