This is a linkpost for https://optimistsbarn.substack.com/p/how-to-be-a-techno-optimist-for-animals

The industrialization of animal agriculture has created an abundance that would shock our ancestors. Meat, eggs, and dairy—which at various points in history were scarce, expensive, or contaminated—are now common, affordable, and safe.

However, in our drive towards economic efficiency, we've shifted much of the true cost of production onto the animals themselves. Any accommodation for animal welfare faces immense competitive pressure to be removed, and the result is a husbandry system that stands in stark contrast to our common-sense ethics. We’ve all seen the videos—the gory details need not be provided.

Farm animal welfare is a serious moral problem, yet the solutions most often proposed lack realism. Some think we should all stop eating meat, others want to revert to an earlier way of life with small family farmers selling to local customers. But these solutions run counter to all the trends of modern society, and it's difficult to imagine either becoming the global norm in an increasingly technological and industrial world.

I believe there’s another way: We can use technology to change what is possible in animal husbandry, and build a scalable, abundant agricultural system that aligns with our values. I founded Innovate Animal Ag to champion this neglected mission

How to mitigate externalities while avoiding the degrowth trap

The problem of farm animal welfare has many structural analogues. Fundamentally, it’s a problem of the unintended consequences of industrialization, and of unpriced externalities. In this way, it’s similar to climate change, air pollution, antimicrobial resistance, and many other issues.

Problems like these have many kinds of solutions, but two broad categories can be called “degrowth” and “techno-optimism.” Degrowth solutions ask us to throw the baby out with the bathwater – to sacrifice the entire system (including its benefits) for the sake of avoiding externalities. Techno-optimism instead says that we should use technology to find ways to preserve abundance while eliminating the externalities.

In the climate space, degrowth is often the subject of ridicule as a fundamentally unserious response to the climate crisis. A degrowth advocate might claim that in order to fight climate change, we ought to wash our clothes by ha...

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