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WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

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21–30 of 319 posts

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#21
post #12

Nice. If you care at all about moral justifications for your own actions, eating meat is an extremely difficult position to defend. It even falls on the wrong side of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide, since the default really is not eating meat, so eating meat is a positive action which must be justified. I think it's a great example of philosophy pointing out the absurdity of a (very) widely-practiced pheno…

How does that argument extend to animals that eat other animals? And why is the default defined as not eating meat?

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#22
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, this is the side of history that will eventually win out. In 50-100 years from now, expect this kind of arrangement to be very common with American companies.

I doubt it. Unless lab grown meat manages to be a competitor, people are going to get meat based protein. And have you seen the vast variety of food around the world made from meat? It’s like saying people will give up excel. Possible, but only if some very major hurdles are crossed. Otherwise ubiquity, biological, and cultural adaptation will win out. The vegetarian side is underestimating the scope and time scale r…

maybe i'm mistaken, but i think the overall point was not specifically about meat.

just that more and more companies will align themselves with some specific viewpoint and require/impel their employees to do the same as a condition of working there.

i'm probably mistaken though :)

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#23
post #12

Nice. If you care at all about moral justifications for your own actions, eating meat is an extremely difficult position to defend. It even falls on the wrong side of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide, since the default really is not eating meat, so eating meat is a positive action which must be justified. I think it's a great example of philosophy pointing out the absurdity of a (very) widely-practiced pheno…

And this ladies and gentlemen is why vegans have a reputation for being annoying.

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#24
post #12

Nice. If you care at all about moral justifications for your own actions, eating meat is an extremely difficult position to defend. It even falls on the wrong side of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide, since the default really is not eating meat, so eating meat is a positive action which must be justified. I think it's a great example of philosophy pointing out the absurdity of a (very) widely-practiced pheno…

How does that argument extend to animals that eat other animals? And why is the default defined as not eating meat?

The common justification for this is the comparative anatomy argument that we're primates and primates don't eat meat. These same people have had their heads in the sand for the last 30 years, because it's been found that primates do quite commonly eat meat.

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#25
post #12

Nice. If you care at all about moral justifications for your own actions, eating meat is an extremely difficult position to defend. It even falls on the wrong side of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide, since the default really is not eating meat, so eating meat is a positive action which must be justified. I think it's a great example of philosophy pointing out the absurdity of a (very) widely-practiced pheno…

How does that argument extend to animals that eat other animals? And why is the default defined as not eating meat?

We usually divide the world into moral agents (pretty much just humans) and non-moral-agents.

The default is not eating meat because the default is not eating anything. Humans must take a positive action to eat something.

Generally perfect duties in the Kantian sense take the form of "thou shalt-nots", so a positive action you shouldn't take, like killing a random stranger or some such. This is contrasted with imperfect duties, which are things that are merely virtuous to do - like using your time & resources to help the less-fortunate, for example.

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#26
post #14

I and a few of my past co-workers have been suspecting that the facilities team in a big tech company I used to work for had an evil genius plan to reduce costs: 1. Pick the most popular snack (e.g. nachos) 2. Replace it with less tasty alternative (e.g. kale chips) "for your health" 3. Consumption is a few times smaller 4. The company can claim they take better care of their workers and no one can accuse them of bei…

I had the same thing at one of my previous gigs. We used to have (allegedly unhealthy) snacks all the time, then they had some kind of bullshit campaign where they would not restock the snacks for one month and donate the cost to the homeless (fair enough), but guess what happened at the end of that campaign - still no snacks.

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#27
post #5
post #2

Ok, they're a private company, they can do what they want. If you don't like it, don't work there. But, really......

Like it or not, this is the side of history that will eventually win out. In 50-100 years from now, expect this kind of arrangement to be very common with American companies.

What’s a good way for me to bet you $1000 that you’re wrong? This statement seems so interesting. What’s the basis for this thought process? Isn’t the trend for meat consumption to increase with wealth so as the world develops, more meat will be consumed. [0]

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-production-consu...

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#28
post #12

Nice. If you care at all about moral justifications for your own actions, eating meat is an extremely difficult position to defend. It even falls on the wrong side of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide, since the default really is not eating meat, so eating meat is a positive action which must be justified. I think it's a great example of philosophy pointing out the absurdity of a (very) widely-practiced pheno…

How does that argument extend to animals that eat other animals? And why is the default defined as not eating meat?

Apparently lions, tigers and bears aren't aware of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide.

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#29
post #5
post #2

Ok, they're a private company, they can do what they want. If you don't like it, don't work there. But, really......

Like it or not, this is the side of history that will eventually win out. In 50-100 years from now, expect this kind of arrangement to be very common with American companies.

On what basis? The highly vegetarian countries are countries with a religious population, and Christianity has never been associated with vegetarianism.

Re: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

#30
post #12

Nice. If you care at all about moral justifications for your own actions, eating meat is an extremely difficult position to defend. It even falls on the wrong side of the Kantian perfect/imperfect duty divide, since the default really is not eating meat, so eating meat is a positive action which must be justified. I think it's a great example of philosophy pointing out the absurdity of a (very) widely-practiced pheno…

How does that argument extend to animals that eat other animals? And why is the default defined as not eating meat?

The default really is not eating anything. Just fast, and fast, and fast, and die.
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