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Showing posts from March, 2017

Trump's Supreme Court Nominee May Be the Most Important Thing Trump Does to Animals

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  Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on a fishing expedition with Antonin Scalia As much as Trump promises to empower the most extreme voices on civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and immigration, animal advocates have long had good reason to fear the Trump administration. Trump's ties to notorious ag empresarios and persecutors of activists from Forrest Lucas of Protect the Harvest to Bruce Rastetter of "ag gag" fame give cause for worry. Despite this all, potentially the most important - that is, damaging - nomination for animals is Trump's Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch. Why the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court touches on all sorts of issues - LGBTQ+ and women's rights, voting rights, civil liberties, federalism, etc. - but when has it ever played a major role in animal rights? How could we even predict how a Supreme Court nominee would rule? Trump with nominee Neil Gorsuch The thing to note is that while nominations, personal ties, regulati

Vox's Piece Against Bill Gates's Chicken Donation Misses A Major Externality

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Economist Chris Blattman (a Principal Investigator where I work, Innovations for Poverty Action ) writes an on-point criticism of Bill Gates's push for donating chickens at Vox, but he misses a major cost. It's a cost that many of the forefathers of modern welfare economics, like Jeremy Bentham and John Stewart Mill noted well ahead of their time. The cost is the lifelong suffering and complete obliteration of individuals - chickens - who possess all the morally relevant characteristics of economic agents for welfare economists to consider them. There are many reasons why economists ignore animal suffering when analyzing agriculture. One is likely simple speciesism . There's a deeper set of reasons that I think make economists ignore animal suffering, though, and they show how far modern economics has strayed from its roots in many ways. The reasons start with this: a refusal to make a "moral" judgment. The basic premise of modern welfare economics is that t