I personally empathize more with the concerns of poor humans than I do mistreated animals and increasing food costs seems likely to increase their pain. I'll gladly wait for technology to improve the lives of animals, but I think it's important our legislation focuses entirely on improving the life of people, exclusively.
Beef is incredibly expensive in terms of costs of food, land, and water -- and in high density situations - rapid disease spread (and post consumption disease spread via cancer, metabolic, and heart disease)
By promoting sustainable diets, mostly vegetarian with optional beef splurges
> but I think it's important our legislation focuses entirely on improving the life of people, exclusively
What about the activists who are motivated by a genuine belief that this is wrong and believe it's their life's work to raise awareness of the issue? Throwing them in jail isn't improving their lives - what framework are you using to pick losers & winners of the people you help vs hurt?
"Throwing them in jail isn't improving their lives - what framework are you using to pick losers & winners of the people you help vs hurt?"
Seems to be the combined wishes of the constituents. Same theory applies to most topics. You can see this in how different states poll on firearms (or abortion, etc) and the types of laws they have on that topic. As an extreme example, the same person can carry the same gun in two different states and be lawful in one and committing a felony in another without causing any damage simply because the values and beliefs expressed by the populations results in different laws. They might even qualify to carry lawfully in both states but are missing a piece of paper confirming it. That's how the laws works - break it and suffer consequences. Maybe it's worth it depeding on your moral convictions. Don't like it, then change the law. In the case of agricultural tresspass, the law is not likely to change in ID based on the current views of the population there.
In a representative democracy, the will of the population isn't so directly represented in the laws that are held. Given the role money and lobbying have in politics, there's no way to conclude that any given law has the broad support of the people vs "this isn't important enough for me to get worked up over vs issues that are more immediately pressing to me" or even "powerful economic powers are acting to sway the opinion of the general population". There's even [1] which adds credence to the idea that laws are passed by the will of the wealthy, not by the will of the constituents. Also immoral laws can be passed when the people in power are immoral. Immoral people can gain power through alternate ways than following the will of the constituents.
More importantly, we have ideals and principles that supersede the will of the public. Arguably the most sacred ideal in America is the First Amendment with respect to protections about speech & this is pretty adjacent in that the law is criminalizing speech for something that should arguably be a civil matter at best. Laws like this are not dissimilar to passing a law protecting employers from employees trying to document unsafe working conditions.
So the idea that the law is purely an expression of the wishes of the constituents is nice but not borne out in the structure of modern democratic governments, not borne out in practice because of how power & money intermix, & invalidated by the idea that we have principles that supersede the wishes of those constituents.
"Given the role money and lobbying have in politics, there's no way to conclude that any given law has the broad support of the people"
That's why I mentioned polling and gave generally verifiable examples.
Yes, money can sway the legislature or even the views of constituents. And yes, most topics have a large number of people who don't care because they don't know or the topic doesn't affect them. However, polling and other research can show how the population views the topic pertaining to the law and the culture in general.
"criminalizing speech for something that should arguably be a civil matter at best."
This is factually incorrect. The speech portion of this would be the sharing of the picture. The part that is criminalized is trespassing and recording to get that picture. The civil part would be stuff like libel or slander.
"So the idea that the law is purely an expression of the wishes of the constituents is nice but not borne out in the structure of modern democratic governments"
I never said it was a pure expression. You can clearly see that property rights are a part of the culture of most western states. Yes, those laws were influenced by the wealthy over generations, but it's now become part of the culture.
Improving the lives of animals directly improves the lives of humans. Who do you think is eating them? Feeding them? Building their shelters and living near them? Slaughtering them and butchering them? Animal welfare is a public health issue. People have caught bird flu and died!
