Engage more with critics and stop using "intuition" or "seemings" or "but that would be crazy" so much when arguing.
Stuff that I don't like: glib dismissal of continental philosophy, theism (not as convincing as you think), stance on miracles - although maybe changed this, think it was behind a locked post, anthropic reasoning - you don't post so much anymore but they were tons of articles that were mostly gibberish to me.
Stuff that is good - very informative posts on just how bad factory farming is
I'd love to hear how you think about the tradeoff between the welfare of the pigs, and the degredation of democracy that comes from the government of one state regulating how pigs are treat in another. The bill you reference allows states to regulate animals within their borders, it simply forbids them from regulating animals outside their borders, and as much as I want the animals to be treated better, I can't condone the dictatorial behavior of a state trying to regulate beyond its borders.
SCOTUS already ruled on this. They're regulating the sale of meat in their state. They ban meat from tortured pigs, which seems reasonable and not to degrade Democracy. The issue here is congress preempting, not the legal question of what states can do.
I think SCOTUS pretty obviously got this one wrong, which is why it should not surprise us that SCOTUS couldn't even agree on a justification. When SCOTUS screws up one of the normal things to happen after that is for congress to fix the situation, and that seems to be what is happening here.
It's simply not true that they are regulating the sale of meat in their state. The meat is the same no matter how it was produced. The rules they are making are about how the pigs are treated, and the pigs are generally not in their state.
Morally, for the government of California, in which the people of, say, Iowa, are not represented, to try to control what happens in Iowa, that seems obviously morally repugnant to me, no less so than any dictatorship. It is the power of government being used to control people who did not have a say in that government. Do you not see the moral problem with that?
And what, under their regulation, determines what can be sold in their state? It is not any property of the product itself, it is what happened in another state. You can't coherently deny that that is regulation of conduct in another state.
Maybe here's another way to see it. In a democracy, if you want to control what happens in place X, you have to go to a legislature which governs place X. Could be the county, or the state, or the city, or the federal government, but it has to be some government that governs that place. That is a core premise of democracy, without which it looses all legitimacy. And in this case, the animal welfare activists pretty blatantly ignored that requirement.
Well every law will have some effect on other states.
I agree there is a way of interpreting this where it is regulating other states and a way where it isn't. But the way where it isn't seems to me like a more plausible interpretation.
I agree that every law will have some effect on other states. Usually that effect isn't obvious in the text of the law, and you would have to go through some reasoning about the economics or mechanics of how the law works in the real world to figure it out. Here the actual requirement in the statute very explicitly says what can and cannot happen in another state. That seems pretty different. And if we think about the intentions of the people, both lobbyists and legislators, who passed the California law, I suspect you'll agree that it was very much their goal to change what was happening in Iowa. Wereas with most laws, the legislature is really only thinking about and caring about what happens in their own state. This also seems like a really big difference. Given this, I don't see any plausible interpretation where California isn't regulating what happens in Iowa. Can you present such an interpretation?
If I want to sell chairs in California, I need to put stickers on them that warn of possible carcinogens. This isn't an instance of California dictatorially controlling my life – if I hate putting stickers on my chairs so much, I can simply decide not to sell chairs there.
The US has regulations on agricultural products it imports, and this is not an instance of the US subjecting the entire world to imperial rule.
I don't know if any countries have laws prohibiting the import of non-halal meat, but that would seem very similar to the California case, and again would not be an instance of undemocratically subjecting non-citizens to Sharia law or anything of the sort.
California isn't a country. It is not free to regulate trade with other states in the way that countries regulate trade with each other. A central premise of the United States is that all states have a common market, that trade between them is regulated at the federal level, not the state level.
As for labeling, that seems very different from what we are talking about here. California can regulate the sale that happens in California, including by requiring disclosures of facts. That is very different from saying how a thing can and cannot be produced in Iowa.
I'm not making an argument about the law, I don't feel qualified to address that. I'm saying that your principle is incorrect: this kind of regulation is not an instance of California undemocratically controlling Iowans. I can tell because it has zero impact on any Iowans except insofar as those Iowans choose to involve themselves with California.
I think the halal meat example is a particularly clear case. It seems very clear to me that "we will not import non-halal meat" would be a legitimate policy for a state to enact and would not seem relevantly like controlling the lives of people in other states. This is true even though you can't tell on a physical level which meat is halal and which is not. Yet another example would be banning the purchase of goods produced by slaves: this would not be tantamount to banning slavery elsewhere, it would simply be that state refusing to have a continued nexus to slavery.
I agree that the California law does seek to change the behavior of Iowans, but only insofar as that behavior is downstream of behavior by Californians. The direct application of the law is solely about what can and can't happen in California.
I think your analysis of how countries interact is just wrong. Countries do try to control each other economically in ways that are undemocratic, and when a state joins the United States, one of the things it gives up is the ability to do that. I don't like the halal thing because that brings in religious metaphysics in ways that maybe complicate the analysis and definitely wouldn't fly in the US because of the First Amendment. As for banning the importation of goods produced by slavery, that absolutely is attempting to undemocratically control what is happening in another country. Of course, if there are slaves in another country, there is already some undemocratic shit going on there.
> I agree that the California law does seek to change the behavior of Iowans, but only insofar as that behavior is downstream of behavior by Californians.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say with the stream metaphor here.
> The direct application of the law is solely about what can and can't happen in California.
False. The direct application of the law is about the treatment of the pigs while they are alive, which happens outside California. The meat in California is the same no matter how it was produced, and yet it sometimes can be sold and sometimes cannot be sold, so that sale is not the thing being regulated.
I'm not an EA and at least part of the joy I get in eating meat is the thought of annoying vegans and ecofeminists, but if some liberal state wants to regulate what can be sold in their state, that's their business. You can always move, you have 49 options.
Some stuff I put on survey:
Engage more with critics and stop using "intuition" or "seemings" or "but that would be crazy" so much when arguing.
Stuff that I don't like: glib dismissal of continental philosophy, theism (not as convincing as you think), stance on miracles - although maybe changed this, think it was behind a locked post, anthropic reasoning - you don't post so much anymore but they were tons of articles that were mostly gibberish to me.
Stuff that is good - very informative posts on just how bad factory farming is
I'd love to hear how you think about the tradeoff between the welfare of the pigs, and the degredation of democracy that comes from the government of one state regulating how pigs are treat in another. The bill you reference allows states to regulate animals within their borders, it simply forbids them from regulating animals outside their borders, and as much as I want the animals to be treated better, I can't condone the dictatorial behavior of a state trying to regulate beyond its borders.
SCOTUS already ruled on this. They're regulating the sale of meat in their state. They ban meat from tortured pigs, which seems reasonable and not to degrade Democracy. The issue here is congress preempting, not the legal question of what states can do.
I think SCOTUS pretty obviously got this one wrong, which is why it should not surprise us that SCOTUS couldn't even agree on a justification. When SCOTUS screws up one of the normal things to happen after that is for congress to fix the situation, and that seems to be what is happening here.
It's simply not true that they are regulating the sale of meat in their state. The meat is the same no matter how it was produced. The rules they are making are about how the pigs are treated, and the pigs are generally not in their state.
Morally, for the government of California, in which the people of, say, Iowa, are not represented, to try to control what happens in Iowa, that seems obviously morally repugnant to me, no less so than any dictatorship. It is the power of government being used to control people who did not have a say in that government. Do you not see the moral problem with that?
No.
They're not regulating what happens in other states. They're regulating what can be sold in their state.
And what, under their regulation, determines what can be sold in their state? It is not any property of the product itself, it is what happened in another state. You can't coherently deny that that is regulation of conduct in another state.
Maybe here's another way to see it. In a democracy, if you want to control what happens in place X, you have to go to a legislature which governs place X. Could be the county, or the state, or the city, or the federal government, but it has to be some government that governs that place. That is a core premise of democracy, without which it looses all legitimacy. And in this case, the animal welfare activists pretty blatantly ignored that requirement.
Well every law will have some effect on other states.
I agree there is a way of interpreting this where it is regulating other states and a way where it isn't. But the way where it isn't seems to me like a more plausible interpretation.
I agree that every law will have some effect on other states. Usually that effect isn't obvious in the text of the law, and you would have to go through some reasoning about the economics or mechanics of how the law works in the real world to figure it out. Here the actual requirement in the statute very explicitly says what can and cannot happen in another state. That seems pretty different. And if we think about the intentions of the people, both lobbyists and legislators, who passed the California law, I suspect you'll agree that it was very much their goal to change what was happening in Iowa. Wereas with most laws, the legislature is really only thinking about and caring about what happens in their own state. This also seems like a really big difference. Given this, I don't see any plausible interpretation where California isn't regulating what happens in Iowa. Can you present such an interpretation?
If I want to sell chairs in California, I need to put stickers on them that warn of possible carcinogens. This isn't an instance of California dictatorially controlling my life – if I hate putting stickers on my chairs so much, I can simply decide not to sell chairs there.
The US has regulations on agricultural products it imports, and this is not an instance of the US subjecting the entire world to imperial rule.
I don't know if any countries have laws prohibiting the import of non-halal meat, but that would seem very similar to the California case, and again would not be an instance of undemocratically subjecting non-citizens to Sharia law or anything of the sort.
California isn't a country. It is not free to regulate trade with other states in the way that countries regulate trade with each other. A central premise of the United States is that all states have a common market, that trade between them is regulated at the federal level, not the state level.
As for labeling, that seems very different from what we are talking about here. California can regulate the sale that happens in California, including by requiring disclosures of facts. That is very different from saying how a thing can and cannot be produced in Iowa.
I'm not making an argument about the law, I don't feel qualified to address that. I'm saying that your principle is incorrect: this kind of regulation is not an instance of California undemocratically controlling Iowans. I can tell because it has zero impact on any Iowans except insofar as those Iowans choose to involve themselves with California.
I think the halal meat example is a particularly clear case. It seems very clear to me that "we will not import non-halal meat" would be a legitimate policy for a state to enact and would not seem relevantly like controlling the lives of people in other states. This is true even though you can't tell on a physical level which meat is halal and which is not. Yet another example would be banning the purchase of goods produced by slaves: this would not be tantamount to banning slavery elsewhere, it would simply be that state refusing to have a continued nexus to slavery.
I agree that the California law does seek to change the behavior of Iowans, but only insofar as that behavior is downstream of behavior by Californians. The direct application of the law is solely about what can and can't happen in California.
I think your analysis of how countries interact is just wrong. Countries do try to control each other economically in ways that are undemocratic, and when a state joins the United States, one of the things it gives up is the ability to do that. I don't like the halal thing because that brings in religious metaphysics in ways that maybe complicate the analysis and definitely wouldn't fly in the US because of the First Amendment. As for banning the importation of goods produced by slavery, that absolutely is attempting to undemocratically control what is happening in another country. Of course, if there are slaves in another country, there is already some undemocratic shit going on there.
> I agree that the California law does seek to change the behavior of Iowans, but only insofar as that behavior is downstream of behavior by Californians.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say with the stream metaphor here.
> The direct application of the law is solely about what can and can't happen in California.
False. The direct application of the law is about the treatment of the pigs while they are alive, which happens outside California. The meat in California is the same no matter how it was produced, and yet it sometimes can be sold and sometimes cannot be sold, so that sale is not the thing being regulated.
I'm not an EA and at least part of the joy I get in eating meat is the thought of annoying vegans and ecofeminists, but if some liberal state wants to regulate what can be sold in their state, that's their business. You can always move, you have 49 options.
Interesting. I know some people who work for Bores. I also like Mark Andreessen though.